New surveys released through three of CareerBuilder’s niche sites – MiracleWorkers (which caters to healthcare workers), WorkinRetail (serving the retail industry) and Sologig (focused on contract and freelance positions) – reveal the information workers value most on an organization’s social media pages – and what social media moves they despise.

More than 500 workers nationwide in each of the above industries participated. Take a look at the results, and use them to inform your own social media recruitment efforts:

Healthcare

Fifty-three percent of healthcare workers who use social media are interested in seeing information on company social media pages, according to the survey from MiracleWorkers.com.

What healthcare employers should post…

• Job listings on company pages (wanted by 40 percent of healthcare workers)
• Fact sheets or Q&A about the company (26 percent)
• Career paths within the organization (26 percent)
• Employee testimonials (22 percent)
• Something that conveys fun about working for the organization (19 percent)

…and what they should avoid:

• Company communication reads like an ad (a peeve for 35 percent of healthcare workers)
• Failure to respond to submitted questions (33 percent)
• Failure to regularly post information on social media or blog entries (23 percent)
• Filtering or removing social media comments (20 percent)

Retail

Fifty percent of retail workers who use social media are interested in seeing information on company social media pages, according to the survey from WorkInRetail.com.

What retail employers should post…

• Job listings on company pages (wanted by 33 percent of retail workers)
• Facts sheets or Q&A about the company (27 percent)
• Career paths within the organization (27 percent)
• Employee testimonials (18 percent)
• Something that conveys fun about working for the organization (18 percent)
• Pictures of company events (13 percent)
• Videos of a day on the job (13 percent)
• Video of new products and services (13 percent)

…and what they should avoid:         

• Company communication reads like an ad (a peeve for 43 percent of retail workers)
• Failure to respond to submitted questions (38 percent)
• Filtering or removing social media comments (27 percent)
• Failure to regularly post information on social media or blog entries (24 percent)

Information Technology

Fifty-one percent of IT workers who use social media are interested in seeing information on company social media pages, according to a new survey from Sologig.com.

What IT employers should post…

• Job listings on company pages (wanted by 39 percent of IT workers)
• Fact sheets or Q&A about the company (32 percent)
• Career paths within the organization (24 percent)
• Something that conveys fun about working for the organization (21 percent)
• Video of new products and services (17 percent)
• Employee testimonials (16 percent)

…and what they should avoid

• Company communication reads like an ad (a peeve for 53 percent of healthcare workers)
• Failure to respond to submitted questions (32 percent)
• Inconsistency in company messaging in different social media venues (26 percent)
• Failure to regularly post information or blog entries (25 percent)

Employers must lead the social media path
Despite this interest, very few workers on social media (18 percent of IT workers, 12 percent of healthcare workers, and only 9 percent of retail workers) currently use it as a means to research jobs. Representatives from each site say social media users are waiting for companies to take the lead.

“Social media communication is a two-way street,” says Bill Meidell, product director of WorkinRetail.com. “Retailers need to keep their pages active and respond to as many fans and commenters as possible in order to see a positive return on their efforts.”

“IT workers are not only interested in learning about new career opportunities, but willing to refer jobs to friends or people in their professional networks, as well,” adds Jamie Carney, senior product director of Sologig.com. “Forty-one percent will pass job leads along to others, according to the survey, making social media the perfect vehicle for improving a job listing’s reach.”

Rob Morris, product director of MiracleWorkers.com, echoes this sentiment, saying, “The referral process makes social media a great avenue for career information. We found that 30 percent of healthcare workers on social media pass job opportunities to friends or people in their professional networks.”

Do these results surprise you? What industries are you interested in getting this type of info on?

While most of the discussions we’ve had here on The Hiring Site about social media recruitment focus on its benefits, I wanted to take the opportunity to address a recent whitepaper by talent management firm Taleo about social media recruitment’s potential risks.  (The main risk being, according to the paper, that companies could, in theory, be accused of practicing discrimination by advertising their opportunities on sites whose user demographic disproportionately represents the workforce demographic.)

While it’s good to be aware of the potential risks Taleo mentions in the whitepaper, it is important to point out that these risks represent the exception, not the rule. 

The biggest risk comes from when companies use only social networking sites to source candidates, which could put them at risk for discrimination, according to Taleo, because advertising on just one type of social networking site that attracts only a certain demographic could be seen as an intent to exclude others. (For instance, because the demographic of LinkedIn users disproportionately represents the demographic of the entire workforce, using LinkedIn to source candidates, it could be argued, excludes some groups from getting equal opportunities for employment at your organization.)

But smart companies already know better than to limit their recruiting efforts to just social media because they recognize that social media is just one part of an overall recruitment mix, used to supplement other talent engagement and attraction efforts.

“Anyone who suggests social media be the sole source for any company’s recruiting, or recruiting for a specific position for that matter, is giving bad advice,” says Melissa Murray, Emerging Media Consultant at Personified.

For instance, used in conjunction with postings, hiring events, internal referrals, college tradeshows, etc., social media adds another channel to attracting the right talent to an organization. And while some companies use it for sourcing, it is best used for employment branding and attracting candidates to apply to jobs.

(This isn’t just good legal advice, by the way – it’s smart marketing. Using a variety of channels by which to advertise your open positions will ensure you get in front of a wider range of diverse candidates, each with different skills to offer and ideas to bring to the table.)

In fact, if anything, Taleo’s report is simply a reminder of what companies should be doing anyway (and, for the most part, already are) when it comes to recruitiment, namely:

1. Plan ahead.  Discuss potential risks and contingencies with your legal team, PR department and human resources managers before getting involved in social media.
2. Train your recruiters – whether internally or with the aid of a third-party consultant – on the social networking tools that your company plans on using – in addition to general training on Affirmative Action, EEOC and your company’s own practices to improve its diversity and inclusion efforts.
3. Create social media guidelines for your company and make sure your employees – or whoever is representing your company in the social media space – are well-versed in these guidelines.

“Bottom line,” says Murray, “If a company’s application process is compliant, and they’re inviting candidates from a variety of platforms, they’re creating a diverse pool. It’s up to their sourcing team and hiring managers to select from this pool in a way that supports the company’s diversity initiatives.”

So long as you view social media as a complement to – and not a replacement for – your overall recruiting process, you can still reap the benefits of a social media recruitment strategy.

We at CareerBuilder have created this e-book for you, the employer.

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Use this e-book to discover our best tips around:

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• Succession management
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