Companies report using social media sites to connect with clients, promote employment brands and to recruit and research potential employees.
As hospitality companies emerge from one of the steepest economic downturns in history, they understand the significant reach and importance of using social media to promote and rebuild their organizations.
A new CareerBuilder survey reports that 57 percent of hospitality employers use social media to promote their organization – the highest among industries surveyed. Four-in-ten (44 percent) said they are using social media to connect with clients and find new business, while others are using it to recruit and research potential employees (15 percent), or strengthen their employment brands (23 percent). The survey was conducted among more than 120 hospitality employers between May 18 and June 3, 2010.
When it comes to managing social media strategy, 67 percent of hospitality employers report that their marketing department handles social media outreach, followed by public relations (21 percent) and human resources (18 percent). Thirty percent of hospitality employers have 1-3 people communicating on behalf of their organization, while 9 percent report that 4-5 people handle the work. Eleven percent said that six or more people communicate for their company via social media. Fifty-one percent said they didn't know.
"As communication via social media becomes increasingly pervasive, hospitality organizations are harnessing these sites to help achieve a variety of business goals," said Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder. "Social media allows organizations to communicate in ways that didn't exist ten years ago, promoting their services and brands while also supplementing their recruitment strategy."
Hospitality workers report that they are turning to social media sites for more than connecting with friends. They're also using social media to research companies and jobs. Workers who come across company pages on social media sites shared what they would most like to see, including:
- Job listings – 43 percent
- Q&A or fast facts about the organization – 29 percent
- Information about career paths within the organization – 25 percent
- Evidence that working at the company is fun – 25 percent
- Employee testimonials – 14 percent
- Pictures of company events – 14 percent
- Company awards – 10 percent
- Video of new products/services – 7 percent
- Research or studies that the company has conducted – 6 percent
- Videos of a day on the job – 5 percent
On the flip side, workers also shared the biggest turnoffs when encountering a company via social media, including the company's failure to reply to questions (30 percent), communication reading like an ad (29 percent), removing or filtering public comments (27 percent), and failure to regularly post information (26 percent).
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive© on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 124 U.S. hospitality hiring managers and 115 U.S. hospitality workers (employed full-time; not self-employed; non government); ages 18 and over between May 18 and June 3, 2010 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset of U.S. employers and/or employees, based on their responses to certain questions). With pure probability samples of 124 and 115 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 8.8 and +/-9.14 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.
About CareerBuilder®
CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset - their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 23 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 32 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world's top employers, providing resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to recruitment support. More than 9,000 websites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder's proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com Media Contact:
CareerBuilder
Allison Nawoj
773-527-2437
allison.nawoj@careerbuilder.com 
