Have you ever heard of the 1% rule or the 90-9-1 principle for the internet?  According to Wikipedia...

In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90–9–1 principle (sometimes also presented as 89:10:1 ratio) reflects a hypothesis that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate.

The rule basically defines three groups of users within any internet community namely the creators (1%), the contributors (9%) and the lurkers (90%).  I know, “lurkers” sounds creepy...but stick with me on this one. Although the actual percentages change from internet community to community, in general the rule applies and indicates that the vast majority of community members are just “watching” and “absorbing” content instead of contributing or creating new content.  This rule certainly applies to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

So at this point you are probably asking yourself “Why should I care?”  This is why:  much of the best passive talent in social media are lurkers.  They aren’t actively looking for work nor are they actively seeking recruiters or looking to “follow” you.  They may not be actively tweeting, posting, blogging, following or sharing because they are....well....working.  In fact, many chose not to be “contributors” so that they remain stealth.

But wait a second...social recruiting is said to be one of the best ways to attract passive talent.  So how do we leverage social media to attract and engage passive talent if passive talent is just lurking and not necessarily contributing or engaged?  

Well, when you are a creator and contributor, you are increasing your brand profile (and that’s a great thing to do) and by increasing your follower count, you are increasing the “reach” of your job openings and opportunities.  But when it comes to finding “lurking” talent on Twitter, you can’t solely rely a “post and pray” strategy.

You need to hunt.  You can’t sit back and wait for lurkers to find you.  You have to go and find them.  Your social media strategy can’t simply revolve around pushing content, it should also involve active searching.  

Tactics HR lets you source talent on Twitter based on skills, experience, employers, geography, who they follow and who they are followed by.  More importantly, our tool lets you find those “lurkers” who may not be tweeting, simply by looking at their network connections and who they are associated with (remember, talented people hang out together even in social media).  In other words, you can source passive talent even when they aren’t tweeting!

The talented “lurkers” may be difficult to find - but many are well worth the hunt.  Let Tactics HR help you find, engage, and hire more great talent today.