Social Recruitment – where are we today?

Most recruiters cannot even envisage the scenario where their jobs would be posted to their Facebook and Twitter, and especially on LinkedIn. Their Facebook profiles are in most cases private. They network with their friends and family there. Twitter is actually a social media tool that recruiter try to avoid if at all possible. It is just a bit too simple. 140 characters to say something meaningful? Not likely. Saying it in public, to both my candidates, clients and competitors? Definitely NOT! That is actually the main reason that sourcing on twitter works best out of all social networks. Recruiters simply don’t use it. So a few that do – have plenty of candidates to choose from. You would like to be the only recruiter with the full access to the Monster CV database, would you?

When recruiters push themselves (or get pushed by their manager) to start posting their jobs to the social media, it usually have no impact on their work. Why? Simply because they do it wrong. How wrong? Well completely wrong. What they do is just what they got set so it is done for them automatically. Like the link to every new job gets tweeted by their Twitter account. Of course no one but a plethora of SPAM-ers and robots follow them. There is absolutely no reason to follow someone’s Twitter account that just publishes jobs. Perhaps the only ones who would find any use of it are the competitors. They can check on you – what are you up to, by subscribing to your Twitter account. The same is with Facebook. The same is with LinkedIn.

Sourcing in Social Media?

You might as well speak French. Or Boolean. Or Klingon. The majority of recruiters would not be able to tell the difference between Boolean and Klingon. And why is Boolean different in Google, Bing, LinkedIn, and your own CV database search? Why can’t there be just one Boolean? Why is there a Boolean at all if it’s different in every single place I use it? It is like Klingon that has a very strong accent? Like a Dub talking to a someone from West Cork.

Recruitment and sourcing specialists and trainers train recruiters on how to use advanced tools on top of the social media products, where the average recruiter doesn’t really understand the underlying products at all. How to generate twitter lists does very little to a person who doesn’t really feel the urge to tweet and build his followership. Again the vast majority of recruiters simply do not want to tweet, full stop. Will they ‘Engage’ and build a ‘Talent Community’? Absolutely not! They hate the whole idea of ‘exposing’ themselves online. Recruiters are more comfortable with the word ‘Confidential’ than ‘Share’. Recruiters do not really ‘Share’ anything. Recruiters do not ‘Like’.

That is why a few recruiters who do the opposite are so successful! The way we communicate is changing. A few years ago I would call a few friends and we would go out. Today I ‘Publish’ where I am, and others follow. Note the difference – today there is less planned – it is real time. I checked in here. I am here doing this and that. Others follow, or I follow them. Today we live and work where the information is freely available in real time. Not using it for the recruitment is like deciding not to use fax, email, job boards, or whatever revolutionised the recruitment.

Real time, local and hence mobile. Those are the attributes of the future recruitment process.