LinkedIn
remains the premiere social network for job hunters and recruiters, feeding the notion that many young people are ditching the traditional resume as their primary mode of self-representation. Indeed, this new generation of job seekers – raised to live their lives on display— yearns to show off their experiences and skills beyond just the professional realm, even to prospective employers. Here are a few new platforms that allow them to do just that.
SkillCloud: In most workplaces, employees rarely get to impart skills cultivated outside of the cubicle. SkillCloud, a
concept app developed at last month’s
Reinvent Business hackathon, offers a platform where employees can share all of their interests and aptitudes with their colleagues, enabling, say, a coder interested in running the company’s Instagram account to broadcast her knack for mobile photography. The unique social network was developed in response to a challenge to conceive prototypes that could close the so-called professional ‘trust gap.’ The resultant SkillCloud, with its ability to allow users to more thoroughly divulge their true selves in the workplace, may do the trick.
Pathbrite: The accuracy of test scores in assessing academic performance has long been
subject to scrutiny. Now, Pathbrite, a San Francisco-based startup, provides job hopefuls with a more right-brained means of presenting their accomplishments. The
cloud-based product offers the means to create
“people portfolios” that can contain both traditional evaluation tools and more expressive media, ranging from videos of presentations to articles written by or about the applicant. Pathbrite was launched to give students a way to document their successes, but it can now be used by professionals to enhance their resumes with more color than the standard one-sheet.
Smarterer: With title inflation rampant, one’s knowledge or experience is not always reflected accurately by their business card. Boston-based startup Smarterer has a potential answer to qualification creep that could give job seekers a more relevant way to prove themselves while helping HR managers streamline the hiring process. The platform offers online quizzes in more than 500 topics designed to reveal the true depth of one’s skills. Employers can create categories of relevant quizzes, called
Skillsets, to post directly within a job listing. Smarterer is the recent
recipient of $3 million in funding, suggesting that more than a few people believe it’s going to live up to its name.
