Tweets, not résumés, to get a job?

This is an interesting article in usatoday this weekend. Apparently this company is looking for employees with ‘online personalities’ regardless of what they can do. While I think the article is a bit extreme I do see this becoming a trend. Whether we like it or not, an abundance of followers on social media platforms equals credibility. If you’re planning on boosting your social engagement on a platform like Instagram, you can easily buy Instagram followers here. However I just was having a discussion this weekend with a colleague and we were discussing how ‘recommendations’ within social media sites like linkedin were not very valuable as people who did not know either of us had recommended us and added skills to our profile in hopes that we would do the same to theirs. Here is a quote from the article:

“The paper résumé is dead,” says Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer at the tech firm Enterasys Networks that is in the process of hiring a six-figure, senior social media strategist based on tweets. Afshar refuses to even look at résumés. “The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references.”

Beginning Monday, job prospects can begin tweeting for the job, which he hopes to fill by April. “I believe the very best talent isn’t even looking for work,” Afshar says. “They’re mobile and socially connected and too busy changing the world.”

Think of it as a 140-character job interview. Even the folks at Twitter are a bit surprised. “I don’t think we’ve heard of that before actually,” says spokeswoman Alexandra Valasek in an e-mail.”

“It didn’t matter to me what they’re like in an interview setting,” Biebert says. “All that mattered was their online personality.”

What do you think?

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