TikTok is more than a workplace distraction. It’s a recruiting tool for Gen Z talent

When it comes to virtual recruiting, there’s no one-size-fits-all platform — especially when it comes to reaching a variety of generations. And for employers eager to attract Gen Z talent, they may be looking in all the wrong places.

According to a recent survey by digital marketing network Omnicore, 60.1% of millennials utilize LinkedIn, widely acknowledged as one of the best places to engage with prospective talent. But that number drops to below 20% when it comes to Gen Z.

“Gen Z thinks of LinkedIn in the same way that I might think of Facebook,” says Stephanie Lovell, head of marketing at startup hiring app Hirect. “They think of it as big old and outdated and cumbersome and not somewhere that they're actually going to go to for job resources or for job seeking.”

Read More: TikTok for work? How social media is changing the workplace

It may not even be a conscious decision on Gen Z’s part — simply a question of habit. Unlike the generations before them, who only had a select number of social platforms to choose from when entering the workforce, younger workers have seen the rise of many new and innovative services that have become part of their everyday life. For example, 20% of Gen Z employees spend an average of five hours a day on TikTok.

“We're right on the edge of this trend where we're going to see that younger generations are no longer going to look towards those traditional job search platforms,” Lovell says. “They're going to start searching in new and interesting ways to find jobs, and TikTok is going to be a huge primary source for them just because that's where a lot of Gen Z are spending their time.”

And with the recent launch of services like TikTok Resume — a channel that allows TikTok users to open discourse on recruiting tactics, upload a video resume and share tips — it’s clear that the labor market has not only noticed those trends, but made the decision to act on them.

“TikTok is still very agile and fairly new,” Lovell says. “They're still building out what their platform looks like and how it serves their customers and their users. Them adding a whole new user interface that really is dedicated to career searching speaks to TikTok already staying up with the trends a little bit more readily than some of the older platforms.”

Read More: Gen Z has embraced TikTok Resumes. What about everyone else?

It all comes down to Gen Z looking for work in non-traditional places in hopes of streamlining the hiring process for themselves and the companies they hope to work for.

“The traditional hiring process is so cumbersome — you can sit on LinkedIn for six months and get 25 interviews and potentially never get any one of those jobs,” Lovell says. “It's a really tough process so I think Gen Z are really frustrated with that, especially in the market right now, which is such a job seekers market.”

Recruiting using social media can cut down the hiring process from weeks to days, according to Lovell, whose marketing firm has already started utilizing TikTok and other non-traditional platforms as a means to recruit for their own open positions. It also eases many of the transparency burdens young employees struggle with including compensation and benefits, making it easier to understand.

“We're going to see [recruiting] become a bit more of an informal process,” Lovell says. “Not necessarily unprofessional, but we're all starting to kind of blend our home and work life together. This is a platform that’s rich with Gen Z and job seekers, and many companies are going to have to start using TikTok to their advantage if they want access to this generation.”