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Subscribe to RSSLots of you aren’t tweeting, facebooking or linkedin-ing, and that could spell doom for your job search.
Today, a majority of recruiters are using social networking sites to find job candidates so your aversion to these cyber communities may end up keeping you out of the happily-employed community.
According to a survey by Jobvite released this week, 92 percent of recruiters said they now use social media to find talent, up from 89 percent last year, and 83 percent in 2010. And the most compelling data to come from the study, which polled more than 1,000 human resource and recruiting managers online this month, was that 73 percent of those surveyed said they hired a new employee via social media.
Jobvite
Percentage of recruiters using social networking sites to find talent.
“We continue to see social recruiting gain popularity because it is more efficient than the days of sifting through a haystack of resumes,” said Dan Finnigan, president and CEO of Jobvite, a recruiting technology company.
When it comes to the particular social networking sites, LinkedIn remains king among recruiters with 93 percent of respondents saying they use the site to find job candidates.
In second place is Facebook, with two-thirds of those polled saying they use the site, up substantially from 66 percent last year. And Twitter is also gaining traction, with 54 percent saying they look for talent on the site.
While it may seem everyone and their sister is already social media and tweet crazy, think again. Only 15 percent of adults who use the Internet used Twitter as of February, according to a Pew report. And overall, only 66 percent of online adults are using social networking sites, another Pew study found.
If you’re in the job market, your anti-social media aversion may not be a good thing.
"Don't expect someone to hand you a job the minute you jump on Twitter or start using Google+, but it is possible to make good connections quickly, and you never know where they will lead," said Miriam Salpeter, author of "Social Networking for Career Success."
"It's also important to try to figure out where your industry people are spending time," she advised. "If there are a lot of your colleagues on Twitter, be sure to see if you can make use of that. Search to see who is posting and where they post and then see if you can engage on those same platforms."
Clearly, just having a social media presence won’t guarantee you a job, and actually could hurt your employment chances if your page isn’t up to snuff.
The Jobvite survey found nearly three out of four hiring manager check candidates’ profile page, and here’s how it shakes down when it comes to what you post:
- 80 percent of respondents reacted positively to seeing memberships to professional organizations, while two-thirds like to see volunteering or donating to a nonprofit.
- Content that recruiters especially frown on includes references to using illegal drugs (78 percent negative) and posts of a sexual nature (67 percent negative).
- Profanity in posts and tweets garnered a 61 percent negative reaction, and almost half (47 percent) reacted negatively to posts about alcohol consumption.
- Worse than drinking, grammar or spelling mistakes on social profiles saw a 54 percent negative reaction.
- However, recruiters and hiring managers tend to be neutral in their reactions to political opinions (62 percent neutral) and religious posts (53 percent neutral).
OK, if you haven’t taken the social networking plunge, I’m here to help you put your toe in if you’re game. Follow me on Twitter and we can start a dialogue.
Want advice on how to use social networking to land a job? Join us for a live web chat today at 10:30 am ET with Dan Schawbel, author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future”, and a personal branding and career expert. He’ll be on hand to take questions from readers about social networking and the job hunt. Sign up here.
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Tweeting, facebook posts may help if you're in some high class job like, I don't know, teaching high school or accounting. But in my area (waste/garbage management) I seriously doubt my boss could care about any tweets we make. I don't have a twitter account anyway.
This article is just bs. The company I work for had me sign a waiver that I would never mention their name in any social media or blogs etc. Imagine what a nightmare it would be for companies to have employees speaking about an employer or company unfiltered by the company. Social media sites just want the public to believe everyone is using them to get more subscribers. Social media only benefits employers when they are hiring, so they can discriminate against applicants. I personally know of a young woman who was scheduled to interview for a job and the hiring owner really liked the woman's resume. Unfortunately, the hiring owner Googled the woman and found her Facebook which had some very unflattering info - cursing, drinking and speaking very badly about her current employer. Needless to say, the company called her and cancelled the interview. She was an idiot to post those things, but apparently that was her life and she wanted to share it with her friends. So anyone that believes posting your personal life on social media sites is good and can't hurt you, is naive. Even the things that you may think are beign can hurt you. What if the hiring manager sees that you like cats and they hate cats or are allergic to cats? They can just not hire you. However, if they do not know that you have cats until after you are hired, they cannot fire you for being a cat owner. Of course this is a very simple example of how social media users may be disqualifying themselves for a job. Use your common sense people!
Honestly, it's just a disturbing trend that every aspect of your life (aka personal life) is somehow relevant to your day job/career. It shouldn't be. Checking my twitter account or Facebook is like snooping into my backyard or peeking through my windows.
Granted, these sites are public, but it's hypocritical of someone to act like they don't drink or curse and not give you a job because of it. I avoid it on those sites because I have class (I tell myself this anyway), but the principle is the same.
There's also an implication of needing to be a saint (charities? Non-profits?). Jeez, when do I have time to live a little and admit to it?
