The Game Tape is Your Resume

Brian Cushing, a linebacker for the Houston Texans, said on ESPN that in the NFL “the game tape is your resume.” You don’t need to write your accomplishments down in a file; the tape already tells the story. People know who quit, who fought to the bitter end, and who showed up better prepared. These days, the same mindset holds for entrepreneurs (and increasingly for business people in general).

It used to be that if you were a corporate executive or commanded lots of press, the world caught glimpses of your performance through the Wall Street Journal or other business publications. But most people don’t land in the national limelight on a regular basis, and so the paper resume arrived: a bulleted list with inflated job descriptions and carefully tuned action verbs. If hiring managers had a game tape, they’d know exactly how you lead, how you think, and how much you contribute. Hell, they might even know whether people respect you (does that come through in a PDF resume?).

The good news is that you now have plenty of free tools to create your own game tape and show it to the world: Twitter, Facebook, your blog, LinkedIn, online videos, online discussions, your corporate homepage and bio, your participation in community events. Go ahead and Google yourself—that’s the best test of your background and performance (and it applies to dating now, too; it’s not just for hiring managers and investors). Many people have predicted the death of the traditional resume (it can even seem amateur if you send a resume to a VC or a startup during a job hunt). My point is less about the decreasing need for a resume and more about the increasing need for a game tape. It provides a rawer view into who you are, how you think, how you behave, and ultimately how valuable you are to an organization. The more honest it is, the more it will help you end up in the right place over the long term.

When Union Square Ventures posts a job, they start the process by asking for nothing more than a link to the applicant’s online game tape. No resume. No cover letter. No words carefully crafted for this particular job. Just: show me your game tape. Others have followed suit.

When LeBron James turned the world upside down with his free agency, he was recruited by everyone who could afford him. Why? They had seen him play. It wasn’t his talent alone—it was the fact that everybody had seen him play, and seen him play a lot. If the exact same LeBron James declared free agency and floated his resume to people who had never seen him play, what kind of contract do you think he would have gotten?

So why would you expect different in the business world? Don’t wait until you need a game tape to make one. Make it as you go. Tell the world who you are and how you think. Share your thoughts, take part in discussions, and let your game tape represent you truthfully as you go through your career.

I’m not praising LeBron for the way he announced his decision or for the media circus. I strongly believe in loyalty, and if he was leaving Cleveland he should have told them face to face, in a closed office. I’ve said before that features can fail and products can fail, but your loyalty can never fail. Ever.

People with the best game tapes tend to be content in their jobs and aren’t going anywhere. My message is simple: represent yourself well and show the world your game tape. Let them see you play. Good things tend to happen.