It’s no secret that in recent years more and more companies have turned to the Internet and various forms of social media and websites for recruiting. Job finding websites continue to update and make it easier for employees to find new talent and to communicate with them online in hopes of finding the right fit. Older job finding sites are creating apps and social media accounts while new sites are popping up all over the interwebs.
The changes are obvious, but how exactly has the Internet changed job finding and recruitment managing and how much have those changes permeated aspects of the online job market?
A growing trend in years has shown that more and more employers take online presence into consideration, not as a way to gauge the types of statuses and pictures that they’ve posted, but for networking reasons. Employers look for qualified candidates via referrals and the rest are found via social media and internship programs. Over 90% of candidates are found on LinkedIn, over 60% on Facebook, and a little over 50% use Twitter. Candidates who do not have an active presence online that shows them interacting and posting about their career path, are usually overlooked by the majority of employers.
According to Mike Corak and Benjamin “Benjie” Pressman from their Webinar Series on the top 8 trends in Social Recruiting for 2015, Linkedin is the #1 source for business professionals and over 1/3 of business professionals have a profile on linkedin.
Due to so many employers who are eager to find employees online, potential employees should take advantage of blog posts on their LinkedIn accounts. Over 80% of employers who go on social media with the intent to find employees will take the time to look at industry related blog posts. However, they will also closely look at posts for topics like sex, profanity, drug use, and even spelling. Any of those, or a toxic combination of several aspects will immediately land potential candidates in the rejection list.
According to this survey from Jobvite 78% of respondents indicate they use linkedin for recruiting vs. 55% and 45% for Facebook and twitter respectively.
More companies are utilizing their own websites to draw in job seekers. More and more websites have sections pertaining to job openings and ways for potential employees to submit their resumes and cover letters. Other trends show that the use of Internet job boards have increased about 15% in recent years as has the use of career websites. Meanwhile, the use of employee referrals and dropped 14% and the use of staffing agencies dropped 16%.
Many of these trends, especially the use of social media will probably continue to grow and make an online presence more of a necessity. All types of job seekers, whether they are millennials or not will have to learn to navigate online job searching and outreach if they want to make themselves known in any industry.
