Ask HN: As a recruiter, would you prefer traditional resume or social resume?

6 points by ajanelisha 12 years ago | 4 comments

As a recruiter myself I frequently receive 2 page format resume. However, they fail to show insight of a candidate. I am more interested in getting to know about candidate's online contribution as well such as on github, stackoverflow, dribbble (if designer) and so on.

What do you all think?

pmtarantino 12 years ago |

As a worker (not a recruiter), I found the same as you. I used to send CVs (that's what they asked for), and they replied me with more info, because the bullet list wasn't enought.

After that, I don't send CVs anymore. I write a text (like a blog post) about what I know, what I did, how I did, what I enjoy, etc. Like a letter talking about myself. It worked perfectly everytime. I know recruiters may find boring to read a lot of them, but that's what I do now.

ajanelisha 12 years ago | |

I think that's better than paper resume. It is very difficult to find right candidate when you look at hundreds of CVs and practically they all look same. Since few months, I started to ask online activity of candidates which is working quite well for me. We are happy with recent hires.

zerr 12 years ago |

I prefer structured text (aka CV). Even in case of free text, you just parse it to extract that structured information - experience, past employers, skills, etc... but you just compare other irrelevant part of the text to other candidates irrelevant part of the text. It becomes more like a gambling rather than objective justification. Who's text is original? personal? better arranged?

And you'll surely miss many great minds just because their text was not that touchy... Please also don't overemphasize on online activity, be it blogs, github or stackoverflow. Again, you'll miss many great minds.

ig1 12 years ago |

You need both. There's many red flags which will only be apparent on a resume (candidate doesn't have work authorization for the country, large unexplained gaps in work history, rapid turn-over of employment), plus it's much easier to quickly process large number of resumes, etc.

But as you say online presence can often add colour to a candidates profile.