No one wants to follow your Recruitment Agency on Twitter

I had an interesting call from a Recruiter today. He was complaining about the fact that no one wants to follow his Recruitment Agency on Twitter. I spent some time talking about the ways you can use Twitter in the Recruitment process. But he didn't care.

We talked about creating a social recruiting strategy to interact with the users. He didn't care.

This is not an unusual situation I find myself in. Nearly all Recruiters I talk with about using some type of social media for recruitment just want to post job adverts and wait for candidates to apply (post and pray).

Well, there is already a service you use for that. It's called a job board.

Only posting job adverts to Twitter is just not good enough. There is no conversation or engagement between you and your users.

These Twitter feeds tend to create a lot of noise and frankly, waste the users time scrolling through all the latest jobs that are not relevant to them.

It's not that people don't want to follow you. You just have nothing interesting to add to the conversation.

From my blog post here http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/no-one-wants-to-follow-...

Comment by Mark Spoor on October 8, 2009 at 12:26pm: Try starting a candidate community by forming a linkedin group around your area of recruiting expertise and then populate it with REAL value-add information that candidates will want to follow.

Comment by Hassan Rizwan on October 9, 2009 at 2:50am: Having a beautiful blog is just not enough. Having content in it, the right people reading it on twitter, facebook, and other relevant communities. This makes up a complete structure of social media maketing. Lack on content is like having a bottle with no drink to offer.

Comment by Bill Morgan on October 9, 2009 at 11:35am: I completely agree. Until we provide value we will be turned off.

Bill Morgan
The Job Swami Career Advice Blog and full-time Recruiter/Branch Manager
http://thejobswami.blogspot.com

Comment by Kevin Jenkins on October 9, 2009 at 11:35am: You're absolutely right, Thomas. I see these job posting recruiter accounts on twitter and think it is such a waste and with all due respect; plain tacky. I would be surprised if a recruiter ever got a placement this way. I think twitter is a great medium for promoting value. I personally use twitter to share my blog posts after I have gone through great efforts to write something I feel may be interesting for others. It's important to remember what twitter really is; a micro blogging medium. It is intended to be used in the same way you would use a blog only doing so in a couple sentences. I wonder how many people would read a recruiter's blog if all they posted there were job ads. Not many I suspect.

Comment by Duane Roberts on October 9, 2009 at 11:55am: Spot on blog. There are many in our industry who are looking for that quick fix and not interested in building a brand that deserves to be followed. Twitter needs to be a part of a larger effort that includes LinkedIn groups (as Mark points out) and other value points for our clients and candidates.

Comment by Greg Post on October 9, 2009 at 2:35pm: Good post. Content is King.

Comment by Saleem Qureshi on October 12, 2009 at 5:07am: I think that a more intelligent way to use twitter in a recruitment strategy is, rather than positing jobs up there, one should directly recruit from twitter. We were looking for a CFA who could communicate with our investors, so we started following a few people, we learnt how they thought, and whoever was competent enough, we made them an offer.

Comment by Carly Rodger on October 12, 2009 at 6:47am: The most effective way for a Recruiter to use Twitter is to create a Profile that is specific to an industry and/or a discipline and post relevant news and information to attract the type of contacts needed. People will follow you if what you are tweeting is of interest or value to them.

Then as your network of followers grows you can post a job or a referral request to this valuable network and see whether this generates any suitable candidates. By simply posting an endless job requirement list people will not find your profile or choose to follow you. However, if the network sees you as a valuable Tweeter, they will be more inclined to support your tweets requesting referrals.

The way most people find Profiles to follow on Twitter is by seeing something interesting that you have tweeted and then "testing out" the relevancy of your Profile for a period of time. If they like the tweets they see for the first few days, they may continue to follow you. If not the liklihood is they will stop following you just as quickly as they started.