Report: 76 Percent of Job Seekers Browse Company Profiles on Twitter

Social networks increasingly have an impact on the job hiring process. 93 percent of recruiters use, or plan to use social media in their recruiting efforts and 73 percent have hired candidates via social media. However, the majority of these recruits come from LinkedIn. A new report from Software Advice outlines how recruiters and job seekers are using Twitter.

58 percent of job seekers surveyed used Twitter during their job search in the last six months. When searching for jobs, 76 percent of job seekers look at company profiles, 55 percent follow companies, 34 percent search job-specific hashtags, 34 percent apply for tweeted job postings, and 33 percent communicate with companies and recruiters.

Jim Milton, vice president of product marketing for recruiting software platform SmartRecruiters, suggests that companies could use their main corporate pages for recruiting, rather than starting new recruiting accounts, especially if customers are the desired recruits.

If retail company XYZ has a million followers, perhaps the followers of that retail brand are the appropriate demographic where they may also want to go work behind the counter. You’ve established a brand and a following, so why reinvent the wheel?

Recruiting-specific company Twitter profiles provide a good example of what kind of content to post when searching for new employees. 38 percent of accounts tweet about job openings, 17 percent highlight company events, 13 percent tweet about the work environment and job perks, and 9 percent tweet career advice.

78 percent of these tweets contain hashtags, 63 percent contain links, and 50 percent include images. Branded hashtags (eg. #GEjobs) are present in 46 percent of Fortune 500 company hiring tweets.

Software Advice concludes that there is indeed an audience of job seekers using Twitter, and recruiters should capitalize on this audience. However, recruiters should continue to use Twitter to market their content in addition to the job postings.

For more information on job seeker demographics, or to see what job seekers think of Twitter as a job seeking tool, check out the full report.

Readers: How are you using social media to recruit new talent?