“All recruiters are hereby summoned!” In a recent TikTok video, Makena Yee, a 21-year-old college student from Seattle, shouted into the camera. “These are the reasons you should hire me!” says the narrator.
Ms. Yee went on to list her credentials. As photographs of firms she has worked for flashed up on a green screen behind her, she stated, “I’m driven with confidence, I love keeping organised, I’m adaptive, and I’m a team player.”
The 60-second video received over 182,000 views and hundreds of comments in a short period of time. Potential employers were tagged by users. Someone hire her Ms. Yee stated that she had gotten over 15 employment leads, which she intends to pursue following her summer internship.
In today’s employment market, neat one-page résumés are progressively being replaced with faxes. This could be aided by the TikTok résumé being popularised by an app known for viral lip-syncing and dance videos.
As more college students and new grads turn to TikTok to network and find work, the firm has launched a tool that allows them to apply for jobs directly. Employers, many of whom are experiencing labour shortages, are also interested. Chipotle, Target, Alo Yoga, Sweetgreen, and more than a third of a dozen more businesses have started using the app to hire employees.
These projects revolve around the TikTok résumé. Job seekers use the hashtag #TikTokResumes and TikTokresumes.com to showcase their abilities, similar to how a personal essay used to be done. They provide contact information as well as, if desired, a link to their LinkedIn profile. Employers function watch() { [native code] } the videos, which must be set to public, then set up interviews with the candidates who appeal to them the most.
According to Kayla Dixon, a marketing manager at TikTok who devised the idea, the résumés are an attempt to assist young people “get the bag” and be paid.
They’re also a spinoff of TikTok’s careertok section, where individuals offer job-hunting guidance, résumé ideas, and job openings. Since TikTok’s launch in the United States in 2018, videos with the hashtag #edutokcareer have received over 1.2 billion views.
The video résumés, on the other hand, have caused some alarm. The format removes a layer of secrecy, allowing employers to disqualify candidates based on their appearance or behaviour. Much of TikTok’s networking is based on accumulating views, which can be difficult for individuals who aren’t skilled at creating content or have had trouble getting equal distribution in the app’s feed.
TikTok isn’t the only social media site that businesses have tried to use for recruitment. Both job searchers and recruiters rely significantly on LinkedIn, Microsoft’s professional networking platform. Taco Bell promoted internship positions on Snapchat in 2015, and McDonald’s allowed customers to apply for employment via a Snapchat feature called “Snaplications” in 2017. Facebook began allowing businesses to post job openings on their pages and contact with applicants using Facebook Messenger the same year.
Rather than a swipe up to a more standard application page, TikTok is now taking it a step further with video applications. Despite the fact that TikTok résumés are open to people of all ages, the majority of films uploaded using the hashtag are from Gen Z users, who are mostly in college. Over 800 people have submitted TikTok résumés in the last week, according to the app.
“Hiring individuals or finding candidates via video just feels like a logical extension of where we are as a society,” Karyn Spencer, global chief marketing officer of Whalar, an influencer company that just employed a TikTok employee, said. “Even though we’re all connecting more and more through video and photographs, so many of the résumés our hiring team receives read like they were written in 1985.”
