The Recruiter

The 411 on social networking

For better or worse, social networking sites have spread like wildfire. With more than 60 million people on Facebook alone, and most individuals maintaining profiles on multiple sites, employers and recruiters are beginning to capitalize and use these sites to scout talent and learn more about their potential or current employees.

But as Spiderman once said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”  Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn can be great tools, but it’s up to you to use them responsibly. 

For job seekers, discretion in the posting of personal material to public online forums is essential.  For example, it’s probably not in your best interest to show your employers a minute-by-minute account of your bachelor or bachelorette party—especially if you are still fuzzy on the details yourself.  Either edit your security setting so only people you know and trust can view the album, or skip posting it altogether. 

However, when it comes to creating and promoting your online brand, you don’t always have to be on the defensive.  Instead, use the Web to your advantage, and make sure that when a potential employer or recruiter Googles your name, they’re going to be impressed by what they see. 

For example, if you haven’t already, start commenting on blogs that are relevant to your industry.  Posting intelligent and insightful comments and initiating quality discussions about relevant topics or trends will provide employers with a glimpse of your expertise and capabilities, and could interest them in learning more. Frequent commenting on blogs can help you spread your name and gain credibility.  Plus, it’s a great way to make contacts and connections that can help you along the way.

In addition, make sure you stay up-to-date on the new tools and features being added to the networks. In April, LinkedIn is launching a service to help members find experts in certain business fields.  You might want to add some key search terms related to your skills (SAP, Java, etc.) to your profile to ensure that employers looking for candidates with these skill sets will stumble upon you.

Posted by Amy D.

Why a recession won’t affect the job market

Penelope Trunk over at The Brazen Careerist put together a pretty interesting post the other day about how our currently unstable economy is affecting the job market—or not.

Penelope argues that the state of today’s job market is not so much a function of economic indicators as it is of demographic trends. This is nothing we haven’t discussed before.  Baby boomers’ mass exodus from the workforce is resulting in a major shortage of employees that Gen X and Y are incapable to fill. (Penelope attributes this to Gen X’s focus on family and Gen Y’s fascination with entrepreneurship that lead them to contribute fewer hours of work per person than the boomers.)

Whether the economy enters a recession or not, as long as boomers continue to retire, demand for younger workers will be high. This is true even for sectors such as finance, real estate and manufacturing that are often hit hardest by economic downturns.

We’d like to add another area in which we expect to see high demand: technology. As we recently reported, the Q4 Yoh Index of Technology Wages revealed all-time high wages in the tech sector before gradually slowing at the end of 2007, and showed a continuing trend of year-over-year growth. And opportunities in engineering, Java, SAP®, project management, security and customer-related projects continue to be plentiful.

So don’t let talk of a recession scare you (when it comes to jobs, at least) -   retiring baby boomers will guarantee demand. But it’s up to you to sharpen your skills, maintain your credentials and make yourself an ideal and indispensable candidate.

Posted by Christy H.