Digital resume

Sticking to a “show, don’t tell” credo, tech and finance companies are pushing aside stacks of boring old resumes in favor of a more personal approach to getting to know job applicants.

Rather than collecting paper piles and arranging lengthy interviews, technology investors like Union Square Ventures, whose portfolio includes Foursquare, Kickstarter and Skillshare, are asking candidates to submit links illustrating their Web presence, then quizzing them over Skype and interview apps about their hopes and professional dreams. Applicants share pages like those on Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr and LinkedIn to demonstrate their interests, while also showcasing their social networking.

This is in stark contrast to recent news about companies asking job applicants to provide passwords to social media sites to find ways to whittle down the application pool.

But while 91 percent of employers use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to filter out applicants, according to social media tracker Reppler, a new set of sleek programs is tapping into the networks to help candidates enhance their applications and increase their chances of getting in the door.

Jibe, a referral-based platform that’s handled hundreds of thousands of job applications, scans a candidate’s Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to reveal their existing connections at companies they are applying to.

Applicants have the option of asking first-degree contacts to click a quick “thumbs-up” referral button, and the connections are submitted as part of the application. “Instead of being in the bucket with thousands of applicants, they’ll fall into the referral bucket and significantly increase their chances of getting that job,” said CEO Joe Essenfeld.

Other programs are reconfiguring the conventional interview. Take the Interview, a service used by Union Square Ventures and Pinterest investor FirstMark Capital, has candidates log in using LinkedIn, and record video responses to preset questions, which can then be rated and commented on by individual team members. The process cuts down hour-long interviews to just several minutes, according to CEO Danielle Weinblatt, and offers nervous candidates several chances to record their answers. While the majority of the start-up’s clients are tech companies like Clickable and Compushare, the program is gaining traction in more traditional fields like education and medicine.

The new hiring techniques fall into line with the “show, don’t tell” approach that’s become standard among employers, at least in the world of fledgling tech companies and their financial backers.

Instead of poring over stacks of CVs, many are collecting links to pages on sites like Github, Dribbble and About.me as a way of assessing applicants.

“It gives you a better sense of who they are as a person,” said Seth Bannon, CEO of Amicus, a fundraising company based out of start-up school General Assembly in the Flatiron District.