Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers

This is part 5 of an ongoing community project (see all posts) to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2008 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This sample set is smaller than one would expect out of a formal research project, after multiple promotions, it was capping out at 200 respondents, and I don’t have other resources to deploy against email lists, or affiliate programs. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.

Finding 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession was announced).

Although these answers were open ended, I tried to summarize them into categories, and then graphed them as shown above, please note that some of the individuals gave more than one suggestion per answer, and some did not answer at all.

Note that their recommendations to connect with others online, is consistent with how they got jobs from friends and family. Which is the same as the first finding from this project

Notice how 9 out of the respondents encourage you to learn new skills by reading online, or by attending classes.

This means that 78% of respondents were hired in full employment positions, likely with benefits.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

The recommendations are very clear, use online social networking tools to connect with others, and get educated by reading online or take classes

Important: In addition to reading my summary, here all the responses that they suggested to those who are seeking jobs –and their observations how the market has changed.

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more.

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: titles that were hired, and some other interesting data cuts

Resources: See my Web Strategy Job Board, or Job Wire.