I was going through some old folders on my laptop the other day and I happened to come across my very first digital recruitment media plan which I wrote for a client way back in 1999. Even though a lot has happened in the last 11 years I still remember this particular project fondly. This might seem quite strange when I tell you that it was an abject failure from both mine and the client’s point of view!
The client needed to recruit four permanent software engineers and was keen to try something a bit different. The Internet seemed the perfect solution and we enthusiastically recommended a campaign microsite and online “traffic driving campaign”. After five weeks the client had received two applications both of which were unsuitable.
Once everyone had got past the initial and somewhat hysterical “the internet doesn’t work” reaction, we were able to unpick what had gone wrong with the campaign. Rather than give up on digital the client worked with us to adapt the site and the media plan. After some considerable effort and a bit more trial and error, results improved and some (but not all) of the roles were filled. However more importantly the learnings the client took from these early mistakes went on to form the backbone of their overall online recruitment strategy. A strategy which was to save them hundred’s of thousands of pounds over the next few years.
The reason we persevered, despite a very disappointing start, was because everyone involved realised that enormous growth of the Internet was going to change everything and the client wanted to be surfing this wave of change.
The current situation with social recruiting is very similar. The uptake and growth of social media is off the scale but there are currently very few good case studies to show us exactly how it will work for recruitment. I’m hoping the reason for this is that there is more failure out there than there is success at the moment. Only by failing a few times do you get the chance to create and refine a strategy for long term success. Many will give up after the first set back, history is telling us that those who stick with it may well be reaping the benefits for years to come
March 10th, 2010 at 10:05 am
That’s a very old laptop you have there Matt.
I think it’s safe to say that there will be many inept, half-baked and cack-handed attempts to use social media in recruitment. Recruitment of all kinds is a competitive sport, and everyone is looking for an advantage. Those who succeed will probably keep it to themselves initially, but we can all learn from everyone elses mistakes.
Failure can be a good thing, if lessons are learned.
March 10th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Great post Matt. A lot of recruitment businesses I speak to say they want to be innovative but then are unwilling to give ‘permission to fail’ if you want people to innovate then you have to allow experimentation and then accept that any failure is a team failure – not an individual one – then learn from the outcomes so yes – failure can be a very good thing!
March 10th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Someone was telling me only yesterday how their client, a recruitment consultancy, had given Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter a whirl for a few weeks but told them to only persist with Linkedin as the response from the other two was either woefully poor or inappropriate. i.e. Linkedin is, in their experience, the only one with any credibility.
I do think the whole furore with social recruiting is a bit premature, certainly in the UK at least. Other methods don’t suddenly drop by the wayside. It took the web many a year to finally result in dwindling classified sections and being so hit and miss as it is at the moment (and patchily subscribed to) it will be a fair few yet before social networking sites become the place to be seen in my humble opinion.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Greetings Matt. déjà vu !
Today I was looking at some old reports I did from 1999 in which I looked at the future of recruitment, the threats and risks etc., as I hope to find some examples to use to demonstrate and reinforce the case for social network recruiting investment, based on some of the lessons we learned in the past [and we noted others learned] and get some proof in the pudding that change did indeed happen, always happens and always will. We saw many sites & services herralded as revolutionary simply dissapear. But did they dissapear? Some maybe but also some NOT – they were part of the learning process. They failed but evolved into other things and some of them today are iconic [at least for now]. “This is how the world works” [said Einstein].. “I did not fail in my experiments, but I successfully identified 10,000 ways in which not to make a light bulb work”.
The use of mere fax [fax was even arround in 1865 - even before the telephone which is probably why trusty fax was so widely taken up by us recruiters!], the advent of email and later, online tools did themselves require some arm and ear bending to convince. Now back to today. It is déjà vu for me as I muster a case for change and seek to find old lessons and evidence that has me delving back 10+ years. However, the case for social media seems to be met more fiercly and eyes may glaze over as if im selling cryogenic insurance or drumming up volunteers to join an oriental basket weaving class [ok - no offence, cryogenics is good and I have nothing against oriental basket weavers either – im sure they are very cool!]. I think on the outset this is fear of the unknown and ‘unknown’ is difficult to trust as it’s not understood. What has been arround for 10 + years now has become the norm as if nothing existed before and what we have today will some how remain forever. We looked where the candidates went. Hey – arent they moving again!..
Of course, recruiting itself has been, and is still, for us, socially networking with your skills / people base – but now digitally, we can feed it with a more dynamic dimension, an avatar to which some Gen Xers, may not be easily comprehendable yet or that such a rethink in recruitment is for a rainy day. I like the idea that profits are proof of concept – [thanks Steve Pohlit] but having no proof of concept doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea either ~ but possible bad timing. Proof of concept applies to you and your experience – hence what works for one might not work for another. So lets get failing soon.. but who will be first to fail? All of us perhaps.
It is ‘viable’ and that is the first step and we start small – but start. When proof of concept in social recruiting comes then recruiters must change mindset, transition to a Gen Yer to remain viable in some cases. Listen up then Gen Xers as the future is written just as the last 10 years was written – except the next 10 years of change will be done in 3! When young, the future is driving space ships to work. For recruitment that is possible now.
We have put together a most wonderful innovative system in theory [and the reality one is pretty cool but only through years of time and investment]. Currently, no system is available that works correctly and in the correct business format. Recruitment Vendors need to play a part and wake up to real integration and API as well as security issues. Hopefully Listen to Einstein, but it’s not rocket science, a clever algorithm or like trying to work out how google works. I notice that whilst ahead, the US also has some more failures to make and watching closely. For now we continue with our in-house developments. Experiment number 2012… Actually, cryogenics might be useful.
March 11th, 2010 at 9:04 am
@Alasdair well that all depends on whether as an organisation you want to be a leader or a follower. As I’ve said to you before things always play out against the classic tech adoption curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle
It’s no coincidence then that the early adopters of social recruiting who are having success are tech companies like Microsoft, Unisys, Cisco and Dell. Innovation is in their corporate DNA and that’s why they are first to properly experiment
March 18th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Great post Matt. Not to highlight the age different here, but I’d only just started high school when you’d taken on that project! I heard a fable recently that I think applies particularly well to the adoption of social recruitment, both by recruiters and by the job seekers themselves.
If you try to put a frog in a bath of boiling water, it’ll simply jump out. However, if you put it in a bath full of cold water and heat it up until boiling point it won’t notice enough to leap out. In other words, it’s going to take some time.
I think any medium that has some social media aspects rather than using them exclusively will perform well. Take facebook for example. The first time the news feed went live they got so many threats in the first 12 hours they had to be escorted from their offices by the police! Of the recruitment sites I have seen out there so far that have chosen only to use social media, they have largely flopped. That isn’t to say they won’t eventually work, it’ll just take a while.
April 21st, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Matt, thanks for this post. I agree, only through failure do we learn. It’s also apparent that the theory of connecting people with employers through social networks is much different than the reality. In theory, it’s relatively simple, straight-forward, and easy. Unfortunately, the most active and fastest growing networks were not built for recruiting (aside, maybe, from LinkedIN). As a result, it’s much more difficult to find top level, specialized passive candidates than might first be presumed.
Many people choose to keep their social networks and professional life separate, so never include content on their employment or professional expertise in their profiles. With this being a reality, how exactly will recruiters find the best talent within the social media platforms? That’s the big question. Some companies have told me that they “do participate in social recruiting”- they have a facebook page for their talent acquisition team. Unfortunately, this only attracts the same people who look at job boards. That is, people would need to actively seek out and find that facebook page, and then opt in to get information or updates. These people aren’t truly passive candidates.
I agree completely, Matt, that there is a future for recruiting through social media, but that future most likely doesn’t look anything like we currently expect it to. In the meantime, how many corporate recruiters have the time to sit down in front of facebook, myspace, a ning network, etc., to sift through the millions of people who may or may not include relevant information in their profiles, and may or may not wish to be contacted regarding employment. At this point, I think many people are still using the “find the needle in the haystack” approach, which is time consuming and inefficient.
Again, Matt, great article and thanks for posting. It’s important to remember the successes we’ve achieved through our past failures to keep us inspired and motivated. So what will the better mousetrap look like?