A grow­ing army of job hunters, even those cur­rent­ly in employ­ment, are turn­ing to social media for help in sourc­ing new opportunities.

That’s the ver­dict of a new study by online recruit­ment spe­cial­ist Job­vite, which reveals that 75 per­cent of work­ers are either active­ly seek­ing or at least open to new jobs, a rise of 6 per­cent on last year’s tal­ly. The study polled 2,100 adults, 1,300 of whom were active­ly look­ing for work.

Social media for employment

For con­tent man­agers and social media man­agers, the inter­est­ing find­ing is that seri­ous job seek­ers are notice­ably more social media savvy than the gen­er­al work­force, with a mas­sive 88 per­cent report­ing that they have at least one social net­work­ing pro­file. Two thirds have two or more net­work accounts, while a third use at least three.

Social media, it seems, isn’t just about shop­ping, shoot­ing the breeze with vir­tu­al friends or elec­tion­eer­ing, it’s increas­ing­ly becom­ing a priv­i­leged method of find­ing new employ­ment. Com­ment­ing on the sur­vey, Job­vite CEO Dan Finni­gan said, “With fierce com­pe­ti­tion for jobs, which now includes a major­i­ty of employed peo­ple on top of active job seek­ers, social media has become a crit­i­cal tool for job hunt­ing and career growth.”

The gold medal for most pop­u­lar site amongst job hunters goes to Face­book, with 53 per­cent of oppor­tu­ni­ty seek­ers using it to find pas­tures new. That’s a rise of 5 per­cent on last year’s fig­ure. LinkedIn claims the sil­ver medal with 40 per­cent of job seek­ers, while the bronze goes to Twit­ter, with 34 percent.

No net­work pro­file, no job

Social media offers the dual ben­e­fit to job seek­ers of mul­ti­ple job post­ings and pro­duc­tive net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. And it’s not only job hunters who are turn­ing to social media in droves; so, it seems, are employ­ers. Almost a fifth of appli­cants were asked to sup­ply their Face­book pro­file to prospec­tive employ­ers, while 10 per­cent were asked for their Twit­ter or LinkedIn equivalents.

A sixth of respon­dents report­ed that they’d found new work as a direct result of a social net­work. As Finni­gan puts it, “With tech­nol­o­gy and social net­work­ing rapid­ly evolv­ing, those who don’t engage through Face­book, LinkedIn and/or Twit­ter will quick­ly find them­selves falling behind.”