The Next Monster-Twitter?

lenty of job seekers spend hours combing through listings on Monster or CareerBuilder but experts say that’s not necessarily the most effective way to hunt for a job. It turns out that only 12.3% of hires of candidates from outside the company come from those kinds of job boards, according to a February report about the hiring practices of large companies by consulting firm CareerXroads. In fact, the report says that Monster and CareerBuilder account for half the job board hires but both are losing ground to social networks and other niche sites.
Increasingly, both job seekers and companies are turning to social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter to find and fill jobs. That may be due to the fact that referrals from both employees and corporate alumni make up 27.3% of all external hires, according to CareerXroads. In fact, the report suggests that referrals could be the best way for outsiders to land a job at a company. Today, software developer Kevin Smith wrote a blog post about how he used Twitter to find a job at a company called Gnoso. Smith discovered Gnoso through one of his Twitter acquaintances who ultimately helped shepherd Smith’s resume to the right person.
The viral nature of Twitter means that one message can be re-tweeted and seen by thousands of people. One marketing firm experienced that viral effect after posting a job listing on Twitter. “Within 15 hours, this tweet went from a few thousand to 15,000 people,” says Divesh Sisodraker, founder of a company called TheJobMagnet which creates recruiting tools for social networking sites. Today Sisodraker’s company launched tweetCruit a software service which helps companies track the viral nature of tweets and how many people clicked through to the job ads. The tool can also help companies do pre-screening and filtering of job candidates.
While Twitter may be a great tool for spreading the word about a job, it can be unwieldy for job applicants. For example, job seekers interested in working at AT&T can follow @attjobs on Twitter. There are plenty of postings but they’re for a range of jobs such as sales consultants and technicians in a range of places from Waco, Texas, to San Diego. There’s really no way to filter jobs based on position or location. These kinds of issues leave some wondering if Twitter will ever become a mainstream tool for job searches or recruiting.
What do you think?