The innovative folks at Zappos have eschewed the traditional job application/interview/job offer process for a social-media-driven process on a Zappos platform. While very up-to-date, does this push the envelope to the point of bursting it?
Getting a job at Zappos—the world’s first holacracy -
Only a few months after announcing that it was no longer going to have job titles or a hierarchical structure, thus establishing the world’s first known holacracy (from the Greek holos meaning whole—it’s not clear how holo became hola), the online shoe peddler Zappos has now done away with job applications. If you visit www.jobs.zappos.com, you will see that you are invited to join Zappos Insider, which, as it turns out, is Zappos’ own in-house social media site. After joining and posting a video cover letter, the interested job-seeker can interact with current Zappos employees, choose her “circle” (which is apparently Zappos-speak for department), and do whatever one does on social media sites. After you’ve been there for a while, if your social-media-mates like you and think you will fit in, you may eventually be offered a job. There are no job applications; this is the only way to get a job at Zappos. This sounds, of course, very cool and quite millennial, but are there problems lurking in those weeds?
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