Please Do Not Make Pinterest Resumes a Thing Now

A different kind of aspirational.

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There’s an old marketing tactic called “eating your own dog food,” whereby a founder swallows his own product to prove to the world just now sweet it is. In recessionary times, it appears that strategy has trickled downstream to potential hires. As The Next Web reports, Jeanne Hwang, a Harvard b-school graduate with six years of work experience at Right Media, Yahoo, Accenture, and Kaixin, resorted to launching an online campaign to get hired at Pinterest (PINS), including, of course, a “Jeanne for Pinterest” board.

That social media hustle has already paid off in form of a job offer from Pintics, a Pinterest analytics site. Perhaps they were moved by the pin of Ms. Hwang sky-diving (to show she’s a risk taker!) or pin of her adorable puppy (someone understands the Pinterest user base!)?

Proving you can handle the merchandise is important for prospective employers. And it’s unsettling, but true that your online presence will probably be dissected as much as your cover letter. But it’s a slippery slope between feeling like you have to use social media gimmicks to get noticed and being denied a job based on your arbitrary Klout score. (Did we mention Ms. Hwang also has a pin on her Pinterest resume just to showcase her Klout?) Besides, Pinterest is already so chock-a-block full of carefully-curated personaes, we don’t think there’s room for career aspirations too.

Please Do Not Make Pinterest Resumes a Thing Now