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?
