If you've participated in one of our trainings, consulted our material or spoken with us at a networking event, you've probably heard us refer to several statistics on social media and employability. Here we will reiterate some of the more important statistics we use, along with a short analysis and source information for these figures.
1. Posted Job Offers
80% of jobs aren't posted. (unconfirmed)
80% of jobs aren't posted. (unconfirmed)
This statistic is circulating throughout employment counsellor circles, across various countries and languages. Here are several examples of other authorities employing the same figure:
We haven't been successful in tracking down empirical information to confirm or deny this number, nor a study on the subject. Unfortunately we're not able to provide an exact empirical figure of the hidden job market.
What's important to remember is that a large number of available jobs are not posted, and networking remains our primary connection to this hidden job market. What's more, networking can also improve our chances of getting a posted job, if we know someone in the company who can vouch for us or promote our candidacy. Even if the 80% figure is unconfirmed, we can still optimize our job search with various strategies to help us break through the hidden job market: cold calling, networking, internships, volunteering.
We've created a tool to illustrate the conflicting realities of employers and job-seekers. Click here to view our diagram.
2.Employer Practices.
The majority of employers search potential candidates on Google or social media sites before hiring them.
The majority of employers search potential candidates on Google or social media sites before hiring them.
The following study from PR Newswire found that 86% of recruiters use social media. This is the most recent study found, and with the most impressive number. It seems that the number varies somewhat depending on the country, but in all cases has increased over time.
Another study, this one more dated (2004) shows that even then, 24% of people searched their professional contacts on Google or other search engines.
The majority of these people found elements that they deemed negative enough to reject a candidate for a job.
A study by Career Builder showed that 53% of employers searched their candidates online and found that they posted inappropriate comments or photos.
The practice of looking into candidates online is so important that a company, called Social Intelligence Corp., was created with the sole purpose of checking the social media profiles of candidates applying for jobs with their clients, the employers.
Again, the PR Newswire study found that 44% of employers had decided not to hire someone because of what was found when searching their name online.
Only a minority of them had found information that was positive enough to convince them to hire a candidate.
A 2008 study by Career Builder showed that 30% of employers had refused a candidate because of negative elements found online, versus 22% who had found positive information favouring a candidate.
Another study from 2009, also by Career Builder, showed that 35% of employers found negative elements, versus 18% who had found positive ones.
3. Job-Seeking Practices
Only 12% of job-seekers believed that social media were relevant in their job search.
This information was obtained in a survey recently held by CERIC, the Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling. Click here to read the study.
The survey was held online, which means that they were primarily surveying people who already had a certain level of comfort with computers and internet. If, even among this group, only 12% found social media pertinent in their job search, we can assume that number would drop for the general population.
We can guess that this lack of interest in using social media professionally is a primary reason why job-seekers tend to perform badly on these sites when employers search for them, as their lack of awareness of employers using these sites to search them tends to fail them more than it does help them.
4. Job-posting on Twitter
50% of posted jobs are shared on Twitter. (unconfirmed)
50% of posted jobs are shared on Twitter. (unconfirmed)
This information was communicated to us by Greg Isenberg during a training on social media. We haven't been able to find the exact source of this statistic.
The job search site Twit Job Search lists the number of new job offers posted on Twitter in the last hour or the last month. Have a look; the number of jobs posted in the last hour is often in the thousands, and in the last month in the millions.
5. The Popularity of Social Networks
800 Million Active Facebook Users
120 Million LinkedIn Users
100 Million Twitter Users
800 Million Active Facebook Users
120 Million LinkedIn Users
100 Million Twitter Users
Facebook: The site has 800 million active users; even more accounts exist that aren't being used.
LinkedIn: The site has 120 million users - this number is undisputed.
Twitter: The site claims to have over 200 million total users, but this number corresponds to the number of created accounts, not active accounts.
How many of these accounts are active? A large number of them follow few or no accounts and aren't followed by other users. The number of active users is probably somewhere around 50 million, according to this article:
However, Twitter recently revealed that they have 100 million monthly users:
General Conclusions
If social media are a new reality, and the implications of their relevance to job searching are not yet known (at least in terms of numbers), we must still admit that the reality for job-seekers in today's world is drastically different from what we've seen in the past. The numbers may be ever-changing, but the picture is clear: the importance of social media in relation to job searches will continue to rise.
We encourage you to look at our Contact page to schedule a free training for your centre to learn more about how you and your clients can apply this increasingly popular tool to your employment strategy.
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