Only 23% of Employers Use Social Media to Find Talent, Where 99% of Candidates Are

Nearly 100 per cent of Canadian professionals and skilled individuals are on at least one social media network and more than half use them as tools to hunt for employment—yet just 23 per cent of employers say they use social media to find talent.

According to the first-ever Where People Are Guide from national recruitment company Hays Canada, half of employers lack recruitment strategies and jobs are often marketed to the wrong audience. The report, based on a national poll of 1,000 hiring managers, human resources professionals and candidates, shows that while employers tend to favour generic online job boards, post-secondary career sites and traditional online ads, candidates gravitate to social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

“Despite the popularity of social media among professionals, Canadian employers fall well-short in their effort to connect with and attract qualified talent,” said Rowan O’Grady, President of Hays Canada. “In an economy that suffers from a skills shortage, it’s crucial that employers carefully evaluate how they’re engaging online. Failing to do so results in wasted resources, lost time and zero results.”

Meanwhile, 98% of recruiters are on social media. According to the North American Social Recruiting Activity Report, which uses data culled from actual social recruiting activity within the Bullhorn Reach user network of 160,000 recruiters, 97% of recruiters use LinkedIn, 27% use Twitter, and 22% use Facebook. Only 12% use all three social networks. 14% of recruiters use a combination of LinkedIn and Twitter for recruiting versus 8% who use LinkedIn and Facebook.

It’s easy to see why LinkedIn is the popular choice: in terms of average number of views per job post in 2012, LinkedIn leads the pack with recruiters seeing an average of 179 views per job posted on LinkedIn, compared to 45 views per job post on Twitter, and just 10 views per job post on Facebook.

Further, LinkedIn has the highest percentage of recruiters with enormous network sizes (15% have between 1,001-2,000 connections); 50% of North American recruiters using Twitter for recruiting have fewer than 50 followers, and 26% of North American recruiters using Facebook have fewer than 200 Facebook friends.

According to data from a previous Bullhorn Reach Rankings Report, 79% of job opportunities are posted on at least one social network. LinkedIn was the most popular site for posting jobs with 77% of openings shared there. Twitter came in second with 54%, followed by Facebook, which came in a distant third at just 25%.

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