ALC - CareerArc blog

The highly anticipated February jobs report was released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and revealed the national unemployment rate held steady at 8.3%. The economy added 227,000 jobs in February and, according to some, is a positive indication of our country’s economic recovery. The BLS releases the unemployment numbers every month, but February’s figures are particularly interesting because of the political implications they have in an election year.

It’s no secret that businesses understand the impact that social media can have on brand awareness, recruiting, and the all-important bottom line. The sheer size of these networks is staggering, and it allows businesses to put their companies in front of an enormous amount of people. As of yesterday, Twitter reached 500 million users a little over a month after Facebook announced they expect to have 1 billion users in August—which means roughly 1 out of 7 people on earth will have a Facebook page. There is no doubt that social media is here for the long haul.

Three years ago this week we launched TweetMyJobs with a very clear objective:  leverage social media to revolutionize online recruiting and help job seekers better connect with employers.  Facebook and Twitter were only a few years old but their power in changing the way companies could do business was obvious.

Mira Greenland is the Director of Sales and Business Development at TweetMyJobs. You can follow Mira on Twitter @MiraGreenland.

The astounding growth in social media has revolutionized the way that people are connecting with each other, and forced companies to rethink how to find quality candidates. Industry specific stories, press releases, or infographics appear week in and week out claiming that social recruiting has arrived as the golden standard, and that companies not fully embracing social will lose talent to their innovative competitors. At TweetMyJobs, we believed an honest evaluation of the industry was necessary to determine whether or not job seekers and employers are “buying in” to the hype. So we went straight to the source.
We decided to listen to what job seekers and employers think about using social media during their job search. After surveying over 2,000 job seekers and 400 company representatives, we transformed that data into a brief video to evaluate the state of social recruiting in 2012 and pose the question: “Is Social Recruiting Real?”
The survey provided many interesting statistics, but a few caught our eye:

The City of Atlanta has partnered with TweetMyJobs to launch the City of Atlanta Jobs Platform to connect employers with job seekers in the 9th largest metropolitan area in the country. Mayor Kasim Reed and his colleagues at the city are proving to be forward thinking pioneers that firmly believe in uniting the public and private sectors to help solve difficult and complex social problems. We’re excited to launch the initiative and welcome Atlanta to the TweetMyJobs family of partners.

The New Year is upon us, and our sister site Internships.com is making headlines in Washington, D.C.. On Thursday at the White House, flanked by business, non-profit and community leaders, President Obama outlined a Summer Jobs+ initiative to help 16 – 24 year olds find summer internships and jobs. As the world’s largest internships marketplace, Internships.com was chosen by the White House to be the co-lead technology partner alongside Google for this project.