What’s it like to apply for jobs in the social media age

For those who haven’t caught up, I’m in the job market.

But what I want to talk about today is the process. I’ve been applying for jobs for 25 years now. I’ve completed:

  • handwritten letters
  • typed cover letters (probably in comic sans), then mailed in
  • “apply in writing to blah blah blah…”
The thing that has amazed me this time is this: loads of online application forms. “Paste your cover letter here.” “upload your CV here – pdf or rtf only, ONE FILE.”
I read somewhere, that your CV will probably not be printed – this opens the opportunity for hyperlinks. Cool!
Schools just don’t do it like this. It’s usually: “a form will be mailed to you…” “download this form then mail it in…”
I remarked to a colleague that maybe it would help weed out the not-so-savvy.
This time around, I have linked to twitter, fb, LinkedIn, this blog and (embarrassingly) to klout.
Please let me know (steve@voisey.co.nz) if you know about an opportunity.

6 Comments to “What’s it like to apply for jobs in the social media age”

  1. Stephanie 26 September 2011 at 5:43 pm #

    Good luck. My teaching CV has on the front of it a QR code to a my portofolio page. Which has twitter api, RSS feed to my blog, videos of students learning, teaching appraisals etc. I figure the schools which realize what the thing is will be impressed, not bothering to apply to schools which wouldn’t get it.

  2. natvoisey 4 October 2011 at 9:19 am #

    Comic Sans… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

  3. Stephanie 4 October 2011 at 8:27 pm #

    @lazzabee I barely scraped together a pass in bursary physics, very much a case of the blind leading the blind.


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