Social Media Turns Job Portal

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Anirban Basak is a senior ex- ecutive with a Pune-based IT company, with about 15 years experience in the outsourcing business. How did he get his current job? By being a member of the social networking group for professionals, LinkedIn. Last year, his current employer, intending to set up new business units, focused on shared services and healthcare business process outsourcing, approached a headhunters firm to find suitable candidates for the positions that would arise. The firm searched LinkedIn and zeroed in on, among others, Basak, who was then heading the healthcare division of another IT giant.

Basak was contacted through email and after due discussions and negotiations, was offered the position of delivery head (healthcare and shared services).

“I have been active on LinkedIn for the past four years, networking with industry professionals and business associates. I have received several key offers from different companies and search firms,” says Basak.

Whether it is an employer searching for potential recruits or an employee exploring career change, social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are fast emerging as effective recruitment platforms. A Ma Foi Randstad Workmonitor study reveals 90 per cent of Indian employees have individual accounts on social media sites, out of which 81 per cent use them for professional purposes. While these purposes vary from getting information about an organisation’s work culture to tracking movements of executives and events of companies, the focus largely remains on jobs.

Curiously this is not a widespread global phenomenon; only 29 per cent of the global workforce use the social media to look for jobs, the survey says. In India the trend is common across all levels, though employees in the 35 to 44 age-group and income bracket of `2 to 10 lakh per month follow it the most.

HR experts, however, maintain that middle- and senior-level executives are the biggest beneficiaries of such platforms, because at that level there is always a talent shortage.“Unlike employees at the junior levels, middle- or top-level people do usually use job portals. To identify the right candidate, search firms and companies are heavily dependent on networking portals,”says Vibhav Dhawan, Managing Partner, Positive Moves Consulting India, an executive search firm. The use of social media for professional purposes has doubled in the past year, he says. “More people are using these sites every day and this, in turn, becomes a large and sorted data source.”

Kris Lakshmikanth, founder of Headhunters India, believes using social media does not yield instant results. “Just because somebody has put up his profile on LinkedIn does not mean he is actively looking to switch jobs. There are plenty of passive job seekers as well,” he says.“Our job is to approach them in a professional manner and build longterm relationships.”

So go ahead and create your profile on LinkedIn or Twitter, even if you are not an active social media person or not looking for any immediate job change.