I am an aspiring web developer and have recently started getting active on twitter, posting mostly about development and nothing incriminating. Should I put my handle on my resume?<p>On one hand, it shows that I am active in the community and some things that I have been working on.<p>On the other hand, it may be distracting on a resume and I am unsure how an employer might view it.<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
If you were applying to work at my start-up, chances are I would try to find you on the Internets anyway, and I would greatly appreciate you saving me time by just providing me your information up front.<p>If you provide me links, it also ensures I find the right accounts for you, and not someone with the same name. Finding the wrong accounts and thinking it's you could mean the difference of me actually calling you or not.<p>StackExchange accounts relevant to the position you're applying for are also good to include (if you use the service).
The resume is not a single statement of your career. The closest metaphor is a personalised advertisement flyer to a business for the position. In other words, would showing social links on your resume assist the 'customer' to want to hire you?<p>If I was hiring a web developer; Yes, it would help to put it on the resume because there may be conflicting account names or save me some effort because I'd check anyway.<p>In fact, put down hobby projects (eg github) as it will show them that you're also active with source control, delivery, etc.
You would save them the effort looking -- I'm sure anyone responsible for hiring these days would search nonetheless. Like you mentioned it shows you're active in the field & interested in development 'outside' of work, too.
Nowadays when Im looking for work I just refer people to my homepage which links to my twitter, github, resume, and portfolio items. I think people are much more interested in your social accounts than your resume alone.