Facebook now boasts 937 million users, and United States Facebook users account for over 69% of the world’s most popular social network. These same users spend nearly 400 minutes liking, uploading pics and updating statuses using the social media giant each month. How do other organizations who are recruiting outside of the United States and globally use Facebook as well as other social networks to reach job seekers, recruit, source and hire?
Top Facebook Use By Country
Last week a blog reader messaged me asking about Facebook use by country. They are recruiting for a position in Russia and want to make sure they are productive monetarily and time productive when it comes to recruiting on social media. Is Facebook the most cost-productive place to be spending for their recruiting, sourcing and hiring efforts? The graphic below shows you the top ten countries by Facebook users as well as recent growth over the past week.
Global Social Recruiting Alternatives to Facebook
Keep in mind that Facebook is the number one social network in 127 of the 136 countries around the globe. But what about countries that don’t have a high percentage of Facebook users? Where should recruiters go? Can they still recruit using social networks? Yes. There are literally millions of social networks, each very unique. For organizations that are recruiting and engaging job seekers globally especially on social networks, it pays to do some research to focus efforts.
You can see from the graphic above from the Next Web, Facebook rules the world we are living in. Blue touches most of the globe. Recruiters can rest assured in most countries, Facebook is the number one social network and a solid strategy when hiring. But for many recruiters, like my friend who is recruiting in Russia, Facebook is not the only game in town. It’s actually not the number one social network.
- VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are popular social networks in Russian-speaking countries
- Vietnam’s most popular social network is Zing
- QZone is the number one social network in China
- Drauglem is premier social network in Latavia
3 Comments
Just because people are on Facebook doesn’t mean they will look for jobs via it. I know many senior professionals who wouldn’t even dream of having a Facebook account, or have had one which has laid dormant for ages. By and large Facebook is a place for idle gossip between family and friends, a place to post funny picture and jokes or discuss the minutiae of your life. It’s not targeted and it’s not professional. Indeed, many on there don;t even say what they do for a job, so it’s impossible to know that you will be reaching the very best people for the job.
@Aladair, I think you are missing the point. Facebook is a searchable database where as a recruiter I can go and search for job seekers. It doesn’t matter if you want it to be used that way. It just does. Over 1 billion people are using Facebook and the majority of professionals are using it for personal and professional reasons. While candidates may not share all their professional background information on the Facebook, they are sharing industry-related news and bits about their work and job. So recruiters make assumptions after we find your profile and we dig deeper looking for an article mention with your name or your membership listing in a professional association in addition to your Facebook account.
Truth is that FB is just an online database. It catalogues your life. Advertisers and marketers are using the tool in this way to reach customers and recruiting this way in my opinion is a smart option. Why wouldn’t you be where the largest population of adults are online?
JMM
Because I don’t want my life catalogued on Facebook and I don’t want to be part of a database that makes it easy for any old recruiter to find me free of charge and then charge a client a huge fee for doing something the client could do themselves. Where’s the added value? What are recruiters actually getting paid for these days if all they do is a trawl through Facebook and Linkedin? And what about the very many professionals who don’t use those mediums, particularly Facebook, where, despite your assertion that the majority use it, I know for a fact that in the UK many senior level professionals don’t because they find it banal. It was originally a college dating medium. It morphed into a worldwide platform for people to talk about the minutiae of their lives and to me that is all it will ever be. I want a job I look where the jobs are – job boards, media career portals, employers careers section of their websites.
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