The True Effectiveness of Social Media as a Recruitment Channel in September 2015

If you pay attention to recruitment news, then you've no doubt read many articles promoting social media as a recruitment channel. Attrachting passive candidates through social channels is discussed daily on social platforms. Some claim to already have had great success, other claim it is the future of recruitment.

But how effective is social media as a stand-alone hiring channel right now? In September 2015 we took a cross section of our clients and measured how many new candidates registered on their careers sites. To measure channel effectiveness, we grouped the results by candidate source:

• affiliate sites (including pay per click ads)
• direct traffic
• email
• job boards
• organic search
• social media

The results surprised even us.

The statistics show a clear divide between the three most popular traffic sources (job boards, organic search and direct traffic) and the fringe channels. Social media provided the lowest number of unique candidates.