

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

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&#x27;s online contribution as well such as on github, stackoverflow, dribbble (if designer) and so on.<p>What do you all think?
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pmtarantino
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.

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ajanelisha
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.

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zerr
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.

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ig1
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.

