TikTok is replacing Linkedin for GenZ 🌱

Finding a Job..is a Job

Finding a job has always been ‘a job’. Most people go through university and some even through their careers thinking simply that if you have the right skill set, then it’s just about applying to a job opening. It’s 100% not.

The first reason, is that the job market is like an iceberg - job postings make just 25% of the whole thing. The rest is made up of unadvertised jobs, mostly through headhunters, as well as internal-only openings, and a huge chunk (45%) happens through networking.

In any of these circumstances, it takes time. It takes time, or should, when you are not looking for a job. You don’t network your way into a role the moment you need it, and you don’t get better at job interviews by doing them once every 3 years. Like everything, you need training, improvement, feedback. But that’s another story on its own (and I did write up a long piece about what I learnt from doing over 1k in the course of 14yrs).

Today’s topic, is the way that looking for a job, especially in the tools, is changing or going to change. One of these ways, is through TikTok.

TikTok is replacing Google for GenZ

For many GenZ, TikTok is quickly becoming the single source of information. There’s increasing reports of how it’s replacing Google (I tried replacing Google with TikTok, and it worked better than I thought, For GenZ TikTok is the new Search Engine) and this may also be a worrying trend, considering the amount of misinformation.

Job searching and careers were definitely not amongst the first trending topics on the platform, but they are becoming increasingly popular with the content and creators branching away from dancing challenges.

75% of its users are over 19 years old, the majority of them belonging to Gen Z. Yet, TikTok also appeals to older audiences of people who might be actively looking for new career opportunities. This age distribution is relevant for other countries and regions, too.

For example, you can see here how #career videos have been continuously increasing over the last 4 months:

There’s obviously a mix of more ‘professional’/serious content, and other that has a more ‘entertainment’ spin (including the infamous videos of big tech employees showcasing what their day working at the company looks like, often just resulting in embarrassment for the company and the employees themselves).

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you get with #careers (which totals 1.7bn Visualizations):

So you can see that instead of performing a search like ‘best career paths’, GenZs are much more likely to view and engage with this type of content.

No wonder, given the alternative:

Just as a bonus on this comparison: always remember that human brains have a magnet for faces, which is part of the secret behind TikTok’s growth.

TikTok is also replacing Linkedin?

Back in the summer of 2021, TikTok launched a pilot program called ‘TikTok Resumes’, where it partnered with some companies to accept Tik Tok videos as the resumes to consider for specific roles.

Since then, it seems nothing else has happened officially, but the hashtag #tiktokresume has totaled over 360 million views, and is still being used in recent videos.

Browsing through some of these, it’s clearly a huge mixed bag; there’s plenty of useless information and lousy outcomes (that still is the case also with pdf CVs) but also some good ones.

Obviously, given the type of media, there are two main types of TikTok Resumes:

Professional - candidates here try to story-tell their experience, skills, achievements, taking from their CV and emulating what would potentially happen anyway in a screener/interview.

Creative - for more creative roles, and for more creative candidates, video is the perfect media to actually show their work and capabilities, by doing their TikTok Resume almost as a commercial, or video that could very well be featured in the normal newsfeed, somehow ‘native’.

Being able to do a good video presentation is a skill that is being increasingly required even for standard hiring processes, with the rise of HR tools that ask for a short video introduction (as if it was the new version of a cover letter) as well as AI scored video interviews. It’s an increasing (and very worrying trend, which I’d like to cover in a separate article):

In this case, it is obviously interesting for companies to make the process faster and more efficient. But if the videos are watched by humans, they can help understand presentation and communication skills - which are critical soft skills.

Of course, the problem is that you’re assuming that this will be sufficient to test those skills - which it’s not.

Most of all - it introduces biases that should NOT be part of the equation, much like photos in CVs should not be permitted. Given the huge work that needs to be done on diversity, this may be a big problem.

The Lines are getting Blurred - and it’s going to be used by Recruiters too

Gen Z workers will account for 27% of the workforce by 2025, so it’s time to stop thinking that they are just high-schoolers. Linkedin has historically not seen very good numbers from this audience, but it seems (according to them) that during the pandemic, it's been growing faster than every other segment - 2.7x growing to 78 million users (10% of total Linkedin users).

There are other Linkedin ‘killers’ for this generation, like Polywork - which has a bolder take on collaboration, and project work - moving away from just being an online CV. But we know from many other experiments, that it’s Network Effects that create barriers to entry, so building a new Social Media for professionals to compete directly is completely another story than leveraging the broader, mass market scope of TikTok and then carve out its space for business.

But it’s going to increasingly be used by recruiters too. They’re trying to meet GenZs where they’re at, and there’s three elements that I think we need to consider:

🏃 Companies are getting into TikTok - there’s no escape; sooner or later every company will have to establish its presence. Facebook opened a crack in the wall, but left a lot of separation between users and brands. The rise of social media and review sites has left no choice to open a direct, transparent (?) two-way relationship between brands and users, and this has then extended to the hiring space when thinking about attracting new employees.

📣 The story will be told, and trusted, only if it comes from employees - Influencer marketing works because people trust and follow other people, not logos. In the same way, brands will need to get their employees to showcase their culture and values in order to be really effective and trusted. This is of course a double edged sword, because it leaves a lot of power on the table and lowers the control of the company (think again of those ‘Day in the life’ videos and how they brought bad reputation to big tech).

#️⃣ Hashtags, influencers, ads - these are all tools that companies will use to differentiate and promote their content.

The line between branding and employer branding is going to be always more blurry.

After all, shouldn’t everyone be treated as a potential customer?

TL;DR - TikTok replacing Linkedin?

No, and it won’t be able to because TikTok has another purpose and misses business and networking critical features. But it will become a piece of the puzzle, and it’s worth while exploring how as we speak.