Jobs.co.za’s Social Network Integration Leads the Way for South African Job Portals

15 March 2011 - Jobs.co.za releases its LinkedIn Profile registration feature to facilitate instant CV registration on its platform for over 2,0 million connected South African Linked Members.

Jobs.co.za recently conducted a study to better understand how its target audience is using the internet, and more specifically social networking platforms to find jobs. Out of more than 500 respondents, 74% said that they mostly use the internet to search and apply for jobs, while 57% use it for social networking (Facebook) and 35% for professional networking (LinkedIn). 47% of respondents are logging in several times per day - 45% from home and 55% from work - to mostly perform these functions online.

LinkedIn is considered the world's largest professional network of passive talent with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries. Recent statistics show that there are over 2,0 million South Africans registered on LinkedIn, many of them holding senior or executive corporate level positions. LinkedIn's profile is essentially considered a digital CV which enables them to attract job offers, apply for positions or exchange business related information.

By implementing the LinkedIn API, Jobs.co.za uses the individual's information available via their LinkedIn account to register on the Jobs.co.za website, thereby streamlining the user experience and expanding the Jobs.co.za footprint to a network of professional passive talent. Once permission is granted by the individual a CV is created from their LinkedIn profile instantaneously. These job seekers can now apply to jobs within minutes from any location without having to first find or update their traditional CV. Job seekers are given the option to review and update their CV before completing the process, and will be able to update it on Jobs.co.za at any time in the future. On registration, the job seeker can choose to set his status to active (searchable) or passive (hidden) while having the ability to apply for any of the positions advertised on Jobs.co.za and gaining full access to Jobs.co.za's job seeker tools.

This release follows the re-launch of Jobs.co.za's Facebook page earlier this year which now makes it possible for its members to register, search for jobs, create job alerts, see who's hiring and find useful career advice all directly from the Facebook page. This re-launch saw an increase of 248% in member interactions on the page and grew membership likes by 34% to 13,400 in just under two months.

Says Gillian Meier, CEO of Jobs.co.za: 'Our priority is to always fulfil the promise that we have made to our Job Seekers; which is to be a job seeker centric portal. Since Jobs.co.za positions itself as a socially active job portal, we believe that by facilitating integration of our job portal on social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, we are enabling job seekers to engage with our job portal in a fast, simple and user-friendly manner. By offering a platform that can initiate this engagement, we not only deliver on our promise to our job seekers, but also offer an extended footprint to an already connected and well networked population of savvy talent for our recruiters.'

Active Job seekers will generally register on two or more job sites when they are in the job market, however many Job Boards forget about the passive job seeker. Although these job seekers may often browse some of their favourite job boards to see what is available, they often do not have their CV posted on job boards, either because they do not want to be called on by recruiters or simply because they do not have an updated CV. Many of these passive candidates are however likely to have a complete and current profile on LinkedIn even though their traditional CV has not been updated in a while.

Jobs.co.za currently has over 480,000 registered active Job Seekers and receives around 13,000 new registrations monthly. By continuing to focus its efforts on enhancing its existing website, and adapting to the increasing growth of mobile and social media usage in South Africa, Jobs.co.za's recruiters can look forward to seeing a substantial increase in new visitors to the website which is currently around 200,000 per month.

As a socially active website, Jobs.co.za has launched a workshop for Recruitment and Hiring Managers to assist them in devising their own Social Recruitment strategies. Jobs.co.za also runs workshops to assist job seekers in building up a credible reputation online and on social networks to further aid them in positioning themselves as experts when applying for positions. Anyone interested in attending these workshops should email workshop@jobs.co.za for more information.

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