Welcome back to Part 2 of BRS Global’s look at the effect social media has had on the internal recruitment function. Last edition we looked at the technological advances that have served to equalise the resources available to both in-house and external recruitment departments, the rising importance of video in recruitment and the upcoming star of YouTube.
We’re taking a more visual approach this episode, by taking an in-depth look at a helpful (and very detailed) infographic from Bullhorn Reach that really illustrates how important various social media platforms have become to recruiters.
From BR’s image we can glean that only 21% of the surveyed recruiters were adventurous enough to tap into all three of the top websites (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook). In contrast to the 1% who use only Twitter or Facebook, 48% of recruiters use solely LinkedIn. Looking specifically at LI, the clearly preferred platform, the average number of contacts for recruiters is 616 (although 28% have over 1000 contacts) and they add approximately 18.5 contacts a week. As a result ‘LinkedIn gets 8.8x more job applications than Facebook and 3x more than Twitter. So clearly results are there to be gained if the site is used effectively.
Andy Headworth, of Sirona Says, also examined these stats and he had this to say: ‘Why the hell isn’t that LinkedIn figure higher?’
Given the demonstrable value LinkedIn has for recruiters it might be easy to agree with him. Yet perhaps a note of caution is required here. For social media websites, and LinkedIn in particular, were not designed to completely replace the established tools of the recruitment trade and an over reliance on their capabilities would be understandably unwise. Indeed only recently the Genius Team wrote an article debunking the belief that LI had replaced the traditional jobs board. Their findings instead proposed social media actually provides a complimentary service to job boards and ‘support’ their function.
Andy was also keen for recruiters to pluck up their courage and get involved in Twitter. While this may be a big time commitment for some, and many in-house recruiters may find other commitments take precedence, the reasoning behind his comments remains sound: all recruiters, if they want to stay at the top of their fields, need to become accustomed to changes in technology. Just because you aren’t using Twitter to reach out to that top talent doesn’t mean your counterpart at another company isn’t. The online platforms available to us are ever increasing and evolving and they are all geared towards sharing information faster, with a greater reach and to more people.
So what can we conclude from this conflicting information? It is, after all, only one image that represents but a portion of the whole picture.
The methods for recruitment are definitely changing, meaning our skills and techniques, including technological capabilities, have to evolve right along side them. This is not to say that we should immediately abandon the tried and tested methods of the past. Rather that we should consider these new online tools a further arrow in the recruitment quiver, enabling the very best to reach all the targets available to them. At the very least we should be aware of, if not experimenting with, the latest developments. In our next edition we will be showing you exactly what to look out for in the near future.
As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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