It’s okay if no one Likes your Social Recruiting

{ 02/06/2011 @ 4:57 pm } · { Effectiveness, Recruitment, Social Media, Social recruiting }
{ Tags: Recruitment, Social Media, Social Recruiting }

We all know the ideal of corporate Social Recruiting is to create an interested (and active) talent community of potential candidates all ready, willing and waiting to seize the career opportunities as you have them. That means connecting with and then building a relationship with this community – be it via a Linked In group, followers on Twitter, being liked on Facebook…

What you’re asking them to do is ‘flag up’ that they’re interested in working for you. So, if using the more popular and open social networks, their present employers could see who they’d like to work for. Or that their colleagues can see they’re looking to move on. Now you can see what implications that may have.

At certain career points, such as Graduate and Entry level for example, that isn’t an issue. Nor in the more ‘volatile’ recruitment markets such as retail and hospitality. But what about the other extreme, say Senior Management? If as a business you want to use social media to help recruit directly, without utilising the ‘talents’ of Recruitment Consultants, will people willingly and openly show their interest in your organisation and opportunities? Probably not.

That is when ‘broadcasting’ come in. Remember there are still many, many people out there who aren’t sat at their computer constantly searching for a job change – there is still a huge need to generate attraction. Ensuring that your messages reach the streams that will reach the right audience. Still using the popular channels but for slightly different uses. Not that we’re advocating the common practice of automated ATS feeds on Twitter – many of which will only reach the often limited numbers of Followers and no-one else. Recently, we ran a social recruiting campaign to recruit for a whole bunch of mid-senior sales and marketing professionals. It didn’t manage to build any sort of community on the social channels – as we have done for other clients’ campaigns – but it did achieve the successful result of filling all the positions after a 4 week campaign.

So don’t always expect to find a massive volume of Likes to a Facebook page, but ensure there’s a reason for them to read it when they ‘find’ it from other channels. Every channel has to work hard and work together. Very much like the old days of direct recruitment when you broadcasted in the press and talked ‘more discretely’ via direct mail, for example, you always have to consider the most effective way to reach your target market to succeed.