This morning I was reading an article called the “The Future of Recruitment” which noted something I’ve been banging on about for years – that organisations should turn to the specialist when looking to recruit new staff – but reading on there was also mention of the role of social media in job searching. Here’s that part of the article;
Social media has emerged as a useful complementary tool to further extend the reach of such communities, extending visibility of available positions to a wider circle of candidates. Despite playing an increasingly familiar role, research by CWJobs revealed that the majority of participants still do not see social media as a professional tool. Interestingly, more contractors than permanent staff use LinkedIn (49% vs. 36%), which supports the findings of our Internet Usage Report [4], that recruiters note social media as a possible tool for passive recruitment, but found that the majority of candidates will use social media for networking and personal reasons rather than to look for a new job.
So the majority of job seekers have still not seen or made the link between the time they spend online socially interacting with others to the next obvious link -that you are more likely to find your next job through someone you know. It doesn’t matter how well you know them or for how long, what matters is the interaction you have had with someone and the impression you leave. That’s the great thing about social media – you never know what opportunity – job or otherwise – will come from the people you meet.
Earlier this year I presented at Project Challenge on the subject – How to Differentiate Yourself in the Marketplace. We’ve seen some tough times over the last couple of years and canny project professionals looking for a new position are always interested in how they can stand out from the competition (i.e., other jobseekers). Most people spend time doing the same things when looking for a new job – update the CV, go on-line to a few job boards, apply for a job/s and wait for a call. Which is silly really when we know that most people get their next job from someone they know. In fact the stats are quite startling really – only 12% of all hires in 2008 were through job boards, a whopping 88% are through other means*
My question back to the audience was – so what are you going to do to widen the circle of people that you know? From a crowd of around 100, only about a third had a LinkedIn account, even less used Twitter, a couple had a blog. In other words the only way the vast majority in the audience were going to widen their circle professionally was through the occasionally networking function they *might* attend, an event like Project Challenge (which let’s face it is not an event designed to facilitate networking) or public training course.
If you are currently looking for a new project position I would encourage you to take the first steps into exploring the world of social media and see for yourself how easy it is to connect to other like minded professionals in the project management field. The Camel will be back with some pointers on using social media to find a new position soon, in the meantime check out these posts;
- Twittering about Projects I, II, III
- Social Media and Project Management
- Social Media and Career Development – The Five Tools
- Project Management Recruitment Ideas – Using LinkedIn
* From the Invisible Candidate – Anthony Haley – the book is available as an e-book – highlightly recommended (see the book review)
Image © Nadya Peek and used with permission.
