A recent Wall Street Journal article “The New Resume: It’s 140 Characters” describes how recruiters are increasingly using Twitter to post jobs, hunt for candidates, and research applicants. They’re fed up with traditional recruiting sites and floods of irrelevant resumes.
I can understand their frustration, but Twitter’s not the answer.
Yes, of course Twitter can be a useful tool when recruiting for social media managers. It's a great way to see a person’s skills and experience in that domain in action. But the fact is most corporate jobs don’t require you to be a power Twitter user or have any social media expertise at all.
Twitter may not be the best tool for most people to get hired -- but it’s become a great way to get fired.
Just last month, a senior developer was axed from her job after posting a tweet about a sexist remark she overheard. And who can forget the case of the new hire who tweeted he was taking a job at Cisco just for the money; once Cisco saw the tweet, the company rescinded its offer and he was out of a job.
We know many corporations are averse to social networks, not only blocking access to consumer social networks such as Facebook but also barring professional networks like LinkedIn that can actually help many do their jobs better.
So if Twitter is not the best way for job candidates to promote themselves in today’s world, what is better than the traditional resume? After all, recruiters' frustration is real -- recruiting sites feel as if they’ve become automated machine-code readers, completely losing the personal touch that is required for matching the right candidate with the right job. And with the ease of sending out your resume en masse, it has become all too simple for candidates to literally spam recruiters and recruiting sites with resumes that are untargeted.
So there must be a better way for candidates to promote themselves and get visibility to employers. Can it be done better with social networks? Yes -- but it takes a lot more than 140 characters.
The key is the difference between consumer social network and professional social networks. Professional social networks are a great way for job candidates to promote their skills and talents online. But if all you’re doing is building a great profile on LinkedIn, you’re missing the boat. Your LinkedIn profile shows where you’ve worked, your education, and whom you know. But the key is not to just show whom you know but what you know about your domain. Some people blog, but the fact is that it is very difficult for most people to keep a professional blog up-to-date; writing posts about professional topics takes a lot of effort and a constant stream of ideas. The last thing you want is to create a blog that’s boring or poorly researched. It could actually hurt your job prospects when hiring managers are underwhelmed by your blog.
There are, however, three things you can do today to promote your professional skills:
Get active in community sites for your job domain. Help others and get award badges to show you are an expert
Start your own LinkedIn group and build up your own community. It’s free and easy to do -- you just need to find a niche or angle that is different than what’s already out there. Then make the group successful
Write reviews of business applications and other software you use in the workplace. There are increasingly more sites for professionals to write reviews of the products they use at work
Twitter is great for lots of things, but using it as your online resume is not top of the list for most people. There are plenty of other social networks and websites you can use to build a great online resume. What do you think? What online resources do you use to promote your professional skills online? Add your comment below.
With high unemployment, more seekers than jobs, it only makes sense to use as many places as one can think of to promote the job seeker's interests. Some will be better than others, and probably twitter's not the best of ideas.
There still a lot of luck involved in getting that perfect job or any job for that matter. And it's still a matter of who you know in many cases. A majority of jobs are found through referrals from others, friends and relatives.
The internet expands the possibilities, but don't forget to seek out those you already know and make inquiries about positions they know are open or will soon be.
When you spend the time to update your profile on Linkedin, this provides a nice versatile resume for a lot of oppurtunities as well as professional develop activites. What about the six-second videos on Twitter? Might be a nice to way to introduce youself and compliment your Linkedin presences.
@Not2Late Great comment! I think video will work great for candidates of jobs where having a 60 second promotional pitch is important such as in sales and some marketing jobs, but for most jobs it won't necessarily convey the right information needed to review a job candidate.
Also video interviews open up a whole new can of worms regarding greater potential for discrimination suits by candidates for not being accepted due to age, looks, ethnicity. Companies will be treading carefully here.
Well said. There is no doubt in my mind that for all but a few positions, Twitter doen's provie anything useful to add to a candidates profile. It may however detract from any sense that they know how to use English in a formal setting. Your comments about building up an online resume are right on the money and of course it works the other way round too, ie when you go for an interview make sure you have already reviewed the Linked-In profiles of those interviewers...there is always some info there to your advantage
Yes, I think it makes sense for employers to glance at candidates Twitter feeds to make sure they're not crazy, but I can't see the positive use in this context.
I've seen some articles about how some people are using Vine to create 6-second videos to get a job. I think it's a funny concept, but just that--a concept. Unless it's for some creative job that involves directing or recording clips, I think it doesn't really say much about the applicant.
Checking a potential hire's Twitter account to see if they're of sound mind? Yes. Checking Twitter to hire people who will make up the foundations of your firm? No. Just no.
Why is it that when someone says that Twitter is the new resume, a regular person like me (if I were looking for a job) would still be required to send in their job history "in the Microsoft Word format".
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