Every year, various specialist job sites run surveys to see what the state of the job market is for those working in IT. The people polled come from various different jobs within this broad sector but one thing is clear from all of them – the internet is the most important place for them when looking for a job. Internet changed the way we live and it’s difficult to ignore the impact it has on the everyday life of the society.
According to one research study into how people find IT jobs, the internet was is most valuable source by a long margin, with 38 per cent saying specialist industry job websites directly focused on IT were the most important. Almost one in four (24 per cent) said their preferred source was general job websites, while around one in eight said their first port of call were the jobs pages of specific employers they wanted to work for. Interestingly, both social media and newspapers were far less appealing, with almost nobody stating those as their main source.
Social media should not be discounted by those looking for a job in IT as while they may not be as important as a specialist IT jobs board, this channel is still important as an aid to recruitment. Social media operates more as a word of mouth (WOM) method of finding a job, not mentioned significantly in the report. Social media jobs are IT jobs and social media also broadcasts many jobs in IT by direct employers.
With almost 40% of respondents indicating that social media was important as a way of finding a job in IT, this should be an important signal to businesses of the importance not only of having an active presence in social media, but also that broadcasting their job vacancies in social media is also important. With such significant numbers looking for jobs with their preferred employers, social media could become an inexpensive support to the traditional IT jobs board for many employers.
Within the IT jobs market, one site did stand out on a survey as being used by more job seekers than what might seem the natural fit. CW Jobs was sited as the IT job board more people visit by a factor of more than two then Monster, a well-known generalist jobs board. Interestingly, Totaljobs, the group which owns specialist IT job board CW Jobs came in at third place after Monster in the survey.
Of the 11 job boards specifically called out in enough volume to be mentioned in the report, many with significant visibility in the search engine result pages, such as Indeed, failed to make an impact. One of the reasons aggregator sites failed to make an impact could be the very nature of the sites – that they are aggregator sites. IT-savvy searchers possibly tended to go to the source of each job posting listed by an aggregator, eliminating some aggregators from the analysis.
If you’re looking for a job in IT, is the clear market leader. There you can also search a database of thousands of IT jobs and upload your CV to their database.
