IES Blog

Social media recruiting results in more qualified candidates

Posted on December 7th, 2011 Read time: 1 minutes

According to the 2011 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey, 80 percent of respondents said they recruit full-time and temporary workers using social networks, while 9 percent planned to begin doing so.

Furthermore, 55 percent stated that they'll spend more on social recruiting this year, 78 percent expect increased competition for hires and 64 percent plan to use two or more social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

New research from global talent development agency Lee Hecht Harrison echoes these findings, noting that the rise of social recruiting has led to the demise of job boards. Specifically, just 11 percent of job seekers now find new career opportunities using passive job sites.

"Employers are realizing a significant advantage by using social recruiting to actively find the best potential employees," said Peter Alcide, president and COO at LHH. "Postings on job boards often generate a large number of unqualified candidates and are proving to be far less efficient in identifying the best candidates."

Alcide points to the significance of social profiles during the recruitment process, as employers can enter specific knowledge, skills or abilities into a site's search bar to find directly qualified candidates.

"A significant number of new hires fail … because they didn't fit in with the team," said Alcide. "You can't determine a good fit based on a social bio." 

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