While it can be argued that the survey has a natural bias (Chances are that respondents are more open to social media than non-respondents - particularly, if many Jobvite clients participated. Also: with 30% of respondents technology firms have more than their share.), there are a few points that still seem very valid:

• Use of social and professional networking sites (not distinguished that way in the survey) in recruitment is growing and by now widely accepted.
• Job boards and search firms lose ground
• Employers are disappointed with the results they get from job boards and search firms
• Employee referrals deliver best results and will be used more. There is much unused potential even in the US, where they are used far more than in continental Europe.
• Employers will invest more in recruitment through social media and are more satisfied with their results than they are with job boards.
• In the US LinkedIn leads the pack far ahead of Facebook and Twitter

These results are also in line with research and project experience of iProCon HCM consultants.

Jobvite's survey says that 68% of employers already use social networking for recruitment and 13% plan to start in 2009. From those, who are using it, 95% use LinkedIn at least as one of their tools.

These numbers do certainly look different in Europe, particularly in continental Europe. With some support from our consultants, our German sister company iProCon GmbH conducted some research and ran a trial to find out which networking site would be best suited for active search (i.e. searching for candidates through the site's search function - not waiting for candidates to find the company) of IT and management professionals and graduates in Germany. They decided that XING is their first choice and are now actively using it to find German speaking SAP HR consultants. Click here to learn about their e-recruitment research (German only).