The world is changing and changing fast. The Internet is here and upsetting everything that used to be sacred, including the CV.
The CV used to be treated like some sacred text, where candidates would spend hours refining it and employers would read over it judiciously.
But then people started telling fibs in their CVs (or at least employers started noticing that people were telling fibs. It is possible that they always told fibs and nobody noticed till recently) and employers started losing faith in CVs and they have become a little less sacred. Then the Internet started doing its thing and the CV is looking very outdated.
Social media has arrived and not only do candidates use it but employers do too. Employers are increasingly checking out your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. Don`t be surprised if an employer asks to be added to your friends list on Facebook, so that they can check you out. They are also using personality profiling to get a feel of who you are. Employers are still using CVs but they are not the only things they use.
Is the CV dying? Not quite yet but there are lots more tools in the box these days and employers are using them. Make sure you are too.
I think you hit it on the head – everything is changing. Being open and online – combining ‘work’ and ‘personal’ life – will become the norm.
For example, I have one personality, although I modify my behaviour to suit the situation, I cannot fundamentally change who I am, nor would I want to.
Facebook and other social networking platforms allow me to represent the whole me. I’m pretty confident there would be many more happy employees if they felt they could be honest and open about who they were outwith the ‘job’…
I don’t know – I think lots of people post things on Facebook that they wouldn’t necessarily want employers, colleagues or potential employers to see. So in that respect, it’s a powerful character reference.
And here’s the rub: the current generation of kids live on the net, in the open. Everything will change dramatically as they grow up – there will be no secrets.
I think that will be a good thing. Nonsense political scandals involving drugs, sex and/or rock’n’roll will be a thing of the past, for one thing. Hopefully.
Using Facebook as a reference checker is a somewhat limited use of its potential, don’t you think?
I know many professional recruiters also use Facebook, LinkedIn etc as hunting grounds for high quality candidates.
But I believe it’s highest value is in creating a professional personal online presence which will lead you to your dream job by allowing you to engage and network with the people (and potential employers, employees and partners) who share your passion.
I agree that the employers should use the web as a form of reference checking, but the implications of having a potential employer make a friend request on Facebook are pretty big, I think.
I try to keep Facebook for those who I actually know and like to hang out with (my friends, you could say!), and LinkedIn for professional contacts. As a result, I would turn down an employer friend request – and that makes me think it’s only a matter of time before there’s a lawsuit over someone not being hired because they denied an employer access to their Facebook account.
And most law firms are just not setup to handle that kind of thing (or in fact anything to do with technology, as I’m sure you’re all too aware!).