Social media has become an important part of our culture and allows us to connect with almost anyone, anywhere and at anytime. Many companies use social media to connect with customers and drive marketing efforts, but recruiters and employers use social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as a way to reach out to potential candidates.
Lately, tweets, often called Twitterviews, have taken over the recruiting efforts of companies such as The Marketing Arm and Enterasys Networks who seek tech-savvy marketing employees. The basic idea of a Twitterview is asking candidates to tweet a response to a question instead of sending their resumes or coming in for an interview. Aaron Biebert, a commercial director from Milwaukee, recently hired a social media coordinator based on 40 public tweets claiming that “ all that mattered was their online personality.”
While social media profiles may help recruiters find candidates and understand more about them, it should not replace the importance of a resume or interview. Mark Burkley, a recruiter here at IPS states,
The paper resume is dead, but it would be both premature and shortsighted to say the resume itself has run its course. This is particularly true for roles that are beyond marketing or management of social media. The fact is we have many more facets and means of gathering the picture of a person and their accomplishments as relevant to a position, and tweets are just another data point in the process.
Overall, while social media can help paint a bigger picture of who a candidate is, resumes and interviews should still remain an important part of the hiring process.
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