WOW’s Awesome Social Media Job Search Advice For 2013

Be careful using social media for job search at work

Be careful using social media for job search at work.

There’s free job search advice aplenty on the Internet, most of it worth exactly what you pay for it – nothing.

There are also plenty of breathless stories in the media with absurd headlines like this one:

5 Powerful Career Drivers for The Future of Work

Why do you need this advice?

  • Why is this important? Why now? Because the world of work is changing, and changing fast.

Ya think?

The gist here is to become a “social connector” who “lives the brand” and is a “collaborative” “master communicator.” Oh, and be sure to “curate everything.”

The whole notion of  web content “curation” has been around a while now, but during the past year or so it’s leaked into the career/job search realm. Expect to hear the word A LOT in 2013 if you’re looking for a job.

And in 2013 you may want to crowdsource your job hunt.

Says Mashabe.com:

  • With social media tools and the interconnected web, much of this research can now be crowdsourced through social channels. Considering 91% of online adults are using social media and approximately 750 tweets are sent out every second, the social web is a huge potential resource for you to tap into. Your online pals and social media connections could hold the key to your dream job if you know who and what to ask. The following are ways to get a little help from your friends in order to impress in the interview.

What’s clear is that online social media job searches are the new normal.

For the state-of-the-art in job searching let’s take a look at a young and hungry for work demographic: recent college graduates.

firms use social mediaApproximately 41% of 2012 college graduates in the market for a job are using social media to help them land one, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2012 Student Survey.

Students are most likely to use social media in the job search to network with employers, according the NACE survey.

However, the NACE survey also found that students are nearly as likely to use social media as a means for researching employers — and this practice is gaining popularity.

“Nearly one-quarter of 2012 graduates using social media identified it as a research tool, up from 17% just a year ago, and up from 15% among 2010 graduates,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

“Students are using it to seek out salary and compensation information, job descriptions, and information about the employer’s training and development programs,” Mackes said.

Social media as a job search tool has been gaining traction since NACE began tracking its use in 2008.

In fact, just 7% of the Class of 2008 reported interacting with an employer through social media. More than half said they didn’t even notice employer ads on social networking sites.

Today, data show this has changed significantly.

“Unlike students four years ago who were unclear about the use of social media in the job search, today’s students see it a viable tool to gather employer information,” said Mackes.

The study also found that seniors using social media in their job search are most likely to use Facebook and LinkedIn.

Since 2011, Adobe has used LinkedIn to find more than half of its new hires, while it used traditional job sites to hire just 5%, according to Bloomberg Business Week.

Software maker Adobe may be an extreme example of the shift to job searching and hiring view social media, but it is indicative of how the job search market is rapidly evolving.

New social media startups, such as Simplicant and Talent Bin offer tools that recruiters can use to find candidates by trawling Twitter, Google and other social sites to find the right people for specific jobs.

Here are a couple of supporting observations for 2013 gleaned from BusinesNewsDaily.com about the rapidly increasing significance of social media job search.

  • The job search will change — “According to 2011 statistics, 14.4 million people used social media to find their last job and 73% of employers successfully hire candidates through social media. Aside from social media, job seekers are looking at search engines to find their next job. Google has 11 billion queries per month, of which 226 million of those are job-related.” –Colin Day, iCIMS

  • Socialized job candidates will rise — “With an improving economy, the class of 2013 (having been born in 1991 and becoming peer- and tech-aware in the age of AOL and modern social networks) will in part choose employers based on the company’s demonstrated commitment to social media engagement with their customers and also with their employees. This will become a driving dynamic picking up even more after 2015.” –Peter Friedman, LiveWorld

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