• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 12, 2011

"Fish where the fish are," the saying goes, and when it comes to hiring, over half the fish in America are on social media sites of one type or another. Unsurprisingly, the number of employers who use social media to recruit new talent has risen sharply in recent years, according to a new survey by Jobvite of over 800 human resources and recruiting professionals across a variety of industries, including technology, health care, education, government, construction and utilities.

The proportion of employers using social media to connect with potential employees, through job postings, referrals, headhunting, and the like, increased from 83% in 2010 to 89% in 2011, with 80.2% saying they already use social media and 8.7% saying they plan to begin this year (I'm not sure what explains the slight discrepancy between the 2010 and 2011 figures -- maybe 2.8% decided to stop using social media by the end of 2010). 55% said they will increase their budgets for social recruiting, and 64% said they have already used social media to successfully recruit new talent, up from 58% in 2011.

Again unsurprisingly, LinkedIn was the clear leader among social media recruiting sites, with the proportion of respondents saying the use LinkedIn increasing from 78% in 2010 to 87% this year.  Other favorites in 2011 were Facebook, with 55% of respondents using it for recruiting, and Twitter with 47%. Perhaps more significantly, 64% of respondents said they are now using multiple social networks for recruiting, including 40% who said they use LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter together.

Regardless of which specific sites they're using, employers are definitely aware of the fact that potential employees are posting information about themselves online. 45% of those surveyed by Jobvite said they "always search" for online profiles, up from 32% in 2010, while 29% said they "occasionally search."

Despite worrying economic conditions, a majority of the employers surveyed by Jobvite (67%) said they plan to increase hiring this year, up from 56% in 2010. Among those who expect to do more hiring in 2011, the proportion using social media (95%) is even higher than the genereal survey pool. Additionally, 77% of the respondents said they think there will be more competition for talent, and roughly two-thirds say they expect to recruit talent from competitors. One-third say they expect the average new employee to stay two years or less, while 48% said they expect them to stay 3-5 years.