Clinicians turn to social media to find jobs

SAN DIEGO – Respondents to a 2011 AMN Healthcare survey indicate that healthcare professions are increasingly taking advantage of social media and mobile devices for job searching purposes and shifting away from some traditional job search methods.

In fact, nearly one-third of the 2,790 respondents of the "Use of Social Media and Mobile by Healthcare Professionals: 2011 Results" said they are using social media for job searching compared to 21 percent in 2010. Close to half of those surveyed are also using social media for professional networking compared to 37 percent in 2010.

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“In our own recruitment with clinicians there’s been an increase in the desire to use social media and mobile devices,” said Susan Salka, president and CEO of AMN Healthcare. “It’s the whole digital world and how they want to use the available technologies to be more efficient in accomplishing what they’d like to accomplish, whether that be searching for information or a job.”

In addition, according to the survey, more hospitals are joining the social media revolution. In 2011, 1,229 hospitals used social media compared to 391 in 2009.

“We’re hearing more and more appetite to be able to access jobs- and service-related information. We go beyond that and our clients go beyond that when it comes to how they use social media to manage their online reputation,” said Salka. “We use all of these to connect clinicians and clients with general healthcare industry information.”

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There’s evidence that the use of social media for job seekers is also becoming more efficient, according to the survey. Six percent of the respondents who used social media for job searching said they were able to find a new job. While this number is still low, only 3 percent found jobs this way in 2010.

As far as which social media sites are favored by respondents, 74 percent cited Facebook, followed by LinkedIn.

When it comes to mobile devices, in 2011, 32 percent of clinicians reported using mobile devices for accessing healthcare-related content or jobs compared to 12 percent in 2010.

Participants were also asked about their use of social media for work-related purposes. The top reason respondents cited for using social media was to access healthcare-related education (54 percent) followed by sharing of research or articles with colleagues (33 percent), and to communicate with employers (18 percent).