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Job recruitment through social media rising in Canada

Social media fastest growing recruitment tool for Canadian employers
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Social media has become an increasingly important recruitment tool. Employers used various social media platforms to help fill more than 50 per cent of available vacancies in the third quarter of 2019. (Black Press Media file photo)

A survey confirms the growing popularity of social media as a recruiting tool for employers.

The Job Vacancy and Wage Survey released by Statistics Canada found employers used social media to help fill more than half of available jobs in the third quarter of 2019. Four years ago, employers used social media to help fill every third job.

“This was the recruitment method that has seen the largest increase in use over the four-year period since comparable data became available,” it reads.

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Other recruitment methods becoming more popular include online job boards (up 9.7 percentage points to 75.6 per cent); company websites (up 6.4 to 58.3 per cent) and professional networking, headhunters, or employment agency (up four percentage points to 19.3 per cent).

Other methods have seen their popularity decline. The use of newspaper ads dropped by 8.5 per cent to 11.9 per cent.

But if the use of digital recruitment methods has risen, many employers still rely on the analogue methods of personal contacts, referrals, and informal networks. They filled two-thirds (65.6 per cent) of all vacancies in the third quarter of 2019.



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Wolf Depner

About the Author: Wolf Depner

I joined the national team with Black Press Media in 2023 from the Peninsula News Review, where I had reported on Vancouver Island's Saanich Peninsula since 2019.
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