Some Thoughts on Social Recruiting

In case you have not heard, there is a Group on Twitter #socialrecruiting. This appears to be have been spawned by @dmanaster of ERE fame and @scottbaxt as far as I can determine. Another great site for this @socrecruiting. Follow these people and Sites.

This is a terrific and timely idea for the direction that the two disciplines of Social Media are heading or should I say colliding. This could very well be the “Big Bang” theory we have been seeking in Social Media and Recruiting.

How do we leverage the best of both disciplines? I have some thoughts. These thoughts are mine and in no way reflect the thoughts of anyone mentioned in this brief paper aimed at stimulating discussion.

We need to partner with the Social Media influencers and all of the experts in Social Media to leverage their clients for us to have an impact on Social Recruiting. We need a workable alliance of SM and Recruiting voices to develop an infrastructure that will allow us all to be successful in providing high quality cost effective solutions to our clients for Human Capital Sourcing and Acquisition and Social Media services. The time appears to be right for a radical shift in the thinking of corporate America on how to attract and retain Talent. Much is written about this daily. We need a blueprint and we need builders to execute this blueprint. Social Recruiting can be this blueprint. The manner in which these highly experienced and intelligent professional interact with their clients will enable us to leverage our Recruiting agenda. Without this partnering endorsement and our own efforts and experience in alliance we will have a much more difficult task ahead of us

We need people with strong influential Recruiting voices, who are willing to share their experience. We need the best of both SM and Recruiting for a thesis, antithesis synthesis to occur (my apology to Hegel) for a powerful solution to our challenge. The SM relationships and expertise and our Recruiting relationships and expertise are the mechanism for entry into the conscious of an enlightened Corporate America. We need to identify companies conducting business in the SM space being responsive to their customers by going where their customers are.

Comment by Slouch on March 25, 2009 at 10:48am: It's a mistake I think to think that we need a blueprint for social recruiting. I agree there is a lot of talk about it. Don't recruiters just want to make placements? I think in most cases, most social recruiting is just about being even more passive as a recruiter and thinking that because you have a great social networking strategy, that will compensate for the lack of " the shaking every tree and looking under every rock" mentality you need to make a lot of placements.

If you figure that most people are not interested in spending more time online, all of these social recruiting systems will be wasted unless it can deliver better search results when the candidates want something from the search engines. Or, use the technology to immediately build a better connection to them. Email is still pretty good.

Comment by Dave Graziano on March 25, 2009 at 11:08am: Thank you for your insightful feedback Jason. I do not agree with the passive approach to recruiting at all. I am a Headhunter that aggressively goes after talent. We now have many more tools to source the candidates we could not source so easily in the past and aggressively build relationships with these candidates quickly and efficiently. The new tools need to be integrated with full life cycle recruiting to be successful. There appear to me to be many Social Media "experts" discussing Recruiting, without ever made a living as a Recruiter. i think we can learn from the SM mantra of listening to the customer (candidate) and going where the candidates are to source them ie the Boolean work done by Boolean Black Belt and Boolean Strings Network to name two that come to mind quickly. Twitter appears to be developing these capabilities also. My approach is not passive, but to aggressively use this technology to become more productive and to develop a specific brand of recruiting. I think we are in more agreement here than you think.

I do appreciate your feedback and I hope this helps clarify my position. Great discussion. Thank you!

Comment by Slouch on March 25, 2009 at 11:30am: I think the best way to get a candidate you are looking for is to know where they are currently working and it works like a charm since the widespread adoption of phone systems that allow you to dial by last name. It's all you need in terms of sourcing candidates. I am not saying what you are saying is wrong I am just saying that it is easy to get carried away and there is a a lot of that. New social recruiting technology will help recruiters when the technology allows a higher percentage response from your candidates when you want to tell them something. It will have to be higher than email or the telephone if it is going to get traction. Job orders are never difficult to get when times are good. Social media does not get people hired when there are no jobs.

Comment by Dave Graziano on March 25, 2009 at 11:39am: i agree with you, especailly about the telephone. i have had exceptions and I have found many unique talent sets using search engine technology that I would not have found via phone. BTW, nothing gets anyone hired during bad times. That is why we are seeing so many splits currently. Job orders and responsive clients are difficult to cultivate no matter what the skill level of the Recruiter is. I have been thru down times four times in 27 years, but this is definitely the most challenging time.

Comment by Slouch on March 25, 2009 at 11:58am: There are more splits done in good times. what's the fastest way to making a placement is the thing one needs etched into your desk, not your facebook password

Comment by Dave Graziano on March 25, 2009 at 1:46pm: Jason, it is the aggressive use of the data gleaned from a Web 2.0 source, not the source. As recruiters we now have access to where the data is than before. The telephone and the personal referral are still the best way to source. We can now augment and enhance sourcing more specifically and develop a comprehensive strategy more readily. I will be glad to talk with you about this at anytime. I am in agreement with you, though splits do seem more prevalent now. That is just my impression. Thanks for continuing the great discussion.

Comment by Dave Graziano on March 25, 2009 at 1:48pm: Thanks Rayanne, I think so also! Jason is making me think, which is great!

Comment by Slouch on March 25, 2009 at 2:13pm: I just think that for most people, the "what is now possible" is all really too much for them to handle. It's just a time issue. Maybe they will be the recruiters who wake up and say what the hell just happened, did my business just disappear and I I have no idea why? I don't think it will play out that way. At the end of the day, we just need the right guy for the job and if you can make sense of the all the data and that becomes the fastest way to making a placement, you will have cracked the code and can retire early.

Comment by Dave Graziano on March 25, 2009 at 2:18pm: Yes, there are an entire generation of recruiters that have grown up professionally with these tools and have not learned what Full Life Cycle Recruiting means. This is a business of relationships and asking people to make difficult decisions based on trust built thru those relationships. The right person at the right time is always the cure:)!

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