HR ideas…from Jeffery Giesener – CEO – SourceMob.com
When it comes to using social media for recruitment, we tend to make things more complicated than they need to be. The basic requirement is to get engaged with prospective candidates, get to know them well and attract them to jobs. That means participating in two-way conversations. But this is where it gets difficult, or awkward. Imagine if we would know more about candidates if we only could have real conversations with them.
I worked for a company where the CEO conducted interviews by going for a walk with the candidate. Our offices were near a mall and he’d often take them there. He wanted a dialog to get to know them and them to know him. The people he hired tended to stay with the company for a long time and were generally high performers. One reason he did this was because it allowed candidates to avoid having to make constant eye contact, which often creates an inhibiting dynamic. Isn’t this one of the reason that the Catholic Church has for centuries separated priests from parishioners by a curtain in the confessional. Why can’t today’s recruiters use these same ideas which have been proven to be tried and true.
Be Who You Are
Social media can make it easy to get to know candidates, and the best way is to do it is to form unique Talent Communities for your niche subset of job categories. This makes sense because active candidates are already applying to your jobs. Passive candidates want to open up in communities if it’s a place where they believe that their views and opinions are respected and where they can have a dialog with other candidates, employee and obviously recruiters. Criticism and disagreement are normal parts of conversation, but are rarely tolerated in job interviews. It’s important to recognize that a Talent Community is a place to build engagement, not an echo chamber. But this goes against the grain, as demonstrated by the desire of so many recruiters (84% according to one survey by Microsoft) who use social media sites to look for evidence of undesirable behavior and exclude candidates instead of building engagement.
If you’re looking to fill jobs that require unique or hard-to-find skills, then building your own Talent Community(s) (where you own your data) around niche subsets for your workforce would be hard to beat as one of the key solutions for attracting prospective passive and active candidates — so long as you can let them be their true selves. A real Talent Community with conversation and engagement tools should be the starting place where participants feel comfortable sharing their views. If they can’t engage in a real dialog then it’s just a place for your company to collect names.
The online disinhibition effect, most evident on Facebook, is a phenomenon recruiters should take advantage of to get to know candidates. The absence of social cues, no need for constant eye contact, and the apparent lack of power structures can all work to a recruiter’s advantage in building relationships with candidates in your Talent Communities and on your social career channels.
The key is to create a forum for people to congregate and engage in dialog, with you and each other. If your idea of a Talent Community is a Facebook corporate Facebook page where you just post your jobs and collect likes then you’re not building a true and powerful community. Also don’t forget that at the same time your marketing team is pushing promotions and sales efforts at these visitors. Why would you want your candidates to face this push marketing?
The truth isn’t just out there; it’s everywhere because your candidates want it that way. It’s the nature of today’s online giving, getting and social sharing. My suggestion to improve your social recruiting is for you to build micro-career sites on each of the major social career pages and channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and mobile that provide real opportunities for candidate engagement with a two way dialog. If you do not believe you can spare the time to do so, then seek an outside resource to do so. At SourceMob we specifically provide this service for many of our clients. Plus don’t forget to provide a facelift for your own company career pages where candidates can learn what’s in for them “WFIM” to come and work at your company. That would include culture discussions, benefits, video testimonials from employees and hiring managers.
These pages should all be mobile responsive as well.
To talk about how you can grow your own unique Talent Communities, provide candidate engagement and real-time conversation while improving your social and mobile recruiting simply give me an email ping at jeff@sourcemob.com or call me at 952-417-6955
ABOUT SOURCEMOB: SourceMob integrates Internet, social, talent community and mobile recruiting solutions to help talent acquisition professionals recruit the very best candidates for tough-to-fill positions. SourceMob’s IT, Analytics and HR Media Services distributes job content and conversations providing a job posting springboard to over 3.5 million candidate profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and all of the major search engines. We help you engage with your candidates and capture niche Passive candidates. Our solutions also enable Mobile Quick Apply and candidate application management services to create efficiencies and lower recruiting costs.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob.com
jeff@sourcemob.com
952-417-6955
Twitter: @sourcemob
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferygiesener