Using social media for recruiting - aka social recruiting - has now been around for a good few years. For many recruiters (though, not enough though in my opinion), the use of the different social media channels as part of their everyday recruiting has become second nature to them. For them it is no longer social recruiting, just recruiting using a few more tools and channels.They use social networks in a wide variety of ways:
- Sourcing
- Engaging
- Communicating
- Referencing (unofficially of course)
- Posting jobs
- Sharing jobs
- Sharing great content
- Demonstrating expertise and knowledge
- Building their brand
- Creating interest groups (call them talent communities if you want)
- Building their networks
- Being transparent
- Mobile = time friendly for candidates
- Showing a personal side
Please note that I have not included the word recruiting here - they still have to make sure they do that bit themselves .........by actually meeting and talking to their candidates!
These are the enlightened recruiters. Do you know any?
From my experiences over the last few months, working with both in-house recruiters and recruitment agencies, these social media enlightened recruiters are a small number. Why?
- Fear
- Lack of understanding
- Cost
- Employee Empowerment
- Control
- Brand
- Scare stories
- Control of data
- Time worries
- Confusion
- Apathy
- Believing social media is still a fad! << You are nutters if you still think this!!!
To any recruiters and recruitment business owners out there, still not using social media - don't fear it. embrace it. It has become part of the recruitment industry and integrated into recruitment practices because it works. And the great thing is it can work any way you want it to! If you only want to use it to help promote your brand, then that is great; if you want to use the social channels to source new candidates, then that is also great too. But please understand that social is now here, it is not going away and the longer you wait to integrate it in to your business, the bigger advantage your competitors and clients are going to have.
There are now many tools that make using social media effective for recruiting. Here are just a few that can be effectively used from a recruiting perspective:
- Time management
- Hootsuite
- Tweetdeck
- Buffer
- Brand and Content
- Facebook Page
- Google+ Page
- LinkedIn (individual & Company)
- YouTube
- Slideshare
- Blogs
- Sourcing
- Followerwonk
- Talentbin
- FindPeopleOnPlus
- Job Posting & Sharing
- LinkedIn updates
- Twitterfeed
- Dlvr.it
- Work4labs
- Broadbean
- Hootsuite
- Availability
- PC & Mac
- All mobiles
- Tablets
- Communication
- Email everywhere (mobiles)
- SMS
- MMS
- RSS
- Twitter DM's
- Facebook Messages
- InMails
- Push messages (mobile apps)
- Time Saving Meetings (FREE)
- FaceTime (Facebook)
- Skype
- Hangouts (Google)
And you have a huge audience to engage with >> there are 100's of millions of people on the different social networks - and that WILL INCLUDE YOUR CANDIDATES AND YOUR CLIENTS.
This is no longer about doing social recruiting as a separate channel, it is now about integrating social media into your existing recruiting strategy and processes. There as many social media platforms, networks, tools and applications as you would need - there is now no excuse whatsoever!
Social recruiting IS mainstream: You have the tools now time to use them.
And remember, every day that goes by another of your competitors and clients will start using social media. How can you not finally embrace it?
We work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them with recruitment strategy, recruitment process and social recruiting. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.
If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.
