More Than One-Third of Employers Use Social Media to Promote Their Organizations, Finds New CareerBuilder Survey

--One-quarter of companies leverage social media to recruit and research potential employees--

--Twenty-nine percent of companies with 500 or fewer employees utilize social media--

--More than half of leisure and hospitality organizations use social media; tops industries surveyed--

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Aug 18, 2010, 07:00 ET

CHICAGO, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- As companies emerge from one of the steepest economic downturns in history, they understand the significant reach and importance of using social media to promote and rebuild their organizations. A new CareerBuilder survey reports that 35 percent of employers use social media to promote their company. One-quarter (25 percent) of these employers said that they are using social media to connect with clients and find new business, while others are using it to recruit and research potential employees (21 percent), or strengthen their employment brands (13 percent). The survey was conducted among more than 2,500 employers between May 18 and June 3, 2010.

Businesses of all sizes and industries report using social media to promote their companies. Twenty-nine percent of organizations with 500 or fewer employees said they do so, followed by 38 percent of companies with 501 to 1,000 employees and 44 percent of companies with more than 1,000 workers. Comparing industries, leisure and hospitality topped those surveyed with 57 percent saying the use social media to promote their business, followed by IT, (48 percent), retail (43 percent) and sales (41 percent).

When it comes to managing social media strategy, 43 percent of employers report that their marketing department handles social media outreach, followed by public relations (26 percent) and human resources (19 percent). One-quarter (25 percent) of employers have 1-3 people communicating on behalf of their organization, while 7 percent report that 4-5 people handle the work. Eleven percent said that more than six people communicate for their company via social media. Fifty-seven percent said they didn't know.

"As communication via social media becomes increasingly pervasive, organizations are harnessing these sites to help achieve a variety of business goals," said Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder. "Social media allows organizations to communicate in ways that didn't exist ten years ago, promoting their services and brands while also supplementing their recruitment strategy."

Workers report that they are turning to social media sites for more than connecting with friends. They're also using social media to research companies and jobs. Workers who come across company pages on social media sites shared what they would most like to see, including:

Job listings – 35 percent
Q&A or fast facts about the organization – 26 percent
Information about career paths within the organization – 23 percent
Evidence that working at the company is fun – 16 percent
Employee testimonials – 16 percent
Pictures of company events – 12 percent
Video of new products/services – 10 percent
Company awards – 9 percent
Research or studies that the company has conducted – 9 percent
Videos of a day on the job – 8 percent

On the flip side, workers also shared the biggest turnoffs when encountering a company via social media, including the company's communication reading like an ad (38 percent), failure to reply to questions (30 percent), failure to regularly post information (22 percent) and removing or filtering public comments (22 percent).

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive© on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 2,534 U.S. hiring managers and 4,498 U.S. workers (employed full-time; not self-employed; non government); ages 18 and over between May 18 and June 3, 2010 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset of U.S. employers and/or employees, based on their responses to certain questions). With a pure probability sample of 2,534 and 4,498 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.95 and +/-1.46 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.

About CareerBuilder®

CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset - their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 23 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 32 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world's top employers, providing resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to recruitment support. More than 9,000 websites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder's proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com.