92% of Employers Use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn to Hire New Employees

A new survey confirms what most in the recruiting industry already know: the use of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have become an essential practice amongst human resource professionals with 92 percent of U.S. companies using social networks and media to find talent in 2012, up from 78 percent five years ago. LinkedIn continues to be a dominant recruiting network, while Facebook and Twitter have seen major adoption growth in the past year.

Two-thirds of companies now recruit through Facebook and 54 percent use Twitter to find new talent. Jobvite‘s June 2012 Social Recruiting Survey of 1,000 human resource and recruiting professionals also found that employers scrutinize social media activity, noting more than half of respondents would have a negative reaction to seeing a spelling or grammar mistake in a social profile. Overall, social recruiting has become an essential tool for recruiters and can be expected to become even more important as 89 percent of the companies surveyed report plans to increase hiring this year.

Some other interesting results from the survey were:

• 66 percent of recruiters use Facebook to find new talent, up from 55 percent in 2011.
• For the first time, more than half (54 percent) of recruiters now use Twitter for their talent search.
• LinkedIn remains the dominant recruiting network, used by 93 percent of respondents. LinkedIn was used by 87 percent of respondents in 2011 and 78 percent in 2010.
• 71 percent of HR and recruiting professionals consider themselves moderate to exceptional social recruiters.
• Nearly 3 out of 4 hiring managers and recruiters check candidates’ social profiles – 48 percent always do so, even if they are not provided.

Of those who check the social profiles of candidates:

• 80 percent reacted positively to seeing memberships to professional organizations, while 2/3 like to see volunteering or donating to a nonprofit.
• Content that recruiters especially frown on includes references to using illegal drugs (78 percent negative) and posts of a sexual nature (67 percent negative).
• Profanity in posts and tweets garnered a 61 percent negative reaction.
• 47 percent reacted negatively to posts about alcohol consumption.
• Grammar or spelling mistakes on social profiles saw a 54 percent negative reaction.
• Recruiters and hiring managers tend to be neutral in their reactions to political opinions (62 percent) and religious posts (53 percent).