One Reason Why I Use Social Networking Sites To Source And Recruit
September 15, 2010
I was doing a recruiter training the other day for a Minneapolis software company and after talking about the why and showing the how of social network sites I noticed one of their hiring managers sitting in the back of the room with his arms crossed and giving off a bad vibe.
So I took a deliberate pause, one of those awkward ones and then asked if there were any questions, thoughts, comments or wanted to challenge me on some of the content.
There were questions and comments, a lot of them, but I could not provoke the hiring manager to speak up.
I took another awkward pause and as I was about to move on to another topic the hiring manager leans forward and says:
“But why do we go to these sites? We have a career page, we post jobs on different job boards and we do other things too...”
A senior recruiter cut him off with:
“Yeah and how is that working for us? Our talent pool does not know who we are. We are passive in everything we do. We wait for people to find us and they are rarely who we want to be hiring.”
A quote I am a big fan of and frequently use in presentations was screaming in my brain and it comes from the great philosopher Winnie the Pooh:
“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
Some companies have it easy they are for better (and sometimes worse) known. Although most of them still need to seek out new employees.
My idea for recruiting has always been this:
Go where your people hang out:
- If your talent pool is online, be online.
- If they attend user group meetings, so should you.
- If there is an industry LinkedIn group, participate.
- If there is a chat or online forum, contribute to the conversation.
For me in my recruiting of Minnesota IT professionals I should need to be online where they hang out. This does not mean I exclusively spend my time online but I do dedicate a good chunk of time to it.
Great article and applicable to other businesses too. We can't just wait in our corner of the forest and hope that someone stops by.
Posted by: Teresa boardman | September 15, 2010 at 10:54 AM
Great blog Paul I totally agree. I think the candidates are starting to pull together more than the companies! One comment is that when companies decide to be proactive in high demand talent markets they should be cautious how many vendors represent them. These people are inundated with calls many times for the same positions by multiple recruiters. It hurts their corporate brand and frustrates the people they really need to communicate with. Maybe hire a guide as you leave your corner of the forest...
Posted by: Patti Yaritz | September 15, 2010 at 04:00 PM