“I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” — Sally Field, Academy Award acceptance speech for Best Actress in 1984′s Places in the Heart.
It’s nice to be liked and it seems as though everyone is on Facebook these days, but is that the best social media website when it comes to finding a job? The answer depends on whom you ask, but based on an article in Human Resource Executive Online it appears that LinkedIn is still king when it comes to job seekers as well as recruiters.
As social media becomes more popular, the line between personal life and professional life is starting to fade. However, at least for now, people still use various websites for specific objectives. Facebook, which is arguably the dominant social media site, is almost never used as the primary method for finding a job. According to the article, there are 1.3 billion users on Facebook and only 277 million users on LinkedIn, yet the latter is preferred with 94% of recruiters citing it as their go-to social network for finding talent, according to a Jobvite poll.
Furthermore, according to a recent Link Humans poll, nearly 70% of employees surveyed say they have never turned to Facebook in search of employment opportunities, with almost 95% indicating they’ve never found an opening and subsequently been hired via Facebook.
That doesn’t mean that Facebook is completely useless when it comes to the job search, especially if the job is specific to marketing, social media, or relevant technology. Facebook has several advantages when it comes to building a corporate brand in which top talent would want to work, and also for potential job candidates to do research and familiarize themselves with an organization before their interview. Many Human Resource professionals already use social media to research potential job prospects, so it’s only natural that these prospects use social media to examine companies and their C-level executives.
It could be only a matter of time before all those people who grew up using Facebook as a way to connect will become senior executives who will then use Facebook to expand the corporate culture. The bottom line is that both job seekers and recruiters need to be aware of all social media avenues as their online personal and professional lives may soon converge into one.