Long gone are the days when to find work all you had to do was walk the streets with CVs under your arm, knocking on company doors, or depending on INEM and temporary employment agencies. Social networks and the Internet offer new forms of job search far from the traditional. It is even possible to find work with them or other specific platforms.
Depending on the profile sought, companies opt for one means or another. Nekane Cendoya, director of Trabajo.com confirms this: “Depending on the profile, companies apply different strategies to find the ideal candidate.”
Pilar Llacer, human resources expert, philosopher and researcher on the future of the labor market at EAE Business School explains it. “Companies have learned to personalize and select the most suitable attraction channel based on the professional profile they are looking for. Social networks have become the most appropriate platform to identify professionals. In these, we not only see people’s knowledge, but also their way of interacting and the impact they generate”.
Thus, for the search for a profile of a worker with work experience or a middle management, intermediate management, the most used sources are Linkedln and recruitment companies or headhunters.
If what you are looking for is a junior profile, that is, someone who is starting their professional career, the most used sources are those related to social networks, among which TikTok stands out with 97% followed by others such as Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, according to an EAE investigation led by Llacer.
“Companies, in order to identify the most appropriate channel to find candidates, have to pay attention to where they spend the most time. Among young people, TikTok along with Instagram have become the networks with which young people interact the most. For this reason, companies are using this medium to attract these profiles. This requires a change in communication style. Conventional job offers are no longer valid, but a type of shorter and more impressive messages”, comments Pilar Llacer.
At Trabajo.com they also consider social networks a more than useful tool. “TikTok is a way of working in itself for all those who spend their time professionally or with the aim of monetizing the content they upload. You can find everything, from human resources professionals who advise on any employment issue and interviews with those from a specific sector or union explaining how to fix an engine”, explains Cendoya.
In addition to the new sources of job search, we must talk about the new technologies that these companies use when selecting personnel.
“New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and computing allow a more objective and faster search for profiles. These systems allow curricular screening times to be shortened and many companies are also using them to carry out personal interviews”, comments Pilar Llibre.
“AI and machine learning do help in the job search, both for the candidate and for the company. The main benefits are a notable reduction in search time as well as the quality of that search result,” agrees Cendoya. In this way, “the degree of adequacy that we offer between what our companies or candidates are looking for and the results they obtain: offers that fit the profiles of the candidates and vice versa, candidates that fit the criteria defined by the companies” .
Apart from the studies and the professional career, other professional competences or skills can be assessed that are key when selecting candidates. “Companies are not only looking for professionals who know how to do it, but how they do it. That they work as a team, collaboratively or with the capacity for constant learning”, clarifies Llibre.
Once it has been verified that the candidate has the required academic knowledge, it is time to “assess the known soft-skills, empathy, teamwork, resilience, adaptation and problem solving are skills that acquire special importance”, Cendoya closes.
