Flight Centre is going to war. No, not with a competitor, (although that would be interesting!) but with the Old School resume and possibly the entire recruitment process itself.
When global social media manager Gregg Tilston was given the go-ahead to hire staff for a global rollout of Flight Centre’s social media program, he decided to do things a little different.
Faced with the drudgery of sifting through piles traditional paper resumes for positions in Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, he turned to social media for the answer.
Candidates will are being asked to provide links to their Blog, Twitter profile, LinkedIn profiles and two other social sites to be considered.
The kicker? The applicants will also have to submit a tweet-length (140 characters or less) message outlining why they should get the job.
When asked why Flight Centre would choose to ditch the traditional resume for the social media approach, Tilston tells it straight:
"Given that we are looking for people who are passionate about social media, we can learn more from blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn than we can from traditional resumes."
As Tilston explains, the future of recruitment will increasingly integrate social aspects with the traditonal.
"While there’s no doubt many employers still pay close attention to resumes, the social media channels look certain to play a more important role in the hiring process in the future.”
The sceptics might argue that Flight Centre is simply trying to save some coin on the laborious (and often costly) process of using recruitment agencies and classified job listings, but I have to disagree whole-heartedly.
The global deployment of a department solely focused on social media marks a significant shift for a company that wasn’t previously seen to be at the forefront of the social web at all.
What happens next is up to Tilston and his new team. Who knows, with a global presence and a strong financial backing, we could be looking to Flight Centre in the future for what’s next in social travel.