Dan Jacobs enthuse.me writes ..
Death of the CV, Long Live Twitter Rosamund Urwin wrote an interesting article recently on how the paper CV is dead or on its way out and Twitter CV’s are the way forward.
I agree with the general trend she is describing, employers are beginning to realise that the CV, which is fairly static and limited, is not the best way to find out if someone is suitable for a job.Twitter can be useful aid in the recruitment process as we recently found out. Running a web-start-up has its challenges and making sure you hire the right people is one of them.
When you are running a small business which is trying to scale very quickly there is very little scope for making mistakes with hires.Especially at the start of the business, every single hire needs to work-out otherwise you could be set back precious weeks or worse inyour project.Even hiring interns can be critical for the business and there for erelying on a CV is not enough.
When hiring our first intern recently we asked job applicants to write a tweet ‘selling’ our start-up – enthuse.me in 140 characters, this was alongside the traditional request for a CV and covering letter and we used it effectively as a way of filtering applications. Applicants who got through the first filter were then asked to write a blog post reviewing enthuse.me. I was amazed at how many applicants dropped out at this point, my guess is that most would not be bothered. This process however left us with a few quality candidates to interview.
Blog posts, video’s audio or other contributions
Urwin was right that a great tweet could get you the attention of an employer and help you to get attention; it can be a door opener. However Twitter is just the starting point, the key to standing out from other candidates is to show employers that you really know something about your field and that you have relevant experience; this can be through blog posts, video’s audio or other contributions you may have made to online communities as well as your LinkedIn profile.
When we started thinking about building enthuse.me, we thought really hard about how to really show what you can do and how you are good at it. We decided to put your content and social presence in the heart of our product. The idea is that you showcase your best bits of content relevant to the role you are looking for. You can also display social media stats such as your Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections (if they’re worth showing), giving the employer a quick sense of your credibility.
The key thing with regards to getting a job especially in the current job market is to equip yourself as well as possible, make sure you aregiving yourself the best chance of getting hired by being proactive and maintaining your online presence carefully!
Dan Jacobs
CEO & Founder, enthuse.me
Dan has held various senior technical and commercial roles in early stage start-ups for over 15 years. His previous role was of founder, COO and eventually Managing Director of the Prime Card www.idtprime.com. In his spare time, Dan is an avid choral singer, passionate vegetarian and makes a mean veggie lasagna.
