In-person still tops online for job networking

Social networking sites will increase in importance as a job search tool, but they'll still lag behind online job boards and in-person networking, a recruitment firm has predicted.

In a survey of 500 European executives by Harvey Nash, nine out of ten said they had signed up to a site such as LinkedIn, while 50 per cent had put their CV on an online job board.

While the execs expected the importance of online networking to grow from 24 per cent now to 38 per cent in two years' time, that's still less important than developing personal contacts (81 per cent), contacting recruiters (63 per cent) or using job boards (51 per cent).

Some 93 per cent of the senior executives surveyed said putting time into developing their personal brand' was a wise career move. While some three-quarters said this was best done offline, two-thirds said they do use social networking sites to look good.

Commenting on the findings, Carol Rosati, director at Harvey Nash, said: "Whilst online networking does not replace human interaction, it does provide candidates with an additional set of resources to create and maintain a personal brand and complement the profile they build through real world' networking."

The top social networking sites for senior execs looking for career progression were LinkedIn (57 per cent) and Plaxo (16 per cent). The usually almighty Facebook took just six per cent of the vote.