Posted on Thu, May 03, 2012
Pinterest is the newest trend to hit the social networking scene. Pinterest is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard. Essentially, it is a virtual pinboard for any information, images and videos you want to come back to in the future.
It is the fastest growing network since Facebook and accounts for over 3% of all web referral traffic. That is a huge percent for a site that was only launched a mere 2 years ago!
Typical user demographics include: (note that these are not correlated)
- Predominantly female (68.2%)
- Age 25-34 (27.4%)
- Income $100,000 (28.3%)
- Geographic (East south central: Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee)
- 50% have children
Now what does all of this mean for recruitment? Well for one, it is another resource pool of potential job seekers just waiting to be found. Though there probably aren’t too many candidates using Pinterest as a job seeking tool yet, it can definitely be used for sourcing. You can search candidates by keywords (i.e. RN or nursing) and see who is following certain organizations or trend boards to get an idea of what the candidates interests are. You can also search by location and individuals can add their Facebook and Twitter profiles.
Candidates can also use Pinterest during their job search efforts in numerous ways, including to:
- find companies that they want to work for. Pin boards can help job seekers get a sense of the company’s culture, priorities, outreach strategies and overall tone.
- create a visual resume, portfolio, etc.
- find career advice from college career centers
- find career advice from career experts
- insprie themselves to find what makes them happy
Pinterest is still an invite-only site, but it is easy to join. As long as you know someone who has an account, they can send you an invite and you’re set to go!
Do you see Pinterest being used as a tool for recruitment besides sourcing in the future? How are you using Pinterest now?
Post contributed by Brittney Horn
Follow me on Twitter @BrittneyLHorn or connect with me on LinkedIn
Posted on Mon, Feb 27, 2012
People who know me are definitely aware that I’m always looking for what’s next. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been a part of the Hi-Tech industry for so long; but I always look forward to the next mobile device coming out, interactive video system being developed, and new social tools to utilize for recruiting.
Enter Pinterest.com - virtual bulletin board. When I first joined Pinterest, I thought “Fantastic – I’m never going to be able to eat healthy if I keep looking at this all the time.” My friends seem to pin great desserts. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen Pinterest go from a site that only a few of my female friends were on, mostly to share recipes; to a site where I find the majority of my friends, male and female, pinning articles, quotes, home improvement ideas, etc. You name it – It’s probably on Pinterest. The thing I haven’t seen yet – Jobs being posted on Pinterest. I’m starting to see companies use it to promote their brand, but not their job opportunities.
This got me thinking. What a great way to reach out to a market that’s looking at your Pins anyway to see if they might repost your position to their Pinboard. The potential to have a viral effect is great. Thus, I started playing around on Pinterest to determine if it was feasible to post jobs.
I must admit that in order to post my jobs on Pinterest, I had to jump through a few hoops. I had to save my company’s logo to a hard drive first, because the image “wasn’t large enough” to be picked up by Pinterest in the automatic recognition feature. I thus uploaded it through the “add a pin” feature, being careful to put the link for my job in the description section so job seekers would know where to go. After three minutes of being pinned, two people had “liked” my update and one had repinned it. Of these three individuals, I only knew one. The downside to Pinterest is unless individuals repin/like quickly, it falls off of the front page rather quickly.
Only time will tell if Pinterest will be a beneficial recruiting tool or potentially act as a job board for companies – but there’s no doubt that people are spending much of their free time on Pinterest these days, and it’s a great way to get the word out about your job opening on a board that’s not yet saturated by other job postings.
What do you think the potential is of Pinterest for recruiters?
Post contributed by Kara Baskett
Follow me on Twitter @KaraBaskett or connect with me on LinkedIn
