Looking for Jobs in All the Right Places? Job Search Behaviors in the Boundaryless Career Era

Given the implications of the job search for career outcomes, such as compensation and job satisfaction, it is important we better understand the job search process. This empirical study of both employed and unemployed job seekers explores the relationship between assistance received from social media contacts on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn and the number of job interviews and job offers obtained. Our regression analyses showed that assistance from social media contacts was related to obtaining job interviews, but not job offers. Furthermore, although unemployed job seekers were more likely to obtain job interviews, they were less likely to obtain job offers than employed job seekers. Our results also showed that unemployed job seekers reported receiving more assistance from their social media contacts than employed job seekers. Implications of the results and directions for future research are discussed.