Use Employee Blogs to Include, Not Exclude, Candidates from the Hiring Process
We’ve all heard the stories of potential employers finding a little too much information about candidates through a Google search of the names of the candidates. A good friend of mine declined to hire an otherwise highly qualified sales candidate when he found her MySpace profile and it revealed in excruciating detail how she enjoyed getting drunk and having sex with strangers. Employers have also terminated the employment of those who revealed a little too much about themselves. The CEO of social networking site Digg, for example, terminated an intern after he bragged on his blog that he did nothing at work all day other than instant message with his friends. A Texas school district terminated a teacher after non-obscene nude photos of her were discovered by a fellow teacher who then told a number of students where they could see a little more of their teacher than they probably wanted to.
Yet candidates can and usually do include far more positive than negative information about themselves on their MySpace, Facebook, and blog pages. Employers should realize that these sites offer a wealth of information about highly qualified candidates who may not even realize they are candidates yet – the elusive and much sought after passive candidate. So how should employers use these sites to find these candidates? The same way that they use the resume banks of CollegeRecruiter.com and other job boards: keyword searches.
Ryan Loken, a recruitment manager for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., was recently quoted by CareerJournal.com, as recognizing the phenomenal potential for employers of blog entries and comments to blog entries. “If [someone has] a blog or [has] made a comment on one, you can see what their knowledge level truly is – because resumes can be full of fluff.” Loken estimated that he had filled about 125 jobs through his willingness to read blogs and contact the writers who make intelligent contributions.
The best recruiters that I talk with always advocate asking candidates for proof of performance: don’t just tell me that you can do the job, show me that you’ve done it. Loken has that figured out. He’s looking for candidates with a significant degree of knowledge and passion for his niche so he’s gone where more and more people with knowledge and passion for a niche are going: to the blogs. And wouldn’t you rather recruit someone for your electrical engineering firm who has proven her ability to perform by choosing in her spare time to write about new developments in electrical engineering than trolling a resume bank for an electrical engineer who has proven, well, that he has an ability to post his resume to a job board?
Source: Campus Career Counselor
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