How Companies Use Social Media to Recruit Candidates

Career Enlightenment recently released an infographic discussing how companies are using social media to find candidates and fill positions. The infographic, which is publicly available to view, offers hiring managers and CEOs insights into where companies, possibly our recruiting peers and/or corporate competition, are having success. Below is the entire infographic, but first, the implications of what stood out to me:

• 14.4 million people have used social media to find a job. That’s nearly the same amount of job seekers who are currently displaced and seeking work. I’d be curious to know the amount of recruiters who use social media as their primary source of candidates.

• 56% of HR Professionals are using social media to source candidates. This figure happens to be a 54% increase from 2008.  Social recruiting is a new phenomenon that has grown over the last 36 months by leaps and bounds.

• 24% of managers found candidate personality & fit from a social profile. Fit and personality are such subjective elements, but are critical to making the right cultural hire and decreasing employee turnover. The social profile can give the job seeker another outlet to showcase that he or she is a good cultural fit.

• 6 to 1. This is the number of job seekers to every job available in America.  No wonder job seekers are taking to social media recruiting and public campaigns to gain the attention of hiring managers and organizations. The market is flooded with candidates, some of which are not qualified and many of which are simply having to wait too long in between opportunities.

 Job Searching with Social Media

 Using Social Media for Recruiting

While the infographic offers an interesting take on social media’s place in an organization’s candidate search, companies must not rely solely on social media to fill positions especially when only 6 out of 10 Americans check their email and use a search engine each day. Not every American relies on email or even social media as a primary form of communication.   Recruiters are still missing out on a large segment of the job search candidate population. This social network and technology adoption is growing, especially considering experts predict that Facebook will surpass 1 billion users later this year.

Yes, social media plays a role and it will continue to do so.  While we must spent more time recruiting through social media, we also must not forget about late adopters to technology and social networks, who are also just as likely to be engaged and productive candidate bases from which to recruit from.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a HR consultant, new media strategist, and author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. Jessica is the host of Job Search Secrets, an internet television show for job seekers.