Lack of strategy and direction for recruiters about social networking

Recruitment and social media seem to go hand in hand. […]

August 24, 2010

Recruitment and social media seem to go hand in hand. Candidates who are looking for a new job are often told to update, complete and professionalize their profiles on all of these social media platforms in order to be found easily. However, how professional and visible are recruitment companies and professionals? It is clear that these companies and its professionals are making progress using social media but there is certainly a lack of strategy and direction.

Limited visibility

Though recruitment companies are present in social media, few promote their presence (14%) on their website of jobsite. 8% of all companies analyzed did not have a website nor a social media presence. LinkedIn is the social media platform that recruitment companies seem to embrace (57%).

Room for improvement on the professional image

Job searchers are often told to professionalize their social media profile on LinkedIn by completing them as much as possible. However, this can not be said about the recruitment professional! They seem to leave all the good advice behind them with as most notable examples the fact 51% does not have a profile picture and 52% do not mention their own company website.


Lack of engagement


The limited visibility of recruitment companies and the poor level of professionalism by the recruitment professionals lead to a lack of conversation and/or engagement with candidates. The mostly mentioned reasons for this behavior is the “lack of time” and “lack of results” (aka ROI). The conclusion is that today social media is being used reactively as to mainly verify that the paper resume corresponds the online resume.
Recruitment companies let a lot of opportunities slip because of this lack of engagement with possible candidates including those not actively looking. Engagement will lead the way to finding good candidates with the right profiles more easily as a few companies in the research have demonstrated. Creating the right image will build the brand even in the recruitment business.

This research is the result of a market study done by Vanguard Leadership in July 2010. In this market study we have used social media and the internet to build the dataset. We have analyzed 180 websites of recruitment companies and 850 profiles (in LinkedIn) of recruitment professionals in the Belgian market).

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