Hiring managers and Social Media!!

Hiring managers and Social Media!!

So first this post is more geared toward corporate recruiting, but some could be applied toward any staffing.

So one of the big questions I get is what can hiring managers (HM) do to help staffing with regards to social media. The answer is simple, a lot.

It can start with ensuring the HMs has a complete LinkedIn profile and at the very least a twitter account. If at all possible a Blog, and accounts with some of the other social media sites such as; Facebook, Google+, Branchout, Beknown etc.

Make sure they tweet, blog, etc. about things like; thoughts on a particular subject related to their vocation, a day in the life of someone at their company, and of course openings they have and want to fill. Bring in RSS feeds form their company talking about the company and the openings. Make sure those feeds are shared through tweets and again are shared on their LinkedIn profile and to their other social media sites. Make sure they update their twitter account either by hand or through various auto tweeting tools and RSS feeds regularly.

Ensure the HMs put their LinkedIn, twitter, and other social media links in their signature block and asking people to connect. Also a link to their openings and jobs page.

Make sure they get involved in user groups and try to connect to others there and have them connect via LinkedIn and twitter. Promote their filed, jobs, and their openings.

Most importantly make sure the HMs connects with their staffing professional (SP) on LinkedIn and all social media sites.

If an HM does these things they will go a long way in helping staffing with regards to social media.

Comment by Ryan Leary on September 12, 2012 at 4:53am: Playing devils advocate here. What metrics on return do you provide to the hiring manager to show that the time spent doing this will be valuable. I understand the value of what you are mentioning but the average manager will look at you like you have 3 heads.

Outside of saying it must be done and it's going to help, how do you sell this and what data do you provide to the manager to show the return?

Comment by Guy Swain on September 13, 2012 at 8:59am: Dean,

Food for thought, certainly. Unfortunately I too would like to know how you are getting the value of this across to the hiring managers. Expressing this kind of activity as valuable and subsequently expressing the ROI to a hiring manager or executive, in a manner that indicates a positive effect on the bottom line, is not easy and not always possible.

Comment by Ron Kubitz on September 13, 2012 at 9:43am: Nice piece and agree with all comments so far! The best way I have found to sell the ROI is through real life examples.I encouraged a Social Media push throughout our organization and got much negatvie response (at first) but a few strong early embracers.

As the Corporate Recruiter/Trainer I worked with the managers to establish their SM presence and it was not long until one of the managers received two good hits from prospects who viewed their profile on LinkedIn. These were two strong candidates who the manager turned over to me for contact and to make along story short both were hired for roles that are not always the easiest fills!

Once these success stories were shared within the company (as well as all subsequent successes) it did not take long for MOST of the other managers to quickly jumpon board the Socail media train. Still have some hold-outs but hires from Social Media now greatly out distance those from true job posts and the myriad of job boards used! Most of the SM hiring still comes from my sourcing of these sites but the managers have made my job a great deal easier.

Comment by Tiffany Branch on September 13, 2012 at 10:52am: I think this is good, however, you have to know your organization's culture and audience. Most of the folks at the current company I support aren't on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc. I've been unsuccessful at attracting straong candidates via those methods. Many of the folks's we would try and attract don't even know how to use social media for networking and job seeking. This particular culture/industry is very much "word of mouth" so I encourage my hiring managers to reach out to their newtorks to try and identify talent.

Like any new method of sourcing talent, you have to know your culture and assess what will work for you. I won't invest in too much social media with my current client (no ROI) but it doesn't mean I wouldn't use the tactics stated in the post for another.

Comment by Dean Da Costa on September 15, 2012 at 8:15pm: Great back and fourth guys. So how I got it across was by real life examples as Ron said, the other was a little common sense, the more people that know you have an opening the more likely someone that will be interested will see it, And also by running a test case with 1 manager after all I only needed 1, once I had 1 and proved it worked the rest was, well as they say history.