Social Networking Is Not Just For Kids (Anymore)

Social networking is not just for kids (anymore)—the New York Times recently highlighted new data from comScore revealing that only 11% of Twitter users are teenagers from the ages of 12 to 17. Twitter has defied the traditional model of social media adoption, which would have put adolescents and college students as early adopters. Instead, Twitter’s users have mainly been adults (particularly attracting professional crowds) and businesses looking for a wide-reaching channel to ask questions and get answers, share ideas and news, and market themselves (whether its an individual, company, or product). Along a similar vein, an article earlier this year on CNN points out that the fastest growing age group on Facebook is women older than 55, and Facebook itself claims that its fastest growing demographic is people 35 years old and older.

For all the nay-sayers who have shunned the use of social media for recruiting or limited their use to only attracting college graduates, it’s hard to ignore the widespread infiltration of these technologies into the professional world and the shift in user demographics to a somewhat older generation. Use of social networking tools won’t go away any time soon, and will only get more sophisticated over time. It’s important to recognize today (and for the future) where your candidates reside, how they interact, and how they find information on the Web. Social networks are an excellent way for recruiters to share career opportunity information and build candidate pipelines in a scalable way (members only), especially if you only want to “stay in touch” for if and when hiring picks up again.

To get you started on Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn, check out our guides on setting up your own social networks for recruiting (members only).

Written by: Xi Chen