Dive Brief:

• If you've ever seen a job candidate’s selfie via social media and found it annoying, there are others who can relate. According to a new survey by Jobvite, 25% of recruiters reported to having a negative perception of selfies, as reported by Human Resources Online.
• The survey, which gathered responses from over 1,400 recruiters and HR professionals, found that while a quarter of them do not like selfies, 73% hold a neutral view, and 3% actually have a positive view of them, says HRMorning.
• What else bothers recruiters? More than half (54%) of them dislike posts showing candidates drinking alcohol, and even more (75%) respond negatively to posts revealing marijuana use or spelling and grammar mistakes (72%).

Dive Insight:

Despite those annoying distractions, recruiters today can ill afford to be too choosy when it comes to promising candidates, as the talent war intensifies. For example, the survey found that almost all (95%) recruiters are anticipating an equally tough or even tougher competition for talent over the next 12 months.

“Landing a highly skilled candidate can sometimes feel like hunting for an elusive unicorn,” said Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite. When unicorn hunting, 78% of recruiters reported finding their best candidates through referrals, up from 60% in 2014, followed by social and professional networks (56%), and intern-to-hire programs (55%). Most recruiters use LinkedIn (87%), while about half (55%) use Facebook and Twitter (47%).

“Recruiters need to get creative and take a multipronged approach using social media, insights gleaned from analytics, and mobile tools, while engaging the entire organization to help find and hire top talent,” Finnigan said.