What is "social recruiting"

n. recruiting of employees by means of social networking sites

Social recruiting (social hiring or social media recruitment) is recruiting candidates by using social platforms as talent databases or for advertising. Popular social media sites used for recruiting include LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Viadeo, XING, Google+ and BranchOut. Social recruiting is at the intersection of recruitment and social media.

Social recruiting uses social media profiles, blogs, and online communities as a talent database to find and search for passive candidate data and information. It also uses social media to advertise jobs either through HR vendors or through crowdsourcing where job seekers and others share job openings within their online social networks.

Since late 2009 there has been some discussion in the recruitment and social media communities about whether simply using social media as a communication and marketing channel can be called "social recruiting". The argument is that for recruiting to be truly social, it needs to build a community, facilitate communication within that community, and rely on social connections between community members to recruit.

The position that nothing has changed is weakening as more data is collected on the actual activities of recruiters in 2010 and 2011. Jobvite, an applicant tracking system (ATS) and social sourcing provider, released a report in May 2011 indicating that 80% of the 600 employers surveyed answered "Yes" to the question, "Do you use social media for recruiting?"

By the end of 2011, social media recruiter postings appear on a regular basis on job aggregator sites like Indeed.com and Simply Hired, and number well over 1,000 in an October 2011 search.

One Social Media Recruiter position opportunity described the primary duties as:

Social recruiting's effectiveness and return on investment have been difficult to determine, since applicants do not usually apply through the social channels which first attracted them. In May 2013, Maximum Employment Marketing Group released the Social Recruitment Monitor, which ranks the reach, engagement, and interactivity of employers' social recruiting efforts around the world.