“Social Recruiting – Social recruiting is when companies and recruiters use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and and other social media sites to source and recruit candidates for employment.”

You can always count on About.com for the most simplistic definition for everything in life. Thanks to CEO Stewie Griffin and CFO Elmo, we now know the true essence of this popular catch phrase. Now that we know what it is, who is successfully utilizing it to align strong vendor/corporate partnerships?

Every successful or moderately successful organization is utilizing any and all cost effective tools to get the “word” out on career opportunities. That means opening the door to Craigslist, Backpage, Ning, Indeed, Jobvite, TwitRes, Tweetmyjobs, Job Angels, Oodle, etc., etc. Now that we have all these avenues to get the word out, how on Earth can we do a 40-hour work week when we have to post on all these platforms. Help!!!

Is there a strong automation and talent networking tool that can effectively link the giants of the social networking world with the needs of talent acquisition to not only to post opportunities and recycle the outreach, but also develop an algorithm that can use our own talent networks to identify key talent?

Drum roll, please… Ladies and gentlemen, the 2011 Award for Best Social Recruiting Platform is…Bullhorn Reach (http://www.bullhornreach.com/)!

The philosophy of Bullhorn Reach is simple: take the bull by the horns and make it possible.

Says Bullhorn CEO and founder Art Papas, “Our aim at Bullhorn Reach is to make it easy and simple for recruiters to unlock the power of social media. Finding and recruiting talent is hard enough, without the extra challenge of learning how to use a whole new set of tools. We help recruiters harness social media to market their open jobs, monitor their contacts, and nurture their relationships — with no training and minimal effort.”

The fundamental goal of a social networking tool — whether it’s to connect with others, develop talent communities, recruit, build a brand or develop a business strategy — is to identify your target audience and create the most efficient and user-friendly tool on the market. Bullhorn has created a talent acquisition/recruitment tool that integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (currently also syndicates to a handful of job board aggregators such as SimpleHired, and in negotiation with Indeed.com) to market career opportunities, identify potential candidate flow in your networks, and provide analytics to evaluate your success points. Utilizing an attractive visual interface and non-technical, user-friendly platform, Bullhorn understands its core client base and has developed an approach that appeals to the recruitment community.

The key elements of the Bullhorn Reach social recruiting platform are:

A tool that broadcasts open job listings to your social networks and job board aggregators, automatically re-posting until the listing is closed;

A metrics/analytics dashboard for monitoring performance levels of the postings;

An algorithm that matches potential candidates from your personal social networks to your open job listings;
Another algorithm that calls out behavioral patterns of people in your networks who may be looking for jobs (i.e., tells you about passive job seekers in your networks before they flip);

A tool for sharing content that attaches a branded bar to all of the content that you share, while simultaneously promoting your open job;

A referral tool (currently in private beta) to both leverage employees’ social networks while helping unlock your employer brand through tapping your employees’ collective voice;

And a reward/recognition program to allow your corporate recruiting team to monitor and share referral performances.

As a recruiter, you want to post a job and sit back while candidates flood the gates to apply for the roles; then, the assessment process is ready to begin. Unfortunately, social media and population growth has created a boundless, virtual world, where our attention span is very limited. What Bullhorn Reach has allowed its users to do, is post career opportunities and then relax while the application does the rest.

Through a scheduler whose pace is determined by the user, jobs are reposted through the three core networks to maximize exposure. The analytics provide data on the frequency, seeded channels and exposure of your open job listings. And, it provides real-time updates on any communications sent by potential candidates.

For most organizations, the most successful pool of talent is found through employee referrals. Who better to understand the culture, infrastructure, and operations of your company than its associates. Carrying this forward, Bullhorn feels that your networks are the best source for talent. As the domino effect clearly dictates, once a role is shared with a network, the probability of it being shared out further is much stronger because you are gaining assistance from people you know and trust.

Upon logging into Bullhorn Reach, you are provided with Radar updates on people in your network who exhibit recruiting-relevant behavior, including promotions, job changes, title changes and other information that allows you to keep in contact with your online contacts, even as your networks continue to grow. The most unique feature of Reach Radar, however, is an algorithm that calls out “potential movers” — that is, individuals who may be moving jobs. They are identified by relevant changes in their behavior (for example, increased activity in profile changes, connections and/or recommendations). The take-away: you, as a recruiter, can jump on a potential mover before they have identified a new opportunity.

As Bullhorn develops Reach’s paid features (it’s currently free), companies will be able further brand open job listings and provide more company-specific information to give potential candidates a better understanding not only of the roles but also the companies.

In the continuing evolution of recruiting, the key is to stay ahead of the competition, find cost effective means to attract top talent at the lowest possible cost, and develop and maintain strong talent communities for future pipeline needs. One thing is clear about recruitment, it never stops.

Organizations will continue to fight for the top industry talent, and recruiters will need to wear a variety of hats to show their detective, business development, sales and marketing skills. Bullhorn Reach may have set the standard for the marriage between social media and recruitment. With a solid development and sales team who are focused on the needs of the company and its talent acquisition teams, Bullhorn Reach is ready to take your hand and guide you through the tunnel to the future of recruitment.

Introduction to Bullhorn Reach