One in five companies rejects applicants based on social media profile
Already, one in five companies rejects applicants based on their social media profiles. This was revealed in the annual technology survey conducted by Schwartz Public Relations in collaboration with the global PR network Eurocom Worldwide.
Social media is not only becoming increasingly important for companies in terms of communication, it is now also playing a central role in recruitment. One in five companies already rejects applicants based on their social media profile and 40 percent of those surveyed stated that they check the social media profiles of applicants.
According to the survey, spending on social is set to increase again this year - almost half of respondents (49%) stated this. It is interesting to note that despite the growing budget, 57% of managers state that they are unable to precisely measure the impact of their investments in social media. Just 23 percent of all survey participants are able to measure their social media activities at all.
There was a major change in the use of social networks compared to 2011. Linkedin, rather than Facebook (64%), is now the most frequently used platform with 74%, followed by Twitter with 67% and YouTube with 56%. The content comes predominantly (78%) from internal sources and second most frequently from agencies (12%).
Although social media is becoming increasingly popular, only half of those surveyed stated that their company has social media guidelines for dealing with social networks. The study also found that 74 percent of respondents consider online PR to be very or fairly important for their company's search engine optimization (SEO) - 37 percent even consider it to be very important.
57% of respondents whose company publishes a blog say that it is intended to raise the company's profile or contribute to opinion leadership. Almost as many (55%) say that blogging is to improve interaction with customers, while 37% say it is to improve SEO and 36% say it is to participate in industry debates. As in previous surveys, the main reason for not having a blog this year is the time involved - 42% of respondents stated this. One in five see no added value and 14% fear negative comments.
The Eurocom Worldwide Technology Survey was conducted in January and February 2012 by the member agencies of the global PR network Eurocom Worldwide. A total of 318 executives from technology companies in Europe took part in the online survey.
