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Professional networking sites fail jobseekers

Friday 9th April 2010

By Mike Jones

Professional social networking sites are not replacing traditional job hunting and recruitment methods, according to IT jobseekers surveyed by The IT Job Board.

While IT professionals do use professional networking sites, their primary function is to build a portfolio of business contacts (53%) and keep in touch with former colleagues and friends (33%), rather than to secure new jobs.

Half of all respondents said they used LinkedIn to search for jobs and almost a third of IT professionals (32%) would like to be headhunted through such sites.

However, in spite of this, eight out of ten jobseekers have failed to secure new roles via professional networking sites.

According to the survey, favoured recruitment channels for IT professionals are job boards (42%) and recruitment consultants (30%).

Just 8.5% of IT professionals view professional networking sites as the most valuable channel for job hunting, indicating that traditional "core" recruitment methods are still preferred.

The main barriers to finding work through professional networking sites are:

* Poor experience – 42% don’t know how to find employers;
* Confusion – 20% don’t know how to approach recruitment consultants;
* Privacy issues – people don’t want their employers to know they are looking for a new job (15%);
* The sites are untargeted – 11.5% claimed they are not specialist enough.

Alex Farrell, managing director of The IT Job Board, said: "While there is a role for professional networking sites in the recruitment process, it is still evolving. There is still confusion around how to use professional networks effectively to find work. They are servicing the passive market, while active jobseekers are utilising both job boards and recruitment consultants.

"Making a success of professional networking is time intensive for both candidates and recruiters alike. These channels don’t – as yet – provide targeted platforms. Today’s recruiters would be better placed using pin-pointed CV databases, which provide a more targeted, effective and proactive way of finding candidates. I think it’s a case of 'watch this space'."

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