36.6 Million Americans Found Their Current Jobs Via Social Networks

Sites include Facebook.com , LinkedIn.com , Twitter.com . Published on December 20th, 2011. Written by Anthony West.

Social media started as a simple way for people to keep in touch online. But that simple function has evolved into something greater, and today, pretty much everything we do is done in some form through the social media machine. And while social media and social networking might be the bane of employers, as tools they are proving to be very efficient at helping employers marry jobs with jobseekers.

This process is so efficient that a new report is concluding that over 36.6 million Americans count social networks as the source for their current job. Data was collected from various sources including Jobvite, LinkedIn, CNN, and JobSearch. While the overall number of people using social media to find jobs was high, the distribution was somewhat skewed towards Facebook.

According to the study, a whopping 18.4 million people got their current job through Facebook—this number perhaps is a natural skew given the sheer reach of Facebook as a social network; and as one observer pointed out, this number is more than the populations of New York City and Los Angeles combined. Rounding out the 36.6 million were 10.2 million people who found jobs through LinkedIn and 8 million people who found their job through Twitter.

This study shows clearly that social media will be a force in our lives for a long time, but the members of that 36.6 million had better remember one thing: Social networking can get you hired, but it can also get you fired.

1 Responses »

1. 

   H Peltan

   December 24, 2011 • 12:37 pm

   The quoted figure (if accurate) is pretty amazing, when and if the euro problems are solved next year we may expand our business and will offer the proposed jobs on facebook.

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