Social media emerging as platform for job finding, recruiting

MUMBAI: More and more people in the country are finding jobs through social media websites, a study says. "More than half the respondents in India, or 56 per cent, said they were contacted through social media about employment opportunity in the prior (last) year, while 25 per cent of respondents said they secured a job through social media," global workforce solutions firm Kelly Services says in its Workforce Index survey 'Socialising Recruitment'. About 64 per cent of respondents agreed that social media was a good platform to share job referrals or opportunities. Also, about 57 per cent of the respondents in the country use social media sites when making employment decisions. "The spread of social media in the community is now mirrored in the workplace where employees are discussing their work, their employers and canvassing job openings and career choices," Kelly Services India MD Kamal Karanth said. In the Asia Pacific region, Indonesia and Thailand seem to be using the social media most fruitfully. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents secured a job through social media there last year, followed by China (35 per cent), Malaysia (28 per cent), (22 per cent), Hong Kong (19 per cent), New Zealand (17 per cent) and Australia (14 per cent). "Employees are more social and more flexible in the way they engage with trusted friends and work colleagues on social media, and increasingly they expect to have access to technology in the workplace to enable that. Social media is quietly revolutionising recruitment because it can open up the whole process to an enormous pool of candidates," Karanth adds. TOI