I've been doing some PR and blogging for one of my current clients www.total-cvs.co.uk and thought I might include my latest post here as I thought there were some points that may be of interest to more than

Some interesting stats have been flying around lately with the big one being 7.3% of the world population being signed up to Facebook and that Linkedin jumped from 10 million users in 2007 to 50 million at the tail end of last year, the monster grows and grows! 

It does present some interesting opportunities for those of us involved in the candidate services side of things. Despite the growth of both platforms there is still a huge lack of understanding on the candidate side of what influence both sites can actually have on their career prospects. They also very rarely know how to use the sites effectively to help them develop their personal brand. 

Education is still a core part of the recruitment industry's responsibility if it wants to continue growth in the right way. I worked on a project last year with recent grads who didn't even know what Totaljobs and Monster were, introducing them to Linkedin was like a whole new world.. So why is this? When I started in the industry far more years back than I care to admit job boards used to be required to educate not only client side but also candidate side and they fulfilled that role very well. As more money flooded in less investment was made in education, we all believed people just "got it" and for a while they did. Job boards were everywhere and spending like it was going out of fashion but we forgot the next generation. 

 Now job boards are scrambling to have a social media presence because while nobody was thinking about it gen X and Y started doing different things online to just finding stuff through Google they actually started to engage, review, discuss, write and share information. Suddenly the need to spend £250,000 a month on paid search (you know who you are...) was not as important as catching and engaging. Now that has started to happen (aside from those who's strategy is “cool sounding” tokenism) we all need to remember that though social media is exciting, we in the industry get it and some understand it, but the crucial thing is the audience we want to attract may not actually understand what it is they are doing putting information out there. 

Do we start education all over again..? I believe we as those on the candidate side really do, whether job boards believe that or not is another question.