Hello, my name is Paul Dhanjal and I’m a Recruitment Consultant at Harrisons Recruitment based in London.

So, I come back from the London Olympia Recruitment Expo 2016, attended a couple of excellent seminars about the strategies of Social Media and I’m buzzing.  Social Recruiting is definitely the answer; I mean, it’s a no brainer.

’56% of candidates now turn to social media first when commencing their job search’ and 61% of individuals expect companies have a social media presence…’ all sounds great!!

However let’s face reality, most Recruiter’s are under pressure to hit their KPI and revenue targets i.e. several hours on the phone daily, interviews, CV / Resume sends, client visits, placements, stand-up power hours etc … it’s fast paced and high volume!

So, where am I supposed to get the time in Social Recruiting? I can’t afford to mess about with creating discussions, blogging, tweeting, following, poking and all that nonsense (BTW, I'm writing this post on a Saturday - out of hours :)).  I’m expected to hit the phones, quickly fill the roles and subsequently hit that placement bell and chalk it up on the sales board.

Recruitment Consultants are trained to “pick up the phone, qualify, pitch and ABC ‘Always be closing’”, it’s the traditional recruiting way, right?

See that is the problem…unless Managers, Trainers, Recruitment Business Owners are able to implement a social recruiting strategy into the recruiter’s daily structure… then happy days! I can put down the phone for a couple of hours a day without being penalised for not being on the phones and start becoming a social recruiting Jedi.

So I ask my fellow recruitment consultants;

Do you get the time to implement Social Recruiting into your daily structure, if so, how do you find the balance?
Do you get support from your Management Team to implement social recruiting or do they feel it’s a waste of time and shout over to you  "'Hey! Get back on the phones and stop tweeting! "?