Recruitment Social Media – Are you Being Left Behind?
ningcontentA few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity). Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”
Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ¬Ω of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.
Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.
Social Media Communities – They’re Not a Waste of Time
In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;
- Finding candidates
- Building relationships with potential candidates
- Enhancing your employment brand
I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?
Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool
Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:
- Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates.
- Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
- Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.
Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.
At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.
Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I’d love to hear what’s working and not working for you!
Article by Nicole Bodem of HR Search Marketing
Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities, and posted on Recruiting Manifesto.
