A recruiter’s job is to find the best employee for a position. Industry contacts and expertise are traditionally the best methods to locate a perfect match, but today recruiters are also looking to social media and finding success, regardless of the type of organization or industry they work in.
Whether you’re a recruiting pro trying to decide if social media is for you, or you’re using social media tools and wondering if they really work, or even if you’re a job seeker asking yourself “Can someone really find a job here?” … the answer is YES.
I interviewed a number of recruiting professionals who have successfully used social media to find new employees. They’ve shared some common themes to keep in mind when using social media as part of your recruiting strategy.
Becoming a Recruiting Organization
TiVo Inc., the home entertainment company, reported an 11 percent increase in referrals thanks to social media tools like LinkedIn. William Uranga, the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at TiVo, said that using social media shifted the focus from the recruiter to the organization as a whole. “It’s about your staff/peers sharing what they find interesting about your organization,” said Uranga. TiVo encourages job seekers to connect with their employees through LinkedIn. The company also makes job opportunities “portable” so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status across major social media platforms.
Refining the Search
Making the Right Connections
But social media isn’t just being used by in-house recruiters, recruiting firms are also adopting the tools. Pinstripe, Inc., a leading human resources and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) specialist firm, said they leverage social media to help clients find top talent. “The key is creating relevance – following relevant people and creating dialog,” said Erin Arkin, a team lead/recruiter for Pinstripe. Arkin explained that using social media has allowed her to build the brand of her client, VWR International. VWR has over 150 years of lab science experience, but isn’t necessarily well-known to candidates that apply from outside of the industry. To engage potential employees Arkin followed the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters (@donottrythis) on Twitter. “When we received a question around a specific test tube we were able to respond, and start a dialog,” said Arkin. “By strategically using social media platforms, VWR has also seen better returns on candidate flow for some of our harder to fill positions.”
Using the Right Tools
So what are the best social media tools for recruiting? Kelly Dingee, a sourcing researcher and trainer for the recruitment training company AIRS, said recruiters should not limit themselves to certain platforms. To make the right connections, you want to be where your target audience is. In her role, Dingee trains professionals on how to use Boolean techniques to extract candidate profile information from sites like Linkedin, Plaxo, Google Profiles, Twitter, etc. Dingee’s message? Don’t rule anything out. “During one of my first training sessions, I had a Senior Recruiter from a notable accounting firm XRaying MySpace. She located an internal auditor that worked at KPMG and, even better, she found that the candidate’s spouse was also an auditor at KPMG (due to the couple’s wedding announcement being embedded in the original candidates MySpace page). She immediately messaged both to further discuss available opportunities.” You might be thinking, MySpace? Dingee explains, “Some people think it’s ‘dead’ but, it still has a high membership and a lot of people visit it regularly to engage in the music and video options.”
Take it Global
Another advantage of using social media tools is their global potential. Dingee said she’s been working with a Corporate HR/OD Trainer who just returned from Saudi Arabia. “He’s developed a thorough LinkedIn profile and, by reaching out to my networks on LinkedIn and Twitter, we’ve been able to secure him solid leads that have led to phone interviews.”
Dingee added that the client was “blown away” when she showed him how to integrate Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com features on LinkedIn.
Mike Sipple, Jr. from Centennial, Inc., a firm focused on helping businesses hire their best people and develop their top talent, said it best when he talked about why organizations should use social media as part of their recruitment strategy. “I have found that social media opens two doors no matter what industry, market segments and level you are seeking for your clients.
Door #1 - You’re able to complete and compete on global search work more than ever because you are just one click / post / tweet / update away from any leader in the world. Door #2 – You’re now one of those leaders! You can find out the top industry leaders to follow, the influencers of any industry, where they hang out, where they spend their evenings… the talent is reachable!”
Social Media is Just the Beginning
“You can’t depend on [social media] as your only way of outreach. Social media is not the end of the process of finding and recruiting a candidate, but the beginning,” said Aviv Wecler, a recruiter for Yodle, a New York City based startup that focuses on helping local business owners find new customers via the Internet. But that doesn’t mean the conversations started on social media don’t yield hires. Wecler told me a story about seeing a software engineer’s LinkedIn profile which also included a link to the engineer’s personal website. He was able to check out the site and find some natural synergies between what the software engineer was writing about on his personal site and what Yodle was doing as a company. He used that information when reaching out to the engineer and was able to make a successful placement. The engineer said he responded well to Yodle because it was clear that Yodle had taken the time to research him and screen him as a quality candidate. Wecler advises job seekers to have as much detail as they can in their profiles including a good summary and career objective. “Candidates often express their frustration at getting contacted by irrelevant recruiters/headhunters. The more specific you are the more likely you are to get relevant contact and find a good fit for a job.” Is your organization successfully utilizing social media for its recruiting efforts? Tell us your story in the comments.
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