One more reason to remain anonymous INSTEAD of use these sites more, to me.
That's why I keep my twitter and facebook COMPLETELY private. I can deny even having one, because they can't search for me. Those sites are strictly for me and my friends only.
HOWEVER, I do think its important to have an impeccable LinkdIn account. This is a way that if recruiters are searching for you that you seem like a responsible job candidate. And on there you can put all that charity and non-profit stuff. Keeps you in the loop in the proffesional world
Agree on LinkedIn because the whole point is professional connections.
As a recruiter myself, I am always using social media. I get great results from it. But is it the only way to find a job? No absolutely not. But if you are serious I would have an account in as many places possible. Not all companies and recruiters use all job boards and services, so you can be missing out on good opportunities.
Ha ha ha-- Jobvite is not a credible source of information as they are selling a line of products designed to help a company recruit online.
This article is just an infomercial and I would not take any of the information provided as fact. Jobvite may have indeed polled some recruiters, but, perusal of their website, I cannot find any information indicating exactly how many recruiters or from which parts of the USA (if indeed they even polled recruiters in the USA) Jobvite polled, or even what fields these recruiters specialize in.
Shame on Eve Tahmincioglu for not using more than one source to verify the claimed "facts" about job recruitment and for taking a sales pitch to heart as truth. It's bad journalism.
I get 2 to 3 LinkedIn emails a week from recruiters or companies asking if I am interested in a particular job (engineering), and I am not currently looking.
I don't have a linkedin account and I get just as many emails as well as phone calls. I am also in engineering. So don't waste your time on things like that. In engineering, it is your skills that count. I am not looking either.
This concept is flawed from its foundation. There is nothing mandated that states that everything posted in a Facebook or Twitter profile need be factual. Moreover, people are taught from the get-go never to post information too personal on social networks.
I've never applied to a job in which I was asked to surrender my Facebook password. Not sure how I'd deal with such a circumstance. I'd either suggest the interviewer send a FRIEND request, or maybe I'd OUT them right there in the interview and post, "So-and-so from Such-and such Company just demanded my FACEBOOK password during my job interview. What should I do?"
Consider this; Say a job applicant has a criminal record, or a history of domestic violence, or a mental disorder, or a sexual/racial bias of some sort. Is their Facebook/MySpace/Twitter account going to reveal any of this? I doubt it.
Shamefully, I know people that interact on Facebook & Twitter more than they do in real life with their own families and friends. We are developing a generation of self-involved individuals with dwindling interpersonal skills. Anyone remember the wedding ceremony in California? No sooner did the priest pronounce the couple man & wife that they both whipped out their respective blackberries to change their facebook status... right there on the altar.
How many times to we read about couples & families that post relentlessly about their much awaited vactions, before, during and after, leaving out no details, only to come home & find their houses ransacked & burglarized? Gee, I wonder how anyone knew they would not be home?
Or the expectant mother, excited by all the expectations of motherhood, only to find someone waiting at home for them to take their newborn child by force? These are not elaborate, imaginative scenarios. The few examples, I've just described here actually happened. They happened to people that put every waking moment of their lives on Facebook for all the world to see.
Personally, I do not have a Twitter account. I am not narcisistic enough to think that anyone I know gives a damn about anything I am doing at any given time. Nobody cares what I chose to have for dinner or what movie I am watching... yet again.
I am involved with Facebook, merely to keep an eye on my kids & what their activities on Facebook are. How many times do we hear about tortured children being cyber-bullied online and parents not finding out about it until it's all too late?
Like any new technology, there's good & bad everywhere. Cyberspace will be the new frontier for quite a while.
If you are even willing to put aside the fact that Facebook and Twitter are designed to be information scrapers for deep mining advertising, you have to realize that what shows up is a facade of the real person. If companies actually rely on these sites to select candidates, then we really have a problem with human resources departments becoming really lazy. But, then again, as the population ages and more youthful computer users begin to populate the hiring positions, what should we expect? The simple feeling of doing something constructive by browsing job candidates on a computer will likely triumph over doing the actual work of reading a well-formed (or not) curriculum vitae. What a person has done, their adaptability, the way they present themselves with words and thoughts doesn't even begin to show up on these superficial web traps. By using such facilities to vet job candidates, there is an implied age bias that begins to exclude more mature workers.
If you believe, as I do, that the quality of general education as evidenced in how people present ideas and thoughts in writing or even verbally, has seriously declined over the years, then it should be no surprise that Facebook and Twitter are becoming important in hiring circles. Such sites attract a disproportionate number of undereducated individuals, even those who are in college, but have yet to actually master spelling and grammar, not to mention big-picture thinking.
Maybe I sound like a reactionary, but I have been in IT for more years than the average age of college graduates and I see the application of Facebook and Twitter as a cautionary tale about giving up rights and information to corporations, rights and information that are off-limits to government snooping.
Very well said & very true!
