The Twitter Resume: Hiring 2.0

For those who are a little slow on the uptake of all the latest tech fads, there is a new social networking service taking the world by storm: Twitter. Twitter is a networking site that allows short posts about "What you are doing now." These posts are then delivered to everyone on your list of followers, either through SMS messaging, instant messaging, or email. The catch is that the posts can be no more than 140 characters in length. This makes the posts concise, direct, and relevant. Twitter.com gained popularity in March 2007 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) web awards where it won for best new blogging service. From there Twitter took off with millions of users now sending out their 140 character updates, known as tweets, every day (or multiple times a day). It is claimed on Wikipedia that Twitter is used now by high profile sources for professional and high-priority messaging, including the Los Angeles Fire Department and NASA.

The newest application of Twitter came from a writer for Business Week and author of the book The Numerati. He is said to have invented Hiring 2.0, which includes using Twitter for jobseekers to create resumes and for H.R. personnel to hire from them.

According to Steve Baker's article, from Business Week Blogspotting, (here) he called for readers to send in Twitter resumes for themselves and create new ones for high profile CEOs, celebrities, et al.

Twitter resumes are starting to catch on and it could do a person a great service to create theirs as soon as possible. For the five minutes or less it will take, the rewards could be tremendous. A few tips for writing a Twitter resume include:

Choose a style for your Twitter resume. There are two basic types. Ones meant to be read by machines for the purpose of pre-screening and ones meant to be read by people for the purpose of piquing interest.

A machine-styled Tweeter resume includes as much information about your accomplishments and job experience as can fit in the allotted 140 characters. This includes using as many traditionally accepted abbreviations as possible. An example from Steve Baker's Blogspotting on May 30, 2008 (here) is "@mikeneumann, Smart Cards - 10 years, appdev, devmgr,PM, biz dev, ISO/IEC editor, consultant. 3GI/RSA Security/Schlumberger/Axalto/StepNexus/ind consult. " The biggest disadvantage to this is that it is boring and doesn't connect to another person very well.

The alternative is a more personal Twitter resume used to pique curiosity and interest. It is not meant to be a bio, but a jumping off point where someone can find more information about you. This could include short links to other websites or more creatively, keywords that when searched on Google lead to a site that says something about yourself.

The use of social networking tools such as Twitter has become so accepted into mainstream society, that the Twitter resume is a viable and respectable option for jobseekers. By giving only a few small details about yourself, resume readers are not bogged down in needless detail and fluff. It gives them a taste and that's all that is needed, which is really the purpose of a traditional resume anyway-to land an interview. The Twitter resume also can reach more people in a shorter amount of time than a regular resume. It can get to the top of the list on machine-screened resumes, and it shows that you are hip to the latest trends and on top of your game, which may be one of the most important traits in landing that new job.