LinkedIn Still No. 1 for Recruiters and Job Seekers

These days every social network claims to be the best on the market, but only one continues to excel when it comes to connecting job seekers and recruiters.
The 2012 Social Recruiting Activity Report from Bullhorn Reach found that LinkedIn is still the top spot for recruiters to post job openings and the number one choice for job seekers to find new positions.

What’s surprising is that even though most recruiters want to use social networks to find candidates - and it’s been proven that this is an effective recruiting tool - 21 percent of jobs are not posted on any social media sites.

The main takeaway from the report is that while LinkedIn knows how to cater to job seekers and recruiters, and Twitter isn’t far behind, Facebook still has miles to go before it catches up with the rest of the pack.
Bullhorn CEO Art Papas points out that most people still see Facebook as mainly a place to socialize as opposed to a place for professional business or job searching. At the same time, Facebook doesn’t make it easy for job seekers to look for work.
“It’s not clear there’s a reason for employers to be investing their efforts there,” he said.

Some specific key findings of the report include:

- 48 percent of recruiters solely use LinkedIn, while only 1 percent rely on Facebook alone, and another 1 percent use Twitter as their only social source for candidates. 

- 21 percent of recruiters use all three social networks, while 19 percent use only LinkedIn and Twitter, and 10 percent use only Facebook and LinkedIn. 

- Recruiters have an average of 616 connections on LinkedIn. 

- 21 percent of recruiters on Facebook have 50 friends or less, while 75 percent on Twitter have 100 followers or less, but 28 percent on LinkedIn have at least 1,000 connections. 

- Recruiters on LinkedIn add more than 18 connections each week, while they get only slightly more than 3 new followers on Twitter, and a mere one-and-a-half new friends on Facebook. 

- It takes about almost three months for a recruiter to double their number of Twitter followers, while it takes just over seven-and-a-half months to double their LinkedIn connections, and nearly 40 months to double their number of Facebook friends. 

- LinkedIn receives almost six times more job views than Facebook and three times more than Twitter, while Twitter gets almost two times more job views than Facebook. 

- LinkedIn sees nearly nine times more job applications than Facebook and three times more than Twitter, while Twitter gets almost three times more than Facebook. 

- Twitter nets almost eight-and-a-half times more job applications per contact than Facebook and nearly three times more than LinkedIn, while LinkedIn gets three times more job applications per contact than Facebook.

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