Bernard Goldbach in Clonmel | 255 words
AS A THIRD LEVEL LECTURER, I use some of my admin time to help land students summertime work placement. I've discovered three facts worth sharing.
FACT. Prospective employers spend more time cross-checking students on social media like LinkedIn than they do reviewing student CVs. Surprisingly, we get a lot of blowback from students about grading their proficiency in social media (we have a syllabus course called "Social Media"). We don't get that kind of criticism when we mark down their CVs. Students with compelling social media profiles appear in relevant search results. Sometimes those profiles have terms synonymous with companies where students end up for paid summer employment.
FACT. Employers have located students who have not applied for positions because they found their profiles. This indicates to us that employers are recruiting via LinkedIn and Twitter.
FACT. Employers use blind referrees. Employers view referrals as the most important source of quality applicants. LinkedIn allows employers to see how listed references on CVs are connected by one degree of separation from blind referrees. The blind referrees may not know the candidate as well as the listed reference, but nonetheless the prospective employers ask questions to clarify the actual proficiency or the proven syllabus-directed activity of students under review. People refer people may only share the name of a company in common. So my requests for blind referree work arrive merely because I teach at the Limerick Institute of Technology. It's remarkable to me to be asked about students on the main campus, nearly 50 miles away from our classrooms in Clonmel.
Bernie Goldbach's curated recruitment links.
Nancy Messieh -- "Survey: 37% of your prospective employers are looking you up on Facebook", The Next Web, April 17, 2012.
Detroit CBS News with Jennifer Vickery -- "Spring Cleaning For Your Social Media - 5 Simple Steps", Detroit.CBSlocal.com, April 18, 2012.
