Social Media Outlets Prove to be Useful for Businesses Looking for Employees

Social Media Outlets Prove to be Useful for Businesses Looking for Employees:

It is true that social networking and media websites mostly began as a system for networking most prevalently used by younger denizens of the internet. MySpace and Facebook, generally considered to be the most notable websites of the initial era of social networking, were initially skewed toward an adolescent-to-college-age demographic, before becoming more widely used and available in the mid-to-late 2000s.

Today, however, social media websites are not only used by a considerably broad range of people, but have become a major tool in the professional and business universe. Individuals looking for a job – and even more significantly, those who are searching for people to hire – have effectively turned websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and various others into veritable job marketplaces.

The resources offered by such social media sites are considerable for both those who are searching for jobs and those who are offering them. LinkedIn has proved to be particularly useful for business and organizational networking, which makes sense, as it is considerably less oriented towards the entertainment and leisure aspects of social media and more focused on the utilitarian aspects of networking.

According to Mashable, one of LinkedIn’s newest features will be of significant use to prospective employees and recruiters looking for talented individuals to fill open positions. User profiles on the website will now include a segment to include details about volunteer experience.

The news source reports that this development will be particularly important for employees, especially considering the results of a recent LinkedIn survey that reveal a near majority – 41 percent – of 2,000 questioned employers value relevant volunteer work on a person’s resume as much as paid experience. A total of 20 percent of those surveyed claimed that volunteer work helped employees land jobs above all other factors or qualities.

Other aspects of the connection between social media and the job search are duly beneficial to potential recruiters. They will be able to search, with a fine-toothed comb, the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social networking pages of a particular prospective employee to gain a perspective on how the individual in question presents themselves in their private – or at least semi-private – lives.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a number of companies are specifically hired for the purpose of monitoring the social-network activity of potential hires, such as the Santa Barbara, California-based Social Intelligence Corp. Businesses like Social Intelligence and its competitors search for any number of things that employers would, with good reason, consider to be red flags – evidence of inappropriate, immature or objectionable behavior, photographs depicting anything sexually explicit, the use of illegal drugs or obscene language and hate speech.

Companies using services such as that offered by Social Intelligence have the ability to vet prospective employees to a considerable degree. These search firms have the legally granted purview to search for online content related to a person that could be up to seven years old.

However, this function is only one of the advantages social media provides to companies searching for the next great employee. Recruiters can easily look up potential candidates and see the various achievements of the many individuals who have nothing to hide, on their social networking pages or in any medium. Furthermore, the use of these methods and other social media marketing and business practices by employers is likely to attract individuals who are themselves media-savvy, which is likely to benefit all involved in the long run.

Social Media Outlets Prove to be Useful for Businesses Looking for Employees is a post from: B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify