Well deserved congratulations to Mike Taylor for organising such a well attended and well received conference last week. It was great to have such an event in the UK and really interesting to see the momentum building behind Social Recruiting, something which will be force for seismic change in our industry
During my presentation at the conference I defined what I believe to be the key elements of “Social Recruiting”. I wanted to blog them as my “beta” attempt to draw a line in the sand and get some discussions going. I’ve no doubt people will have some very valid alternative views and I’d be really interested to hear what they are
In my opinion the key elements that make up Social Recruiting are:-
Social Advertising
Often dismissed as not being “proper” social media marketing, there is no doubt that advertising in social channels is an important and effective tool. Highly targeted and available across most social platforms (including LinkedIn), social advertising is already delivering bottom line results in the recruitment industry
Portable Content
Increasingly, more companies aren’t just putting their content on their corporate recruitment sites they are letting the content go to their candidates and travel around unhindered in the social space. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook are already being utilised to take key content (with video being one example) beyond the traditional company web site
Referral Networks
Expect to see much talk of “Social Graphs” , “Nodes” and “Ties” in our space in coming years. Referrals and word of mouth have always been key in recruitment and technology is going to turbo charge this as we move forward
Authentic Conversations
Profiles of current employees have been a big part of recruitment websites in the last ten years. Things are now moving towards more authentic real time communication. Conversations between current / past employees and future hires whether officially sanctioned or not are already becoming an important part of the recruitment process
Reputation Management
A highly complex area in which no two situations or responses will be the same. The key thing here though is for companies is know what is being said about them and where it’s being said
Social Sourcing
I really liked the phrase “chatter mining” which Bill from TwitterJobSearch used at the conference. In areas where the best talent still remains difficult to recruit, social media is offering more and more ways for skilled recruiters to identify and engage with top quality prospects
So, what does everything else think?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Digital Recruitment, Futurology, Matt Alder, Recruitment, socialmedia, socialrecruiting
I have to say I love the term “chatter mining”. Currently leading a small staffing start up in the area of Social Recruiting has brought me first hand experience with it! Today I actually gave a staff meeting kicking off the start of our Social Recruiting strategy where it will become a day to day task. The first skill I spoke about was searching based on what people you want to connect with will be talking about! Second we talked about using this “skill” in the networks they already have established. Doing this while building new connections based on the chatter will speed up your results dramatically!
Recency and sophisticated data mining will bring about big changes. The ability to dip into this avalanche of noise and pull out relevant content will mean that targeted conversations can be had in a way that hitherto was not possible.
Richard
I agree that social media can benifit recruitment, you cant ignore the data value.
But, in this market, a candidate riche market, I dont think we’ll see its full worth. the mass look at job boards…. now, maybe this will change but will the ’social’ inviroment’ allow such a serious topic to take off?
The biggest hurdle is educating the public that the next job is around the next friend request in the skyscraper.
I have a feeling there will be another platform that will appear and be better suited.
Exccellent topic.
Social media in recruitment is very exciting and something everyone should be looking into. However, in this market job seekers for the most part want 2 things; a) the most relevant jobs on one site and b) complete control over their active job seeking. Social networks don’t currently offer this for me. I don’t believe social media will destroy job boards, the way job boards have destroyed the press, they will compliment them and show them how to adapt to the needs of the new age job seeker.
However, for branding and capturing the the passive job seeker, social networks are vital to the media mix right now.
But still, very exciting and gutted I missed your presentation mate.
Matt,
An interesting piece as ever. I agree with jamies comments on job boards, they won’t die. (didn’t everyone say the same thing about recruitment firms becoming extinct when the job boards evolved!). What i’m seeing happen is that the boards are themselves evolving to incorporate and be a part of social media, as well as evolving a more sophisticated offering by sourcing and providing more human contact through sourcing teams. this trend of “inteligent” job boards will continue and shape the recruiting landscape.
At the same time, corporate and internal recruitment functions are growing in capability and reach as a result of the channels open to them. this is where the biggest competition for recruitment firms as more of the active and passive candidates engage with hiring organisations. In the short term this is a threat, in the medium term it has in turn caused recruiters to need to offer more than being simply “sourcing” houses. The economic enviroment has also meant that hiring companies are looking for more value and far more in the way value through service. Whilst there are less jobs about, equally the good candidates that are working have become far harder to find and move, hence the need for a trusted consultancy approach and brand. The industry is the better for it, and for the competition and social recruiting provides the channels to build the neccesary relationships with clients and the potential candidates of now and in the future. Sharp recruitment firms are looking at all the avenues including blogging, podcasts, video, webinar etc etc to build a following in order to become the destination of choice.
As a last point, it is important to remember how social recruiting works. for me, channels like twitter act as a signpost to direct followers to a destination. That destination is where the business is done, either a website or most importantly human contact through calls, networking in person, meetings etc. The hub of this is the website, although these now are being replaced by communities that offer forums, blogs, podcast, video, feeds etc to keep the followers engaged in one place till they are ready to do business. This is why i am in the process of creating a community over a website and changing my offering to encorporate “social” products in all my services. the chatter will be useful to know where to place the signpost, but if everyone takes up listening as a strategy, how long before the direct response is viewed as spam?
Ultimately, i believe we are going back to the old ways of selling and marketing based on value, quality and personality. Old rules with new tools!
As you know i’m only a social media amateur, but i would be glad to continue the conversation on twitter @BillBoorman or through any of the other places i appear.
Thanks for provoking conversation as ever.
Bill (fan of The Addler)
Some interesting thoughts for everyone above, thanks for commenting.
In terms of the effect on job boards lets not forget there is an unprecedented candidate rich market in many sectors. This may mean record traffic for job boards but this traffic doesn’t mean a record number of advertisers quite the opposite in fact.
I’m seeing more and more clients looking at social recruiting as a way of maximising their reach while minimising their advertising and recruitment spend.
I wouldn’t call anything a “job board killer” just yet but the forces of social recruiting, search marketing and job aggregation are being amplified by the recession to become a massive threat to the old job board business model
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