More job seekers applying to the jobs advertised on your recruitment web site is what every recruiter dreams of (and asks me to do for them). Being listed on top of Google search results is important but the referral traffic from the social media sites is growing rapidly. If you manage your presence on the social media sites you have most likely seen something like 100% growth of the referral traffic from the social media sites in the last 12 months. Google is aware of this and have recently introduced a detailed analysis of the referral traffic from the social media web sites in their Google Analytics product.
What social media site will bring you the best visitors and the most job applications?
The best way to start looking at it is by the number of pages the visitors from each site look at on your site. Here is a chart I have compiled from number of recruitment and job sites that shows very interesting and quite unpredicted data. The visitors to the job site that came from LinkedIn open only 2.13 web pages on the job site on average. The Facebook referral traffic is slightly better with 3.3 web sites opened by the visitors that came from Facebook. Twitter is the largest surprise here. The average visitor from twitter opens 7.74 web pages on a job site!
More pages seen on a recruitment site mean more applications for your jobs!
Without entering into a deep discussion why do visitors from LinkedIn open almost 4 times less pages than the visitors from Twitter, it is quite likely that you will get an application from a visitor who have seen more pages. Why? Most of the pages on a job site, careers site or a recruitment agency web site are the pages with jobs currently on offer. The more jobs seen the more likely is that the job seeker will find something interesting to apply for.
Do not tweet your jobs!
If a visitor from twitter opens almost 8 pages on your recruitment site, you can rest assured that he will find the job he is looking for on your site. Tweeting a single job in each tweet has a low rate of matching the interest of any single job seeker. Tweet something that catches the attention of any (relevant) job seeker. Industry news, salary surveys, skills in demand or something funny bordering on provocative in most cases has the highest click trough rate (on Twitter). With on average almost 8 pages viewed from the visitor from Twitter, you can be sure he will find the job to apply for as well on your web site.
Remember, a visitor from Twitter will find your positions advertised on your recruitment web site. Tweeting and re-tweeting your jobs is more likely annoy them more than if you fill the twitter stream interesting data (published on your site!). They will find your jobs when they visit your site.