Facebook a Vital #2 for Social Recruiting

Jobscience, a talent management technology firm for the social enterprise, has announced the results of its recent social media survey. The survey found that over one-third of U.S. companies have Facebook in their sites as the primary tool for social recruiting in 2012. The survey also found that Facebook was the second most important social recruiting tool, trailing only LinkedIn. Data from the survey also supports the notion that social recruiting isn’t going anywhere, as nearly 60 percent of survey participants believe that the next evolution in recruiting strategies is reaching candidates through social media networks. LinkedIn is anticipated to be the most used tool for recruiting with 57 percent of respondents expecting to use the tool more than job boards, email marketing, and referral programs.

“Using social networks to find candidates for current job openings has become a common strategy for recruiters,” said Ted Elliott, CEO and founder of Jobscience. “But the real value of social recruiting is when companies continually engage with people through social networking — so when an appropriate job opens up — the person is familiar with the company and has a propensity to want to work there. It’s about social sourcing and building pipelines of talent — so your talent pool never runs dry.”

Social networks are also thought to be nearly as important to prospective job candidates as to employers with 52 percent of companies believing that social networks are used by applicants to research companies thus making the venues an important channel for attracting candidates. Currently, LinkedIn holds the number one spot as “the social network that matters most” with 86 percent of respondents tapping it as the best play for social recruiting, followed by Facebook at 51 percent, Google+ at 27 percent, and Twitter coming in last at only 16 percent. But the still considerable gap between Facebook and LinkedIn may be primed to narrow as 36 percent of companies reported plans to use Facebook more this year than last.

“As Facebook becomes the most relevant place on the web — it is also putting a face on the ’employment brand’ of companies,” added Elliott. “Information about a company is no longer solely controlled by recruiters. Candidates and employees are using social media to gather information about companies. If companies want to attract top talent, they need a strategy for their employment brand — which includes monitoring how their brand is perceived on social networks, facilitating a social dialog and giving compelling reasons for people to work at their company.”