Take Your Résumé and Shove It

Aaron Strout, vice president of new media at Mzinga

I think anyone who goes down this process has to be respectful of people's privacy...and be flexible in terms of how they are asking people to reach out to them and allow them to sort of look into their private lives.

Does this recruiting process make sense for other industries and jobs?
Absolutely. I pushed the envelope in terms of wanting it to be very social-media focused. I think that you can ask people to go down this path without necessarily pushing the social-media envelope so far. Just: "Show me the blog posts you've done," and—I know that people already do this—do a Google search on someone. If you've spoken at events, include that. So think of it more as an online résumé that has a lot more dimensionality to it.

Some people are getting in trouble for blogs or online profiles that employers don't like. How do people navigate this new gray area?
It's a tricky question, because really it boils down to the company. I guess I would say that people need to be true to themselves, and if you work at a company that you don't feel is a "we" company—an open and honest culture that focuses on conversations and would never fire someone because of something that they wrote in a blog—and you want to be open and honest, you want to be a "we" person, you want to embrace those types of activities, then you need to be looking at working for a company that is true to what's important to you.

Do you see social media changing the job search process for everyone?
I don't see how it can't. Say I'm looking for a salesperson: I'd like to see that they've got 1,000 people on their LinkedIn network, and those are people that might be beneficial to the Rolodex that I'm asking them to come through with.

Taking it a step further and looking at their other social behavior through some of these other tools shows what types of content they read, who they share it with, how they share it. How do they lay out their Facebook page? What types of information flow to the top? Do they strike you as an organized or disorganized person? So a lot of things you'd try to infer from an interview, you can definitely streamline.

That said, I'm not comfortable enough yet to hire someone without sitting with them and feeling that chemistry. It has nothing to do with looks, age, or whatever, but I think that's sort of an old-fashioned gut check that people do. But this helps with the gut check, so it may expedite that, and it may make phone interviews a lot easier in the future.

Do you ever want to look at another résumé again?
You know, once I get far enough down the path, it doesn't hurt to see the résumé. So yes, I do want to see another résumé again. But I want to see it maybe third, fourth, or fifth in the process—not first.