The number of people seeking work on social networks is rising

Prague, 20 October 2016

Czechs seek work most frequently on job portals, with the help of personnel agencies or on the Facebook and LinkedIn social networks. Less and less people are using press adverts or the services of the employment office to access job offers. This was indicated by the recent survey of candidate preferences executed by the Grafton Recruitment Agency.

Nearly 95% of job applicants use adverts on job portals, the same percentage as last year. Personnel agencies improved their placing by 4 per cent, but utilisation of press adverts or information from the employment office fell by 10 per cent year-on-year. “The biggest change during the last year occurred on social networks, which are used by twenty per cent more candidates seeking a job, compared to last year,“ Jitka Součková, Marketing Manager at Grafton Recruitment stated, and she added: “ Similarly, the number of people who do not have an account on any social network, has fallen by nearly half among candidates.” The number of candidates with an account on LinkedIn increased by fifteen per cent year-on-year and the number with an account on Facebook rose by eight per cent. Every thirtieth candidate has Snapchat.

Candidates are not the only ones to use social networks to seek a job, employers use them too. “Facebook is used to search for candidates from nearly all professions, but mainly for potential employees in production and administration. LinkedIn is a favourite when seeking people for the IT segment and other segments such as finance, marketing and engineering,“ Jitka Součková explained.

56% of all Czech Internet users (4.5 million) currently have a profile on Facebook. A total of 51% of Czechs on Facebook have a university education and 43% have a secondary school education. From the aspect of profession most Facebook users are IT professionals and technicians (15%), workers in the field of healthcare and medicine (14%), sales agents (12%) and members of the management (11%). This is consequently a large group of people in which personnel officers can seek candidates, particularly in the case of IT and technical positions, which there is the greatest shortage of on the job market.

Approximately 600 thousand Czechs have a profile on LinkedIn. IT professionals and marketing specialists were among those who most frequently registered on this network previously, but it is now used by a range of other professions. The technical and production segments and sales play a significant role on this network. The biggest group of people with a profile on LinkedIn is aged between 25 and 33 years (88 thousand users), the second biggest group consists of people aged between 35 and 44 years (69 thousand). The smallest group is people over 55 years.

Graph: What sources do Czechs use when looking for a job?

Job portals, Recruitment agencies, Social networks, Labour offices, Press adverts, Adverts in other media