3 Reasons Your Online Job Search Is Failing Miserably

If you’re looking for a job and depending on online tricks and tools to do the job, you might be waiting for longer than you expect before you hear, “You’re hired.” A pair of new surveys highlight the biggest mistakes and misconceptions job-seekers make when it comes to job-hunting online.

You use your smartphone instead of a computer. Jibe, a company that makes technology for job recruiters, finds that a full 20% of job applicants would give up on an online application if they couldn’t do it entirely on their phones. But unfortunately, it also finds that more than a quarter of big companies don’t have a single part of their hiring process set up to work well on a smartphone.

“Many passive job candidates, and especially the youngest members of the workforce, live a mobile-first or mobile-only existence. If you want to give yourself the best chance to land a job, relying on mobile may add significant risk,” says Joe Essenfeld, founder and CEO of Jibe. “Even though most job seekers expect mobile apply capabilities, enterprise systems are still working to catch up.”

You rely on Twitter and Facebook. If you’re seeking work, go to LinkedIn. A new study from social recruiting company Bullhorn Reach finds that only around 20% of recruiters use Facebook to find job candidates; about the same percentage use Twitter. LinkedIn is the overwhelming favorite, used by 97% of recruiters.

“Relying on just Twitter and Facebook without LinkedIn would be a mistake,” says Aravinda Rao Souza, Bullhorn’s senior marketing manager. “The real surprise is that Facebook isn’t more popular,” with recruiters, she says. “It really should be… Candidates love it because so many of them already essentially live on Facebook.” Rao says companies that use Facebook to find job candidates have a high degree of success, but until a majority of recruiters catch on and start using the social network’s broad reach and targeting abilities, you should probably keep looking on LinkedIn, too.

You give up too easily. Jibe’s research finds that nearly a quarter of candidates will give up on applying for any jobs at a company if they have a single bad experience with completing an online job application. If you’re serious about finding a new gig, this could amount to shooting yourself in the foot. “Job seekers should be cautiously optimistic because the technology is evolving quickly,” Essenfeld says.

Jibe also finds that more than half of job-seekers say they’d be deterred if an online application didn’t let them upload their resume — a problem that’s probably keeping an untold number of people from landing the jobs they want, according to Essenfeld. “Uploading a resume was the second highest challenge cited by job seekers in the survey,” he says. If you can’t upload your resume, call or email the company even if the job listing says not to, he suggests.