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

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Maybe she was hoping the resume would be picked up by some out of touch 50 year old who thought Twitter was complicated? Not sure where you find those people, but...

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

This job? Has absolutely no call to use Twitter. In fact, someone in this position trying to use Twitter in an official capacity would probably be fired.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

Twitter is ridiculous - I'd like to hope that it's a fad that will go away quickly, but unfortunately, the Library of Congress is now digitally archiving all public tweets (apparently it will be useful for sociological and anthropological future studies of how shallow and self-absorbed we all are), so it likely will be around for a while....

[jeths-mom.livejournal.com]

(Apparently I am now able to use my old log-in.) Which may demonstrate the qualities of the type of person who would think Twitter is a job qualification. Or may also suggest something about the opinion of the applicant of the people working at museums who "must be dusty artifacts - they're in a museum, right??"

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, they went into the dump pile pretty fast.

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I had a debate with a friend about the usefulness/uselessness of preserving Twitter. I agree with you that it has a sociological/anthropological value, though I don't think that's just to preserve our vapidity for the future. I think there's something valuable to Twitter. It, like newspapers, TV shows, etc., is a means for disseminating information, and it does so rapidly. It's fascinating to study what gets picked up on, and by whom, and how widespread the use is. The fact that Twitter, like blogs, has tags so that you can trace who's on the trend and how far that trend goes makes it even easier to search.

Yes, Twitter is vapid a lot of the time. And, like all networking sites, it's rampant with ad-stream Twitter accounts. But I also remember things like the unfolding of support for the dissidents in the Iranian elections, the way people responded to the crisis in Haiti, and I can see the potential for Twitter to be both useful and purposeful. As ever, these things are only so deep as we make them.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Problem is, on average, we're not very deep.

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.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

Twitter has been on the decline over the past year; it gets more usage these days with fewer users, the people who are on it like it, but everyone else thinks it's stupid. On the other hand, the concept of microblogging is almost definitely going to stick around.

As @TrinVix says below, it gets a lot of usage in marketing these days, and has actually been seeing a lot of use in B2B channels, which is sort of fascinating to me. It more or less approximates an RSS feed for some purposes, I suppose. Companies releasing many short communications to their dedicated fan base appear more 'human' as well as get some incredibly targeted messages out to precisely the audience that would buy in.

As for the original topic, given how Web 2.0 is bandied about everywhere these days, listing comfort with social media in general seems like a fine thing for a somewhat techie person to list on a resume just because it means they're cued into tech trends. Twitter specifically? Still dumb.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

Just found out last night from the Ampersand what FourSquare is. Very bizarre brave new world we live in.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's not a tech position, either. It's a contract-writing position.