Memo to employers: Social media is your friend, and not just because it helps you weed out the knuckleheads in your applicant pool.
All of the talk about the pitfalls social media presents for people trying to find (and keep) jobs often obscures the important role that networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter play in connecting employers with really good employees.
A new survey of HR professionals by the Society for Human Resource Management shows that social media has become an essential part of U.S. hiring.
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Of the 410 HR professionals who took part in the survey, 84 percent said they currently use social media for recruitment and 9 percent said they were planning on using it in the future. Only 5 percent never have and never plan to.
That's not to say that social media has overtaken more traditional approaches to headhunting. Only 5 percent of employers said it was their primary recruitment tool.
It seems unfathomable today that an established company–particularly a large one–wouldn't have a presence on social media, but only four years ago the same survey showed only 56 percent of employers were using social media in hiring.
The rapidly-changing social media landscape has been driven in part by the increasing reliance on mobile devices–rather than PCs–for internet activity.
Two-thirds of surveyed organizations reported taking steps to leverage mobile recruitment so that their job postings and applications are easily-accessible via smartphone or tablet.
SHRM identifies social media as an important tool for reaching "passive" job seekers.
These are the people who may be interested in a new job but aren't actively searching for one.
But while social media has also helped some employers connect with future employees, it has, of course, dissuaded them from hiring others. Thirty-six percent of employers said they have disqualified a job candidate in the past year after finding "concerning information" on an applicant's social media account.
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