Social media and recruitment

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As technology has advanced, the recruitment industry has almost completely transformed. Just ten years ago if somebody was looking for a new job they would have gone to a recruitment agency on the High Street and handed in their CV.

Nowadays however, almost everything is done online. Initially it was thought that this would have a negative impact on recruiters but this hasn’t actually been the case at all. It does however mean that agencies have had to adopt a lot of new practices including how and where they find candidates.

Social media has become an invaluable platform for recruitment and it is in fact at an all-time high. A whopping 92% of companies now use social media for recruiting and 45% of Fortune 500 firms include links to social media on the career pages.

LinkedIn is the preferred method of sourcing candidates and as the years go by, an increasing number of businesses are using it for hiring purposes. In 2010, 78% of companies used it, this went up to 87% in 2011 and this figure has now reached an impressive 93%.

66% of companies say that they use Facebook for recruitment and 54% use Twitter.

When you look at the most recent statistics it’s not hard to see why so many companies are turning to social media to find new employees. 73% of those who were questioned said that they have successfully hired someone via social media and 42% said that since doing so, they think that the quality of the candidates they are finding has improved.

20% say that it now takes less time to hire and 31% have seen an increase in the number of employee referrals they receive.

With an increasing number of recruiters turning to social media, candidates are being advised to be careful about what they’re posting on their pages. Three out of four hiring managers and recruiters say that they will look at a candidate’s social media profile before considering them for a role and one in three have rejected an applicant based on something they saw on social media.

When it comes to what potential employers don’t want to see, 78% say that they don’t want to see any references to taking illegal drugs and 67% respond negatively to posts of a sexual nature.

It’s not just recruiters who are turning to social media either. 29% of job seekers say that social media is their primary tool for job searching and that they always look at a company’s social media pages before going in for an interview.

Do you think that social media is a good tool for recruitment or do you prefer to stick to more traditional methods? Feel free to share your thoughts with us below.