There are three words that that many recruiters, sourcers and researchers are seemingly missing when it comes to social recruiting. They are so damn important to understanding the concept of using social media in recruitment. And yet EVERY time I do workshops, training and work with recruitment teams, I have to go through the process of explaining what these three words are.
Do you know what they are?
Let me give you a clue.
[Using LinkedIn as an example here]
- What do you call yourself at work? What job title do you give yourself? What job title has your employer given you?
- Have you tried to make it sound bigger, better, more important, more modern, fancy etc? (because you can on social media like LinkedIn)
- Have you taken into consideration what 'normal people' i.e. the majority, would refer to you as?
If you have just given yourself a glorified or grandiose fancy dan job title, you might be feeling rather smug with yourself. You might have just boosted your ego by 5 points. BUT, what about all those people that are trying to find you on LinkedIn?
They are not going to look for a Principal Consultant Director or an International Specialist Consultant they will be looking for a recruiter. Why?
THAT IS WHAT THEY UNDERSTAND YOU DO - TO THEM, ALL YOU ARE IS A RECRUITER
Take it to a more basic level - if you are a researcher, sourcer or a resourcer it doesn't matter. <Sorry!> When does a candidate ever look to find a resourcer or a researcher for a new job? They don't know about the nuances of recruitment terminology - to them only one thing exists in the recruitment world - recruiters or recruitment consultants. So that is what they will look to find.
And what part of your LinkedIn profile will they look at first to determine what YOU SAY YOU ARE - just your headline and your photo. That is all they will see in search results. So, park your ego, pride or whatever you want to call it and make sure your LinkedIn headline does what it says on the tin.
Have you figured out the three words yet?
They are words you have no control over - but I guess you have figured that out already, haven't you?
Using social media in recruitment successfully, you need to grasp the concept that your biggest problem are these three words. They are your biggest challenge. Ironically it is governed by social media character limits in bios, profiles, headlines etc.
People call themselves what they want to; they describe themselves in their own words NOT YOURS; they describe their industries in many different ways - heck they may not even describe themselves or their jobs at all!
It makes finding the right people via social recruiting tough (who said it was easy anyway?) I refer to this recruitment challenge as LinkedIn Ghostbusting.
Now you know the three words, right?
No?
USER GENERATED CONTENT
Makes sense now doesn't it? Did you get them right?
So, please remember two things:
- It isn't what you think you are (or how you describe yourself) that is important, it is what all those people out there wanting to find someone like you thinks you are, that is important.
- Everyone calls themselves something different - even for the same job working at the same company sometimes. The skill is understanding all this user generated content, learning the ALL the synonyms that they could use to describe themselves, and then use them accordingly (make sure you read the Ghostbuster link above for more of an explanation).
We work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them integrate social media into their existing recruitment strategy and recruitment processes.
If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.
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