Study Shows that 76% of Social Job Seekers Found Their Current Position via Facebook and 43% of Job Seekers Have Used Their Mobile Device to Engage in Activities Related to Their Job Search
Burlingame, Calif., February 6, 2014- Jobvite, the comprehensive recruitment platform for the world’s fastest-growing companies, today announced the results of the 2014 Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Study. Now in its fourth year, the Study authoritatively analyzes trends in Americans’ attitudes towards job prospects and the steps they take to manage their careers.
The data underscores that the U.S. workforce is transforming, and the long-term trend of constant job-hopping accelerates each year, with 51% of employed workers reporting they are either actively seeking or open to a new job.
Other notable findings include:
Workers are willing to wander — even if they’re currently employed.
Study results found that 71% of the U.S. labor force is currently on the job market and that more than half of currently employed workers are actively looking or open to a new role. The job market is more competitive than ever before, and results show younger workers are more optimistic about finding a job this year as compared to their more senior counterparts. Personal connections proved to be the avenue by which job seekers found their “favorite or best” job, which aligns with recruiter preferences outlined in the 2013 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey. Other top ways job seekers found their favorite jobs include online social networks, online job boards and classified ads.
Social job seekers are younger, more highly educated and more likely to be employed full-time.
Known as the social network for professionals, LinkedIn is indeed where social job seekers conduct most activities related to their job search, such as having a contact refer them for a job, make professional connections, and receive perspective on a company from an employee. However, results show 76% of social job seekers discovered their current position through Facebook.
In terms of readying social accounts for the job hunt, job seekers are as likely to delete a social account completely as they are to remove specific content from their profiles. This is interesting to note, since the 2013 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey found that 93% of recruiters are likely to look at a candidate’s social profile and 42% of recruiters at some point have reconsidered a candidate based on content viewed in a social profile.
Job seekers are increasingly going mobile.
As with social job seekers, millennials and younger workers abound among mobile job seekers. However, mobile job seekers tend to be less educated than their social job- seeking counterparts. Almost half of job seekers have used their mobile device to engage in some sort of job search-related activity and increasingly expect career websites to be optimized for mobile. Unlike social job seekers, mobile job seekers are more likely to turn to Facebook than LinkedIn for job seeking activities.
“Stability is a thing of the past and change is constant for today’s workers. The successful job seeker knows this and cultivates a professional presence on multiple channels, a trend that our study shows is becoming more common,” said Dan Finnigan, president and CEO of Jobvite. “Job seekers are in perpetual search mode, and businesses must be, too. The results from this year’s Job Seeker Nation Study shows there is a clear disconnect between where job seekers are looking compared to recruiters. This gap must be closed in order for businesses to attain desirable candidates, especially as talent is becoming more scarce at higher specialization levels.”
On behalf of Jobvite, the polling company, inc., conducted a nationwide online omnibus survey, which was fielded December 12-19, 2013, with 2,135 adults (aged 18+). Of the 2,135 adults that were polled, 1,303 were participants in the U.S. labor force. Data was weighted so that demographics of this audience closely matched the nationwide population of adults with respect to gender, age, and region.
About Jobvite
Jobvite is the leading recruiting platform for the social web. Today’s fastest-growing companies use applicant tracking, recruiter CRM and social recruiting software solutions from Jobvite to target the right talent and build the best teams. Jobvite is a complete, modular Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform which can optimize the speed, cost-effectiveness and ease of recruiting for any company. For more information, visit www.jobvite.com.
