Social Media Explosion Not Translating into Jobs, Yet.

We all know the hype behind social media, heck, we all LOVE the hype behind it.  We all know how much easier it is to get in touch, stay in touch and find New people to want to be in touch with, when you’re using social networking, and any or all of the tools of social media at your disposal.  It’s easier to find people, meet people, and, if the original claims were true, find employment.  Or is it?

So far, not so good according to new reports.  While social media and social networking has been lauded as the newest, best and brightest way to network and find new forms of employment, it doesn’t look like the results are living up to the hype…yet.  Instead of the onslaught of new social media and the technology behind it leading to the creation of a whole new set of job skills, job descriptions and yes, job openings, it seems like so far people are turning to internal, existing employees and just asking them to adopt new responsibilities.

Here’s what JetBlue had to say, that says a whole lot about the current hiring status of some of the biggest, and most active companies when it comes to new media:

“Rather than hiring external social-media savvy people…we looked internally for people who happened to be active on social media in their personal lives.”

Will this change?  Right now, we can’t say, but given the current recession state of our economy, it seems a lot more likely that internal hunting is going to continue to take place, and a lot of these responsibilities that might have otherwise required a new employee, are going to be passed around to the existing ones.

This isn’t to say it’ll always be this way, anything could happen, and all of you job hunters would be extremely wise to add as many new social media and social networking skills to your arsenal.  Just a thought.