And the survey says… more Human Resources professionals are using social networks to augment or replace traditional recruiting techniques. According to a social recruiting survey by Jobvite, an online social recruiting service company, 83% of businesses polled said they are already or planning on using social networks to find new employees this year.

In the sense that referral hires in general are stronger and of higher quality, it’s fitting that social network recruiting would be a natural way to attract the great-fit employees who already know about your company and are inclined to stick around longer.

Jobvite’s survey indicates:

• 46% of respondents plan to spend more on social recruiting in 2010 than in 2009
• 38% will spend less on third-party recruiters and search firms
• 36% will spend less on job boards
• Only 17% use no social networking or don’t know if they will use social networking for recruiting new staff

Why less on job boards? Respondents rated job boards last for candidate quality; referrals were rated highest. Only 17% of companies surveyed planned to spend more on job boards in 2010 than they did in 2009.

Another interesting fact is that Jobvite’s first survey in 2008 showed that more than twice as many recruiters used LinkedIn than Facebook as a social network recruiting tool; Twitter didn’t even appear as a response to “what social networks do you use for recruiting?” This year, 78% of those surveyed indicated they use LinkedIn, 55% use Facebook and 45% use Twitter.

HR managers are also using social network tools to research candidates through LinkedIn (over 70%) and Facebook (nearly 50%). About 60% used search engines to research job seekers—perhaps as simply as Googling each name.

With both the cost of recruiting and the number of candidates for every position going up, it can make sense to take advantage of low-cost or free tools to improve the quality of your next group of job interviewees.

And don’t neglect to conduct thorough pre-employment screening before you hire! No social network will tell you whether a new hire has a criminal history or is a financial risk to your company.