Twitter has overtaken Facebook as the preferred recruitment network for candidates and recruiters in the UK according to Bullhorn, the global market leader in CRM for the recruitment industry.
Bullhorn’s Global Social Recruiting Activity Report, which reviewed the social media activity of 33,800 UK recruiters, revealed that 28 per cent of recruiters are now active on Twitter, compared to just 15 per cent on Facebook. According to the report Twitter averages 2.5 times as many views per job posting as Facebook and receives an average of 1.4 applications per job posting.
The research also reveals UK recruiters’ average LinkedIn connections increased 12 per cent from 840 to 940, compared with a 46 per cent increase in Twitter followers to an average of more than 550. That coincides with Twitter’s own rapid growth in the UK, swelling from 10 million active users in 2013 to nearly 15 million in 2014.
Peter Linas, international MD of Bullhorn, comments: “While LinkedIn retains its title as the world’s largest professional network, candidates are beginning to look elsewhere for jobs, meaning recruiters can’t just rely on LinkedIn - today’s most successful recruiters must be active across a whole range of social platforms if they are to maximise their chances of finding the best candidates.
“It’s encouraging to see that network sizes are increasing across multiple social platforms year-on-year but, in the UK, Twitter has taken centre stage. Recruiters need to make a conscious effort to keep building their Twitter followings.”
While Facebook remains largely for personal use among UK recruiters, with the majority preferring not to use it for sourcing candidates, it’s a different story in the United States. According to the report, which looked at the social habits of 260,000 recruiters globally, Facebook was the only network in North America through which job applications increased.
Linas concludes: “By embracing Facebook and Twitter for sourcing, recruiters expand their candidate pools significantly. Facebook’s user base grew to 1.28 billion active monthly users in 2014 and Twitter now stands at 271 million users – these aren’t numbers top recruiters can ignore.”
To download the social recruitment report in full with detail on social network size, job posting averages across networks and job application numbers by network, amongst other statistics, please click here.