Social media recruitment works well in some cases.
Using social media to recruit
As the large recruitment website Monster says: “…talent acquisition has been an early adopter of social networks…”. This is because a great deal of jobs are referral based and also due to the fact that marketing and recruitment now play more of a combined role. It also clearly comes about as a result of the sheer mass of possible candidates that are available on social media websites and the advertising opportunities that these websites offer. The reach granted by social media far outweighs that of print media, while many social sites are more focused, niche portals that group together certain similarly skilled individuals – a goldmine for recruiters and companies alike.
Using Facebook, Twitter, et al
While it’s all fine and well to have a large number of fans on your company’s Facebook or Twitter page, these aren’t really people that necessarily ever want to work for your company. To be successful at pulling out
Remember, that everything you post while recruiting using social media, just like anything you post on the Internet, is there forever. Likewise for job seekers, many companies are also using social media during the recruitment process to complete extra background checks. I recall while recruiting that I found a candidate had left out some information that was available on LinkedIn and his lying cost him the chance at interviewing for the opportunity available at the time.
Rope the whole company in
Getting the rest of the company’s staff members to participate has huge benefits. Especially if they are users of the social media websites and apps that you as a recruiter are utilising. They themselves can even become “evangelists”, promoting the company’s brand and image very positively, which looks good to new hires and potential candidates. It is thus worth infusing your staff members with the ability to broadcast your brand.
Focusing on professional networks like LinkedIn for management roles
And so we turn to LinkedIn, the social media website that loves job seekers and has a fickle relationship with recruiters, while they are both in turn the best clients of the network itself. Focused on being a network of professionals, with a public CV for almost every user, LinkedIn is by far the best place to pick up most skills, but not all. Medical talent, for example, is not often found on LinkedIn.
If you are a recruiter, then it is usually worth investing in LinkedIn’s costly services that allow you more and better search abilities on the site. The payment necessary is easily offset by looking at the expenses undergone if you utilise normal recruitment consulting methods.
Other social media such as Dribbble or StackOverflow
If social media recruitment is defined as reaching job seekers and filling vacancies through using the Internet, mainly on websites where people with a similar interest socialise, then there are many more websites that just Facebook and Twitter. Designers congregate on Dribbble. Developers meet on Github and StackOverflow. There is a meetup group for just about everyone on Meetup.com in almost every town. While launching up a hardware and app combination startup, I found incredibly rare skills at some of the meetups, while likewise StackOverflow, while horribly expensive, will bring you amazingly skilled programmers.
Most importantly, hiring through social media brings you into the “group”, meaning that if you find one Java programmer on Twitter, you’re likely to find more within his or her list of followers. This is in contrast to telephonic screening where you have to ask for referrals and draw them out of an already regretted candidate.
For recruitment consultants, especially, social media recruitment is a must. If so, then surely it must be a “must” for companies as well, since they are paying recruitment agents to do, among other things, exactly that. As a company, you will find that covering social media properly will decrease your need to outsource recruitment reach and process.
