Social Recruiting: Reality not just Strategy

{ 09/19/2012 @ 7:36 am } · { Recruitment, Social Media, Social recruiting, Technology }
{ Tags: Recruitment, Social Media, Social Recruiting }

That is the important factor of using social media for recruitment. Of course you need to plan a strategy, have aims in mind, measurements for ‘success’ in place but you also need to leave room for some reality. The fact is things change. All the time. New platforms are born. (Inevitably, some will die.) Changes in popular usage. Remember, when gamification was THE big thing for social recruiting. Nowadays, content seems to have taken over its mantle. The world of social continually evolves. As do the people using it. So does the way they use it. Meaning there’s one key takeaway, every strategy needs room to breathe because reality means just that. Real. Honest. Adaptability.

Too often, strategies are ‘corporate’ tight. Even down to the number of posts per day/week. What can/can’t be used. Ideal response times. You know the score. That’s fine, but not when it actually restricts what you can achieve. How you can (or should) engage. Reality means you need some flexibility. Some space for a possible bit of ‘beta testing’. Room to ‘experiment’. That’s the beauty of this ‘media’, after all. If it doesn’t work, you can drop it. Stop it. Change it. If it works well, you can build on it. But only if your strategic plan isn’t set in ‘Excel’ stone to begin with.

Just think how much change there has been in the past year. Across virtually all the platforms. Facebook Timelines. Pinterest interest. Linked In interface. And only yesterday, the second New Twitter in 12 months. Could you have planned for those in your Social Recruiting strategy for 2011/12?