When a friend of mine turned 40 her sister told her that she had better take care of herself because she was competing with 20-year-olds. My thought: Why would you want to date a man who wants to date a twenty-something?
I feel the same way about Klout.
There’s a long article* in Wired about the so-called “standard for influence” (for the record, I have no Klout). It starts with a guy who goes in for a job interview, only to be turned down when his Klout score isn’t high enough. So he sets out to raise it — tweeting all the time, “engaging” with high-score accounts, and the like.
I don’t get it. Why would you want to work for a company that values Klout over smarts, strategy, and people who forge genuine connections with the people around them?
*You don’t have to read the whole article; much of it covers familiar ground. But it’s worth skipping down to the last couple of paragraphs, which I think say it all.
Photo by xJason.Rogersx (Flickr).
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I heard the other day from a colleague that people are actually checking credit scores for job candidates now. The Klout thing infuriates me, the credit score just annoys me. What does this have to do with your smarts, with your work ethic, with your passion?
Hi Christina,
The Klout score is infuriating because it completely devalues the candidate’s expertise. But since it says more about the company than the candidate, it’s probably not a bad filter for picking your employer wisely.
The credit score is troubling in a different way. Clearly there are positions (banking, CFO, and the like) where how you manage money may be relevant. But for most jobs, it’s really no one’s business–and it is just invasive and intrusive. But again, it’s a filter…
Hi Daria,
I never take Klout very seriously and I am surprised some company even bothered to look at it. Its fun to watch that you are popular and that may be desirable in certain jobs but to reject people solely on this basis is ridiculous.
Sometimes its really hard to get in the brains of people who do such things.
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Hi Ashvini,
“Sometimes it’s hard to get in the brains…” Only sometimes?
It really says a lot about these companies’ metrics, doesn’t it? Probably another reason to run away.
Daria Steigman recently posted..Why Find-ability Is No Longer Enough