Why is Social Recruiting Missing in these Sourcing Survey Statistics?

I was conducting some research for a client and I found the following survey results on an the client's industry's trade publication:

SURVEY QUESTION: How do you recruit technicians?

Newspaper advertising 17.65%
Technical or trade schools 23.53%
Employment office advertising 23.53%
Internal promotions 0%
Word of mouth 35.29%

It lingered with me for awhile after reading the results. Why wasn't social (media) recruiting or even old-fashioned online job board sourcing a survey option?

Of course, who really cares about the lowly technician whose placement does not reap a whale-sized commission, right? (Excuse my attempt at humor.)

Or perhaps the recruiting industry should be concerned that candidates across all career levels are not being sourced or the perception that they are being sourced via the hottest new recruitment tools or social recruiting. Why? Perhaps social recruiting is really only a nervous virgin and a bit tentative about doing it.

I have another client who is about to be offered a position. (Negotiation stage). I asked her if over the course of her job campaign what leads had she received from social recruiting sites? Zip. None. How was she found? A job board, Monster. And, by the way, she is a recruiter by profession! I guess social recruiting isn't quite there yet. Or, those recruiters trolling through thousands of linkedin profiles per month are missing a lot of good people.

Food for thought.

Comment by Suresh on July 16, 2012 at 9:28am: Randall, here is my thoughts on this..

Technicians know where they can find useful information related to their industry, its not going to come from recruiters (atleast very rarely). Unlike some gurus would like us to believe, trust and legitimacy have to be built over a long period of time and not with a bunch of tweets or facebook page with sub par content. If someone wants to be doing Social Recruiting, then they will have to do it the hard way:

-Social Media in itself doesn't create content - it just helps broadcast it

create great unique relevant content for the industry (this is the toughest thing to do - most people throw this around as if its easily done)

- If you get into content creation business, then you are generally going away from your core which is recruiting

That will be dilemna most in the recruiting will face.