Selfies, the narcissistic fad of the millennial generation, have gone mainstream with companies opting for selfie resumes to screen potential employees and selfie images/videos to sell fashion and lifestyle merchandise to customers.
Hiree.com, a portal that offers employers an active base of 5,00,000 jobseekers across industry verticals, launched a selfie resume feature which allows its base of jobseekers to post one-minute selfie resumes – where they are required to introduce and talk about themselves for one minute.
Additional screening “The selfie resume is an addition to the jobseeker’s word document resume, which employers can see in order to be able to screen potential hires much better. Employers can also send a request to jobseekers to upload a one-minute selfie video answering 3-4 specific questions” said Abhijit Khasnis, founder and COO, Hiree.com.
Within two weeks of launching the feature in December, Hiree.com received over 100 selfie resumes from jobseekers, which can be viewed by Hiree’s corporate customers such as Wipro, TCS, Flipkart, Amazon, Pepperfry, OYO Rooms, Microsoft, IBM, and Cognizant, among others.
Explaining how selfie resumes make the hiring process more efficient, Khasnis said, “Real recruitment begins at the interview stage; the rest of the time is spent on screening. With selfie resumes, we are adding one more screening process for our corporate clients, who will get to know the candidate better.”
Video profiles Avinash Saxena, co-founder of fashion discovery platform ROPOSO, says many of his 2 million user base of women post selfies in fashionable clothes with a story attached to it – on what occasion they wore that dress to, where they bought it from and for how much, and who inspired that look.
“Since we introduced selfie photos on our portal last May, we have received 1 million self-photos along with stories decoding their entire look, and we continue to receive over 1.5 lakh selfie photos every month from our target group in the age profile of 16-35 years. These selfies inspire our user base to buy similar styles and looks. We plan to introduce selfie videos soon,” said Saxena.
Similarly, Wooplr receives 80,000 selfies that are complete ‘head to toe’ looks, every month on its platform, which its CEO and founder Arjun Zacharia says are tagged individually from the dress to the earrings, shoes, handbag etc, with details on where it was bought from – inspiring other shoppers on Wooplr to go out and get themselves similar looks.
The selfie has traversed a long way from being featured as one of the top 10 buzzwords by Time magazine in 2012 to a potent screening tool and catchy way to get customers to buy fashion merchandise.