An Introduction to Social Recruiting
Recruiting top talent has always been a challenge. But with new social recruiting tactics, many companies are turning to online communities and platforms to source candidates quicker and easier.
For those of you who are familiar with social recruiting, this post might be a bit of a repeat for you. However, there are still a lot of recruiters and HR professionals out there who are either hesitant to use social media for recruiting or simply don’t feel comfortable with the platform. So this goes out to them.
Born and raised in the UK, I've been in advertising since 2004. The agencies I've worked for include Grey, Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson. Along the way, I've won a handful of shiny metal things, including a Gold Cannes Lion, Gold Adfest, Gold Kam Fan and a rather dangerous-looking Silver Spikes Asia trophy. I thought I know or had seen everything associated with advertising. How wrong was I?
When I first entered the world of Employment Branding & Recruitment Advertising at Maximum in 2013, one of the things that got me excited was Social Recruiting. But what is it exactly?
“Social recruiting is when companies and recruiters use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites to source and recruit candidates for employment.”
It's not really a surprise if you look at the staggering statistics about the most used social networking channels:
“Social recruiting is a proactive process for job seekers and recruiters to search, converse, share, engage and refer each other using social media, web-based and mobile platforms.”
Even more astonishing is that there are more devices connected to the internet than there are people on earth and 40% of people socialise more online than they do face-to-face. Also, every minute, 100,000 tweets are sent, 2 million queries are searched on Google and 684,478 pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Now you know why I’m excited!
In the last few years, social media has transformed from what may have been a temporary fad to a very real, established part of life in the 21st century.
By allowing more channels for a brand to connect to their audience in a relevant context, businesses can experience a number of recruitment benefits by utilising social media.
“Social recruiting is a concept not a defined technique, and breaks down the three primary activities of Social Recruiting as Push, Pull, and being Genuinely Social.”
Some Benefits of Social Recruiting
1) Diversity – All of these channels offer diverse results that recruiters can filter by a wide range of demographics and career level to match their needs.
2) Improved referrals – Hiring managers can easily review a referred candidate’s resume, co-worker recommendation, review skills, previous job profiles and professional references for credibility.
3) Increased visibility – Companies and job seekers can build their own community or forum with career opportunities and sift through multiple channels for relevant results with options to filter and match job opportunities depending on location, skill level, titles, years of experience, and salary range.
4) Larger reach – Social media tools help recruiters engage with large audiences to get a comprehensive sense of characteristics, culture, experience and personality.
This combination of quantity and quality candidate data in social networks is a game changer. As more firms begin to step into social media networks, different employers will find the best practice methods of recruiting for their particular field.
At the end of the day, recruiting is all about sourcing the right talent, so having more options is better for employers and job seekers as well. If used properly, employers don’t have to conjure up candidates – social networks have the potential to present quality referrals with a single click. Now that’s exciting!
