With the HR Technology Conference just around the corner, my friend Mary Kaylor, Manager of Public Affairs at SHRM, invited me to participate in a Q&A series they’re hosting on We Know Next. I got a bit long-winded, but thought she sparked some good conversation, and wanted to share with my readers here.
Everyone is talking about social recruiting. How important is it for employers to include a social media component in their recruiting strategies and why?
Everyone is talking about social because everyone – not just active job seekers – is using social on a daily, hourly, near-constant basis. Recruiters savvy enough to leverage social as a marketing communications channel are reaping the benefits in very big ways. Use cases for social are rapidly evolving beyond direct sourcing, and many of these are changing the traditional recruiting mold.
Glassdoor, for example, has quickly evolved into one of the leading job-seeker resources around. Its reviews and ratings give candidates insider information on an organization, giving them some much-needed perspective on the viability of that organization as an employer.
This is can be frustrating for recruiters, I know, as it’s not exactly making their jobs any easier. But it’s past time employers are held accountable for poor process and fabricated value propositions.
As technology evolves, what do you think the future of recruiting will look like? Will software programs and computers replace recruiters?
Have you met a recruiter? Is there anything remotely robotic about them? Quite the contrary, recruiters are some of the most dynamic people I know. Their job depends on it!
But talent acquisition technology can certainly make their lives easier – especially in sourcing and assessing talent. Search algorithms like those used by Gild and Entelo can quickly scour the social web to find the best coders living in Boise. Behavioral assessment tools like People Answers can evaluate candidates’ values and habits to gauge how well they’ll fit in your organization. Video interview platforms like WePow can vastly reduce the time recruiters spend screening candidates.
Whereas much of the last decade was spent making recruiting more efficient, the 2010s have been dedicated to making talent acquisition more effective. There’s a lot of opportunity here, and I think we’re only beginning to understand just how much there is to be done.
Now that everyone is using technology to find candidates, how can organizations use technology to attract them?
Great question – and one we’ll be discussing in my panel on Oct. 8 at 3:30p (Laws of Attraction on the Ideas & Innovators Track). One of the greatest challenges organizations face in attracting talent is also the most elementary: capacity. Who has time to build a long-term marketing strategy for attracting top talent?
The good news is, this is one of the first areas that best-of-breed solution providers in recruitment marketing are focused on. From content curation and distribution tools offered by QUEsocial to employer brand management solutions offered by Glassdoor, there’s a lot that can be automated in recruitment marketing.
But I’ve said it before, and I have a feeling I’ll be saying it for the next ten years: Measurement is key. If you don’t know where the target is moving (and attraction is most certainly a moving target), you’ll never come close to hitting it. You’ve got to understand where you’re at and where you’d like to go before you can even begin to think about how you’re going to get there.
What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding about social recruiting?
Great question. The single biggest misunderstanding organizations have about social recruiting is that social just for the sake of social is worthwhile. By setting up a careers page on Facebook and tweeting out some jobs on Twitter, many organizations seem to think they’ll achieve meaningful results. On the contrary, our research shows that only those organizations with a formal social strategy in place are seeing significant impact in their key performance indicators.
The reason is pretty simple: These companies set clear goals, identify metrics for measurement, and actively monitor performance. As a result, they are able to optimize resources and time spent on the most effective channels, and focus social recruiting efforts rather than simply apply to post-and-pray model to another medium.
–Kyle Lagunas, Talent Acquisition Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@KyleLagunas
