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While all advice is telling them the opposite, Britons looking for work, either because they need a new job or want to get out of their current position are failing to embrace social media as a part of their jobseeking activities.
A survey carried out by recruitment agency Kelly surveyed around 97,000 people in 30 countries and found that Britain is in the 25 place for people exploiting resources such as LinkedIn and Facebook to look for jobs. Indonesia came at the top of the table with 49% of the survey respondents saying they searched for jobs using social media. That was only 20% in the UK.
What does that mean? Well, only 1% of people in the UK have found their current employment by using their contacts on social media. The reason people are reluctant to search and engage with social media is that that are afraid of the negative effects that this activity would have on their career, according to 26% of those surveyed while one third admitted to deliberately ‘self censoring’ themselves online.
Katie Ivie, HR director with Kelly Services UK points out that: “Now is the point that candidates should be developing a stronger on-line presence on professional networks to take advantage of the opportunities they have to offer and stand out from the crowd.”
Lets hope these figures improve as the use of web version 2.0 is only going to become more important as a resource driving the recruitment industry.
If you are currently looking for a new role make sure you take advantage of every opportunity the net has to offer. There are some activities you can undertake and some housekeeping which is vital.
If you don’t already have one, start a LinkedIn account, complete the registration in full and be as honest as you can. Invite to connect with everyone you’ve ever worked or been in education with and ask for recommends. Being polite isn’t going to get you anywhere and if you suffer from the traditional British reticence to brag you’ll get nowhere. People are on LinkedIn expressly because they want to find new work or new employees so make yourself known to them.
Get involved in forums in the fields where you would like to work as well as those you have experience of. Get involved in conversations and ask questions. I’ve even heard of people asking business chiefs if they could come over and visit the offices just to look around. Showing that amount of interest is sure to impress.
Another strategy that jobseekers should adopt is to become invaluable. Become the Go To Girl/Guy; put people in different groups in touch with each other rather than sitting idly by thinking “that’s funny because X is looking for some-one like Y” and doing nothing about it.
If you’re going to look for your next job on Facebook take care to remove any pictures and comments which are going to prejudice a prospective employer against you. They’re not supposed to judge your aptitude for a role based upon any social media entries but if they read about how wrecked you got mid week and see pictures of you behaving irresponsibly it will still have an influence nonetheless.
Dan Cash wrote this. While he was a student and otherwise unemployed in Brighton takeaway food was something of a luxury. If you’re out of work and fancy some Indian Brighton has some cheap and delicious curry houses.
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- LinkedIn values itself above $3 billion for IPO (mbcalyn.wordpress.com)
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One reason I was reluctant to look for work via social media was because I felt my pages were not as complete and full or ‘great content’ as they should be. Therefore it might go against me. Also I didn’t really want potential employers seeing my personal facebook! Any suggestions to over come this?
You’re right about personal Facebook pages, you might want to unfriend people who have a habit of posting stuff that other people might not find funny. I think a good rule of thumb is only to put information on facebook that you’d be happy to put on a handbill and pass out to everyone in the town where you live, including your mum and your little sister! As for incomplete pages, if you’re unemployed, you’ve got time to put content together for them! If you’re working then lack of content shouldn’t be a problem. The most important thing is to be hones, don’t hide your light under a bushel and don’t say you’ve got skills you don’t
Twitter: stephwoo286
I get where you’re coming from. I’d also say that facebook is blatantly a terrible idea for looking for work. It’s just not built for that. That said, the FB security features are only as confusing as they are because they’re actually pretty powerful. You can set certain security levels on ‘friends’ by grouping them, and you can restrict what non-friends can see on your profile in the same screens.
Five second job: set all your ‘drunken’ party animal photo albums to ‘friends only’.
Twitter: stephwoo286
Most of the time, wild horses couldn’t drag me on to Linked In. The sad fact is that a lot of the traditional avenues are even less user friendly and effective at getting you work.
Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense why the UK people aren’t using Facebook or LinkedIn. I was looking for work one time and decided to update my status on Facebook telling people I was looking for work. I got an unbelievable response and I found job opportunities that weren’t even posted anywhere else on the web.
Congratulations! I hope it goes well. =o)
Twitter: kensingtongreen
Well, some interesting points here. I think one of the main reasons for the situation is that there are so many fake accounts around. The reluctance comes from the employers. I, as a potential employer, would think twice before headhunting on Facebook. How do I know that the person is real? If you know where to look, you can get a fake Facebook account with 1000 “targeted” friends (all of them bots just like you) for 10 quid. This is one of the real problems with Facebook. I think it will take some time for both employers and employees to start trusting social sites and consider them as a possible avenue to that great new job.
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Twitter: ronniedare
Forums are sometimes a good place to check or land for a job. I don’t use FB and Twitter as well in terms of looking for a career.
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Twitter: shaanhaider
Its funny to see that when the whole world is using the social media, specially LinkedIn, to get the jobs, few people do not want to use
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