First of all, in my NSHO unless you're a celebrity, Twitter is just STUPID. 2nd, no you may NOT look at my facebook to try to "size me up"! Unless you're planning to set up my office in my house at your expense, my personal business is MY business. PERIOD. Here's my resume and linked in and that's IT!
Uh, last time I checked, two-thirds and 66% are pretty much the same thing, right?
No, 2/3 is 2/3 of a percent higher than 66%. Isn't that substantial?
The author of this article learned how to write on Twiiter.
Social Media is the death of genuine human interaction. And I say this on a message board. Ha HA!
It's true, JSaff.
:)
Soceity has to grow up.
So Eve Tahmincioglu, are you saying we're required to participate in these social networking sites if we want to land a job? Isn't that a form of discrimination? If these "majority of recruiters" feel a need to intrude into our personal lives....they need to start paying us for our personal time & space. When I worked for someone else, I kept work life and my private life separate. What I did on my personal time was not a reflection of my professional self. I'm in my mid thirty's (not old!), have had 2 long term jobs both of which I promoted in & have never been fired from a job. I've owned my own business for over 2 years now....have done this with the "mind your own business" attitude......not sharing my personal side with the world....well, at least not with a photo & name attached to it!
I think everyone on here is thinking that recruiters want to rummage through your FB page which would mean you would have to friend them. That's not what it is. Recruiters companies need to have an FB page with administrators setup that can post on behalf of the company and also send out job openings to their friends.
Once this is done then you get referrals from your actual friends who could be a fit for the job, or they get directed to the company page get the contact details for the recruiter and contact them and say "hey i saw the company post on FB...."
That's what this article is talking about. I don't want to "friend" people who are candidates looking for jobs but i do want people to contact me who get referred to the company page and are interested in an open position. Same thing with twitter. The recruiting firm should have its own public twitter account to post jobs to.
Did you read the article? What you're saying is not at all what the article says. Linkedin, I can see using as a professional resource.....I can actually see that replacing the resume as long as it's users remain professional, but Facebook, Twitter? No. People who I know that use those two sites, use them as a place to "show off" their personal side. Potential employers are using them to, well.....snoop. Even with a privacy setting....let's not play dumb, there are ways of finding personal information that has been posted on these sites. According to the article:
Sure sounds as if they're judging these applicants based upon their private lives. What's wrong with this is it's illegal to ask and not hire someone based upon their religious or political views.....guess they've found a way around that. But then again......if someone's going to post these things....well....you know the old saying.
As far as what you're saying......if I was searching for a job and these companies based their recruiting process on a Facebook page or Twitter account and not an actual site, I personally would pass on the job. The company obviously has no long term vision as these sites I believe, are fads.
unless you want to be in public spaces or be checked or followed by anyone all the time, you don't want to have a FB or twitter account.
you don't need a FB or twitter to get a job. if they want you, they will call you or track you down when you apply for a job.
If your resume gets through the OCR screening software......
I work as a consultant. I no longer send a resume automatically with an email looking for work prospects, unless it is specifically requested. However, I do have a link to my LinkedIn page as part of my signature. I think this is the least I can do to have a "web presence." In my case, a website would be better, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.
I do have Facebook, but just a personal (not for business) account. No one in my work world has ever asked to be Friended for the purpose of reviewing what I post. Of course, I do not post things that would hurt my professional standing, just in case. This simply makes good sense.
Twitter is useless in my opinion. It just wastes time and attention with trivia.
I recently did a guest blog post for about landing my job through Twitter. It was not a recruiter who found me, but it was my initiatives of connecting with local professionals. I find Twitter is great for making professional connections, even more so than LinkedIn. Read my story here:
I recently did a guest blog post for about how I landed my job through Twitter. I used it mostly to connect with local professionals in my industry within agencies I wanted to work for. It was a lot of work but it paid off! Read my story here:
I recently did a guest blog post for careerfuel.net about how I landed my job through Twitter. I used it mostly to connect with local professionals in my industry within agencies I wanted to work for. It was a lot of work but it paid off! Read my story here
So, AmoreSocial, you just joined Newsvine this month and have three duplicated entries here. It pretty much smells like you are trying to advertise something, but you can't figure out how to put a link in your SPAM post. If you really landed a job through Twitter it must be a delivery job at Papa John's Pizza. That's about the magnitude of what you're going to get on Twitter.
In working with IT recruiters in Dallas, I know they follow
specific processes to find the right IT talent for my clients and spend a lot
of time looking at LinkedIn profiles. Recruiters and HR teams these days have
to look at so many job applications. A resume just looks like hundreds of
others coming in. The trick now is to get noticed before you even walk through
the door. It’s easier for recruiters to assess what they see on LinkedIn; all
the information they need is there. The LinkedIn profile is the door opener.
Than Nguyen
All I can say is thank God I grew up before the details of everyone's whole life was splattered all over the internet.
But I guess you can't fight change.
Want a job? 'Tweet' 'In' a recruiter's 'Face'
That sounds like a sure way of NOT getting a job, "tweeting in someones face"