“I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Tammie Christofis Ballis tells her more than 60,000 TikTok followers. “But if you had a short job interview, it’s a sign that it didn’t go well.”
It’s the sort of advice that in the past may have been dispensed around water coolers or over coffee, but is now a regular feature on social media, with the recruitment consultant one of thousands of professionals offering expertise to jobseekers online.
In the past three years, the #CareerAdvice hashtag has accumulated 167 million views.Credit: Nathan Perri
Influencers post short videos on a topic or question, filming their response as if offering in-person guidance. #CareerAdvice, a popular hashtag for the topic, boasts 430,000 posts globally, with 167 million views in Australia in the past three years – the equivalent of 150,000 views per day – according to a TikTok spokesperson.
The platform has fast become a favoured source of practical information for Gen Z and Millennial jobseekers, offering instruction on anything from resume writing to interview etiquette.
Christofis Ballis said TikTok suited the advice-style content as it allowed for authenticity; she prefers not to script her videos and instead relies on her expertise in the field to answer questions naturally.
“I think that’s why I’ve been so successful – because I am quite blunt. You’ve just got to be honest otherwise people will swipe through to someone else,” she said.
I think it’s a great way to get bite-sized, fast and really focused, quick tips on how to enhance your career.
Career Success Australia program director Naren Chellappah
“These days, with the growth of TikTok and the short-form videos, attention spans are becoming less and less, so you’ve got to grab attention quite quickly and then give that valuable information.”
The explosion of online content comes as almost eight in 10 Australians and New Zealanders are either looking for a new job, or planning to in the next year, according to research from global recruiting group Hays.
The survey, released in June and in which more than 8000 employees participated, cited rising cost-of-living pressures as the primary driver for the increase in mobility as workers look for higher salaries.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows 2.1 million Australians left or lost their job between February 2023 to 2024. Young people were the most likely to change jobs, with 13 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds doing so over the 12-month period.
Career Success Australia program director Naren Chellappah said social media was a good first step for jobseekers.
“I think it’s a great way to get bite-sized, fast and really focused quick tips on how to enhance your career, as long as the person putting forward that content is providing good quality information,” he said.
Chellappah said the platforms were also a good avenue for consultants to gain a following they could convert into paid career training programs, and it was therefore in their interests to post accurate information.
“Most of the information I’ve seen on TikTok is fairly good, in terms of being posted by recruiters or hiring managers or career coaches who just know how the system works ... career counsellors need to be present on those platforms in order to be able to speak to that jobseeker audience,” he said.
Christofis Ballis said her social media presence was an extension of her recruitment business, and that TikTok livestreams, where followers could ask questions in real-time, were the most successful way to drive people to her offline services.
But she warned that not all online information was accurate and that users should always verify the expertise of an influencer when considering their advice.
“Check the credentials of the person that you’re going to trust, don’t just go in blindly. Because someone that’s spitting all this information about professional job applications should be able to back it up elsewhere, and that’s usually on LinkedIn or even having a website or reviews.”
Career Industry Council of Australia executive director, David Carney, said that while social media was a popular tool, it didn’t replace other sources of counsel. He said young people still tended to rely on parents, career advisors, teachers and peers for decision-making advice.
“There’s a difference between getting career information and seeking career guidance ... career information is a very transactional, one-way sharing of information – so you can collect that on a website, reading a pamphlet, or on social media,” he said.
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