Recruiting with Social Media

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Social Media as a Recruiting Tool
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I use (and have written about) Social Media fairly extensively. One aspect I hadn't previously written about however, is using social media as part of your recruiting strategy. As I use social media extensively for business, between Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, I have thousands of connections, with almost all being professionals in the hospitality, restaurant or wine industry. Due to this, it has made sense for me to post links to jobs posted at WineAndHospitalityJobs.com these postings have generated some strong interest in these jobs. I also follow what others in the industry are doing in this regard.

Some of the things I have noticed:

Linkedin is bursting with job postings! However, I have not seen much action/response/traffic around most of them.

Facebook has been great for me for generating qualified candidates for jobs. However, I am connected to 2,000+ industry professionals. Most companies are using their online presence to connect with customers, who are not typically potential candidates.

As far as Twitter, I have not used Twitter for recruiting purposes at all.

I did a little research and found some articles on recruiting through social media. And while I think they are well though out, it sounds like it would make most small (or even medium) sized employers cringe - the time commitment of having a social media presence that is dedicated to recruiting would requires a FT person simply to manage the process! (Read 6 Aspects of a Social Media Recruitment Strategy Every Company Shou...)

What I'd like to know is:

Are you using social media to recruit, and if so, what have your experiences been? I created a very brief survey to collect the data, you will find it here. Your participation is much appreciated!

-Margie

Comment by Hassan Rizwan on October 29, 2009 at 5:11am: We have used social media too and well we found twitter as the most effective site in contrast to your experience. But we had a little different Target Market and not just the candidates. In short, these three sties are the most valuable tools now to interact with people of your interests.

Comment by Luis Campos on October 29, 2009 at 9:09pm: The Social Media for us has been a truely positive experience. Our business is a quality call services company who hires disabled americans that are business professionals like you and I who can no longer work in a traditional office environment. By giving these extraordinary individuals this opportunity in working from their "home" office environment, it has allowed us to offer educated professionals to our current clients.

As you can imagine, finding these individuals across the country can be a challenge. However, with social media, we can reach out in the virtual enviroment and literally have access to large pool of candidates that we never though we have. As a result of us doing that, we have seen a positive result overall especially through LinkedIn.