TeneoTalent

The Recruiting Times, They Are a Changin’

May 18, 2011

By Edwin Dean

The time is changing. Are you prepared?

It’s no secret that the face of job searching/recruiting/talent acquisition strategy is changing quickly under the influence of online social media and other technological changes, generational differences in attitudes towards work, and a whole host of additional factors.  My father’s experience provides a good example.  When he graduated from college in 1927 with an undergraduate chemical engineering degree, he found a job immediately and stayed with that same company (DuPont) until 43 years later when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.  Aside from his exceptional good fortune at holding a job throughout the Great Depression, his story was not unusual for that time in terms of the two-way loyalty that was established between employer and employee.

Fast forward another 40 years and you will see a very different picture.  Now it seems that “employment for life ” has become more like “employment at either party’s whim.”  According to the Jobvite 2010 Social Recruiting Survey Results (http://recruiting.jobvite.com/), the average worker will have 10.8 employers in his lifetime, compared with four in Dad’s day, and Gen X members may expect to have 14.  (I confess to having had five, along with various consulting gigs and my current entrepreneurial effort at http://teneotalent.com/, can you guess my age?)  Thus there has been an exponential increase in the numbers of job searches (and talent searches), as an increasing population of workers is the subject of multiple job and career changes.

Other interesting findings of the survey are that:

  • 83% of the (employer) respondents are now using or planning to use social media for recruiting.
  • Although LinkedIn remains the dominant site for online recruiting, both Facebook and Twitter are growing quickly.  Now 78% use LinkedIn, 55% use Facebook and 45% use Twitter. After that, there is a fairly rapid dropoff to the other social media channels.
  • Social networks lead all other recruiting channels for planned investment by employers as the economy recovers, and will see increased spending.  The news for job boards and third party recruiters is not so positive.
  • 35% of the respondents said that business is booming and they expected to be hiring right away.  Another 35% said they were hiring somewhat in anticipation of an economic recovery.

My conclusion from all this is that you should keep that online profile of yours up to date.  It’s especially important for “passive” candidates who wouldn’t be caught dead looking but might not want to seem non-existant, and could be open to a little wooing.  Feel free to contact us at http://teneotalent.com/ if you are in sales and would like some help.

photo by: Leo Reynolds

http://TeneoTalent.com offers a new process of sales recruiting that uses sales assessments for both employers and job seekers to create long term fits.  We also offer career development tools through our sales career coaching program, including resume writing. We offer career advice, career matching and although our organization has a national focus, and have many Denver and Boulder sales jobs available at the moment.

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