We are at a point where we have left the discussion whether or not social media is going to be a serious employer branding tool far behind. We are beyond the hype. And we are happy about it. It is about time to measure the ever-changing social media landscape and to find out how the usage of social media for recruitment has changed over the last twelve months. Did employers put more effort in engaging with their target audiences? Did we experience more interaction? And what about the growth fan base? Let’s dig into the figures of Facebook to find out. ™

Creating a Facebook career page specifically for recruitment purposes is obvious. However, more importantly, it can be very useful to measure your performance on social media and to compare yourself against the competition using an objective benchmark that includes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as engagement.

The Social Recruitment Monitor™ website (launched in October, 2012) displays these KPIs, in which engagement and interaction are crucial parts of the algorithm behind the SRM Index – the performance indicator on which all channels are being ranked to. Currently, around 800 Facebook career pages from fifteen different regions are being tracked on a weekly basis. All social statistics, derived from the Monitor, of the global Facebook career pages over the last year have been analyzed. In what way has Facebook developed as a social recruitment channel? The Social Recruitment Monitor™ provides the answers. Based on our research there are three major insights we would like to share:

• The average engagement ratio increased by 32%. Engagement on Facebook is an important aspect since higher engagement will increase the visibility of your updates. As employers have noticed that Facebook is an effective channel for their employer branding and recruitment efforts, it’s not surprising to see that they try to engage more with their continuously growing audience.
• 15% More updates by employers on their Facebook pages. Hence, organizations generate more content for their Facebook career pages, resulting in an average growth of 15% when it comes to the average amount of updates.
• The average fan base increased with more than 250%. The increased amount of updates and the extra engagement efforts of the employers have in return a positive effect on the Facebook users. More and more users are getting used to interact with organizations via social media and become aware of the added value of ‘likes’.

Based on these numbers, one can conclude that the usage of Facebook as an employer branding and recruitment channel grew rapidly. In addition Facebook users also got used to engage with (potential) future employers. Will Facebook continue to grow at the same pace in the coming twelve months?

Join the Social Recruitment Monitor today and be part of the benchmark. It’s for free: www.socialrecruitmentmonitor.com.