Four years ago I wrote this post – Online Presence – Asset of the Future – Why your social graph will be worth as much as your home. I wrote it because, I was beginning to see a trend building. The trend, social media was changing the way we interact and people were no longer going to be willing to engage others without more information. We, unbeknownst to ourselves, were beginning to rely heavily on the web to qualify and vet people, companies, jobs, etc. My premise at the time was, if the trend continued, those without a strong online presence or social graph were in deep shit and those with strong social graphs based on a solid online presence would be the new aristocracy. Well it appears the trend is growing and if you haven’t begun building a solid online presence yet, you’d better get serious and start.
Last week the Wall Street Journal had this post: The New Resume: It’s 140 Characters. Twitter is becoming the new job board and the new resume.
This quote might get your attention.
In February, Enterasys, a Boston network-infrastructure firm, decided to exclusively recruit for a social media marketing position using Twitter. The firm promoted the position via tweets and only accepted candidates who tweeted their interest using the hashtag #socialCV. Among the requirements for candidates: More than 1,000 active Twitter followers. . . .”I am fairly certain I am going to abandon the résumé process,” says Enterasys’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The Web is your CV and social networks are your references.”
This is a material change in how organizations find and source their candidates. If you aren’t on Twitter or dont’ have a solid social network your not getting a job at Enterasys in Boston. At least not in their marketing department.
In July of last year CNN had a piece asking if Social Media is Making the Resume Obsolete.
What hiring manager is going to make a decision based on an e-mail attachment when they can browse your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, read the gory details in your blog and hit Google to find out more about you — good or bad — all in one sitting? And paper resumes? Forget it. Between desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones, some hiring experts say there’s little reason to peruse a dead-tree summary of someone’s career anymore. “I don’t ever have anybody come in and hand me a paper resume,” said Gretchen Gunn, a principal at MGD Services, a staffing firm in Stockton, New Jersey. “Ten years ago, your fax machine was loaded when you came in in the morning. Not anymore.”
This quote on the Smart Data Collective Blog was big for me. Read it twice, it’s powerful and it needs to sink in.
Something else employers are considering when evaluating search results isn’t WHAT they find but what they DON’T find. If they are looking for an expert or authority in a certain profession and the candidate is nowhere to be found on blogs, blog comments and they don’t follow any of the relevant groups on LinkedIn then it shows that this person really isn’t that dialed into their craft.
In my post 4 years ago I said this:
In the future, if you don’t have some semblance of an online presence you won’t even be considered for the job. If employers, or recruiters can’t learn about you online, through your social graph, they won’t be interested.
It appears this trend is beginning to materialize. That is if you buy into these articles. I’m seeing more and more evidence of this trend today. More importantly, I’m seeing more and more people building their online presence. That should get your attention. Imagine competing for a job with someone who has a Klout score over 60, a blog with over 500 robust industry related posts, over 1,00o Twitter followers, and a strong Linkedin presence all of which are picked up by Google with a simple search of their name — and all you have is a resume.
Ugh! That would suck!
