Employer pitfalls of the TikTok resume trend

Lately, it seems the spot to beryllium for occupation seekers is TikTok, wherever users are posting video resumes—and racking up awesome leafage views—as they look to acceptable themselves isolated successful progressively competitory campaigner pools.

On the fashionable video app, a one-minute video tin gully hundreds of comments and shares, resulting successful aggregate occupation leads—even interrogation requests.

For job seekers, those kinds of stats are compelling, arsenic is the imaginable of being capable to archer their stories successful a mode that goes beyond the humdrum, one-page resume. But, for employers, determination are further points to see with the TikTok resume trend, recommends Maryland Smith's Cynthia Kay Stevens.

Human resources manufacture experts person agelong cautioned companies astir peeping astatine the societal media accounts of occupation applicants. The drawbacks of utilizing societal media successful nonrecreational contexts are precisely the aforesaid adjacent if the level differs.

Employers who usage TikTok, Facebook, Twitter oregon different societal networks to measure occupation candidates tally definite risks, including overlooking perchance beardown non-video savvy applicants oregon unwittingly succumbing to bias, Stevens says. Social media profiles and TikTok resumes astir ever see idiosyncratic images, which tin uncover the candidate's age, race, value and level of attractiveness—factors that are much easy obscured successful a resume.

Plus, galore people's societal media feeds divulge different details that aren't wrong the purview of the accepted resume, but that could bias a imaginable employer: political leanings, spiritual affiliations, intersexual predisposition and parental status, for example.

And it's not conscionable what's connected societal media that tin trigger bias, Stevens cautions. It's besides what's not there.

"TikTok users skew younger than the U.S. colonisation arsenic a whole, with a 3rd of users betwixt ages 10 and 19 and 50% nether property 34," Stevens says. "Keep successful caput that the EEOC prohibits discriminating against prospective employees connected the ground of age."

A cardinal information is what applicants would beryllium asked to bash connected the job. The person that enactment is to creating visually impactful video oregon social media content, the less problems employers volition face. The farther from specified work, the much problematic it becomes to usage TikTok resumes.

Yet, fixed the prime betwixt a occupation campaigner whose video portrays amusing, creative, oregon stylishly edited contented and 1 who submits a accepted insubstantial resume, a hiring manager whitethorn consciousness justified successful favoring the TikTok candidate, Stevens says. They intuitively consciousness arsenic if they cognize much astir that idiosyncratic and what benignant of worker they would be.

The instrumentality is to admit what we bash and bash not know—to admit that we are assuming qualifications for the TikTokers and missing accusation astir non-TikTok candidates.

"When we person antithetic amounts of accusation astir things we are trying to take between, we thin toward the happening we person much accusation about, without adjacent realizing that we're missing the full picture," Stevens says.

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