Kevin Wheeler has a great post on Talent Pools vs. Communities. You should go read it here.

As I am meeting prospective clients I am facing similar statements

• Why should I build a talent community?
• Our company already has a Facebook page, Twitter account - why manage another platform?
• We are using Linkedin to recruit - our internal recruiters have more than 15,000 Linkedin connections - so we're already doing social recruiting.

If you have the same questions/ doubts - here are the reasons:

• Companies that engage with prospective candidates and build a relationship with them- sharing their culture and details. As Tony Hsieh says "Your culture is your brand"
• On Facebook and Twitter all your updates go out to all the people following your liking your account. And yet engagement is notoriously difficult on Facebook and ephemeral on Twitter. The other fact is that  the focus of these accounts is not talent/jobs/careers but customers/communication/marketing. As Shiv Singh says - you are competing for attention (on Facebook) with 30 billion other things !!
• The focus of platforms like BraveNewTalent is the ability to segment and communicate with specific groups of your followers - you cannot do that on generic social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook where brands focus on "broadcasting" and chasingnon-useful metrics like number of fans/followers
• Platforms like BraveNewTalent become "social media hubs" pulling in tweets, YouTube videos and Job openings on to one platform. People who follow you see all your content in one place
• Great that you have social media rockstars on your recruiting team and are leveraging their networks. However, ever thought what would happen when they are poached by the competition? They take their network with them. Does the organization really have thetime and resources necessary to pursue lawsuits?
• Talent communities are not job-boards. Organizations have to attract and engage the workforce they want to hire. And they have to also develop the ones who are following them. Unless a talent engages with them, they cannot "spam" a job seeker.
• Yes it takes time and effort to create and engage a community. It's a network of relationships. Relationships take time and effort. But the benefits can be immense. You decide if you want a job-seeker (in the normal way of business) or an advocate (by building a community). Read this post by my blogging-buddy Luis Suarez on what is a community.

So are you ready to be an innovator in the Talent industry? Reach out to me - mail me at gautam @ bravenewtalent dot com or call me at +91-97422-39954

It would be my honor to enable you for success