Executive Search
Professional Placement
Staffing Consulting

Over 30 years building industry relationships
in Information Technology drive our
performance recruiting for key people.

The Importance of Being Online – By Todd Bossler

EM Info- Vol. 5 Issue 54. Jan 2013…

The Importance of Being Online (in Earnest) . . . and 3 Steps to Get There. By Todd Bossler

Here’s a statistic to digest: according to a recent survey conducted by recruiting tech firm
Jobvite, 52% of job seekers use Facebook to find work. That percentage is up from 48% in
last year’s Jobvite survey. (Both surveys used a sample of more than 2,000 adults in the
U.S., either unemployed or currently employed and looking for another job.)

Also as part of that survey, LinkedIn is used by 38% of job seekers, up from 30%,
while Twitter usage rose from 26% to 34%. In addition, 25% of job seekers added
professional information to their Facebook account in the last year, and 26% did so with
their LinkedIn profile.
What does all of this mean? It means that your firm’s website must be integrated with
social media. Specifically, your firm’s site should have the ability to post your open
jobs to social media in a way that will drive active job seekers and passive candidates
back to your site to check out (and apply for) your opportunities.
Why is this important? Once again, according to the Jobvite survey, 88% of job
seekers maintain at least one online profile with a social media site.
However, it makes sense that if somebody has an account with one social media site,
they have an account with multiple sites. If your website is integrated with social
media, then it will increase its “reach” on the Internet, since you’ll be connected to an
engaged audience that loves to share information.
Step #3—Be “mobile ready” with “responsive design”
According to Mashable.com, an independent online news site for technology, 77% of
job seekers use mobile job search apps. That percentage breaks down as follows:
· 36.3% use them to quickly react to new job postings
· 23.8% like to job search anytime, anywhere
· 17.7% feel that it’s a discreet way to search for a job
It’s no longer just a “website world” . . . it’s a “mobile world” for recruiting and staffing
firms, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Once again, what does all of this
mean?
It means that it’s imperative that your firm’s website is easily viewable and searchable
on a mobile phone or tablet device. This is referred to as “responsive design.”
When a website is built with responsive design, it means the site will “respond” to
whatever device is viewing it—PC, laptop, mobile phone, or tablet device—and present
the site and its elements in the appropriate fashion.
According to a case study conducted by Kelton Research and published by open
technology platform Jibe, 86% of job seekers who have a smartphone would use it to
search for a job. Smartphones and tablets have become essential tools for the jobseeking
Millennial Generation. People always carry their phones with them, which
means they can search for jobs on the fly and respond more quickly than they would
with their not-as-portable laptop computers.
If your recruiting firm’s website doesn’t have responsive design, it won’t provide the
best experience for those job seekers who visit it on a mobile device . . . even if you
DO post your jobs to it.
As you can see, while it’s important for your firm to be online and have an Internet
presence, it’s even more important to be online in earnest!
The three steps I’ve outlined in this article can help you achieve that and also help
ensure that you engage your website visitors, convince them to take action, and
compel them to visit your site again in the future!

, , , ,

Comments are closed.