Social Media: The Hiring Tool of Choice?

Last month, we reported on the increasing importance of social media to job seekers as well as employers. Now, in the US at least, the beginning of an economic turnaround seems to have only reinforced social media’s position as the hiring tool of choice.

Writing for the Journal of New England Technology, Galen Moore cites a number of cases where online social networks are replacing job boards, and where traditional job boards are integrating social media to keep up with the trend.

One example is Monster Worldwide’s recent move to open its Technology Centre of Excellence & Innovation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Company spokesperson Janet Swaysland told Moore that the centre is focusing on ways to integrate social media into monster.com.

That other jobs classifieds giant, careerbuilder.com, has already taken steps toward making social media part of its website with the launch of a social media brand management service for employers in early July.

Moore also cites three examples of Boston based startups that are using social media to make job seeking easier: winbread.com, which allows people to keep track of their job search online, venturefizz.com, which combines a job board with technology community news, and genotrope.com – an online startup directory that has recently been updated with job postings.

Moore quotes Elaine Varelas, managing partner at Boston based career counsellor Keystone Associates, as saying, “The job boards are being used less and less by employers as a global source of new candidates”.

The increasing focus on social media in job seeking and hiring won’t surprise the people behind websites like Facebook and Twitter, both of which registered record growth in comScore’s figures for June 2009.

If these figures weren’t convincing enough, Socialnomics author Erik Qualman has released a video outlining the growth of social media throughout its short history that contains some staggering statistics:

Related posts:

1. Social Media Enters Real World Job Seeking A recent post on the comScore blog by Andrew Lipsman, who is Director of Industry Analysis at comScore, discusses the value of social media in what is a very tight US job market. ...
2. Jobvite Releases New Search Tool Jobvite has just released a new standalone tool it says any company can use to assist with social recruiting. ...
3. Companies to Move Towards Social Recruiting Results of an annual survey on social recruiting by US website jobvite.com have suggested a shift away from recruiting methods such as job boards....
4. tweetmyjobs.com Launches Social Campaign Job notification provider tweetmyjobs.com has launched a social media based competition to promote its website. After watching tweetmtjobs.com’s promotional video and entering their details, competition entrants will be sent a link to promote across Twitter, Facebook and any other social...
5. eggsprout.com Launches Social Job Boards eggsprout.com has announced the launch of its new platform – a job board creation tool that incorporates social networking applications....

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