Have you been poring over that latest pristine copy of your resume, carefully examining any potential flaws that may be driving potential employers away? Well if Twitter is any indication, the days of resume craftsmanship may soon be long gone.
A new trend is forming wherein prospective employees are hired based off of their savvy in Twitter rather than through a conventional sit-down interview or even (gasp) an evaluation of their resume. Sometimes accomplished in as little as a couple tweets, this new hiring process is revolutionizing how people perceive the job search.
It's name? A 'twitterview', and the effects of this new hiring process could have a long-lasting effect. For one, this practice will almost assuredly lead to abominable sentences such as "all I had to do was tweet the deets at my twitterview and the job was mine #twitterviewingswag". More importantly, however, is that such a trend could spell the end for the resume's stranglehold on the hiring process.
"The paper résumé is dead," says Vala Afshar, CMO at the tech firm Enterasys Networks and current issuer of twitterviews. Afshar won't even bother with résumés. "The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references."
Starting this past Monday, Afshar began his search for the right employee by allowing job seekers to state their case on his twitter. What's most surprising is that this job is not for some entry-level online marketing job. Actually, it's for the title of 'Senior Social Media Analyst', and its reward is over $100,000 a year.
Some people believe that this will not just be a fad, but instead will one day be the go-to method for hiring people in the digital realm. 22 year old Kristy Webster, who is currently operating a twitterview competition for her company The Marketing Arm, is one such believer. For her, it's pretty simple:
"We're meeting our potential talent where they live," says Webster. "What's more relevant than Twitter to our interns?"
Twitterviewing's popularity is not just for those that are caught up in the tech-inspired, youthful frenzy that is online social media. Jan Melnik is a seasoned career coach from Durham, Conn. who believes this method is here to stay, as it evaluates the newest members of the work force based on what they do best.
"It's perfect for any company that wants to take advantage of what Millennials bring to the marketplace."
#hired
