Tips for Social Training

ideas from Jeffery Giesener – CEO – SourceMob

What is your strategic plan for Social Training?

Does your plan differ for each of the major Social Networks?

#1: Create a Social Voice

Agreeing on your Candidate-facing voice determines your Company’s identity and character. It is also the starting point for your training because it puts all your Recruiters in a comfortable place to engage with socially enabled Candidates.

The key point in Social Training is to match your voice with your Social audiences. This is Social Communication 101 and should be your best practice. So if you are recruiting primarily for IT Professionals your voice needs to appeal to them. PhD’s recruitment should strive towards higher standards of voice, Telemarketers quite another and Sales Pros obviously yet another.

#2: Define Social Objectives

Mapping key objectives right out of the gate will enable you to determine where you want to wind up.

  • Do you want to deliver more hires?
  • Are you trying to build your Candidate database?
  • Are you trying to create Company/Brand awareness or collect conversations to deliver Candidates in the future?
  • Do you want your employees sharing jobs with their Social contacts?

#3: Determining Limits but Grant Freedom

No two Social Media conversations or wall posts will be written the same way. So having a “writing best practice” doesn’t mean that you need to build a bank of pre-determined terms and phrases for your Recruiters to copy and paste. Also please do not turn your Social Recruiters into RoboPosters. Allow flexibility because remember you are in a Social conversation. Give your Team the freedom to find their Company voice that speaks appropriately to the specific job audience while also being personal and respectful. Add a nice level of personality to the post by having your posts be signed by the poster.

#4: Mandate Social Frequency

I assume your answer your corporate email within a maximum of 12 hours. So don’t leave Social posts unanswered. Unanswered wall posts are far worse than an unanswered emails because your Candidates request or question is out there for their for all your Candidates to see not to mention the world—with a time stamp on it. Don’t let your Social Career Center visitors get the impression you are not interest in them.

Make it policy to respond to your Candidate Career Center wall conversations within a maximum of 3 hours (non-weekend). And if you follow the Companies who “get” Social they are responding much faster. It is just best practice to raise your internal bar and get in the Social game. Remember more than 52% of hires do not come from a direct job posting. They come from Company PR, news articles, search and financial postings.

#5: Answer Everything

Whether you like it or not, your Social Career Center walls will be portals for praise, requests for job conversations, demands, complaints, disappointments, threats and act as a posting catchall. Make sure your Social Recruiting is ready to answer every wall post, even the disparaging ones, and is able to do so with respect and kindness.

Be ready to spin negative feedback in to positive word-of-mouth advocates just like your customer service teams are doing. Outline a procedure for dealing with disappointed candidates. But don’t just prepare for the negative; be ready to capitalize on positive feedback.

SourceMob is Ready to Socially Assist You Conversations…

At SourceMob our Professional Services Division will help you map out Social recruiting strategy, develop Best Practice guidelines, provide Social Sourcing consulting and even help you monitor your Social conversations. To learn more about our SourceMob Social Sourcing Solutions ring me up at 612-349-2740 or email me personally at jeff@sourcemob.com for a virtual conversation and presentation. Or visit our www.sourcemob.com website.

Best,

Jeffery

Jeffery Giesener

CEO/Founder

SourceMob

www.sourcemob.com

jeff@sourcemob.com

612-349-2740