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Social media changing the recruiting landscape for staffing agencies

Posted on April 22nd, 2011 Read time: 1 minutes

According to Citybizlist, new technologies and the advent of social media have transformed the staffing industry into something entirely different than what is was 20 years ago.

John Eckenrode, CEO of IT consulting and staffing agency CPSI, answered questions about the current state of the staffing industry, and noted two important factors that have changed due to social media.

He explains that casual conversations between professionals no longer have a half-life. Embarrassing posts, tweets or blogs can now become fodder for human resources departments that routinely check social networking sites for candidates.

In addition, he notes that technology has made the candidate pool grow and made the process deceptively faster. He believes that more than ever, organizations need people who understand how to interact, and those people are not on Monster, Facebook or LinkedIn posting their skills.

However, not everyone has caught on. In Canada, only 27 percent of respondents in a recent Randstad Canada survey used social media for business or work-related purposes, according to the Vancouver Sun. Plus, only 61 percent of Canadians know that social media can help them find a job, compared to 83 percent and 82 percent that recognized that in China and India, respectively. 

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