Differentiate Yourself OR Die

Why differentiate yourself as a recruiter

As I was going through the slideshare presentation titled “Start-up of You” by Reid Hoffman, slide 21 really made me stop and think for a moment as it provided only two options: differentiate or die.

If you think about it, it’s so relevant to you as a recruiter or a recruiting leader who is trying to win the war on talent for hard-to-fill positions. In the process of winning this war, you can either differentiate yourself & win or die in the battle. The choice is yours.

This particular war on talent is won every day by a very few recruiters who know and have mastered over time how to harness the power of key Social Media platforms including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus to source top talent within 48 hours.

But the vast majority of recruiters and recruiting leaders (97%) still think they can get away without investing time and money into learning how to actually do social recruiting to get an ROI in just 6 months. Is that you?

No worries, we’ve all been there. It’s not your fault.

Now what’s at stake here?

“For many people twenty years of experience is really one year of experience repeated twenty times”. - Andy Hargadon

In other words, if you’re just doing recruiting or filling jobs with active candidates for twenty years, you’re highly replaceable by your company. Sorry to break this to you but ask yourself sincerely, “can anyone do my job?”

If your answer is “yes”, then you’re at the mercy of your employer. How does it feel? Not good, right?

The good news is you can change that starting this week. Differentiate yourself or die.

Build something from the ground up in the space of social recruiting to source passive candidates so your employer may value you more, give you more opportunities and treat you differently.

Pick one social media platform and become an expert in it to differentiate yourself from every other recruiter in the industry who’s just recruiting active candidates through applicant tracking systems.

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Comment by Keith D. Halperin on November 11, 2013 at 1:30pm: Thank you Shahid. I think you differentiate yourself by having a position that the candidates you seek actually would consider. Most employers and therir recruiters are going after far better candidates than they can reasonably expect to get.

Cheers

Keith

Comment by Shahid Wazed on November 11, 2013 at 4:42pm: You're very welcome Keith! Absolutely, having or taking some time to redefine the position passive candidates would find interesting and consider is critical in sourcing top talent :) Thank you Keith for taking some time to contribute to this discussion.

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on November 11, 2013 at 5:28pm: YOu are most welcome, Shahid. Please keep blogging!

Cheers,

Keith

Comment by Jerry Albright on November 12, 2013 at 8:37am: This statement is ridiculous: "This particular war on talent is won every day by a very few recruiters who know and have mastered over time how to harness the power of key Social Media platforms including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus to source top talent within 48 hours."

I'll clarify. Linkedin is a resume/job board. Period. The term "social recruiting" and Linkedin should never appear in the same sentence, unless the sentence is highlighting how they are absolutely different animals. "Harness the power" of Facebook? Twitter? Hardly. Those are 2 of the biggest time sucking monsters ever to hit our profession.

Let me guess.....you sell Social Recruiting services?

Comment by Shahid Wazed on November 12, 2013 at 10:05am: Thank you for your comment Jerry. 100% agree with you when you say Linkedin is a job board because Linkedin does have that function. However, if we exclude Linkedin from the club of social networking sites, then I'm afraid we need to exclude Facebook and Twitter as well. For example, you can add any job board app (i.e. jobcast, to your corporate Facebook page to let your candidate know about your job opportunities. Here's an article from Forbes that'll shed light to this great discussion: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/11/14/the-facebook-job-boa... . As for your other comment on Facebook & Twitter recruiting, please note I've personally seen an organization recruit over 25 people YTD from Facebook! Also, I know a recruiter in Toronto who recruits passive candidates from Twitter every week! And that was exactly my point, majority of recruiting leaders are still in denial when it comes to social recruiting, however, a very few recruiters are making Social Media work for recruiting. Remember Jerry, just because you personally don't have the evidence, it does not mean it does not exist. But you brought up a valid point about Linkedin, thank you! As for your last question, the answer is no.

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on November 12, 2013 at 1:11pm: @ Shahid: I ask any social network recruiting advocate to do as follows:

1) You have 25 reqs : high, medium, and low-level positions.

2) Starting in one month, you're expected to fill one req on average/week.

3) You can only use FB and Twitter.

4) Your clock starts NOW...

Cheers,

Keith

Comment by Jerry Albright on November 12, 2013 at 1:24pm: Let's look at it this way: "Social" recruiting is a ship. I see it as a giant ocean bound vessel where you must pick your course well in advance of actually needing to produce results. You simply can not jump onto Twitter and pull out a specific talent on a moment's notice. Just as you can not turn a Carnival Cruise liner on a dime. Same thing for Facebook.

Let's say you've got a great online community of C#, .Net Web-type developers. Great. But your phone rings and it's your client. She needs an Oracle DBA. Your social network isn't going to provide that. And this is typically the nature of business - even within a niche.

I might not be describing this well (I'm also trying to work through a Ham and Swiss before a 1:30 call. But I see our advantage in being a high-speed pleasure boat. Zipping through the recruiting ocean. Turn left, circle back - go forward, stop. All directions are possible if you are not encumbered by thinking you have some sort of social advantage.

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on November 12, 2013 at 3:03pm: @ Jerry: Thank you for mentioning the boat analogy.

SNR is one of the types of snake oil or “magic bullet” that slick hucksters with high-level connections try to sell to desperate and not-yet insolvent recruiters and their superiors who fail to recognize that in most cases they are futilely “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic” of their companies’ ill-conceived, over-blown, grossly-dysfunctional hiring practices.

Cheers,

Keith

Comment by Shahid Wazed on November 12, 2013 at 3:27pm: @Keith I personally pick up candidates (i.e. get them interested in job opportunities) within 48 hours leveraging only key Social Media platforms.

So I can only refer to what Henry Ford said: "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right."

This is not to say social recruiting is the only way to recruit candidates but it's highly mistaken to think you can't recruit great talent leveraging Social Media and decrease your time to hire by 33% as pointed out in this particular survey done by Jobvite: http://mashable.com/2013/09/11/social-recruiting/#! .

Thank you for taking the time to contribute to this interesting discussion, appreciate it!

Comment by Jerry Albright on November 12, 2013 at 3:52pm: Jobvite surveys do not qualify as anything other than propaganda in my opinion. I dare them to remove Linkedin from their stats.

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