Young whippersnappers

[jethrien]

Ok, I'm officially old. I am boggling over a resume that claims, among other things to be proficient at Twitter.

Twitter.

How exactly is one proficient at Twitter? You can successfully type words? Maybe throw in a "without offending lots of people"? How did this get to be a job qualification?

Do you also have a really sweet MySpace page? Maybe you're the mayor of our museum in FourSquare.

Get off my lawn.

Comments

Devil's Advocate

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Advertising that you can use Twitter is like saying you can tie your shoes in the morning without help. It is declaring that you have mastered a supremely basic skill and expect praise for it.

To be fair, however, Twitter is being used, more and more, as a networking site, like Facebook or MySpace back when, and being aware of Twitter's potential to disseminate information quickly and concisely indicates that you do have a finger on a trend. In some job fields, like entertainment, the ability to rapidly attract thousands of people to some event--a new movie trailer, dates for a concert tour--can translate to huge word-of-mouth followings. True, word-of-mouth hurts as well as helps, and there has been, to date, not enough evidence that enthusiasm in advance actually translates to pay-offs (this is the Snakes on a Plane problem). But if Twitter can keep low-light celebrities like Ashton Kutcher popular, it can probably do anything.

What would have been more appropriate to list as a skill is a familiarity with social networking sites. Granted, you lose the edginess of saying that you are a Twitter-ati, but it indicates, in a more professional manner, a job skill that you would like your potential employer to know you have. That would be fair to list on your resume, I think, especially if you then provided links to previous Facebook pages, Twitter accounts that you either set up or managed.

Obviously, this is all meaningless conjecture if the position to which one was applying didn't really require the applicant to be so PR-savvy, but, you know, Devil's Advocate and all.

Re: Devil's Advocate

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, if this was a communications or marketing position, it would be different. If this person had managed a Twitter stream in a professional capacity, it would be different. There's no indication of this, however - as far as we could tell, this person is very proud of the fact that s/he can broadcast to the world what kind of sandwich s/he just ate.

There's a world of difference between the skills required to have your own Twitter account and to have a professional level Twitter account. The second requires diligence, creativity, excellent word skills, and discretion. The first requires thumbs. (Maybe not even that.) I'd accept as worthy someone who managed a corporate Twitter, or a celebrity's Twitter, or even someone who had their own feed who could say "I have X followers" where X is an impressive number. This felt more like someone claiming they could totally design a webpage because their MySpace page is awesome!

Re: Devil's Advocate

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I got it. I was just advocating for not totally dismissing this as a possible skill, not that I thought it would be in this case, much less in how this case was presented.