Referrals Still King

It is estimated that half of all jobs are obtained through referrals.   Whether it‘s networking at a professional event, extending relationships with contacts you made online or even asking an old college roommate to refer you to their boss — finding a job has always contained a social element. And in today’s information age, social real-time interaction is becoming the norm. People spend 22 percent of all online time interacting through blogs and social networks. Services like Facebook (+500 million users) and Twitter (+145 million users) dominate the web space, and LinkedIn boasts over 75 million profession­als worldwide.

Job Search, Still a Disjointed Process

Despite the overwhelming presence of online social networking, the social aspect of job search remains a primarily offline process. Those who do leverage their connections for a job must engage in a disjointed process: asking around for contacts, calling friends of friends, schedul­ing in-person meetings, cold-calling hiring managers … even emails must be composed manually.  I’m confident that this reactive process will improve with new web tools that will intelligently connect job seekers with employers.

Social job search will look to bring our professional and social connections into the same plane as job listings, this is already happening on LinkedIn. When a relevant opportunity is discovered, a job seeker is able to see if any of their connections work at that company, or can otherwise offer help in obtaining the desired job.

The Shift is Happening

The offline social aspect of job search will continue to converge with online social networking.  This fundamental shift will be most widely adopted by the “Generation Y” audience.  This future generation of job seekers will expect a process that is transparent, social, personal, mobile and efficient.  To best prepare for these new job seekers, it is critical that employers understand the directions in which job search is evolving. The digital synthesis of personal profiles, social and professional networks, and online recruiting tools for employers will allow jobseekers to proactively stage their presence online and better position themselves as qualified candidates.

If I ignore a friend request from you, please don’t take it personally. Link to me in WhyHire.me and in Linkedin once you establish yourself and we have done some work together. Over time, we may very well become friend in life and online.

For those that collect friends like vendors collect business cards at trade shows, remember, you are making a social contract with these people. If you post items of a truly personal nature – a goofy photo, a self-depreciating comment or anything not professional, these posts can be misunderstood, or taken out of context, since your new “friend” does not really know you. Case in point, if you use sarcasm online and the friend does not really know about your sarcastic humor…they will misinterpret your post.

An extreme oh-o, is when someone copies and pastes your Facebook items and puts them in a blog entry for the world to see. Check out this story on Audra Sigler Shea and what happened to her racist remarks she posted in Facebook alongside her trusted friends. In this case, her nasty remarks were simply copied and shared with the world.

Keep your personal and professional world separate. This way you can keep up your sarcastic humor with your buddies and not worry about wierding  people out.