“An increasingly digital world” is a phrase of the past. The world is digital, and when practically everything lives in the cloud it should come as no surprise that the next generation of job seekers is looking beyond the classifieds. In fact, they have even gone beyond the standard job boards and are engaging with potential employers on social media sites and other digital platforms.
Unfortunately, some businesses are not ready for their potential new employees to be researching them as thoroughly as they themselves are being researched. In a recent study by Harvard Business Review[1], it was found that while 79% of companies surveyed are either using or planning to use social media channels, only 12% of them felt that they were using them effectively.
The reality of the situation is that a large percentage of organisations are still hesitant to get serious about social media, and interestingly, two-thirds of those surveyed had no formalized social media strategy. While a measly 7% of respondents have integrated social media into their overall marketing strategy, the remainder seem to be haphazardly applying social media aspects to their business, forgoing any real kind of direction or strategy. The most surprising discovery is that one-in-ten executives surveyed still feels that the application of social media to business is a passing fad, dismissing it as unimportant.
In fact, social media could not be more important. To get an idea of how important, take into consideration that according to a survey conducted by Belle Beth Cooper, Content Crafter for Buffer and co-founder of Exist, social media is the number one activity on the internet[2]. Clearly, social media carries more weight than ever. Its usage is habitual and new platforms continue to appear and grow, proving that it is not a fad.
What To Expect
Recruiting has evolved thanks, in no small part, to the presence of the internet and the growth of social media, but what can we expect to see come out of this evolution. In the short term, at least, we can expect a certain level of passivity among job seekers. Considering that practically everyone lives on the social web, it should come as no surprise that job searchers actively participate on platforms such as YouTube, Weibo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and elsewhere.
The result of this is that the volume and quality of their presence increases, thus making them increasingly visible to recruiters looking for the next best hire. Recruiters are using social media to search for top tier candidates and the candidates themselves know this. They no longer have to work so hard to update their resumes or push their skills to recruiters because the recruiters themselves are out searching. All they have to do is keep their profiles updated, something they already do on a regular – if not daily – basis.
Recruiters know how important it is to be first in line in a potential candidate’s queue, and have had to evolve in their methods of seeking out talent. Increased presence on social media means more actionable data and intelligence for recruiters to use. As such, recruiters are becoming, and will continue to become, major consumers of social data, utilising it to answer the questions of what candidates are good at, where they are and how they can be reached.
It is through social data that potential employers will be able to review crucial information regarding potential candidates faster and more efficiently, resulting in the inevitable social consumption. As such, there is little doubt that social recruitment will remain on the rise for the foreseeable future.
Stepping into The Social World
In today’s recruiting world, it has been found that 60% of job seekers expect a company to interact with its followers and fans. In a study carried out by the Aberdeen Group, 73% of job seekers between the ages of 18 and 34 reported that they found their last job through a social network[3].
More than just a trend, social recruiting gives employers a human face and voice, letting them engage directly with potential candidates throughout the entire process. For a company without the prerequisite experience in social networking however, where is the starting point? What can a company do to truly harness the impressive power of social media in order to attract the cream of the crop?
The first step is to engage with your audience. Social media is about open dialogue and relationship building with the audience you are interested in. Through this kind of engagement, a company can create an active community that will help to grow its pool of candidates – both active and passive.
Engaging starts with various points, but once started, you begin to grow what is known as a social networking community which, when properly managed, can gain a life of its own, to the benefit of the company.
- Community building starts with listening to your audience, digesting what you hear and responding.
- Do not bore your audience with old data, but continue to provide new and exciting information about products, services or the company itself.
- Stay current on industry information and share anything that might be useful or interesting with your community.
- Respond to queries and comments as soon as possible. The internet is live and your responses should be treated like a conversation with as little lag in the dialogue as possible. A simple acknowledgment or thank you is enough to gain goodwill.
- Get your employees or management involved in answering questions or creating posts
- Be visual. Remember that a picture paints a thousand words and a video is priceless in telling the whole story.
Essential Platform
Knowing how to engage is very important but knowing where to engage is just as much a part of the equation. What are the most influential places where companies can engage and be engaged by the public? Keep in mind that while companies can use social media to ‘investigate’ potential new hires, those candidates can do the exact same thing in reverse.
Company Website
A company website can be a great tool for attracting talent, but it can also be a great dissuader. The key to maximising this potential is to make the site as user- friendly as possible. A candidate should be able to get an idea of the company culture from the website. This includes photographs of company events, videos filmed around the office and employee testimonials on what they like about the company.
If your company does not have a Facebook page, then one should be built. A company Facebook page is a great way to cultivate a strong relationship with fans and potential candidates. It can also be used to integrate recruitment applications, allowing visitors to browse job opportunities or look at employer branding videos. There are currently over 1.3 billion monthly active Facebook users around the world, 75% of whom are outside the US. That statistic alone should provide insight into how wide an audience can be reached with a Facebook page.
LinkedIn is another platform where a company should have a strong presence. Because it is a professional network, it occupies a very special space as one of the most valuable resources for recruiting. LinkedIn’s specialisation as the largest professional network means that it is the best social channel to search for specific skills previous experience and recommendations, as well as for approaching candidates directly. To date, more than 2.6 million companies have LinkedIn company pages and in Asia alone there are over 40 million users[4].
Like Facebook, employee engagement is important to the portrayal of the company. Encourage employees to connect with one another through the company page, creating a better picture of the people and the culture within the company. This may result in top tier talent making a connection through employees as a way of getting their foot in the door.
one often overlooked platform for recruitment is Twitter. While the microblogging site is a great way to share links to content such as corporate videos, blogs and job postings, very few companies realise that it can be a valuable social recruitment too. Twitter can be used to spark conversations with candidates and job seekers. ou can also showcase your office or feature a team at work.
Keep in mind, though, that people generally prefer to follow other people, not companies or brands. So instead of tweeting from the brand account, try having an influential member of the organisation tweet from a personal account instead, as candidates are more likely to follow them.
Hashtags are another method to focus attention on what companies want to promote. Hashtags are used as a way to filter and find information on Twitter. They mark keywords or topics by placing the ‘#’ symbol at the beginning of the word. A hashtag makes a tweet instantly searchable. For example, tweets that include #ITjobs as a hashtag would catch the attention of anyone looking for positions in the Information Technology field.
Youtube
Unlike the other platforms, YouTube is best used solely for branding. Content on YouTube is consumed voraciously and brands worth their social media salt have their own channels. This is the ideal arena for employee engagement videos, corporate events and corporate culture videos. This will allow potential candidates a peek behind the curtain to find out what it is like working in the company before they sign on the dotted line or even before the first interview.
Cross-Pollination
one of the true benefits of social networking is the ability to migrate assets. Cross- pollination of content means that when a video appears on YouTube, a link to that same video can be tweeted, posted on Facebook and on LinkedIn. In this way, the content is reaching out to a variety of different audiences, widening the candidate pool and building the social networking community.
As it has happened in many other industries, social media has transformed the recruiting industry. It is no longer about chasing candidates, but rather, it is about attracting the right kind of candidates. By investing in a strong, coherent and relevant digital presence, your company will become a beacon for the kind of candidates who will be suited for both the role and the organisation.
[1] Social Media: What Most Companies Don’t Know
[2] 10 Surprising Social Media Statistics That Will Make You Rethink Your Social Strategy
[3] Best Practices in Social Recruiting, Meisha Rouser, March 2013
[4] Asia is Getting LinkedIn, But not Everywhere
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