Demand for Recruiters with Social Media Experience Growing

We've reported throughout the year that social media skills are in high demand by employers as it is becoming a more integrated business strategy. Human Resources professionals – especially Recruiters – are more and more commonly required to have skills and experience with social media. Over the past 90 days, employers and staffing firms have placed more than 900 job ads for Recruiters that require social media skills, up 117% compared to the same 90-day period in 2010 and more than 350% versus the same time in 2009. In fact, social media skills now represent 7% of all hiring demand for Recruiters.

Hiring Demand for Recruiters with Social Media Skills and Experience – 4 Years

Source: WANTED Analytics

Metropolitan areas with the highest hiring demand for Recruiters with social media experience during this period were New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Atlanta, and Seattle, all of which saw year-over-year gains in hiring demand.

Location	Volume of Job Ads	% Change vs. 2010
New York, NY	76	+55.10%
Washington, DC	66	+106.20
Chicago, IL	63	+70.30%
Seattle, WA	41	+141.20%
Atlanta, GA	38	+375.00%

Due to increasing demand, the Hiring Scale™ shows that recruiting conditions for Recruiters with social media skills are likely to be moderately difficult. In the nationwide workforce, there are approximately 11 potential candidates for every open job. However, conditions will vary slightly by location, depending on local talent supply and demand. Of the 5 cities above, employers sourcing for openings in Atlanta are likely to experience the most difficult recruiting conditions. Hiring demand in Atlanta has grown 375% over the past year, while the talent pool is smaller than average, meaning that Recruiters are likely to compete more heavily to source candidates. In addition, it is likely that Recruiters in the Atlanta area will see job ads listed online longer than many of the counterparts nationwide, where the average duration of an online job posting is 43 days (or just over 6 weeks).

Hiring Scale for Recruiters with Social Media Skills in Atlanta

Source: WANTED Analytics

Comment by Tim Spagnola on December 13, 2011 at 1:27pm: Interesting data and information as always Carolyn. Thanks for sharing!

Comment by Suzanne Levison on December 14, 2011 at 10:55am: Excellent! I am positive much research was utilized to compile this information.

Comment by Christopher Lyon on December 14, 2011 at 10:55am: Great article and thanks for sharing!

Comment by Darryl Dioso on December 14, 2011 at 11:31am: Call me troublemaker but how does one judge one's "Social Media skills" level?

Comment by Tim Spagnola on December 14, 2011 at 11:33am: of course by Klout Darryl - I mean Double D ; )

*This was a joke of course

Comment by Darryl Dioso on December 14, 2011 at 11:37am: I'm going to +K you Tim! LOL

But, seriously this started me thinking. What is the criteria of social media skills? Number of followers? +K? Circles?

Comment by Kelly Blokdijk on December 14, 2011 at 3:36pm: Please do elaborate on what constitutes social media skills. My teenage relatives use Facebook, so is that sufficient? Seriously though, it would be helpful to see some tangible criteria related to the context of professional competence level required to be considered "skilled" in sm.

Comment by Carolyn Menz on December 14, 2011 at 3:47pm: I've gone through a few of the job ads with these requirements and some of them indicate that they want recruiters to be able to identify and source candidates through social media channels. Others say things similar to this "Social Media experience and ability to virtually network with highly desired candidate populations".

Comment by Paul Alfred on December 15, 2011 at 12:17pm: Yessss... I have a future .. Jokes aside this is great info ... Thanks for sharing Carolyn. I think though that for someone to be considered a SM expert one needs to be plugged in across SM channels and more importantly are you providing content that can be actioned - and if you're writing a SM Strategy can you provide measurable results. Social Recruiters need to be able to provide information that their Target Audiences (Passive/Active Candidates, and/or Potential/Existing Clients) find useful and to do so consistently across the channels where you have the most influence... You build influence/klout by providing quality content regardless of the amount of followers you have and also the level of engagement you have with your followers. My 2cents ...

Comment by Suresh on December 15, 2011 at 12:32pm: @Courtney, like your "Tempered Enthusiasm" note in your comment. That helps to differentiate Fad from Real Trends.