Last year, we surveyed 100+ in-house recruitment, talent acquisition and employer branding teams about their social media habits, challenges and best practices. We round up the key statistics and trends from this social recruiting research below.
See how your team compares and get ideas for your social media recruiting strategy by finding out:
- What percentage of teams are currently using social media?
- Which are the most-used social media channels?
- Why do teams use social media? What are their main goals?
- What content types and topics do they post on social media? And what works best?
Looking for more stats and ideas on how recruiters use social media? Download the full social recruiting and employer branding 2023 report.
98% of recruitment, talent acquisition and employer branding teams use social media
It’s clear from our research that social media is an important channel of communication for in-house recruiters and employer branding specialists in 2023, with a huge 98% of teams currently using social media. This includes 65% who have dedicated social recruiting and employer branding account(s).
Additional statistics show that 56% share (some of) their social media account(s) with other departments within the company (for example, corporate or marketing teams). And 67% use their personal profiles (for example, LinkedIn profile) as a communication channel for recruitment and/or employer branding purposes.
Social media helps us enormously to achieve our recruitment objectives (due to the large reach), and this at a very low cost.
— 2023 social recruiting survey respondent
In contrast, just 2% of recruitment specialists do not currently use social media.
Why? They are simply not interested in including this in their social recruiting strategy.
LinkedIn and Facebook are the most-used channels for social recruiting
For those recruitment teams who use social media as a communication channel, the vast majority use LinkedIn (78%) and Facebook (65%).
Instagram, YouTube and Twitter come in third, fourth and fifth places, with 58%, 42% and 38% respectively. Instagram is the channel that saw the biggest increase year on year, up from 45% in 2022.
One of the newest social media channels, TikTok is used by 23% of recruitment teams. While less than 10% use Tumblr.
Recruiters are focusing their social media strategy on getting more applications
Our social recruiting statistics showed that most recruiters are moving away from focusing on what can be called “vanity social media metrics,” such as follower numbers (19%). However, we see a significant upward shift for increasing number of social media followers (34% in 2023, vs 19% in 2022), which just overtook increasing engagement as the 4th most popular social media goal for recruitment professionals in 2023.
Instead, teams are focusing on number of applications, reach and website traffic as their main social media goals, with 64%, 46% and 46% selecting these options respectively.
Job vacancies are the most engaging recruitment content topic
While vacancy posts (43%) and life at your company (25%) are the content topic that receive the most engagement for employer branding and recruitment teams in 2023, respondents also indicated that company news (8%) and event promotions (8%) are the least engaging content types.
Looking at the type of content teams post on social media, 67% of teams make use of videos. This social recruiting trend continues to increase year over year. While social media carousels are used only by 21% of the specialists, research often finds this content type to be one of the most engaging across social media platforms, which means that 79% of recruiters are likely missing out on potential extra engagement.
Need some inspiration for your social media recruiting posts? Check out our articles for 23 examples of “we are hiring” social media posts, 26 examples of “welcome new hire” posts, and 14 employer branding social media examples.
90% encourage their employees to engage with their social recruiting content
Most recruitment, talent acquisition and employer branding specialists involve their employees in their social recruiting activities. Out of the 100 specialists who use social media, 90% indicated that they encourage their employees to share and engage with their recruitment content.
But what’s the best way to get employees involved in your recruitment activities? We put this to the specialists we surveyed as an open-ended question. We then categorized their expert tips and ideas below, combining the recommendations from our 2023 and 2022 survey.
For more social recruiting advice and best practices, access the free social recruiting and employer branding 2023 report.
Recruitment teams are taking content creation into their own hands
In 2023, we are potentially seeing the start of a shift away from recruitment teams relying on marketing for their social media content, and instead taking this task into their own hands.
Our research found that 58% of recruitment teams create their images and videos themselves (up from 51% in 2022), and 48% get help from their marketing team (down from 51% in 2022). Although the difference in the data is not yet statistically significant, we expect this to be a growing trend, as recruitment teams get the skills and tools to take control of their content creation.
Most teams use content creation tools for their social media posts
Of the 58 recruitment specialists who indicated that they create their content themselves, 95% use some form of tool to make their social media visuals.
The majority use tools such as Photoshop, PowerPoint templates, and native features offered by the social media platforms themselves (such as filters). Dedicated template platforms such as Canva, Content Stadium and Picart are also some popular alternatives.
71% of teams face content creation challenges
71% of the recruitment, talent acquisition and employer branding specialists who use social media face one or more challenges when creating their content.
The statistics show that the biggest issues centered around 3 trends:
- Time: While some specialists are investing more time than they would like (44%), some cannot create the social media recruiting content they want due to a lack of time and resources (28%).
- Creative skills: 30% of teams lack design skills.
- Budget: 20% find creating content expensive, and do not have the budget to create what they want.
“Presenting content beautifully visually takes a lot of time, and is quite expensive,” said one respondent.
Others added: “Lack of time is the main obstacle,” and “It often takes a lot of time before we have a perfect result, but it is very important.”
Meanwhile, some respondents shared their solutions. One specialist from our social recruiting statistics research explained that they “usually hire a consultancy agency to help us further,” and several others recommended “doing your research for good apps, systems or software,” which they mention can save time, increase quality, and decrease costs.
Create professional branded content yourself – in a few clicks.
Lack of time, design skills, or resources shouldn’t stand in the way of consistent social media content.
At Content Stadium, we give recruitment and employer branding teams the tools to create, share and post professional branded images, animations and video content, in a few clicks, thanks to our custom-built templates.
Learn more about how we can help you attract the right talent on social media: discover our content creation platform for recruitment and employer branding teams.
Get more social media recruiting ideas and examples
- Read the full social recruiting and employer branding 2023 report, for more statistics, insights and expert recommendations.
- Get inspired by these examples of “we are hiring” social media posts.
- Grow your employer brand on social media with these 8 best practices.
