There’s not enough talk about #SocialRecruiting. #TruSanFranEdit

I want to start this post by stating that this is not a rant, nor is it a criticism of internet radio show #HRHappyHour or career community Brazen Careerist’s recently announced Social Recruiting bootcamp.It is however, these two events that have triggered my thinking.

I was listening in to Steve Boese’s excellent guests Susan Strayer and Ryan Healey, and the topic was Social Recruiting. The reason for the show was that Susan, Steve and a host of other people I like and respect, will be running an on-line training seminar called “Social Recruiting Bootcamp.” It is well worth looking in to if you are interested in exploring social.

Hearing what Susan,Ryan and Steve had to say, it struck me that all the conversation was around employment branding and talent attraction. Some great examples like Strayer’s work with Marriot, using a social game for global talent attraction, and sourcing hourly workers. It’s a great story that you should look up.
The show concluded pretty much in the same vein. Great content, but really all about attraction, and that got me thinking. Talent attraction is an important part of the recruitment process, particularly given the competition for talent, but it is only the first part. Once the potential candidates come in, there’s a whole lot more to it.

Thinking about the conferences and events I’ve been to this year, the story has been much the same. The lines between marketing, branding and recruiting have become blurred, social does that, and it’s a good thing. What I’m not hearing a lot of conversation about is how social changes the rest of the process. I know people are doing it, and it might be less sexy to talk about the practical stuff, but it is a massive part of the recruiting process that determines success or failure.

The good thing about the work I did with Oracle and Hard Rock was that we looked at how we could integrate social in to the full recruitment process. Things like what communications could be sent out via social. How to deal with the volume of response, in particular the rejections. coordinating interviews and communications on-line. How social changes the recruiters and sourcers role. Theres plenty to think about, integrate and share. These are the practical points that need to be shared. How integrating social has changed things, what has gone well and what hasn’t.

The result of there being not much conversation on integrating social in to all of the recruiting process, this is where problems occur, where the implications of implementation are over looked. The conversation needs to move on from being mostly about branding and attraction.

On my part, I’m going to run a track at #truSanFran on the 26′th – 27′th October titled social impacts, to look at these issues, and talk about the practical stuff, so important for the eventual success of any implementation. What do you think? What are the areas of recruitment process, and social integration you would like to know more about?

Bill

The #HRHappyHour Show

Susan Strayer

Brazen Careerist: Social Recruiting Bootcamp - November 7′th – 18′th

Buy Tickets For #TruSanFran

Comment by Charlie Davenport on October 14, 2011 at 11:55am: First step I would suggest is to evaluate a little more closely how you are using the word ATTRACTING. Every step of the recruiting process is some form of attracting (with rejection being negative attracting). Branding is a way to do attracting, but it is a subset, not a parallel activity.

I do stand a little lost on what you mean by "The conversation needs to move on from being mostly about branding and attraction." Perhaps you should define the steps involved in "all of the recruiting process" that you want to integrate "social" into and move from there. (Something tells me you're going to find that Social doesn't fit much of the actual "Recruiting" process.. yes, great for Sourcing, and yes, great for initial attraction, but after that, there may be a need for actual "human to human" interaction.

Just a thought from someone who is approaching the 60,000 hours of involvement in the recruiting process.

Charlie Davenport @CRDRecruiter

Comment by Bill Boorman on October 14, 2011 at 12:44pm: Thanks Charlie,

All recruiting is social, person to person. I view the recruiting process as being every step from attraction or approach, through to hire/rejection. There is plenty of interaction in between, and some of this can be done on-line or in social.

I work with corporate clients working that bit out, as well as the attraction bit. I'd like to hear a bit more about what others are doing in this area. If not, talk attraction or branding, not recruiting.

Bill

Comment by Charlie Davenport on October 14, 2011 at 3:28pm: Thanks for the enlightenment on what I have been doing for nearly 30 years. Here are my thoughts to help you... Recruiting is the result of creating an attraction with is the objective of branding. And I did that without any hash tags.

The brand of this particular conversation within this blog is borderline #Timeconsuming and #Nonproductive

Have a good time!

Comment by Bill Boorman on October 14, 2011 at 3:53pm: i match you on the 30 years Charlie. nice use of hashtags

Comment by Sandra McCartt on October 14, 2011 at 4:49pm: The #devil is always in the #details

Comment by Steven G. Davis on October 17, 2011 at 12:24am: Hi Bill,

I can't be at #TruSanFran, so here are my thoughts and no I don't have 30 yrs so bare with me :)..You are right the branding/attracting is already being done, sometimes over done, the pathway is there and will continue. Interesting, for example here on this channel we have over 30K members. I dare to find 30K applicants in one location except maybe on the job boards. So for me it is using SM for our company/myself and use it beyond branding/attracting to reach those applicants. As @jerry_albright would say, "twitter is just a waste of time". In one sense he is right, how many recruiters, TPR's of any sort and/or Corporate can show a significant ROI on their recruitment effort via SM. By the shear magnitude of people using SM you would think it would be a slam dunk for us "attracting" folks via SM, but it still remains bottom of the scale in terms of its rate of return, at least in my daily work. That doesn't mean I will stop using it, just need to learn how to use it more productively to increase a potential high ROI..I had a great placement just last month via my SM efforts, it is great story and I was very pleased with the outsome but I want more successes.

I do think your question is a good one and does need more exploration. For me, I wonder how to reach those quality candidates via SM, is it possible, hell anything is possible. Sometimes it seems that it is just one of those things that is only as good as those using it. Meaning, if it's all just new grads then you are limited as a recruiter if you are looking for a senior level candidate that may not have jumped into the SM pool or vise versa. Of course I do beleive that is a big part of it. Look at LI, it was only a few years ago that it was not used at all and if so, it was mostly recruiters, yet today it gets more and more play from non-recruiters. So part of the issue is the timing of it all and that recruiters are just a step ahead of the curve and now that we are, we need to slow down and figure out how to harness it and integrate it into the entire recruitment process. I am very interested in how your tract goes, is there any possibility of there being a live feed?

Comment by Steven G. Davis on October 17, 2011 at 12:30am: oh and one last thing, because technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed, so will our need to employ many tools of "interaction". Social media is here and will continue to grow, you are correct, we need to figure out where and how to fit it into the equation "the times are changing", I say, "fire up the engine, all aboard???" The train has left the station who's coming?

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