Week 5 EOC: Social Networks and Job Hunting

In today’s society, everything seems to revolve around social networking. “Personal connections—forged through words, pictures, video, and audio posted just for the [heck] of it—are the life of the new Web, bringing together the tens of millions of bloggers, more than 175 million active Facebook users, and millions more on single-use social networks where people share one category of stuff, like Flickr (photos), Del.icio.us (links), Digg (news stories), Wikipedia (encyclopedia articles), and YouTube (video)…. It’s hard to overstate the impact of these new network technologies on business…” (Marketing: An Introduction for Education Management Corporation, p. 142). It’s no wonder that employers of big businesses have jumped on this bandwagon. I have to say I did not know this existed, but it didn’t really surprise me. Most employers and potential employees have utilized the social networking site of LinkedIn. This is a professional site where potential employees can post their resumes and where employers can post available job openings. It is all career centered without someone asking to “friend” you. It does however let you add professional networking contacts. New to this scene however is Facebook, and some employers would rather use Facebook than LinkIn to look for potential employees. “Some recruiters say they have all but eliminated their spending on job boards, which can charge a few hundred dollars per job posting, depending on volume. Others note that while LinkedIn contains a more comprehensive résumé database, candidates tend to value referrals from their connections on Facebook more.”(Job Recruiters Turn to Facebook to Find Candidates, Wall Street Journal) From all the statistics, researchers are sure that this will become a popular thing with employers and employees. “But if current growth trends continue, Facebook could rival traditional job boards in 2012, said Jobs2Web analytics manager Phil Schrader.”. (Job Recruiters Turn to Facebook to Find Candidates, Wall Street Journal)  I’m not sure that all people will want their employer to know about them, but if they have nothing to hide then maybe they will more likely get hired.