Posted by It’s hard to get hired these days without an online presence. For one thing, hiring managers and recruiters who source candidates from social media might not even know you exist, if you’re mostly offline. Then, there’s the fact that 43 percent of organizations now use social media to vet candidates during the hiring process. In short, if you’re not active online, you could be missing out on the job of your dreams.
Don’t assume, however, that just because you don’t have an online presence yet, you can’t build one. Here’s what you need to know, if you’re starting from square one.
The Current State of Social Recruiting
Social recruiting is a big deal these days, and ignoring this fact may be the reason you’re not getting calls from recruiters. Having a positive online presence in today’s job market is just as important as, if not more important than, having a gleaming resume – without a strong profile online, you just get lost in the crowd.
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) recently published its findings from a survey that examined the use of social media for talent acquisition, including:
- Two-thirds of organizations have taken steps to leverage mobile recruiting.
- In 2018, 84 percent of organizations indicated they use social recruiting, which is up from 58 percent in 2014.
- Organizations say the main reason social media is used for recruiting is to recruiting passive job candidates, followed by increasing brand recognition (77 percent) and targeting job candidates with a specific set of skills (71 percent).
- Overall, 43 percent of organizations say they use social media or online search engines to screen candidates, and 44 percent of HR professionals agree that a candidate’s social media profiles can provide information about work-related performance.
- Over one-third of organizations admit to disqualifying a job candidate in the past year because of concerning information (e.g. illegal activity, discrepancy with application) found on a public social media profile or through an online search.
The moral of the story: the internet is forever, so use it with caution (and some common sense).