Winter may be over in 10 days, but it’s still a cold world for job seekers.
First, the good news: According to Friday’s jobs numbers, employment rose 236,000 last month, meaning 92.3 percent of Americans are working. Which of course also means that 7.7 percent are still out there pounding the pavement.
Yes, it’s still tough out there, and job seekers are using every tool they can think of to help get themselves hired. No. 1 among these is the Web, especially social media.
And it works. In 2012, 73 percent of responding companies said they used social media and networking sites to fill positions, up from 63 percent in 2011, a Jobvite survey found.
Increasingly, the way to go for job-seekers is to build a strong professional profile on the Web and engage with hiring managers directly.
New companies like HireArt are one-stop shops where employers can access information and content from around the Internet. Members demonstrate their abilities by adding work samples and creating video responses to interview questions, which can then be attached to multiple job applications. The platform urges applicants to showcase their office skills by having them complete tasks like creating mock travel itineraries or editing Excel spreadsheets.
“You get to use all the richness of digital media to show who you are,” said HireArt co-founder Elli Sharef.
“The advantage of having a digital footprint for job seekers is that it makes them findable,” said Lars Schmidt, senior director of talent acquisition at NPR, which relies heavily on social media to advertise jobs.
Schmidt recently met with journalist Dawn Siff after she posted a quirky résumé she created on Vine, the Twitter app that allows users to share short, looping videos. Siff’s vine, titled “Why you should hire me, in 6 seconds,” was quickly beamed around the Web and garnered her phone calls from several employers.
Other job seekers are also finding success through micro-blogging platforms. David Dominique, 26, now a music marketer at Charged.fm in DUMBO, found an internship on Twitter after tiring of applying for positions on Craigslist and search engines like Monster and Indeed.
While studying at the Institute of Audio Research, Dominique began following key players in the music and entertainment industry, including Tommy Dee, whose blog he visited frequently. It wasn’t long before Dee, director of business development at Charged.fm, tweeted an advertisement for a visual-marketing internship at the company, and Dominique clicked and applied. Two months after landing the position, he was hired as a full-time employee.
“People are trying to become more creative because it’s hard to stand out amongst thousands of candidates,” Dominique said of his job search. “Whatever your field is, just being out there and being present makes a huge difference.”