How Employers are Hiring Online

Say goodbye to the traditional paper resume and say hello to social networking.

If you think someone can’t be hired without a piece of paper that a typical human resources recruiter spends 60 seconds on, think again. Employers are turning to paper-less recruiting.

But don’t take my word for it. Here are four people (of countless more) who constitute the social proof:

• Chris Kieff, the director of marketing at Ripple6, wrote on his blog last week that he was hired through Twitter.
• Josh So was profiled in the International Herald Tribune last month that he received four job offers from LinkedIn.
• Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com profiled Sprint call center recruiter Lisa Graham last spring who actively uses MySpace and Facebook to hire 18-year-old entry-level engineers.
• And don’t forget Aleksey Vayner and his mugshot that graced a feature story in Time Magazine in February 2007 after he submitted an online video when applying for a job with investment bank UBS.

Networking works

“People get hired without resumes because they are hired by someone they know,” writes Glen Slingerlands of Chilliwack Employment Services. “Employers have always preferred to hire people they know, and networking is really about getting to know more people.”

Welcome to the social web, where employers and prospective employees are using the same networks. Everyone is commoditizing themselves as personal and corporate brands. The more networks one is on and actively participates in is directly proportionate to common connections.

For instance, I was messaging on Facebook today with my friend Jill who I’ve known for almost a decade, and we discover today that one of her childhood friends is a guy who I’ve acted in community theatre with. If it wasn’t for Facebook, we probably would never have made that mutual connection.

Every Fortune 500 firm is on LinkedIn and using it to add connections, answer questions, and engage with current and potential customers, clients, and employees. You can call LinkedIn a professional network, but essentially it’s still social networking.

“The more buzz you can create around yourself and the more interest you can create, the better your chances,” says Kieff in a BlogTalkRadio interview with John Lawler.

Business is changing

Two years ago, an advice column on Yahoo! Hotjobs indicated social networking will not get you a job. It boils down for me to one sentence by Peter Weddle:

“Social networking takes time, but it won’t do much, if anything, to advance your job search.”

No longer, Peter.

“The old business adage that it’s not what you know, but who you know, takes a twist in the Internet era because it’s what you know about social networking sites that can get you ahead,” writes IHT’s Sarah Jane Tribble.

This is echoed in numerous people profiled by Orlando Sentinel reporter Etan Horowitz (and Twitter user @etanowitz) that social networking sites are helping job seekers.

Aaron Strout of online community management firm Mzinga is widely quoted as leading the pack of social media adopters who don’t want to see paper resumes:

For more information on the why and how of social networking, I refer you to prior posts of mine on how I use Twitter and why I don’t want to be added to your LinkedIn network, not to mention why businesses are joining the social media bandwagon.

Also, Andy Beal refers to a CareerBuilder.com study that one in five recruiters are active on social networks as part of their hiring process. He provides handy advice to job seekers to protect your online reputation and be alerted if someone writes something about you.

If you are an employer or a job seeker using social media to enhance or replace traditional recruitment, I’d love to hear from you.

Join the conversation by adding a comment below, or you can contact me through a number of my social networks, linked to the right of this page.

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Tagged as: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

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