Only 22 Percent of Recruiters Used Facebook to Recruit

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faceAccording to the 2013 North American Social Recruiting Activity Report, 98 percent of recruiters used social media in 2012, with the big three being Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Yet, although Facebook is the largest social networking site of the three, at 22 percent, the least amount of recruiters used the tool for recruiting last year. A whopping 97 percent of recruiters said they used LinkedIn for recruiting purposes in 2012 while 27 percent said the same of Twitter.

The survey results come from actual social recruiting activity within the Bullhorn Reach user network of more than 160,000 recruiters. The survey is designed to evaluate recruitment activity on major social media channels, and assess how recruiters are using social networks in North America. The results also showed that a mere 12 percent of recruiters were connected to all three major social networks last year. At 14 percent, recruiters using a combination of LinkedIn and Twitter to source talent was more popular than the 8 percent using LinkedIn and Facebook.

“Social recruiting continues to gain momentum and it’s no surprise that LinkedIn remains the preferred network for recruiters given its early and fervent adoption,” Art Papas, president and CEO of Bullhorn, said. “Social media helps recruiters reach a much larger pool of talent than they would through traditional means. In 2012, when we issued our first social recruiting activity report, it was mainly tech-savvy early adopters using Bullhorn Reach. Now it’s mainstream.”

Other key findings include:

  • Recruiters are more active on LinkedIn than on any other network and the social networking site has the highest percentage of recruiters with enormous network sizes (15 percent have between 1,001-2,000 connections).
  • Recruiters saw an average of 179 views per job posted on LinkedIn, compared to 45 views per job post on Twitter, and only 10 views per job post on Facebook.
  • Of those recruiters using all three social networks, those seeking talent for information technology jobs was the largest. Recruiters in finance and banking, healthcare, and manufacturing followed.

Download the full report here.

By Shala Marks