How to Actually Get a Job on Twitter
We know a lot more about our latest hire from his tweets than his transcript or resume
Tomorrow, my newest hire starts here at The Atlantic. Robinson Meyer is his name, he just finished up school at Northwestern, and he may be the only college kid to actually get a job because of how good he is on Twitter. He's so good that I've been wanting to hire him since he was a sophomore. I brought him in as an intern last summer, and now, we've hired him as a staffer.
The Twitter thing is not what you're thinking. I didn't look at his Klout score. I don't care how many followers he has. I don't care how funny he is (though he's very funny).
Rob got my attention by becoming a part of The Atlantic Tech's extended cast of writers and interlocutors. His network analysis was uncanny. One minute I've never heard of this kid, and the next minute, he's engaged in interesting, respectful conversation with half of my Internet friends.
That takes a certain kind of fearlessness, and most of the time it'd be paired with arrogance. But not with Rob. His humility is genuine, driven by a real desire to
think this stuff through. And the thing that I always noticed about Meyer's conversations with everyone was that he was such a good and generous reader of other people's work. He tended to respond with whatever the opposite of snark is. His role became to connect good ideas with each other by connecting good writers with each other. He wove the social fabric tighter and made our conversations richer.
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