How To Spice Up Social Recruiting in 2014

How To Spice Up Social Recruiting in 2014

Should you even bother to catch the Social Recruiting train that has left the station?

You shouldn’t if you’re happy with your

limited applicant reach
increased “time to hire” and
increased cost per hire.

On the other hand, if you’re in recruiting to source top performers from your competition within 48 hours, then you may want to catch the Social Recruiting train today.

It’s not too late.

Let’s spice up your Social Recruiting efforts in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Writing Creative Job Ads

What happened to your creativity?

Why your job descriptions are so boring? Really...

Lastly, why do you share those boring job postings on Social Media?

STOP, please do yourself a favor. Talk to your boss and ask him / her if you can take a copywriting course at a local college or online. If you take this piece of advice, you’ll thank me for the rest of your recruiting career. Not that I need any thank you notes but hey, who does not appreciate a little appreciation :)

After you take the copywriting course, let your creative mind flow to write the most compelling job descriptions and job ads for key Social Media platforms including Linkedin, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Then grab a beverage of your choice and count the number of job applications pouring in from Social Media with a big smile because you did it, you finally cracked the code of social job applications!

Step 2: Giving Your Time

What do you care about most when you have a position to fill?

Great applicants or a cup of cappuccino?

Great applicants you say, right? Unless you’re addicted to cappuccino...which is a different conversation all together so I won’t go there.

Now what do your prospective candidates care about who follow your employer brand on Social Media? Have you ever thought about this even for a minute?

If you did, then reward yourself with a chocolate you like the most because you’re one of the very few recruiting professionals who has ever thought about what their candidates care about the most. Seriously.

Helping your potential candidates with their Linkedin profile, it’s not your job, right?

Wrong, it’s your job to help your prospective talent with their Linkedin profile so they remember you and your employer brand for life!!

Hmm....what do you think?

Step 3: Offering Magnetic Customer Service

I wonder why customer service is not one of the recruiting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), have we lost our mind or what?

Nothing matters if your customer service is horrible.

Because as you bring in new talent, existing talent will leave your organization due to horrible customer service (i.e. corporate culture).

Now this is what the majority of employers are providing right now in terms of their customer service to their customers (i.e. applicants).

===

Do not phone us.

Your resume now sits comfortably in the black hole of our ATS (Applicant Tracking System).

We will try to pick it up closing our eyes and let’s hope for the best!

Sound familiar?

===

Why do we treat our applicants so harshly when they are in fact our customers?

Would you fly with an airline next time if they mistreat you at the counter and you’ve other options?

If your answer is no, then what makes you think your ideal candidates will apply for your jobs again after having a horrible experience with your customer service upfront in the form of ATS or no interface with recruiters at all?

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Shall we?

Let me ask you this.

What prevents you from running a webinar on resume writing giving your potential candidates access to inside information and interaction they crave for?

What excuse do you have?

Busy?

You really don’t care...

I don’t know...but you know the answer :)

Let me end with this suggestion:

“Serve your customers well today so they may serve you well in the future”.

Now what do I exactly mean by that? Well, feel free to let me know in the comment section below and let’s get the discussion started...

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Comment by Matt Charney on December 5, 2013 at 8:24am: Shalid: I think this is a great post with some awesome pointers and things to think about. Appreciate your taking the time to share some of your lessons learned. I agree with most of the points in here, but I think the one about job descriptions is a little misguided. I absolutely agree that a well written job description is absolutely essential as the single most important piece of recruitment advertising collateral, but writing ability or creativity won't fix the major problem with these. Killer copy can actually contribute to one of the two primary issues, which is that these JDs often unclear or overly promotional and don't actually effectively communicate the role and responsibilities that's pretty much their raison de'tre. The second, and in my opinion, far more pervasive problem, is that no matter how sticky or sexy the JD is, the list of requirements often suffers from Goldilocks syndrome: they're either so broad everyone is pretty much qualified, or so highly targeted and niche no one is. And at the end of the day, those minimum posted qualifications are the legal baseline (in the US) for screening candidates - so this element is as important as any. Although even if the JD sucks, the good news on social is you can make anything sound interesting in 140 characters or less - reinforcing your second two points.

Thanks again for the great read.

Matt

Comment by Shahid Wazed on December 5, 2013 at 8:55am: Great points Matt! We do need to take time to make job descriptions as realistic and clear as possible while making it sound interesting with the art of copywriting :) Thank you for your contribution, appreciate it!!

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on December 5, 2013 at 3:56pm: Thank you, Shahid. If your point is that we SHOULD offer these things so as to get many good applicants (or that it's the proper, professional, and reasonable thing to do), you're incorrect. On the other hand, if you're saying we MUST/NEED to offer these things so as to get many good applicants, I believe you're incorrect. Unless an employer needs (and not just "wants") the Fab 5% (or a somewhat larger percentage for some in-demand skills) it can get loads of highly qualified, motivated applicants SIMPLY BY OFFERING THEM A JOB OPPORTUNITY. It's a buyer's job market out there for the vast majority of people, and until that changes substantially, I fear there's no real incentive to improve.

No Cheers,

Keith

Comment by Shahid Wazed on December 5, 2013 at 7:44pm: You're very welcome Keith. The points you made really validated my opinion that is majority of employers don't care about their customers (i.e. job applicants) because they don't see any real incentive to do great work in recruiting beyond posting jobs and sourcing candidates. It's all about ME, ME, ME in recruiting not WE. Anyway, just so you know the points I made in this article are backed up by real data from my own experience so these are not just my opinions but facts that can be proven again by real data for someone who would take action with any of these three ideas discussed above. Thank you!