SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA IN NUMBERS
Over the last few years, social media has appeared, gained momentum and, in some respects, dominated the conversation in graduate recruitment. But for many companies it remains one of the most difficult things to get right. Graeme Wright, of global HR services group, Penna examines the findings of the company’s latest Social Media Audit, and looks at what it means for graduate recruiters.
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…in 2010 the majority of respondents (55%) rated their knowledge and use of the channels overall as only “OK”. No one claimed to be an expert. Now over 40% describe themselves as confident users and 10% even view themselves as experts…
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n 2010, Penna looked to help clarify what was happening in the market place when it conducted the
Social Media Audit. Two years on we have conducted the survey again with a slightly larger sample (96 graduate recruiters participated) and a broader remit in terms of findings. (A summary of the report is now available on the AGR website:
www.agr.org.uk.) Many of the findings reflect a growing comfort in the
use of social media. For example, in 2010 over half of recruiters felt it was ‘dangerous’ and were uncomfortable using it. Today that figure has fallen to 4% – a phenomenal turnaround. People are also more confident in their use of social
media – in 2010 the majority of respondents (55%) rated their knowledge and use of the channels overall as only “OK”. No one claimed to be an expert. Now over 40% describe themselves as confident users and 10% even view themselves as experts – which in a sector as dynamic as social media is remarkable. Companies are also increasingly gaining quantifiable
benefits from their social presence, the most common benefit being ‘increased brand presence’; while 91% felt there was a causal link between managing reputation and being an employer of choice. No surprise then that we are liable to see an on-going
growth in its use as a recruitment tool: our findings suggest that all the main sites – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube – will see growth of at least 60% in terms of recruitment usage. In terms of ‘depth’ of use, Facebook has seen the most significant change in the last two years:
79% of recruiters now maintain a Facebook page, with
60% of them doing this regularly. This site is clearly a very important tool in terms of building engagement.
More holistically recruiters are increasingly keen to
actively manage their online reputation (98% stated this as an objective) but there is an acknowledgement that this is not always easy with half of the organisations we surveyed feeling they were not managing their reputation well – the main barriers being a lack of ‘time’ and a lack of ‘tools’ . The most successful companies spend at least 10 hours a week on reputation management, and importantly do it as part of a normal working day. However, this is not a task that needs to be done ‘in-house’ with increasing numbers of companies outsourcing ‘reputation management’. The survey also looked at how social media is used
in the selection process. Overall around one third of companies stated that they are using, or ‘might’ use, Facebook to evaluate candidates, and this figure is liable to be significantly greater if you consider the use of the whole spectrum of social sites such as LinkedIn. However, the majority of companies have no policy in place with regards to recruiters viewing materials about candidates on social sites. As you might expect, this emerged as one of the major concerns with regard to social media usage – the majority (64%) stating it was a concern that candidate information available online could get in the way of a fair recruitment process.
These are just a taster of the findings. If you would like to know more contact
Graeme.wright@penna.com
GRADUATE RECRUITER 15
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