If you’re looking to grow your team in 2015, get ready for a lot of confident applicants. Beyond recently conducted a national survey of 4,000 people and job seekers are more optimistic about finding work in 2015 than they were going into 2014. Last year at this time only 39% said they felt that it would be “easier to find a job next year” – but at the end of 2014, that number jumped to 47%.
So what should we expect to see from the applicant pool this year?
We predict:
1. More job hoppers. As job seekers become more confident those that stayed with jobs for security reasons will start to actively search for jobs to take the next steps in their careers.
2. Increase in the civilian labor force participation rate. As the unemployment rate improves (now at 5.6%--the best rate it's been since 1999) those that were discouraged by the state of the economy will start to throw their hats back into the ring.
3. More people incorporating social media into their search efforts. Those people that are unemployed—are 22% more likely to use social media to find a job than those currently employed and looking for work. So as the competition heats up job seekers will integrate some more non-traditional methods into their job search.
“It’s impossible to discount how important job seeker confidence is to the overall economy…” said Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond. “If the past seven years has shown us anything, it’s that modern job seekers are among the most resilient people on the planet. It’s natural that people would use social media to crowdsource trusted friends, but it’s also indicative of a larger trend in personalizing the job search experience to suit your specific industry or tastes.”
Photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee at Flickr.com
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