Are you ready for the new normal that is social recruiting?

Over the course of the next week, I am meeting with many different companies - all with the same question wanting to be answered - does my business need to be using social media to recruit - social recruiting?

One of the first questions I shall be asking is whether their company is ready for social media?

I mean, do they understand that to get properly involved it will take time and commitment? With that commitment comes responsibility; listening; giving; sharing; vision; empowerment and bravery (for being prepared to listen to what is being said out there, about you, in the 'big bad internet'). Still interested?

The next question I ask is whether they are ready for a new normal?

The business world has changed (whether you like it or not), and some of the older traditional styles of recruiting are long gone. Many recruitment advertising agencies failed to see the light, stuck their heads in the sand, resisted change and tried to stick 'to what worked before.' They are no longer around!
Change is occurring and it is happening fast.
Candidates (and clients) no longer like being interrupted (old style marketing) or sold to directly about why they should be talking to your company. It is now very much about relationships, influencing and value-add selling. Still interested? Or are you happy to stay in the dark ages and perish accordingly?

While social media enables and facilitates this new normal, it is still the companies (and individuals) that need to shift their mindset to make it a success.

To be honest, every company I am seeing has answered 'yes' to both of these, so I am looking forward to discussing social recruiting in more detail with them!

My answer, by the way to the question I started with is always the same - yes.........but only as long as you have a sound recruitment strategy in place already. If you have, then social recruiting is certainly a channel you should be using!

Posted originally on my blog SironaSays

Comment by Saleem Qureshi on February 9, 2010 at 4:41am: Well raised questions. Certainly, with the emergence of social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook , and Twitter , and their user bases growing by millions, a headhunter’s job has got challenging, and they do have to change for retaining the success of the company. What I think is that the headhunter’s should take advantage of this social media, and must look into the new dimensions of recruiting through online talent assessments for cost-effectiveness.

Comment by Andy Headworth on February 9, 2010 at 5:17am: Saleem,

Absolutely the way to go! However, from many conversation and presentations with Search firms and Headhunters, there still seems to be a "if I stick my head in the sand it will go away" approach taken by many of them.
It is one sector of recruitment that are really dragging their heels in terms of accepting that the world is going social, and that they need to change with it.

Let's hope they take off their rose-tinted specs sometime soon!

Andy

Comment by Nick Gallimore on February 9, 2010 at 11:32am: Andy, aside from the really big companies who have huge budgets and who place a lot of emphasis on workforce and succession planning, how many companies actually find that Social Recruiting delivers them a better return on investment in terms of hiring than the "old-school" approach of locating and approaching top talent directly?

IMO, the Social Web is just a new tool - a really cool and exciting tool - that can (but by no means needs to be) be used as part of a winning recruitment strategy, but to suggest that it in some way replaces the need to (or is better than) directly approach talent (and heck, selling to talent) is a claim based on hope and not on evidence.

I've spoken to a number of companies who have been sold to by the new "Social Recruiting" industry, and none of those approaches even came close to seeing the bigger challenge for those companies - the here and now problems of getting sales closed, getting products made and getting promises delivered.

The world may be "going social" - for now - but it's by no means a given that these techniques, which can, in some situations, work really well, will replace the existing and established best practice of active dialogue and developing real relationships.

Comment by Margo Rose on February 9, 2010 at 11:28pm: Andy, you asked the question of the hour. Everyone wants to jump on the social recruiting bandwagon, but you are also correct when you say it is best to have a sound recruiting strategy in place. Excellent post.

Comment by Paul Alfred on February 15, 2010 at 8:34pm: Andy, I feel that Social Media has to be apart of a Company's Marketing Strategy with respect to better positioning of their product and or service through Blogs and SEO Strategies that drive traffic back to their perspective websites - Even with a sound recruitment strategy in place Social Media Recruiting will become more popular over the long term - I think for now Companies who utilize SM Channels are looked upon as being "With the Times" not so sure it impacts their online recruiting efforts with any major significance. With all new trends lets ask this question in 2011-12 time frame...