Why Klout Is Essential for Social Media Hiring

Klout as a Resume Filter?
There has been a lot of debate surrounding Klout this week after Salesforce revealed they are using Klout scores as a factor in their hiring process.

TechCrunch’s Community Director Drew Olanoff criticized this move, claiming that Klout is an unscientific method of determining social media authority and that it will arbitrarily hurt otherwise qualified candidates.

Klout Score as a Proxy for Social Media Prowess?
However, Klout scores can be a very useful baseline tool when measuring social media prowess. As Klout CEO and founder Joe Fernandez revealed in an interview yesterday, the average Klout score for a registered user is 38. In our experience at Webmarketing123, it doesn’t take a whole lot of social activity to reach this score. If a candidate for a social media position can’t even meet this low benchmark, it’s safe to assume they haven’t spent much time driving engagement for their personal accounts.

Another fair criticism leveled at Fernandez is that Klout scores will hurt people who spend more time managing social media for their organization or clients rather than on their own personal brand. Personally, I spend way more time managing my clients’ accounts rather than my own. So, HR departments may want to consider both a candidate’s personal score and the score of a corporate brand they have managed.

Klout is Still Evolving
Klout has also come under fire for the ability of scammers to use fake accounts to boost their engagement and reach. Undoubtedly, Klout will continue to tweak its algorithm to combat this artificial inflation. There will always be scammers who find ways to boost their scores, but then again there will always be CEOs who fake their resumes to get jobs at Fortune 500 companies.

With the advent of social businesses and social enterprises, organizations are not only looking for employees that are hardworking and work well with a team, but also people who have a personal brand that can add value to the company. As one of the best tools out there for measuring social media authority, Klout should certainly be a factor in this discussion.

Paul founded Webmarketing123 in 2004 and continues to direct the company’s overall strategy and manage its operations. An Inc. 500 company, Webmarketing123 helps clients improve SEO, PPC and social media marketing performance, and delivers measurable results. In demand as a speaker, Paul brings his 20 years of marketing and strategic consulting experience and enthusiasm for education to his many speaking engagements and webinars. Prior to founding Webmarketing123, Paul was a vice president and general manager at AT&T Wireless, and a management consultant with Bain & Company. He earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.