General Surgery Residency Applicants' Perspective on Social Media as a Recruiting Tool

OBJECTIVE: General surgery residency programs have increased their social media presence to educate and recruit prospective residents. This study aims to under-stand the impact of general surgery residency program social media on the 2020-2021 applicants' evaluation of prospective programs, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.DESIGN: An optional 20-item online survey regarding specialty choice, sub-internship rotation completion, social media resource use, social media impact, and gen-eral demographic information.SETTING: Large academic medical center, United States. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 1191 Participants to our gen-eral surgery residency program were sent a survey. Six hundred thirteen completed the survey.RESULTS: Surveys were sent to all general surgery resi-dency applicants of a single program (1,191) and 613 (51.4%) responded. Overall, social media resources use included official residency program website (92.4%), Doximity (36.5%), and Twitter (35.6%). The most fre-quently relied upon resources by applicants were the official residency program website (64.9%) Twitter (10.9%) and Instagram (10.8%). Most respondents agreed that social media was an effective means to inform appli-cants (70.9%) and that it positively impacted their per-ception of the program (62.6%). The most commonly cited benefits were helping the program exhibit its cul-ture and comradery among residents, faculty, and staff (79.2%), with posts of social events and camaraderie as being the most helpful in learning about residency pro-grams. Of all applicants, 71.3% noted that social mediahad a significant impact on perceptions of programs dur-ing the application cycles that were limited by COVID-19 safety and travel restrictions. However, most appli-cants disagree with (35.3%) or are neutral toward (32.1%) the statement that social media will have less of an impact on future cycles not limited by COVID-19. CONCLUSION: During the 2020-2021 application cycle, the majority of applicants utilized social media to inform and educate themselves about the general surgery pro-grams they applied to. Residency-based social media had a positive impact on the majority of applicants, especially in terms of allowing a program to demonstrate its culture and camaraderie. Investing time and resources into resi-dency social media accounts appears to be a meaningful pursuit for general surgery programs and is an important aspect in today's recruitment effort. (J Surg Ed 79:1334-1341. (c) 2022 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)