How one recruiter sourced 27 I.T. professionals from Twitter

This is an old post from my blog "The Recruiting Unblog.", but as there have been a few posts recently on the topic of Twitter and Recruiters, I thought it was worth sharing. David Palmer asks"Does twitter do anything for recruiters?. This is how one recruiter figured out how to source from Twitter, and got great results. Be glad to hear of other success story's, and no doubt the nay sayers.

Whilst in Dublin, I heard a great story, how technology expert Ivan Stojanovicof Irish recruiting firm C.P.L. The headline of the story was how he had recruited 27 specialist I.T. staff via twitter. Thats right, 27!
The issues that he had in sourcing these people, and why he chose twitter really as a last resort was that the people he was looking for don’t have c.v’s or resumes. They are not looking for fulltime jobs as a rule, most choosing to ply their very specialist skills in contract roles. Being in demand and quite rare, broadcasting links and posting ads didn’t work.
The approach Ivan took was brilliantly simple.A search of twitter bios and the usual twitter directories revealed nothing. The skills and experience needed just wasn’t listed. he set up a few non-branded twitter accounts and searched for keywords in real-time search in twitter, setting alerts based on the kind of words related to programmes or projects they might be talking about. This returned a number of repeating profiles whose tweets showed they could be of interest.
Ivan followed these targets and began engaging around technical topics, increasing connections and profiles. Techies tend to hang out with other techies in any community.
Once Ivan had built a relationship and qualified his connections fully, he approached them about the opportunities. This proved to be very effective, resulting in a total of 27 hires over a 12 month period, with all connections originating from twitter. Forget apps and all the other good twitter stuff, this came down to using twitter search, listening first, connecting, engaging and building a circle of contacts in the channel. I don’t know the salaries involved, but they were top end. It would be reasonable to estimate an average fee of £10k, offering a return over 12 months in the region of £270k!
It takes time,some specialist technical knowledge in order to engage, and patience to find the right time to make an approach. The return makes it well worth the effort! Anyone want to question the R.O.I?

Comment by Louis Welcomme on September 21, 2011 at 4:41am: @ Bill You mentioned The Social CV? Is there anymore you could kindly tell me about it. I've had a look on the website and it doesn't seem to go into much detail. Perhaps a potentially useful tool for recruitment software... Much appreciated.

Comment by Jon Terry on September 21, 2011 at 5:05am: @ anyone.... Is there a way of searching for twitter for key words on a bio as opposed to key words on a tweet.

One of my massive gripes with twitter (hence my so far one and only blog) is that it is getting overrun with recruiters. If I search key words all I ever get is recruiters job ads!

Comment by Steve Ward on September 21, 2011 at 5:13am: @Jon - use www.ManageFlitter.com - you can search Bios there, as well as tweets.

I use it mainly for ditching inactive accounts - but it has many practical uses.

Comment by Jon Terry on September 21, 2011 at 5:23am: @steve - thanks. A useful tool and a few people have just been unfollowed as a result. But I seem only to be able to search the bios of the people I follow. Is there a way to search bios of people I don't?

Comment by Bill Boorman on September 23, 2011 at 7:04pm: louis,

Formore on TheSocialCV contact @WilliamFischer on twitter.He will give you a demo

Comment by Bill Boorman on September 23, 2011 at 7:20pm: @Jon,

FollowerWonk is quite effective for bio searches http://followerwonk.com/

Tweepz.com is also quite good if you use: bio:keyword

Bill

Comment by Sandra McCartt on September 23, 2011 at 7:34pm: Aha, now I'm getting to some specific stuff that may give me my wish for non Boolean yellow pages. Old dog can learn new tricks.

Comment by Bill Boorman on September 24, 2011 at 9:14am: Neither dognor as you said in your recent post, old. I'm sure there are plenty of new dogs with more to learn.

Comment by Jon Terry on September 25, 2011 at 5:21pm: @Bill - Thanks. Had a days training on Social Media last Friday.... I may be becoming a convert!