How do you find
IT jobs these days? Back in the day, the print publications were the main source. The first section that most IT professionals turned to when they got Computer Weekly or other trade magazines in the mail was the jobs part at the back. These days, the Internet has taken over as the main source for job seekers, but the signs are that employers and recruiters may not be taking advantage of it as much as they could. And that's potentially damaging, because innovation in online recruitment is speeding up.
Thanks to the economic crash, and the effect on information-centric industries such as financial services, jobs in IT these days are still relatively hard to come by. Almost a third of recent graduates are unemployed, and more than a quarter of those that are in work gross under £10,000, according to
CWJobs' recent survey of 5000 jobseekers.
No wonder, then, that IT workers are turning to the web, with its high volume and fast turnover, to track the latest opportunities. Around 70% of respondents use general job sites on the Internet with lots of different vacancies. Around half of all candidates look for job opportunities specifically on a potential employer's website. Just under half of them go to specialist industry web sites to find their next appointment.
Worryingly though, a third of candidates interviewed by CWJobs said that they received no response when submitting a job application online. As the survey points out, graduates who have less job seeking experience may well take that lack of response as a negative sign, and not bother trying again.
As one respondent said: "The key problem is receiving no response. It feels like my applications disappear down a black hole." By not acknowledging responses and feeding back, recruiters risk alienating a valuable segment of their potential candidate base.
While recruiters struggle to nail down even these basic online skills, social media is raising the stakes for candidates and employers alike.
Twitter has dramatically grown dramatically in significance in the past couple of years. Whereas it used to be a site for inane chatter about what you had for breakfast that morning, it is now a site both for that same inane chatter, and for more serious things, such as passing on news links, asking questions of your community - and finding jobs.
Take
TwitJobSearch, for example. This tool aggregates job postings on Twitter into one easily searchable place. A quick look shows 2000 job postings harvested in a single hour. These are jobs across the world, and in many different sectors, but there is still plenty of opportunity for finding the position that fits you. The site lets you save jobs to your Twitter account, and add your online CV. It also highlights the recruiters who are savvy enough to be using Twitter to post new job opportunities (hello there,
@jobs_in_the_uk, and
@itjobsldn!)
Still, we have a long way to go before people realise the significance of sites such as Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn were by far the most-used social media sites among the CW Jobs survey base.
LinkedIn is used more by contractors than permanent staff (roughly a half vs just over a third). This is probably because contractors need to score gigs far more regularly than full-timers, meaning that they have to network more. Services such as Twitter garnered around 10% in both camps.
But 29% of jobseekers surveyed say that they don't use social media sites at all, although given the incredible growth in the popularity of these sites, and the dire situation of the economy following the financial crisis, that is likely to change. As individuals begin to realize that it is possible to find jobs using these outlets, they're likely to catch on and begin firing up sophisticated (and free) social media management tools such as
Hootsuite.
So, for recruiters and candidates alike, if you think that social media is for teenagers, now's the time to think again. The web will continue to play an increasingly important part in the recruitment process - and those who choose not to play will be missing out on a big opportunity.
