How Social Media Affects the Staffing Industry – Part 1

people chemistrySocial media is a growing force that is disrupting many industries, and the staffing industry is not falling short of its grasp. So how exactly is social media affecting this particular industry?

Finding people. The first aspect in which social media has impacted the staffing industry significantly are search capabilities. The way and extent to which searches can be conducted to find the right skills needed has virtually been revolutionized by social media.

Through a pool of increasing platforms, jobseekers are able to increase their online visibility for employers to see.

Anyone with a LinkedIn or Facebook account has their entire résumé laid out online. Moreover, the membership base of these platforms is only increasing. This means that employers have access to more and more professionals, along with their professional histories and data.

Whether it is general social media sites like Craigslist and Facebook, or more career-centered ones like Monster and LinkedIn, social media is giving many opportunities for jobseekers to be found and for employers to find them.

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Moreover, many of these platforms have mobile applications too, which means they can be accessible from anywhere, at anytime, and even on the go; thus providing time-efficient solutions to both job and candidate searching.

With the surge of such online tools, people are thus able to put themselves on the map wherever they may be located, and companies can, today, search for the candidate they need on a local or global basis, with the possibility to conduct wide-scale, cross-geographical searches.

Project-specific staffing. A concomitant trend in social media is the rise of freelance platforms, which have equally affected the way staffing is being made.

Freelance platforms are specifically designed for jobseekers to share information about their skills and to look for specific projects according to their skills. In turn, employers can post available projects or tasks that need to be completed, as well as browse the sites to find required skills.

From country-based sites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, to global ones like Elance and oDesk, these platforms are mushrooming, and, if need may be, are complemented by a range of online collaborative tools like Dropbox, Skype, Yammer and more to allow efficient work to take place cross-geographically.

A new work model is thus emerging as a result of this new system, with companies outsourcing skills more and more, with people being paid per assignment, or per hour, rather than with traditional salaries, and with these freelance platforms becoming mediators between contractor and freelancer and ensuring that payment is settled.

This new, task-based model helps companies reduce cost in both looking for skills and paying for them, and allows them to satisfy short-term, temporary or project-specific needs. In turn, this gives the opportunity for jobseekers to look for work in different places at the same time and to manage different projects concomitantly, increasing their experience.

In addition, ratings, testimonials and reviews of both clients and jobseekers are sometimes shared on these platforms too, which allows for a more open, transparent staffing industry.

In my next post, I’ll address LinkedIn’s unique effect on the industry, as well as how the rise of social media requires a change in the industry’s mindset.

MORE: Social media not a one-man show

Steve Nicholls

Steve Nicholls
Steve Nicholls is the author of Social Media in Business. A former business executive, bridges the language gap between those developing new technology and the senior executives who need to implement it to keep their company¹s competitive edge.

Steve Nicholls

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