I saw a tweet recently complaining that a candidate hadn’t placed the traditional methods of contact on his resumé (telephone number, email address). I think the case concerned, I believe it to be a valid complaint. However, it lead me to think more about the kind of roles we recruit for today – and more specifically, the way we recruit.

For many of the creative or online roles, we actively seek more than a CV. Sometimes it’s as mundane as checking out a candidate on LinkedIn (does the resumé match, do they have recommendations from genuine professional associates?), but often it’s more detailed. Do you have a blog? Can you direct me to a portfolio of previous web projects? Show me a site where you designed the user experience?

With this in mind, perhaps this is one area where candidates can, for a change, drive the recruitment process. A very short resume that catches your attention, then driving the recruiter to engage not by defined process, but via the candidate’s preferred medium. It’ll drive out lazy recruiters, allowing the candidate to deal only with professionals. It’d work to the advantage of skilled sourcers too, better able to find such individuals.

What’s in it for the client? You’d know from the start that this candidate wasn’t just applying to every job on the site, just to support a salary negotiation. This candidate has taken a good look at themselves, evaluated how best to demonstrate their abilities, then invested some time in making sure the path to their door looks suitably impressive.

For the last word on candidate creativity and taking contact through new channels…. I’m going to hand over to Alec Brownstein. If you don’t know his name, but you like game-changing plays, this one’s a corker.

This was first published on my regular page, www.musingsfromsussex.com. If you like what I write, you can follow me here, where I tweet about technology and social media, in amongst the usual recruitment.