Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

The use of social media as a recruiting tool increased significantly as nearly 80 percent of employers reported that they use social media in their recruiting efforts, up significantly from last year when 68.7 percent reported such use, according to results of NACE’s 2017 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey.

Among those employers that used social media, 69.6 percent indicated an increase in use during the past year, including 17.7 percent that indicated a significant increase. On the other hand, less than 5 percent of employers reported a decrease in use. (See Figure 1.)

In recruiting, social media is mainly used to assist employers with providing information to potential recruits (83 percent). Approximately two-thirds of employers use social media to post ads and brand their company to potential recruits (64.8 percent). Half of employers (50.3 percent) contact potential candidates through social media, and slightly less search social media to identify potential candidates (45.3 percent).

The top three social media platforms used by employers and in terms of effectiveness were LinkedIn (91.1 percent used; 3.8 effectiveness rating on a five-point scale), Facebook (73.8 percent; 3.1), and Twitter (67.7 percent; 2.9).

Data collection for NACE’s 2017 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey Report took place from July 19, 2017, to August 1, 2017; 301 firms participated. An executive summary is available on the NACE website. The full report is available to those at participating organizations through MyNACE > Research Reports.