Leveraging Social Networks for Recruiting !

“The secrets of twenty-first century economics lie in the servers of the companies that are all around us…”
– From ‘The Long Tail’ –Chris Anderson

From the development of telecommunications to emails, chat rooms, instant messaging, discussion boards, group calendars, blogs and social media, internet has come a long way revolutionizing our lives and shrinking a boundaryless world into our cosy rooms. Come to think of, social media isn’t new but rather, an intelligent combination of various applications using latest technology that appeals to human desires and foster interactions in real time. It works better, faster and is accessible from mobile phones making Social Networking truly pervasive.

We have witnessed Social Media spark revolutions, establish connections, renew old relations and even topple governments. Social networks have facilitated easy content creation and publication which aids organisations in establishing deeper levels of engagement amongst users. The rapid mobile revolution in Asia will yield significant increase in mobile internet and social commerce thereby making social networks to become major shopping centres. The manifestation of social media will have tremendous implication on economy, business, organisations, consumers and individuals. Social networks seamlessly integrate the virtual and real world thereby making it a catalyst for change and defining the future of internet technology. Little wonder, organisations, business and individuals are relentlessly striving to capture space on various social networks.

Today social network generate strikingly different set of challenges for individuals and organisations. The laws for social networks are not properly defined. There are grave concerns about data privacy and inappropriate usage of personal and professional information. But this hasn’t deterred people from subscribing to various social networks.

Interestingly Social network propels ‘disintermediation’ wherein companies approach customers directly with their products and services instead of any intermediaries or partners or resellers.

Disintermediation appears advantageous because companies can directly learn more from customers by engaging them and such interactions help to serve customers better. While traditional branding focused on logos, social media branding essentially is focused on users. This aspect of engaging with users can be extended and creates an opportunity to develop a strong employer brand.

With millions of people subscribing to various social networks, leveraging these networks to tap potential recruits is popularly known as ‘Social Recruiting’. To harness these networks, it is extremely important for HR to understand the various social networks and develop an effective social recruiting strategy. At the moment, these “Big Five” social networking sites viz; ‘Linked In’, ‘Facebook’, ‘YouTube’, ‘Twitter’ and ‘Google +’ are very popular.

LinkedIn is the leader in connecting experienced professionals from around the world, while Facebook at the moment is the largest of the social utility sites with over 700 million users that connects people with friends, family and professional colleagues. Facebook has also included connections to organizations, businesses, and interests. YouTube provides individuals and organisations with amazing opportunity to stream videos. Many organisations have started showcasing real life videos that displays their work culture, work ethos, business practices, domain expertise, case studies etc. These videos are created to provide compelling reasons for customers to do business and for candidates to apply. Twitter is more of information networking service and acts as microblogs that shares user experience using 140 characters ‘tweets’ or messages. Google + appears similar to Facebook and promises to be much more in future.

Biz Stone, CEO of Twitter once said that “Openness is important for the future of a company”. This means social network is no longer a trend but a necessity, a tool not just for recruiters but predominantly a resource for candidates to research information about companies. It provides recruiters with a wide pool of readily available talent, allows them to target passive candidates and develop talent pipeline. Social networking is also cost effective tool that enhances communications by developing good content, providing online updates using blogs, podcasts, and videos. The number of “likes” helps organisations to monitor perception about their brand

HR professionals have gradually started realizing the impact of social network for employer branding. But before they subscribe to social media, it is extremely important to delve on the following aspects:

 Create an effective global social media policy: A social media policy outlines for employees the corporate guidelines or principles of communicating in the online world. HR must play an active role along with communication department to design and roll out an effective social medial policy.

 Train Employees: Invest in training employees on different social media platforms. Educate employees to respect privacy, protect information and follow the law. A great example is ‘Zappos’ where employees are encouraged to have Twitter accounts so they can interact with current and potential customers. Interestingly they also train their employees on the proper use of Twitter during new-hire orientation. ‘Dell’ has a social media university that renders certifications across different platforms to employees once they complete their training.

 Create Content: With content becoming the king, it is critical that organisations invest in creating high-quality content which can benefit the organization. This can be done by using leadership and employee blogs, podcasts or uploading videos that help in improving employer branding. Remember videos encourage more sharing than text.

 Advertise Jobs: The simple way to use social media for hiring is by posting job vacancies and search for candidates. Linked In also has separate hiring solutions and exclusive suite of tools for recruiters. You can even post a job for free in the Facebook Marketplace.

 Transparent Information to candidates: HR must ensure that candidates are notified, in writing, about the companies use of social media to gather information, e.g., on job applications. Ensure employment decisions are made based on lawful, verified information. Follow hiring policy or incorporate best practices in identifying a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the hiring decision with the documentation supporting the decision.

 Provide company information: Regular information and updates must be provided on social networks. This can be done by creating a Twitter account for the organisation. The objective of tweets is to communicate about the organisation and what topics are important to organisation. This will help in reaching out to customers and potential hires. This will also help to engage with potential candidates and see what topics they tweet about.

 Focus on building communities of talent: This is done by encouraging job seekers, subject matter experts and hiring companies both to participate in a dialogue using discussion boards. The quality of discussions and community membership is important for HR. HR and line managers must join various interest groups to connect with potential candidates.

 Reputation Management and Monitoring: The emergence of social media and arrival of tech savvy millennial generation at workplace has made it important to monitor perception of company brands. This can be done by subscribing to agencies that provide reputation management service and by even conducting online polls and feedback surveys.

 Facilitate collaboration: Web 2.0 technologies promises to spread social media amongst employees and interest groups. HR must facilitate such collaboration and become a change agent in promoting this technology.

Demography, attitude of the potential candidate, Generation Y and Employer branding are compelling companies to change recruitment methodology. Social networks can improve communication, bring greater efficiency to the workplace and provide great insight about people’s interests and motivations. It offers immense opportunities for learning and knowledge sharing. It is therefore imperative that HR has to adopt and integrate social media quickly. At the same time, HR has to subtly integrate both social recruiting and traditional recruiting including job boards, company sites and search firms to evaluate talent. Social media is here to stay. Both marketing and HR will have to play a crucial role in becoming leaders in harnessing various social networks to build brand and recruit talent.