The rise of social media has been eye-opening. Are you looking to publicly express your displeasure with your mobile service provider? Need to get in touch with a service provider that hasn’t replied before? I would compare the impact of social media on communication to that of the telephone.

Can you sense there’s a “but” coming?…

The “but” relates to job-seekers and the impact of social media on the job search process. It’s an acknowledgement that it’s possible to expend huge effort on social media without your job search seeming to progress at all.

See, on the one hand, social media has revolutionised the way people look for work. Formerly, applications would just vanish into thin air without any way for candidates to follow up with prospective employers or recruitment agencies. Candidates can learn things about an organisation they never knew existed before they even apply. As a result of what they discover, they may be discouraged or inspired to press on even more. They might even discover entry points they never knew existed at the company.

The hiring process has been facilitated and made more equitable by social media in many respects.

What it can’t do is alter the market’s underlying structure. The vast majority of social media recruiters you interact with will NOT have any openings that are a good fit for your skillset. Most people will be too busy to tell you why your application was rejected.

You have to understand that social media hasn’t magically given recruiters extra time off. Neither has it made the companies they serve more lenient in terms of the qualifications they look for in a potential employee. Therefore, it is important to remember that the vast majority of candidates’ interest expressions are still inevitably shot down.

What’s different now is that there are more channels through which recruiters can find you as a candidate, and more channels through which you can network to discover openings for which you might be a better fit. The primary challenge for candidates today is the same as it was a decade ago: finding the one opening for which they are a perfect fit, or making sure recruiters find them.