Ask HN: As a recruiter, would you prefer traditional resume or social resume?

As a worker (not a recruiter), I found the same as you. I used to send CVs (that's what they asked for), and they replied me with more info, because the bullet list wasn't enought.

After that, I don't send CVs anymore. I write a text (like a blog post) about what I know, what I did, how I did, what I enjoy, etc. Like a letter talking about myself. It worked perfectly everytime. I know recruiters may find boring to read a lot of them, but that's what I do now.

I prefer structured text (aka CV). Even in case of free text, you just parse it to extract that structured information - experience, past employers, skills, etc... but you just compare other irrelevant part of the text to other candidates irrelevant part of the text. It becomes more like a gambling rather than objective justification. Who's text is original? personal? better arranged?

And you'll surely miss many great minds just because their text was not that touchy... Please also don't overemphasize on online activity, be it blogs, github or stackoverflow. Again, you'll miss many great minds.

You need both. There's many red flags which will only be apparent on a resume (candidate doesn't have work authorization for the country, large unexplained gaps in work history, rapid turn-over of employment), plus it's much easier to quickly process large number of resumes, etc.

But as you say online presence can often add colour to a candidates profile.