In 1975, Charles Revson, Co-Founder of Revlon Cosmetics, was quoted as saying, “Oh Lord, give me a bastard with talent.”  I can understand the irreverent prayer because job hunting was a bigger risk.  The primary method of communicating jobs was the newspaper with limited geographic circulation.  Since that time, and with the dissemination of technology and understanding of hiring risk, new tools have increased the opportunity to find the right candidate faster and greater accuracy.

One of the greatest advents was the introduction of online employment job boards.  Monster launched in 1999, the merging of two preceding job boards.  In 2008 Monster was reported to have over 1 million job postings at any point in time and accessible to 86 million monthly job seekers globally.  Since 2008 Monster has continued to grow but the job board format has come under attack by a new format, moving from seek and find methods to connecting and networking processes.  LinkedIn is the new format, and looking to dominate.

LinkedIn is the foremost place for professionals to connect, being focused on career and business connections, unlike Facebook which is about socializing.  LinkedIn is on path to achieve their 2012 plan of $860MM in revenue, showing with growth in the first qtr. at just over 100% and stock gains in a single day in Feb of 20%!  LinkedIn’s original purpose was to become a professional social network to bring people together.  Since inception it has become a place for professional networks, jobs search, and a place to “be found” by employers.

So where should employers be fishing?  What lake should job seekers be in?  It is not a matter of preference, it is matter of coverage.  LinkedIn will not be enough, nor will Monster, nor working.com, nor Workopolis nor Indeed, nor…why?  The correct answer is that each approach has different coverage and complexities.  According to comScore (Jan 2012), and audience measurement organization, Indeed.com has 13.7MM job search unique visitors vs. monsters 4.9MM.  Does that mean Indeed is better?  No, because up to 62% of Monsters users do not visit Indeed.com.  Likewise the overlap between Monster and Workopolis is near 50%, which means employers on one website or the other miss 50% of the candidate market and candidates miss 50% or more of the jobs advertised.  This is a time of change and flux in the job search market, and until a dominate player emerges, as Monster did in 1999, all outlets need consideration by job seekers.

For this reason the job search falls upon the job seeker to visit and be engaged in as many online job boards as possible as no single solution fits all.  This responsibility falls to the candidates because the costs of an employer being on all job boards are prohibitive from a cost and resourcing perspective.  So if a job seeker is on the job boards what need is there for LinkedIn? Plenty.  LinkedIn is a place to search a job board but also be found and networked into a career of choice.  Like other job boards, LinkedIn has posted jobs, however, it allows you to be found by recruiters (internal and external), referred to jobs, and provide more about you than a resume allows (speaking to more skills, personality traits, interest, involvement and culture).   More importantly you become open to sourcing.

Sourcing is the skill that recruiters use to ‘headhunt.’  While the term ‘headhunt’ is archaic and carries an unfavorable stigma, in days past recruiters would use the phone to connect with people in similar positions at different companies and gauge interest in a new career opportunity.  This is approach is slowly being replaced by LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter searches.  Key words are now important as recruiters seek job descriptions words to see what candidates meet their search criteria. Job boards of the past allowed candidate to search jobs, on LinkedIn the jobs can now search the candidates.  This is not a new concept as Monster keeps resumes on file that could be searched; however, LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for searching and at no cost, along with Facebook and Twitter allowing for additional searches.  Social communities have created enormous opportunity for clients and candidates to search out each other, and what was once primarily a one directional search where hiring managers would declare, “Oh Lord, give me a bastard with talent,” can now search and discover candidates that match more effectively and reduce hiring risk.

Darryl

Executrade – Your Recruitment Specialists

www.executrade.com