What You Can Learn From Recruiters Bullhorn Reach 2013 Report

What You Can Learn From Recruiters Bullhorn Reach 2013 Report Bullhorn Reach just released their  2013 North American  Social Recruiting  Activity Report and I wanted to help you understand what this might mean for your job search. Theres a lot you can learn from recruiters (both in-house and third-party) and how they source candidates! Who Is Bullhorn Reach? In case you havent heard or seen this name before, Bullhorn Reach was launched in February 2011 and was  designed to help recruiters leverage social media to source candidates more effectively. Over 170,000 recruiters subscribe to this service to tap into social recruiting. If you are connected to recruiters on LinkedIn, you may have seen their Bullhorn Reach status updates in your stream. The Bullhorn Reach report is based on data gathered from over 160,000 North American recruiters in 2012 and it  examines their social media activity    across the “big three” social networks â€" LinkedIn,  Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn Reigns Supreme LinkedIn is the g0-to source for sourcing candidates because it produces applications. 5.5X more applications than Facebook and Twitter delivers 1.3X more applications than Facebook (Twitter declined in producing applicants in 2013.)   My take on this is that job seekers prefer to use LinkedIn for job searching because they know their LinkedIn profile best represents them professionally (True? let me know in a comment!) It may also be due to the fact that Twitter locked down their API so users can no longer apply with their Twitter profile through Bullhorn Reach.  What This Means For Job Seekers You have to have a LinkedIn profile and it has to be keyword rich! You need to connect with recruiters on LinkedIn. You also have to monitor your LinkedIn homepage regularly if you want to see the jobs recruiters you are connected to are promoting! What Types of Jobs Are Being Posted using Bullhorn Reach? Information Technology Finance and Banking Healthcare These are the top three categories of jobs being recruited for using Bullhorn Reach however, take a look at the other types of jobs recruiters are sourcing via social networks in this chart. As we see more jobs become harder to fill, you can probably expect more activity through social recruiting. (Some say we are headed towards a war for talent whereby recruiters will be hunting harder for the best and the brightest- perhaps even stealing when necessary.) What This Means for Job Seekers No matter what occupation you are in, you need to be on social networks, specifically LinkedIn. Expect to see jobs moving away from the job boards (or change)  and move towards social networks or become even more integrated with social networks. Learn how these social networks work! What you can lock down, how to interact, where to find jobs, etc. Is Bigger Better? Recruiters with bigger networks did get more applications, but not as a percentage of their connections. So which is better, quantity or quality? That is a question this study doesnt address.  But overall this is a numbers game. Your potential message/reach is only as big as the number of people in your network. If you only know 20 people, that limits the ability for people to know about you and what you are saying, doing and looking for. (Not good during an active job search!) What This Means for Job Seekers Your chances of gaining a recruiters attention by interacting with them on Facebook or Twitter may allow you to stand out since they arent interacting with as many people on these networks. Recruiters want to connect with you and grow their network! It becomes their own private, more targeted distribution channel for jobs. Get comfortable and know the rules of engagement on all 3 social networks so you can maximize your presence on all three.   Take Aways from this Study 1) LinkedIn is a must-use resource for job seekers to discover jobs being advertised by recruiters. 2) Job seekers MUST connect with recruiters on LinkedIn (whether they know the person or not) in order to quickly find the shared opportunities. You must also understand how to work with recruiters, so please read this post! 3) Individual recruiters might have social network preferences, so dont give up on the other Twitter and Facebook (yet!). Just be sure they represent you professionally. If you would like to download a copy of Bullhorn Reachs full report, follow this link. Have you used Bullhorn Reach to apply for jobs? What was your experience?