Hiring

I’ve been meaning to write the post about how we found our most recent team member, Katie Gear, for a few months now.  Obviously it disappeared in the recesses of my mind, until a similar post by Digital Royalty and Barack Obama’s CNN Town Hall where they discussed hiring.

Here is the deal, we are a startup social media firm and by definition everyone has a number of responsibilities.  Mine include new business, client services, operations, and taking the trash out.  Finding new team members is not part of my everyday routine so making time for it can be challenging.  Also because we are a startup there is a premium on finding the perfect fit as they can have an outsized impact on the culture.

Lucky for me, we are in the social media business and between your Twitter and Linked I can find a host of relevant information about each candidate.  When I research a candidate I’m not looking to see if they mistakenly put up too many photos of themselves and friends having too much fun, I’m looking to see if they understand the mediums and how they use them.  More importantly, if you don’t have a Linked In profile or your Twitter account has 5 tweets it probably means you’re not a good fit for us.  Ironically after looking through 50 some odd resumes we choose to hire the one candidate who didn’t send us a resume.

Instead, we found Katie Gear’s resume.  We found her because she was active in social media and was interested in all the things we were currently doing.

She had over 500 followers on Twitter, and regularly supplied her followers with social media news as well as interacted insightfully on her twitter feed.  Her Linked in profile was up to date and linked to her website and slide share.  So even before I reached out to her to make her aware of the job I knew she had the experience we were looking for and was passionate about social media.

As they say ‘the news finds you,’ so to do future employees.

What I think is informative for all the people currently applying to be our next team member is that Katie Gear made information publically available that demonstrated her understanding of what we do far better than a resume or in person interview could.

2 Comments for this entry

• 

  Jaemie Neely

  January 21st, 2011 on 9:27 pm

  Great story! What would you suggest someone who doesn’t come from that arena, but is developing an interest? My professional background is in banking and financial servicing; however my brother of Horizon Media has done a great job in selling me on entering this young, fresh and interesting market. With this, I am in search of a “niche” to sell my transferable skills into a different field. What do you think?
• 

  Benji

  January 24th, 2011 on 5:14 pm

  Hi Jaemie, thanks for taking a look! One of our favorite ways of inspiring new ideas using current social media is to use industries such as financial services or even banking which a lot of people believe to be inherently “unsocial” and finding ways that a current social network could enhance that business. One of the first things we tell anyone is to experiment, see what Twitter, FourSquare, Tumblr, Linked In, and the hundreds of others social networks are like on a day to day basis and start thinking social. One of the ways we look for new team members is to follow them on these networks and see what they are contributing to the space and whether their behavior shows an understanding of these networks. Just dive in and see where it takes you!