How to beat the Summer Recruiter doldrums….? Web 2.0 networking
You show up to the office Monday after a great weekend and are ready to source, the instinct of hunting takes over. You sign onto your favorite job sites, write you Boolean and search. Thinking to yourself, what interesting talented people will you get to talk to this week. There is a problem, why are there only 3 new candidates, and none are a fit for your role? The answer is that you are experiencing the summer doldrums! It is well known that Mondays and Tuesdays see a significant drop in the amount of job seekers posting new resumes online. it is also well known that once the sun comes out people are more content to vacation than search for jobs. That is particularly true in places such as our lovely state of Washington where each day of sunshine enjoyment needs to be capitalized on. How are you to stay busy and proactively beat this drought? You still have jobs to fill and there are still people looking to fill them. The answer is social networking web 2.0.
If you haven't accepted the fact that MySpace and Facebook can be used for Recruiting then you are probably too old and need to start filling out your social security forms. Passive candidates offer up a plethora of unsolicited information regarding their job title, company, dates worked for, duties and most times their direct contact information. Facebook is my personal favorite for candidate searching. From the main home page in the upper left hand corner is a 'search' button, click on it. Then on the right hand side of the page in bold it says 'profile', click on that next. Now you can fill out the search template any way you see fit i.e.: search by companies you wish to headhunt passive candidates; search by positions of people in your local who you may have skipped over on other job boards. Once I have identified a candidate I find of interest I always write a personalized message that is short, sweet and too the point. Social networking sites receive just as much, if not more junk mail that your box at home, don’t waste people's time.
This action can be repeated on MySpace, Talent Bar, and LinkedIn. It serves as a way to network on a more personal scale while digging a little deeper than the person at company X who is reviewing the same 3 resumes you looked at hours ago. Another great feature to check out are group pages on MySpace and Facebook. The group pages can be used to create an adaptable company profile where job openings can be posted, company information shared and news discussed. Group pages are something I will have to discuss in a future blog.
Happy Hunting,