I can’t express in words how tired I am of hearing the questions, “Are résumés dead” or “Are résumés obsolete?” I’m almost as tired of hearing this than I am of hearing my daughters arguing over a pair of jeans.

It’s as if people are asking and writing about whether the  résumé is obsolete to create a self-fulfilling  prophesy that will bring on its demise. Personally, I think the  résumé has a good deal of life in it.

So you can imagine my annoyance when I came across a recent article from my much admired LinkedIn connection, Martin Yate, titled Are Résumés Obsolete? Résumés vs. Social Media; and then my pleasure when he states that both are needed. So the LinkedIn profile, as a passive document that requires employers to type keywords to find you; and the résumé, as a tailored document you send to target companies, which will also look for the requisite keywords in order to find you in their databases.

Martin writes: You are going to need both a résumé and a social media profile for your job search, and they are both going to need search engine optimization to be productive.

Bottom line: jobseekers need both the résumé and LinkedIn profile in order to compete in this tight job market; and they need to create strategic documents that succeed in landing them an interview. In other words, there’s no reason to choose between the two. I hope this ends the debate, because I for one am tired of hearing it.