…ideas from Jeffery Giesener – SourceMob – CEO • 2/27/14
The shift to greater social connectedness and engagement with candidates is growing at a rapid pace. Is your talent acquisition keeping up with this trend? At a recent recruiting conference in Boston, not one of the 500 attendees was below the age of 30. As a result, discussions on social and mobile recruiting seemed to generate fear, uncertainty and doubt in the audience.
So what’s with the sluggish adoption of social and mobile recruiting? Is it caused by…
- The FEAR of failure?
- An unwillingness to go out of your comfort zone?
- A concern over your professional reputation and / or position?
- Pressure to make a recruiting ROI or to lower your overall recruiting cost?
As a leader in your category, you might want to do some soul searching and ask yourself: Am I so fixated maintaining the status quo? Why shouldn’t my brand benefit from recruiting innovation?
Here are some status quo questions to think about:
- How many new recruiting channels have been added to your talent acquisition mix during the last 2 years?
- Which channels generate a minimum of 5-10% of your total candidate application flow?
- What would happen if the top two channels disappeared tomorrow?
- How many new talent acquisition technologies have you tested in the last 3 years?
If you find yourself always looking in the rear-view mirror, you should stop and check out what has happened in the recruiting world since 2004 when Facebook arrived on the scene. In Seth Godin’s book, “Tribes,” he described a new paradigm that has changed the playing field. He calls it “New Leverage.”
Not long ago, recruiting was all about pushing jobs at your recruits. In fact, cold emailing and calling is still a regular practice among recruiters (…whether they have permission to do so or not) But how effective do you think this approach really is in today’s evolving recruiting world? What are you missing? What can you not see on your radar screen?
What Are NOT Today’s Best Recruiting Practices?
- Forcing candidates to view and search through a “fire hose” of jobs to find jobs of interest.
- Forcing candidates to visit your career site to see your job posts.
- Cold emailing and calling (are these efforts more effective today than they were even 3 years ago?).
The primary task of yesterday’s recruiter was to drive candidates to an organization’s career website. Those candidates then had to navigate through the site and apply. However, social media now offers an ocean of preferred (passive) candidates, the majority of whom want to apply through mobile. The “yesterday” recruiter who does not embrace this shift will miss substantial opportunities to connect with top talent.
Today’s “New Leverage” has influenced your candidates and now…
- Candidates have the power to decide which jobs are relevant to them and where they want to see them (on social media, through job alerts, etc.).
- They decide which job they want to share within their social communities (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and more) and with their friends who also may be looking to make a job transition.
- They want to see your jobs and apply to them on-the-go using their mobile devices.
Are You Old School or New School?
Many people desire what is “New School,” stylish and hip. These people – though usually small in number – often persuade the “staid” crowd that usually disregards change to “look to the future” and accept innovation.
….if you haven’t noticed by now, the New School has been here for a while.
You probably know that Facebook just passed the 1 billion+ global users mark. Did you know that there are more than 180 million active mobile Facebook users in the US alone? Twitter and Google+ have close to a billion global profiles and approximately 50 percent of these are using mobile. Morgan Stanley mentioned in their 2013 Trend Study that 50 percent of all E-commerce will be done on a mobile device by 2014, a.k.a. this year!
What Will Your Recruiting Look Like in the Next Couple of Years?
Are you going to continue looking through your rear-view mirror or will you become New School?
Let’s put your social and mobile FEARS aside and get into a discussion. Not only will I address each of your concerns, I will personally show you how easy it is to begin social and mobile recruiting (outside of using LinkedIn/CareerBuilder/Monster) and win with positive and solid ROI results. I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.
Onward…to a continued successful 2014.
Best,
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob
jeff@sourcemob.com
612-349-2740
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyjeffgiesener