Jobvite just released its annual Recruiter Nation Survey, which included more than 1,400 recruiters and human resources professionals across multiple industries. As always, their finding are insightful and provide valuable advice for anyone in recruiting or employer branding. Let’s take a dive into the numbers.
Social Recruiting Continues to Soar
In 2011, 89% of recruiters were using social media. Now, 92% are. Of those, 87% recruit with LinkedIn, 55% recruit with Facebook, and 47% recruit with Twitter. Those are the Big Three, but I was surprised by some of the upstarts that have found their way into the poll, including Instagram at 13% and Snapchat at 3%. Another 21% post recruiting videos on YouTube.
Social also leads the way in employer brand awareness. 74% of recruiters use it to further their company’s brand, beating other strategies such as career sites (63%) and marketing/advertising (37%).
After referrals (78%), social media is the second most effective source of quality hires. At 56%, it beats out job boards (37%), outside recruiters (38%), and — most surprising of all — even direct applications, which comes in at 46%. So an applicant is better off tweeting at a company’s recruiting Twitter than applying through an ATS? If that’s confirms, it could turn talent acquisition upside-down.
Mobile Recruiting is Mandatory
As more job-seekers use mobile devices in their searches, recruiters are seeing success through mobile means. 37% of companies use mobile career sites to support recruiting efforts, and 19% of recruiters are now finding quality hires from mobile sites. In the effort to grow their employer brands mentioned above, 15% of companies are using mobile career sites for that purpose. Finally, about a quarter of recruiters plan to increase their mobile budget, ranking it about the same priority as job boards and campus recruiting.
So mobile is reinforcing employer brands, discovering quality hires, and are the focus of higher spending in 2016. All these findings show the growing importance of mobile as part of a recruiting strategy.
Time to Hire is Up, Employee Retention is Down
Jobvite’s survey provides some eye-opening statistics on the “Realities of Modern Recruiting,” as the survey puts it. 49% of respondents said the average number of applications per open position was 49 or less. Only 24% said it was more than 100.
Meanwhile, time to hire continues to increase, with 41% of recruiters declaring the average is 31-60 days. 24% say it’s more than 61 days, while only 30% say it’s between 11 and 30 days. In 2011, according to Dice, the average was under 20 days.
Adding to the bad news is the survey’s finding that employee tenure is shrinking: 30% of recruiters say average employee tenure is just 1-3 years, while 29% say it’s 4-6 years. That means about half the entire workforce can turn over in just five years.
As a result, 56% of recruiters say their top challenge is finding skilled and qualified candidates. But only 26% say the size of their recruiting team has increased significantly in the past year. Together, these numbers paint a very bleak picture for talent acquisition.
The Hunt for Talent Heats Up
The Jobvite survey shows that recruiters are aware of both the challenges and the opportunities that await. 50% plan to increase their social media budgets, and 46% plan to increase spending on their employer brand. 28% intend to work on improving quality of hires over the next year, along with decreasing time to hire (14%). Over the past year, 69% have increased salary offers to match the demands of a shrinking and more selective talent pool.
Recruiters are also using social media not just to recruit but to evaluate talent, taking note of factors like a candidate’s average length of tenure at previous jobs (74%), membership in professional organizations (30%), and work samples (29%).
If you’re in a competitive industry and want to improve your social or mobile recruiting, your employer branding, your quality of hire, or your time to hire, Brandemix has experience in all these categories. We’ve helped organizations large and small enter the world of social recruiting or enhance their social presence, add mobile to their strategy, and strengthen or refresh their employer brands. Our goal is to increase the number of top candidates, while decreasing turnover, time to hire, and cost per hire.
If you’d like to learn more, visit our website or contact me directly.
Jody Ordioni is President of Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
