Social Recruitment: Embrace it or be left out
Recruiting the right talent for a job is a key determinant of a successful business. The integration of social media with recruitment brought a new terminology “Social Recruiting”.
What is Social Recruiting
Social Recruiting is about capitalizing on the strengths of powerful social media channels for recruiting right talent. According to The LinkedIn talent solution reports on Global recruiting trends, 2017 says that social professional networks (40%) are among the top 3 sources of quality hiring.
Growing Reliance on Social Channels
There has been an increasing trend among job seekers, as they no longer rely solely on job portal for opportunities. One of the challenges is uploading/enrolling CV with recruiter or HR consultancies and which takes a longer time. Being active on professional sites like LinkedIn, BranchOut or Xing helps the candidate to eliminate unwanted calls from a career counselor and gives scope for right recruitment. According to research,
Integrate Social into Brand
It is not only important for candidates to be active on social media channels but for companies to signifies the brand image via social channels for getting the right pool of talent. Thereby, Companies needs to follow these five steps to achieve desired hiring goals
- The First step for social recruitment is to identify organization hiring goals.
- The Second step in the process is to integrate social media channels.
- The Third step is to create a plan of action and develop strategies. It is easy to get confused because of the availability of lots of social media channels. HCL Technologies have a well-designed strategy for their hiring needs. They focus on LinkedIn for sourcing mid and senior level candidates while on Facebook and Twitter for entry-level openings. About 47% of candidates are using mobile devices for job search and this number is increasing at a very fast pace. This means companies’ social media recruitment strategies should be developed keeping in mind the behavioral traits and preferred social media channels of their target audience.
- The Fourth step is to nurture an active social media presence, figure out how you can portray the most significant element of your organization.
- The Fifth step is to review and analyze the branding and targeting strategies on regular basis.
Opportunities for Student and Professional
Just like companies are investing energies and resources in hiring talent through social media channels, good candidates too need to brush up their social media profiles to be searched by the companies. Candidates can showcase their academic achievement as well as extra curriculum activities including volunteer work, paper presentation, awards and recognitions etc on LinkedIn. They should also engage with peers locally or globally on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. According to research,
SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE BY COMPANIES
Students need to be active on these social media channels. The famous story of Ryan Graves, In January 2010, when Uber was less than a year old, then-CEO Travis Kalanick tweeted:
“Looking 4 entrepreneurial product mgr/biz-dev killer 4 a location-based service.. pre-launch, BIG equity, big peeps involved–ANY TIPS?”
Graves saw Kalanick’s tweet and responded:
“Here’s a tip. email me :)”.
He included his email address too. Graves stepped down on Thursday, but his unconventional job application led him to one of the longest-running tenures at Uber. A story like Graves encourages students to be pro-active and engage with their dream companies when opportunity knocks their door. Thereby changing social media landscape presents great opportunities for students and professional. It is the time to explore and capitalize the social media for getting the right job at right point of time in career Lifecycle.
