Social recruiting – recruiting new workforce with the use of social networks – is not a new practice. The internet can show us numerous examples of successful recruiting campaigns through social networking. What once was a trendy practice a while back, has become an everyday reality for those who know hot to integrate it into a modern recruiting strategy. According to the results of the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2014, recruiters plan to invest more in social recruiting, referrals and mobile.

According to the survey, social recruiting has transformed from a novelty into a norm – now over 90% of recruiters use or plan to use social networks to support their recruiting efforts. Social networks can be a useful tool to find out as much about the candidate as possible without asking him or her direct questions about their lifestyle. After all, a candidate who constantly blabbers about how to play the best casino games directly on your phone, is better to be avoided – a habit of playing games of chance on mobile can turn into a bad habit, which can affect your colleague’s work performance later.

For the coming year most recruiters expect competition to increase a lot. Thus, social alone will not be enough to find quality talent for hire. Recruiters have to use various other tools to support their efforts – they need to wander to the territory mostly “inhabited” by marketers. According to the study, recruiters will need to showcase their brand and engage with their candidates over more than one platforms, much like marketers engage their potential customers.

Let’s take a look at the top findings of the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey of 2014:

– 69% of recruiters expect hiring to become more competitive in the next year

– 61% of employees leave their positions for higher compensation, followed by long term growth prospects, location and a better title

– only 38% of the employees stay loyal to their company for over 3 years, while 12% of them leave after an average 18 months

– 94% of employees use LinkedIn for social recruiting, followed by Facebook (60%), Twitter (52%) and Google Plus (21%)

– recruiters use LinkedIn to search for and contact candidates, keep tabs on potential candidates and post jobs

– Facebook is mainly used to showcase employer brands, generate employee referrals and vet their candidates both pre- and post-interview

– 73% of recruiters have hired a candidate using social media – most of them through LinkedIn, but just 7% of them have hired based on the candidate’s blog

– before making a hiring decision, 97% of the recruiters review the candidate’s social profile. What they look for is the candidate’s professional experience, length of professional tenure and specific hard skills.

The Jobvite 2014 Social Recruiting Survey is available free (after registration) through Jobvite’s website.