The internet has changed the job hunting and recruitment process drastically. Now job seekers are applying for jobs and connecting with employers over Social Media. If you haven’t been paying attention to social media, in particularly to LinkedIn, you have some catching up to do. You cannot afford to ignore LinkedIn today.
LinkedIn has become an increasingly popular way to network with people in the same industry. More and more employers are using LinkedIn as a recruitment and hiring tool and students and professionals are using it in their job searches. Treat it like more than a resume. Sure, they both convey your current and former professional roles. But your resume is a formal document used for the specific purpose of gaining the attention of a hiring authority and motivating them to call you to initiate an interview process. Your LinkedIn profile is social. It is for networking and interacting with a wide variety of people, not just hiring authorities. Consequently, it is an important part of the job hunt aside from a formal job request. It allows you to demonstrate what you really care about as a professional, and it can help you build relationships with people who are in a position to positively impact your job hunt.
Also the traditional way of a job interview has changed. Besides face-to-face interviews there are now also mobile interviews and video interviews.
Mobile interview
More than 70% of active job seekers use their mobile phones to look for jobs. Unfortunately, companies are struggling to keep up despite the enormous opportunity mobile provides: just 20% of companies have mobile-optimized career sites, and a mere three percent have a mobile app. It order to keep up with the changes companies need to use IT.
Video interview
A video interview uses online video technology to allow job seekers and hiring professionals to connect earlier in the hiring process. Video interviews take place remotely and use video technology as the communication medium. Since so much communication occurs at the nonverbal level, seeing and being seen is extremely important. And video interviews give people a better way to present themselves, both verbally and nonverbally. There are different kinds of video interviews: Live video interviews (synchronous) and one-way video interviews (asynchronous). Synchronous interviews are conducted live over the Internet. In contrast, an asynchronous video interview is pre-recorded by the job seeker and submitted to the employer.
Hi Megan! Thank you for your interesting post. For the team of the week assignment we also investigated the big changes in the job market. One thing that’s worth mentioning is the fact that nowadays more than 40% of the workers in the U.S. are contingent workers (freelancers for example). This labor market is changing and companies like Upwork and Taskrabbit are providing a new way of hiring and working. I do believe this is the future, and LinkedIn can play a big part in this. With their enormous network and LinkedIn Pro they can be the new platform for this new way of hiring. If you’re interested, I’ve put the link to our team of the week video down below.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/#2f4ecbdd2532
Great article! I think that LinkedIn adds value to companies during their search of candidates by improving their capacity to attract more potential candidates, it also enables companies to increase brand awareness and customer engagement. Moreover, job seekers are able to better connect and interact with recruiters. I also think that Linkedin is more often used than any other social networks because it is more professionally oriented and the most suitable platform to communicate vacancies. However, I do not see social-media platforms as a direct replacement for traditional hiring processes, but rather a supplement to them.
Hi Megan,
Thanks for your interesting post regarding the latest developments within the recruitment sector. An additional read that may interest you is about at research done by a RSM PhD candidate (using BigData as a recruitment tool). Basically he developed an algorithm that can simulate the work of a recruiter with an accuracy of up to 80%. You can read about it over here: http://discovery.rsm.nl/articles/detail/218-big-data-predicts-who-will-be-invited-for-a-job-interview/
Robbert