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Vietnamese As we move into a new era of recruiting, the age of the resume may be drawing to a close. Social media is becoming increasingly popular as a way for recruiters to find the best possible candidates for open positions. According to a recent survey by Jobvite, 92 percent of recruiters are using social media to find new talent in 2012. The survey reports, “Social recruiting has become an essential resource in the war for talent as competition is fiercer than ever.”
Social media recruiting - The 21st century of attracting talents
Employing social platforms to enhance the talent acquisition process is one of the latest recruitment trends. It’s common knowledge that recruiters will check Facebook accounts. Any college student looking for a job knows that their profile must be clean and free of typos and questionable photos and posts; however, that’s only the beginning.
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Recruiters want to see candidates who have a strong web presence. Many report checking applicants’ Klout scores, Twitter followers and connections on LinkedIn. More and more, companies are getting creative with the way they post jobs and follow up with applicants. They want to see creativity, innovation, and the ability to address their organisation’s challenges at the same time.
In an article for Forbes, Jeanne Meister describes MasterCard’s recent use social media recruiting. She writes, “The process involved engaging on MasterCard’s Facebook page, uploading a resume via LinkedIn, and following MasterCard on Twitter for further directions. The campaign represents the future of recruiting, where the process demands that applicants showcase their skills-and in the process makes them stronger candidates.”
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So, how can your organisation effectively employ social media in recruitment? Here are just a few of the many ways your organisation can use social media recruiting to attract your next great employees.
Post an opening
Posting an open position on LinkedIn or another of your organisation’s social networks is arguably the fastest, easiest, and most cost-efficient way to get it in front of thousands of qualified candidates. It costs around $200 to post a job for 30 days on LinkedIn, which is almost nothing when you consider how many individuals will see it.
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If you don’t have the budget to pay to post jobs, you can get your opening out there in other ways as well. Join relevant groups and post your job to those discussion boards. You can even post the opening to your company’s profile page, and those you are connected with will be able to see it. The more people you connect with, the greater potential of finding a candidate who is perfect.
Don’t forget to be creative! Take a page from MasterCard’s playbook and use more than one platform to encourage creativity and innovation from your applicants. If done correctly, when your applicants finish the process, you will not only be left with the very best, but your applicants will have learned a great deal about your organisation.
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Get to know potential hires
LinkedIn is a great tool to get a brief work history. As a recruiter, you can see where an applicant attended school, current and past positions, skills and other projects they may have worked on. You can also see if he or she has any second or third degree connections and use those to get a more personal reference. These are wonderful tools, but don’t forget about Facebook and Twitter.
These networks tend to be more relaxed and are often more telling about a candidate’s personality. Do they engage with others? What topics do they discuss? Does their profile have a serious or fun tone? Of course, you can’t learn everything from social media sites, but they provide valuable insight on who you might want to meet for a face-to-face interview.
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Build your brand
In the same way you’re looking at applicants’ social presence, they’re looking at yours. It’s essential that your organisation builds a brand that resonates with potential hires. In a recent survey, Net Impact found that 58 percent of the student population would take a 15 percent pay cut to work for an organization whose values matched their own. Make sure your organization’s culture and values are clear on your social media sites to ensure you attract talent who will fit well with the organization.
Social media recruiting takes time and effort. It must be done with a purpose and plan, but it’s an investment that will more than pay off in the long run.
To learn more about recruitment in the digital age, download TRG's latest whitepaper on recruiting Gen Z, who are known to be digital natives and will be rocking the corporate shortly.
