Are online skills surpassing IRL Experience?

I had a job interview yesterday and the most surprising thing happened. My work as an author and an online content creator was of more interest to the interviewer than my real life job experience. 

To put this in perspective, I'm a college-educated person with years of retail management and customer service skills under my belt. That portion consumed maybe five minutes of our forty minute interview. 

While I don't have experience in the field I was interviewing for, I'd heard about this opportunity and jumped on it. But I assumed my evil day job skills would be my biggest selling feature since I have management on my resume. It was barely a blip on their radar. 

What did we talk about? Online skills. We talked about edits and formatting and uploading and social media. We talked about Facebook parties and coordinating collaborations. Know what we didn't talk about? Management experience. 

Granted, I haven't interviewed in a long time, but the fact that my ability to grapple with authors to plan games and giveaways was relevant in my quest to obtain an evil day job...well you could have knocked me over with a feather! That stuff was just for fun. Right? It couldn't have been a marketable skill. Apparently, it was the most marketable skill on my list.

Like anything you do where you put your future employment in someone else's hands, I tore apart our conversation and thought of all they ways I could have presented myself better. And you know what I would do better next time? I'd put my online experience and skills to the forefront of my resume and my sales pitch. 

With attention spans not lasting any longer than a quick scroll through Facebook, you have to catch attention immediately, and refresh that first impression over and over again until it finally sticks in the back of someone's head. So savvy online people are valuable. Who would have thought all that time playing games with my friends online would have been topping my resume!

So for all those authors out there who are looking for a second or third gig to keep the lights on, I'm telling you right now...don't for a second discount all the skills you have as an author. I'm going to completely revamp my resume before sending it out again. 

Do you use your online skills as a feature for your Evil Day Job interviews? Do you have a blog? Write reviews for one? Host online events? Those skills are more valuable than you think they are. I definitely learned that yesterday. 

What do you think? Are skills with emails, social media, and skype-style conferences taking the place of in-person interaction at your place of employment? I'd love to hear about how you think the business world is evolving in your line of work. Tell me about it in the comments below.


~Roxy