Study: More Than 15% of Workers Get Hired Through Social Networks

By Alicia Eler / November 16, 2011 1:45 PM / 1 Comment

In a survey released today, recruiting software platformJobvite noted that more than 22 million Americans used social networks to find jobs in 2011. One in six people, more than 15%, say they found a job through social networking. Fifty-four percent of job seekers are using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter for their search. Even though there's a higher job seeking volume on Facebook, more than one-third don't use it to look for work. There's far more actual job hunting on Twitter and Linked; almost all job seekers use LinkedIn for job hunting versus nearly 75 percent on Twitter. Overall, 86 percent (nine out of 10) job seekers have a profile on social media. Eighty-four percent of job seekers have a Facebook profile, 39 percent are onTwitter and 35 percent use LinkedIn.

In terms of social network sources that led to a job, 18.4 million Americans credit Facebook. More than 10 million and 8 million Americans credit LinkedIn and Twitter as sources that led to jobs, respectively.

The Super Social Networkers Find Jobs More Quickly

Job seekers with more than 150 contacts on any single social network are considered "super social" and have a better chance of finding work, period.

Four out of 10, or 41%, are super social on at least one social network, and especially on Facebook.

The Jobvite Social Job Seeker Survey 2011 queried more than 1200 members of the workforce, two-thirds (69 percent) of which were job seekers and people who are looking for work or employed but open to a new job.

Results from the 2010 Jobvite survey found that companies were using mostly LinkedIn (78 percent) to recruit, followed by Facebook (55 percent) and Twitter (45 percent).

Recruiters Are Using Facebook To Find Talent

LinkedIn may be innovating like mad with updated iPhone apps like CardMunch, but apps like Jobmagic are focused on helping recruiters use Facebook and other social networks to find talent. For example, Jobmagic powers a few Disney Facebook pages, including Disney Studio Careers and Disney Cruise Line Jobs.

Why the focus on Facebook? It's 5x bigger than LinkedIn, and has the largest engagement rate on the Web. Recruiters who use LinkedIn are less likely to locate healthcare professionals such as nurses, young professionals, hourly workers, people with income less than $75K and people without a college degree.