3 Building my profile on social media

‘Social recruiting’ is a growing trend amongst employers. This means using social media platforms to find, attract and recruit employees.

In a recent article on recruitment trends, Andre (no date) shares the following infographic from Infinity Social Media and Jobcast.

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Figure _unit5.3.1 Figure 1 Social recruiting infographic

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Infographic displaying statistics on using social media in recuriting talents.

• 94% of recruiters use of plan to use social media for recruiting
• 70% of recruiters plan to increase their investment in social recruiting
• 49% of employers who use social media found improvement in candidate quality.

Figure 1 Social recruiting infographic

You can see that developing a strong profile on social media can be useful when you’re looking for work experience.

Social media can also be a good way to raise your profile with potential employers – for example, by contributing to relevant discussion groups in a positive and professional way. Moreover, if you follow organisations that interest you on social media, you might sometimes get early warning of a new vacancy or other opportunity.

Depending on the sectors that interest you, different social media platforms may be more or less relevant. Find the platform that people in your preferred industry use the most. For example, a more visual-based industry might be more likely to use Instagram or YouTube, whereas a more traditional or corporate business will probably have a presence on LinkedIn.

In the next section you’ll focus on LinkedIn as this is the platform that is likely to be of most relevance to all. It also has the most obvious connection to the world of work.