Bullhorn, a developer of a recruitment software and application system, recently released the Social Recruiting Activity Report, and named LinkedIn as the leader in terms of frequency of usage by recruiters and their effectiveness for sourcing candidates. Twitter came in second, while Facebook came in third.
“Our findings suggest that recruiters are connected to all three social networks, but are using LinkedIn and Twitter much more than Facebook to recruit talent,” the report stated.
The report examined the use of social media by recruiters, not actually job hunters. The report shows that LinkedIn networks continue to drive more views than Twitter and Facebook, despite Facebook being increasingly used for professional networking.
LinkedIn had nine times more applications than Facebook and three times more than Twitter. About 48 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn exclusively with an average of 661 connections and don’t use the other two social networks for social recruiting. Recruiters have fewer connections on Twitter with 37 connections on average, but 19 percent of them are on LinkedIn as well as Twitter, compared to 10 percent that are connected to LinkedIn and Facebook (with an average of 245 friends).
LinkedIn also grows at the fastest pace in terms of adoption, with the average recruiter adding 18.5 LinkedIn connections each week, compared to 3.3 Twitter followers and 1.4 Facebook friends. LinkedIn also drives the most views per job, generating three times as many as Twitter and six times as many as Facebook.
“As social networks evolve in 2012 and the world becomes even more connected through the ‘big three’ social networks, agency and corporate recruiters will develop new strategies for recruiting candidates through social network connections,” the report concluded. “…Currently, Facebook has the least amount of network activity among agency and corporate recruiters. One would anticipate them to alter their strategies going forward to leverage the power of the largest social network….”