Jobvite’s sixth annual Social Recruiting Survey has just been released, and while LinkedIn remains a strong go-to recruiting tool, Twitter is quickly gaining steam. So far this year, ninety-four percent of recruiters have been turning to LinkedIn for vetting candidates, with Facebook at 65 percent and Twitter at 55 percent. In 2012, Facebook was at 66 percent and Twitter was at 54 percent. In other words, that single percentage point switched sides, and it may not sound like much, and maybe that’s because it isn’t. It’s just a single point. A single point tends to be the entire margin of error. Small potatoes, for sure.
So why isn’t Twitter more popular among recruiters?
Well, on last year’s study, Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan noted that “the rise in social recruiting has allowed both candidates and employers an easier way to find the best match. We continue to see social recruiting gain popularity because it is more efficient than the days of sifting through a haystack of resumes. It also increases quality referral hires, which our own data on Jobvite proves are hired faster and last longer.”
So, again, I’ll ask the same question: Why aren’t more places using Twitter? Many are becoming more and more vocal about LinkedIn’s drawbacks (which include skill endorsements and the nice-to-have-but-not-worth-much-usually recommendations), which aren’t even an issue on Twitter. What’s more, with Twitter, you are more likely to get on someone’s radar who is genuinely interested in your brand, is already familiar with it and isn’t just trolling around to find the next or any job opening. Regardless of whether people say the economy has recovered or not, I still know plenty of people who are struggling very hard to find something new and to change their current employment situation. Although people certainly do get head hunted via LinkedIn, why isn’t as common on Twitter?
It’s not like it’s incredibly tough to plug someone’s name from Twitter into Google or LinkedIn — something you’ll do with any applicant, anyway — so there really is no compelling, ironclad reason why not.
I say it’s worth a shot. And it almost guaranteed isn’t something your competition isn’t doing, so all the more reason.
David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.
