Do recruiters need to become more Pinteresting?

I am a Social Media and Marketing Exec and I work for a recruitment company called Lipton Fleming (LF). Here at LF we try to change with the ever adapting media landscape, not only by being a recruitment consultancy that “Places people first” (our slogan and for all intents and purposes our mission statement but) by moving with the times.

This does not mean jumping on the bandwagon and following the latest trend if it has absolutely nothing to do with us but we have to remember this is all down to perception and thankfully at LF my peers feel the same. We don’t follow fashion; we adapt to our landscape and are fortunate enough to recruit in media, where the vast majority of our candidates are using mediums such as Facebook, Twitter and the new kid on the block Pinterest, amongst other heavy hitters.

This leads me on to my point, I went to a conference recently and heard something which almost made me convulse!! A speaker basically said “As recruiters we have no business using new fads like Pinterest”. Ok, so maybe convulse is a bit of an over statement, but I look around at the vast majority of recruiters in our market who either do not use social media or do and just push messages to their audience. I’m biased but I know that at LF social is a way to; A) Meet our candidates and clients in a relevant space to them, B) Engage, share information and be relevant to both them and us.

An example would be how we are using Pinterest; we share relevant information, engage with other members on the site and then syndicate our content for our clients and candidates on some of our relevant social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Please don’t misunderstand, I am not saying we are pioneers but what I think is the most important take home aspect of this is, that we will always look for a way to engage with our clients and candidates by meeting them in areas that are relevant to them and sharing relevant content to them.

Please feel free to check us out on the profiles in question:

Pinterest (We have some Pinterest invites left if you would like one please ask via our Twitter)
Twitter
Facebook
Website

So the question I ask is “Do you think recruiters / recruiting brands need to become more relevant and interesting to stay in touch with their market?”

Written by,

Richard Ward.

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Comment by Ellen Clark on March 23, 2012 at 10:08am: My firm, Clark Executive Search, just started about a month ago to use PinInterst. I like what I see so far in terms of increased traffic to my web page. But also it is just plain fun to use. Here is my Pininterst link: http://pinterest.com/clarksearch/

Comment by Dorion on March 23, 2012 at 10:35am: I do believe a recruiter's brand is an important compentency for recruiters to possess. There are more people in the job market today who handle their life's transactions via social media and social networking. We I started recruiting most recruiters were adjusting to the move from receiving resumes via fax to receiving resumes via email. Now the landscape has shifted again and we must be able to adapt to communicate with the new job seeker in 2013 and beyond.

Comment by Lipton Fleming on March 23, 2012 at 10:46am: @ Ellen Clark You're right!! It is just plain fun as well!

@ Dorion You're right, it's all about meeting candidates in places relevant to them.

Comment by Doug Cohen on March 23, 2012 at 11:01am: I just started using Pinlnterst, but sometimes you can spend more time being social then recruiting-even though you are-I am in favor of trying new sites, but it can get time consuming. By the way anyone looking for a Sr. Recruiter with 15 years experience, who can work virtual? Who has a technical background, recruited for coast to coast, and international and who does not use job boards? Please let me know.

Comment by Brian D on March 23, 2012 at 12:12pm: I just signed up for it, looks cool! . How are recruiters using the site?

Comment by Lipton Fleming on March 23, 2012 at 12:24pm: @ Brian If you have a look at our Pinterest you can see how we are using it. http://pinterest.com/liptonfleming/ also there are others posted above in the comments.

Comment by Paul Alfred on March 23, 2012 at 12:46pm: Pinterest is fun Brands are killing themselves to get involved ... Don't see the immediate use for Recruiters unless you're gonna make profiles of Candidates ( Add Sexy picture here) you have or Job descriptions where a pin takes you back to your webpage or a blog. I just use it to show off stuff I love and find interesting and stroke my ego :) Kidding ... I have a ton of boards ...: http://pinterest.com/ispeak2u/