Social networking sites no longer continue to remain sites for reconnecting with lost friends but are fast becoming a medium for job seekers, especially the passive ones.
According to Yogesh Bansal, CEO & Founder of ApnaCircle.com (business and career networking site), there are two types of persons who are looking for jobs, active job seekers and passive job seekers.
While the former are in immediate need of jobs, the latter include those scouting for better alternatives compared to existing jobs. While it is difficult for a person to constantly update his career profile on the job boards, professional networking provides good alternative for this.
Udit Mittal from Unison International, a HR solutions company, advising clients in all aspects of recruitment, training and consulting maintained passive recruiters do have an eye on possible openings and even Unison makes use of social networking sites. With the help of networking sites, not only are they able to study the profiles of persons but sometimes also share the details regarding possible job openings.
Shivanandan Pare, COO Big ADDA. com, social networking site from ADAG group, maintained with more and more youth joining in the social networking sites, besides developing social contacts there was urge to understand the person’s profile as well. “Certainly social networking sites are becoming helpful tools for recruiters in the corporate sector”, he added.
Bansal maintained one of the biggest and newest usages of professional networking sites for organisations is in the area of recruitment. The reasons are twofold; first, professional networking sites enable people to recommend their connections on seeing a job opening, thereby acting as a point of reference for the recruiter about the quality and credentials of the prospective candidate. And secondly, such sites are the only place where recruiters have an access to an up to date profile of the professionals.
ApnaCircle.com is a business and career networking site which was launched in 2007, has over 30 million users as of date as against just 200,000 users in 2008.The company which is planning to tour 10 tier II and tier III cities across India, as part of its mission to promote the site expects 2 -2.5 million users in India by the year end as against 1.4 million users now.
