Using Social Networks To Fill Jobs
…HR ideas from Jeffery Giesener – CEO – SourceMob.com
Engagement requires a soft touch, not a hard sell. Companies who are succeeding in recruiting on social networks have developed a sourcing strategy, which looks more like customer service than a typical recruiting model. The focus should be on a conversational approach to luring top talent–many of whom are Passive candidates.
Keys to a Successful Passive Sourcing Strategy
- Establish Social Career Pages (not marketing pages) on the key social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+). The goal is to drive a successful recruitment positioning statement to lure in potential candidates.
- Brand all your Career Pages while also making them interesting, collaborative and ready to drive relevant content frequently enough to stimulate ongoing conversations with your potential candidates.
- Grow your Talent Community. Why start a recruiting process from scratch every time a new requisition opens? Be more efficient by mining your current candidate database by employee segment not tied to your ATS job number.
- Get mobile savvy. Like it or not, everything is already mobile. Candidates browse through jobs on mobile like they do their social feeds so this experience needs to be optimized for mobile – it also needs to be intuitive and enjoyable. Make all your career pages mobile ready.
- Develop a career site and deliver content that provides why a candidate should work for your company. Or WIFM – What’s In For Them. Let them know about your culture and why your organization is unique and fun to work for.
What is important to realize is that a conversation is not just filling out an application? It is just what it sounds like… a conversation. Passive candidates increasingly want to “test the waters” first by getting to know your company, the recruiter and your company culture before stepping into the formal application process. Not to mention many want to stay off the recruiting radar until they are ready to make the first move. This is why it is important to have a conversation mechanism (online chat solution) in place so your recruiters can engage with these candidates.
How do you start? Simply start by creating or selecting a conversational topic on your Social Career Centers (not only from your corporate marketing pages) and or in mobile that’s relevant to your candidate audience. It doesn’t have to be only job related. But it should be interesting enough to elicit comments from your target candidate audiences. Then make sure you respond to their comments including finding others (inside and outside the company) that can contribute to the conversation. Don’t wait all comments should be responded too as fast as possible
Don’t be so overt to sell your jobs. That comes later because anyone interested in a job will already have considered applying or have applied. What you’re looking to do is hook those Passive candidates into having relevant conversations and get them to identify themselves. This strategy is the building block to building Talent Communities around your specific job and or niche career categories, especially those hard-to-fill positions. But remember: building conversations and engagement with Passive candidates comes first, takes time, and needs a level of excitement and energy from your Talent Acquisition Team to come across as being credible.
Luring Passive Candidates into a more substantial conversation is the key goal. These conversations need to be nurtured and fit within the Candidates timeline–not yours. If things feel right for them, they will apply in their own time.
In a recent survey from The AList of some 1,800 candidates, about half the respondents claimed that they found their last job through connections made through social and mobile networks, mainly by tapping trusted friends and relatives. Interestingly, a majority of those that found jobs in this manner also reported higher levels of satisfaction with their jobs.
For an employer wanting to tap social and mobile networks, their approach should be to draw people into conversations, which drives engagement.
Capturing Passive Candidates
Networking with candidates in social and mobile is one of the most effective ways of finding today’s passive candidates. .
- Despite LinkedIn’s apparent popularity among recruiters, on the contrary, job hunters succeed at finding a job more through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, mobile and the key search engines.
- Social and Mobile hires tend to have a higher job satisfaction, feel more informed about the company prior to accepting the job, and show longer retention cycles.
- Mobile recruiting is growing exponentially and it is not only about finding jobs. Candidates need to apply on the go too 24/7 too. The worst thing for a candidate experience is a disjointed process and waiting until you can get to your desktop before you can apply. There’s no excuse for not creating fully mobile responsive career sites and mobile-apply forms. It’s what mobile candidates want so deliver it.
If you want a virtual meeting with me to discuss your social and mobile career acquisition strategies simply contact me at jeff@sourcemob.com or phone 952-417-6955
SourceMob provides your organization with Passive communication solutions that are proven to capture candidates at a Cost of Apply (CPA) up to 50% less than your current rate.
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
952-417-6955
Twitter: @sourcemob
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferygiesener