Social media recruiting has been core to what I do for years. It ranks second to the phone as my most important tool.
I know how many folks visit my blog every day. I pay attention to Twitter follows/unfollows. I have a Twitter list with 3,000+ Minnesota IT pros paying attention to it on a semi regular basis. I rank on the first page of Google for all the keywords important to me. I am running a set of Facebook ads next week and have an idea for some simple videos for my startups.
I am not tired of recruiting or social media … I am tired of the commentary.
We are well into the fall season of state SHRM and recruiter conference season or what I prefer to call it, “silly season.” The volume and frequency of these conversations has increased and my attitude is not getting any better.
The past weeks and months I have seen LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter status updates and blog updates from conferences and “thought leaders” that have made me say, “Oh no, they didn’t say that.”
Things like:
- Social media is making it so we don’t have to talk with candidates anymore.
- LinkedIn company pages are more important than company websites.
- There is nothing wrong with just tweeting jobs.
- When sourcing and recruiting on LinkedIn, you should always have others see you as “Anonymous.”
- Everyone needs to be branding their company on Pinterest and Instagram.
- Follow those people on Twitter you will want to recruit. If they don’t follow you back it’s OK to unfollow them.
- Recruiting on social media sites is free.
- Replace traditional job posts with infographics … people like visual things.
- Posting photos of company culture on Instagram will bring you more candidates.
If you find yourself reading one of these posts or attending a conference and feel skeptical about what you are hearing, ask the writer/speaker questions … engage with them.
Here are a few to start with:
- How do they know?
- What are the metrics?
- How has traffic, engagement, resumes received, number of interviews, and ultimately hires increased?
- Can you quantify in any way how this has helped employer branding?
- What does the A/B testing show?
- Show me an example of how this can work for a company like mine.
Here’s the deal…
Using social media sites as a sourcing, recruiting, and branding tool goes back many years now, so we should have examples of how it is done. And examples should have evolved beyond using Facebook, Google, Zappos, and similar companies.
Frankly it’s too easy to use them.
We should now be hearing about the 250-person manufacturing company outside of Tulsa, the web development shop in Minneapolis, and how a med device startup in Detroit used a tool to source their new hires.
If not, then we need to question if and how social media is really working for your average, common company.
Take away …
Ask those commentating on social media and recruiting to prove it.