Does Social Networking = LinkedIn for Most Recruiters?

We ran a webinar today with Elaine Orler and Jason Corsello of Knowledge Infusion about what changes we should expect from recruiting technology in the next year.

I learned a lot on the call, but one of the polls that we took really made me stop and think. Here it is:

What social networking application are you most likely to use in your recruiting efforts?
	# of Respondents	% of Respondents
LinkedIn	298	66.82%
Facebook	35	7.85%
MySpace	7	1.57%
YouTube	0	0.00%
Twitter	4	0.90%
Other	16	3.59%
None of the above	86	19.28%

Total Respondents	446	100.00%

That LinkedIn was the most popular did not surprise me — it’s not exactly a secret that it has become one of the critical tools of our profession. I was surprised that LinkedIn was such an overwhelming favorite – nobody else was even remotely close.

The way we asked the question had people answering which of these services they are most likely to use the most. But I wonder — if we had phrased the question to ask if recruiters are using these sites at all for professional services, would the answers have been any different?

Asked a different way, aside from a very small portion of the recruiting community, are we really using social media effectively?