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Social recruiting is now the norm and is used by 93 percent of recruiters across industries, according to Jobvite’s Social Recruiting Survey, now in its seventh year and completed by more than 1,800 recruiting and human resources professionals across industries and regions.
The report also revealed that due to an increased demand for skilled workers, social is no longer enough on its own to attract and hire quality talent.
The study found more recruiters are taking a multi-channel approach, much like marketers, to find, engage and hire the best talent in this competitive job market.
LinkedIn is still the preferred social channel for 95 percent of recruiters to search, contact and engage candidates, and Facebook and Twitter are the two top channels recruiters utilize to showcase a company’s brand—59 percent of recruiters surveyed use Facebook and 44 percent use Twitter to educate potential candidates on employer’s culture.
“There was a time, years ago, when job searching was done behind closed doors—when I ran Yahoo! HotJobs, the site even had a feature allowing job seekers to restrict certain companies from seeing their resume online,” Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan told eWEEK. “This is no longer the reality we live in. Today our lives are on social and we share personal information freely across the Web. The proliferation of social has manifested in social recruiting, becoming the norm and essential for sourcing great talent.”
The report also indicated social media is a valuable tool recruiters use to vet candidates even after the interview process—18 percent use Twitter and 35 percent report using Facebook.
Although the report affirms the value of social media, with 73 percent of recruiters planning to increase their investment in social recruiting in 2014, 82 percent of recruiters feel their social recruiting skills are proficient or less.
Mobile became an important asset to job seekers in 2014–although 43 percent of job seekers actively use mobile to find jobs, 59 percent of recruiters currently invest nothing in mobile career sites.
Job seekers are increasingly using mobile to search and apply for new jobs, but many companies do not offer mobile career sites, but the mobile movement is gaining momentum, as 51 percent of respondents plan to increase their investment in mobile recruiting.
The report also indicated respondents who are leveraging mobile have seen an impact on candidate engagement, especially in quality of hires.
More than half of respondents have reconsidered a candidate based on their social profile, with 61 percent of those reconsiderations being negative.
Illegal drug references are still the top point of contention for 83 percent of recruiters, with sexual posts coming in at a close second at 70 percent.
“There is a shrinking supply of skilled talent and 69 percent of recruiters expect recruiting to become more competitive in the next 12 months,” Finnigan said. “Companies need to act like marketers and showcase their employer brand and engage with candidates across many platforms.”