CareerBuilder Affiliates Survey Workers to Find Their Preferences for Corporate Social Media Pages

Surveys conducted through specialized job-search websites MiracleWorkers (healthcare industry), WorkinRetail (retail industry), and Sologig (freelance jobs), have determined the information most valued by workers visiting an organization’s social media careers page. The surveys additionally uncovered those social media behaviors that job seekers and employees hate. Each of the above industries was represented by 500 workers from all over the country.

Within the healthcare industry, over half of all surveyed workers who regularly use social media would like to see an active company social media page. What page visitors most want to see are job listings (40 percent of respondents), a company questions and answers section (26 percent), available career paths available within the company (26 percent), employee testimonials (22 percent), and information depicting fun aspects of working for the company (19 percent). Behaviors to be avoided by a corporate social page include advertisement-type corporate communications (35 percent), failure to reply to employee posts (33 percent), failure to post regularly (23 percent), and filtering comments (20 percent).

In the retail sectors, half of employees who regularly use social media would like to see regular social media activity on their company’s social media page. Most wanted corporate social media behaviors as polled by respondents include job listings (33 percent), company Q&A (27 percent), employee testimonials (18 percent), a display of fun aspects of the organization (18 percent), photos of company events (13 percent), videos of both new products and services and of typical days on the job (both 13 percent). Company behavior to be avoided include advertisement-type corporate communications (43 percent), failure to address posted questions (38 percent), removing employee-posted comments (27 percent), and failure to post regularly (24 percent).

While interest in corporate social media sites is high, only about 12 percent of healthcare workers and 9 percent of retail workers use the services to job hunt. However, most users agree that they are waiting for companies to take the initiative to improve their social media presence.