By Kenzie Bryant
You’ve heard the horror stories. Man tweets a thing. “Ha, that’s silly,” he chuckles before hitting send, but, “Wow, that’s insane,” is the general consensus among everyone else, including the man’s boss. Man loses his job. Or he tweets one thing and doesn’t get the job; or he got the job, but then tweeted and subsequently loses the job he hasn’t started yet. “Never tweet,” as the axiom goes. It’s served many well, especially when it comes to keeping and/or getting jobs.
But certain celebrities are ushering in a brand-new era of social media-centric hiring. Chrissy Teigen is looking for a new assistant, one who can take out her hair extensions, she announced on Snapchat on Sunday. Jaden Smith was looking for a photographer in Toronto via Twitter last week. Chance the Rapper was looking for an intern, also via Twitter, in late March. They’re saying to forget head hunters. Forget that friend of a friend who’s son is very creative and graduating next month. Forget Monster.com. They’re saying to tweet.
This seems like a tough way for famous people to cull applications. They each have millions of followers. Smith received almost 2,000 replies between his two calls for camera-wielding Torontonians. Chance tweeted two calls for interns and received over 11,500 replies. Teigen was joking and her Snapchat statistics are private, but she almost definitely got a deluge of qualified applicants who know their way around a hair extension.
Is the trend real? Can the people with the largest and most loyal followings really wade through the riffraff, the jokesters, the unqualified to find the candidate of their dreams who is also not a stalker? Vanity Fair emailed each to see how the process is going, but did not hear back prior to publication.
In the last decade, much ado has been made about social media allowing celebrities to bypass old modes of media and talk directly to fans. But celebrities bypassing the hiring process and bringing fans closer to their payroll is a new one. Please, though. If Smith or Chance or Teigen are looking to hire someone to help sort the applications they receive through Twitter, feel free to D.M.
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