According to a brand new survey by >CareerBuilder, one-quarter of businesses leverage social media to recruit and research possible staff. Twenty-nine percent of companies with 500 or fewer employees are utilizing social networking in some way. And more than half of leisure and hospitality organizations use social networking to help promote their businesses.
As companies emerge from 1 of the steepest economic downturns in history, they understand the significant reach and importance of using social networking to market and rebuild their organizations. A brand new CareerBuilder survey reports that 35 % of employers use social media to market their company. One-quarter (25 %) of these employers said that they’re utilizing social media to connect with clients and discover new business, while others are utilizing it to recruit and research potential staff (21 %), or strengthen their employment brands (13 percent). The survey was conducted among much more than 2,500 employers between March 18 and June 3, 2010.
Businesses of all sizes and industries report utilizing social networking to market their companies. Twenty-nine percent of organizations with 500 or fewer employees said they do so, followed by 38 percent of companies with 501 to 1,000 employees and 44 percent of businesses with much more than 1,000 workers. Comparing industries, leisure and hospitality topped those surveyed with 57 percent saying the use social networking to market their company, followed by IT, (48 %), retail (43 %) and sales (41 percent).
When it comes to managing social media strategy, 43 % of employers report that their marketing department handles social networking outreach, followed by public relations (26 percent) and human resources (19 percent). One-quarter (25 percent) of employers have 1-3 people communicating on behalf of their organization, whilst 7 % report that 4-5 individuals handle the work. Eleven % mentioned that much more than six individuals communicate for their organization via social networking. Fifty-seven percent said they didn’t know.
Workers report that they’re turning to social networking websites for more than connecting with friends. They’re also using social media to study companies and jobs. Workers who come across organization pages on social networking websites shared what they would most like to see, including:
— Job listings – 35 %
— Q&A or fast facts about the organization – 26 percent
— Information about career paths within the organization – 23 percent
— Evidence that working at the organization is fun – 16 percent
— Employee testimonials – 16 percent
— Pictures of organization events – 12 percent
— Video of new products/services – 10 percent
— Company awards – 9 %
— Research or studies that the company has conducted – 9 percent
— Videos of a day on the job – 8 %
On the flip side, workers also shared the biggest turnoffs when encountering a company via social networking, including the company’s communication reading like an ad (38 percent), failure to reply to questions (30 percent), failure to regularly post information (22 %) and removing or filtering public comments (22 %).
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive© on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 2,534 U.S. hiring managers and 4,498 U.S. workers (employed full-time; not self-employed; non government); ages 18 and over between Might 18 and June three, 2010 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset of U.S. employers and/or employees, based on their responses to certain questions). With a pure probability sample of 2,534 and 4,498 1 could say with a 95 % probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.95 and +/-1.46 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.
