Job Networking: A Matter of Timing

April 16, 2012

The global economic collapse of 2008 continues to have repercussions in so many areas, from housing to shopping to even marital status and a declining divorce rate. Given the scope of those changes it’s hardly surprising that the economic challenges have altered the world of social networking, especially when it comes to jobs.

The newest section of Untangling the Social Web, the new study from the Coca‑Cola Retailing Research Council of North America takes a deep look into how social networking is changing the workplace, especially recruiting. The changes are coming from both companies and individual workers.

After five years online, the professional networking site LinkedIn boasted about 32 million users in 2008—a nice, but unspectacular number compared to the population of Facebook. By early 2012, after more than three years of economic challenges, LinkedIn’s population jumped by 100 million users and the number continues to grow by two professionals every second.

Clearly the recession and the challenge workers have when it comes to finding jobs or their need for extra care if changing jobs has fueled a large share of this growth. And for companies, that means looking at social networking for recruiting with far more interest than ever before.

More details on the relationship of social networking and employees can be found in Part 5 of the study. All five sections can be downloaded at www.ccrrc.org (NorthAmerica page).

Michael Sansolo

Research Director

Coca‑Cola Retailing Research Council of North America