Employment websites step up their game to get people back in the workforce
Web recruiters have found an opportunity to expand their business
Employment websites and social networks are creating new online tools and features to help the world get back to work. All of these websites have one thing in common: a desire to help workers get hired now.
Here’s how they’re doing it.
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CareerBuilder
Career Builder, a Web site that aims to connect workers to jobs, has introduced a number of job-seeker-friendly features.
“The world has changed, and how people get hired has changed,” said Irina Novoselsky, CEO.
For anyone who was laid off due to the pandemic, CareerBuilder wants to be a source of information. To get the latest job market insights as they pertain to you specifically, grab your phone and text “COVID” to 51893. That leads you to a portal that offers a job-search engine that will identify open jobs according to your title and ZIP code.
If you want more, there’s an option to find out who’s hiring in your area right now, whether you’re looking to work full time, part-time, from home, or per gig. There’s also an option to upload your resume and let CareerBuilder’s artificial intelligence tools send job recommendations to you.
CareerBuilder also offers something called “social referral” to employers. Through it, employees can opt to blast job openings via their personal social networks. Tip to job seekers: monitor the social feeds of your friends and followers for leads.
In addition, for small black-owned businesses that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, CareerBuilder is opening its leading-edge hiring resources for free for six months.
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Blake Barnes, vice president of product at LinkedIn, said he has never seen so many talented people looking for work, and his company feels an obligation to help.
“LinkedIn is about community, and some of our members are struggling,” he said. “We’re making it easier for employers to tap into that community.”
Job seekers who want to signal that they’re actively looking for employment can tag themselves as “Open to work” on their profile pictures to privately notify recruiters of their status. From there, they can go on to specify the types of jobs they are interested in and indicate a preferred start date and location. By doing this, job seekers will show up in more recruiter search results.
For those who want to shout “Open to work” from the treetops, there’s also an option that makes the tag visible to all LinkedIn members, not just recruiters. Job seekers who choose the latter option are 40 percent more likely to be contacted, according to Barnes.
LinkedIn also offers a career-explorer tool that maps the skills you already have and pivots them to jobs in demand.
A waitperson, for example, meets 70 percent of the requirements for a customer-service professional, according to Barnes, since food-service workers tend to be great multitaskers, engage well with the public, be well organized with attention to detail and more. What’s missing might be computer skills, which can be picked up on LinkedIn Learning (or elsewhere) and are typically low cost or free.
There’s also a free learning path available on LinkedIn Learning, called Finding a Job During Challenging Economic Times. It’s highly engaging and includes 11 modules covering recovery from a layoff, engaging the likability effect in the job search and video interview tips.
LinkedIn even has a tool that leverages artificial intelligence to watch your practice interview and give you feedback.
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Snagajob
Snagajob is a site designed specifically for shift workers who get paid by the hour, such as delivery drivers, grocery stock clerks, warehouse associates and cleaners — and business is booming.
According to CEO Mathieu Stevenson, “the jobs in our sector have recovered,” but not all of them are filled, because, in many cases, job seekers need a change of direction.
With 100 million registered job seekers and employment opportunities at 470,000 locations, it was crucial for the management at Snagajob to figure out how best to serve its constituents. One of the initial things the company did was provide technological tools to help show displaced workers, like those who worked in restaurants, how their skills could be applied elsewhere.
Dishwashers, for example, are in low demand, while the need for DoorDash deliverers is high.
They did something similar with employers. As a result, when Snagajob identified a job posting and a worker as a match, interviews and hires began to happen quickly.
“We’re lucky that our jobs have recovered; in fact, we now have more jobs open than we have workers,” said Stevenson.
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ZipRecruiter
“With COVID-19, we are in an unprecedented labor market,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, a job board on which employers post their vacancies.
“Jobs have skyrocketed in some areas in a way that no one could have predicted. But they have almost disappeared in others where there was once a healthy demand.”
ZipRecruiter has been reaching out to employers with postings on their site to find those that were still hiring, then tagged them “Actively hiring during COVID-19” or, when appropriate, “Urgent.”
At ZipRecruiter’s COVID-19 Resources, you’ll find connections to an index that highlights valuable skills, software skills you can learn on YouTube, occupational licenses that offer the biggest bang for your buck, and advice on how to become more employable.
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Pollak said that workers who feel dead-ended in their careers might also find new possibilities by taking a course. “We have seen job seekers who have attained new skills in as few as 10 to 12 hours and get hired,” she said.