Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers

Categories: Job SurveyPosted on February 10th, 2009

This is part 5 of an ongoing community project (see all posts) to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2008 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This sample set is smaller than one would expect out of a formal research project, after multiple promotions, it was capping out at 200 respondents, and I don’t have other resources to deploy against email lists, or affiliate programs. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.

Finding 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession was announced).

Although these answers were open ended, I tried to summarize them into categories, and then graphed them as shown above, please note that some of the individuals gave more than one suggestion per answer, and some did not answer at all.

Note that their recommendations to connect with others online, is consistent with how they got jobs from friends and family. Which is the same as the first finding from this project

Notice how 9 out of the respondents encourage you to learn new skills by reading online, or by attending classes.

This means that 78% of respondents were hired in full employment positions, likely with benefits.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

The recommendations are very clear, use online social networking tools to connect with others, and get educated by reading online or take classes

Important: In addition to reading my summary, here all the responses that they suggested to those who are seeking jobs –and their observations how the market has changed.

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more.

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: titles that were hired, and some other interesting data cuts

Resources: See my Web Strategy Job Board, or Job Wire.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 10:21 am and is filed under Job Survey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

MLDina

I'm surprised the 'use existing relationships' column fell so low on the list. While the other suggestions are great, I almost always interview a candidate who came from a personal recommendation, rather than from a social network. Online connections are great, but forming personable relationships is still my first choice.

Rich Meyer

Thanks for the help. I have found that a lot of times however it's not what you know but rather whom you know that gets you jobs. It's such a subjective process

Web Templates

Saw a great article about job hunting, that recommended workers monitor RSS feeds for jobs. Can't find the URL now but thought it was interesting...

Andrew

Jeramiah,

Not to dispute the importance of social networking, but I would think that the data here would be significantly skewed in it's favor, as you suggest.

The importance of maximizing your performance within your current role cannot be understated, a point which former HP chief Carly Fiorina emphasizes in her book, Tough Choices.

In addition, with respect to social networking, it is important to remember that this should be a process which is not limited to the online world, and indeed, networking within the offline world is still at least as important, if not more so, as that which is done online. No matter how fast the world moves online, there is still no replacement for face to face meetings, especially from a viewpoint of establishing a relationship of mutual trust.

Michiel

The old word of mouth and making your needs obvious or in other words social networking definitely has it's benefits. I also prefer a recommendation from someone when looking for employees, it is not always possible to get that but they go a long way in the employment vetting process, perhaps not to the scale of the results as you said but not totally off the wall results. Good luck to all the job seekers, it is a tough period to get new positions but it is possible. Education is as noted key as well, know what you are talking about before you interview for a position so learn about the company and the type of work otherwise you just waste your time and the prospective employers time.