Why recruitment is a social experience… for Diversity

{ 07/10/2012 @ 7:50 pm } · { Awards, Diversity, Social Media, TV }
{ Tags: Awards, CIPD, Diversity, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter }

Can social media be utilised to show the importance of Diversity to an organisation? Why not. For more and more people social media is part of their day. For news. For events. For causes. For business. And for ITV, it’s there for understanding their candidates and viewers – on top of being a platform for promoting themselves as an employer concerned about diversity in all its forms. To enable this, Facebook acts as an information hub and Twitter helps drive the conversations.

On Facebook, not only are there some aspirational and informative pieces from a variety of people of diverse backgrounds, but the page promotes diversity initiatives from the TV industry and specific ITV job opportunities/schemes aimed at various diverse audiences, such as BAME and LGBT.

Twitter is used for social listening, to gather feedback from the TV industry and potential employees and to promote ITV as a diverse employer. This centres around regular twitter chats – #ITVchat – which have covered subjects from Disability, Women in the workplace, Working families and LGB. These chats attract involvement from more than just potential ITV employees – organisations such as Stonewall to other media businesses like the BBC join in. Not surprisingly, they also engage and involve ITV employees. But unexpectedly, these ITVchats almost always make it into the top Trending Topics, such is their popularity.

The discussions are fed back within ITV and are helping the business understand how it connects with their diverse community – not just employees and candidates but viewers as well – all to help future employment and programming.

Another interesting development is that the social media accounts have been used as personal sounding boards by some individuals – from the prejudice shown towards a gay runner to a person with mental issues trying to start a career in TV – all by direct messaging. That’s how personal social media can be – and the importance it can play in diversity.

ITV (aka @Moveonup2ITV on social media) is shortlisted in the Best Diversity Initiative at the CIPD RMAs. Fingers crossed for tonight.