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Social Media for Recruitment

Written by: Harpaul Sambhi

Article Overview: Social media and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal e-mail and are growing at a rapid pace. These results should make it clear that incorporating social networking into your recruitment strategy for 2010 and years to come is the way to go… something I would definitely encourage you to do.

Social Media for Recruitment

Social media and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal e-mail and are growing at a rapid pace. Nine of the top 15 websites visited in Canada are social media related including sites such as chat rooms, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and social media tools like YouTube and Blogger. These are staggering results considering 3 years ago many experts thought Facebook was a fad, Twitter was unknown, and social networks like Bing and LinkedIn had yet to catch on. These results should make it clear that incorporating social networking into your recruitment strategy for 2010 and years to come is the way to go... something I would definitely encourage you to do. Companies like Deloitte, and Motorola are creating internal social networks where they are able to communicate with thousands of customers, and using them for internal collaboration. Recruiting on external social media, such as using corporate blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Careerify, and Twitter allows you to target particular demographics, which would be vital with the impending labour shortage. Expect the talent shortage to only increase as we rebound for this recession.

Now I will be highlighting how specific companies use social media to recruit the tech savvy generations of today. When talking to clients, one of the more frequent questions I get asked is how to recruit on these networks? With Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, HR must think outside the box to create a viral campaign. Users on these social mediums visit these sites mostly on a social basis. Creating a fan page on Facebook and posting job opportunities will not work effectively. Your employees will not invite their peers to join, nor would the common user land on your corporate page. Let's focus on Ernst & Young, a company who has used these social media effectively. They have been able to utilize social mediums to cultivate over 40,000 users who frequently communicate with a few recruiters with questions. Since Ernst & Young have corporate recruiters creating an interactive environment with two-way communication, a user's experience is much more pleasurable compared to the common FAQ sections most corporations provide.

In order to create a viral campaign, it must involve not only your marketing department, but also your employees. Employees are the most effective recruiting tool when incorporating social media. An average user has 120 friends on Facebook, and adding other social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace, a user has an average over 160 people. Multiply this by the number of employees that use any of these networks within your corporation, and you have the average potential of how many people you can reach out immediately. Taking Careerify as an example, amongst the three co-founders we have 2,284 people on LinkedIn and Facebook alone, which is one of the main reasons Careerify is growing, how we recruit employees, and brand ourselves. So how can you get your employees actively involved in a recruitment strategy? One way to spur employee involvement would be incentives through a contest. For example, having employees create a video that combines their personal and company life. Deloitte is the best example of this, where they created a Deloitte Film Fest, much like a film festival for their employees. Employees were asked to create a short-film that expressed Deloitte's culture and values. They had over 370 submissions and had employees vote on the best films. Once these were uploaded, they had several thousands of views simply because employees pushed traffic to these videos. Viral marketing, if done properly, can create hundreds of applications without spending the head-hunting money.

Next Topic: How specific companies are recruiting on Facebook

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Article Tags: deloitte, e mail, facebook, fan page, frequent questions, impending labour, internal collaboration, labour shortage, linkedin, media tools, mediums, rapid pace, recruitment strategy, social basis, social networking, social networks, specific companies, staggering results, twitter, youtube



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Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - GT - thanks for the FYI - I'm not sure if we'll put a link back. Something to consider though! Trent - the new category is "Social Network and Media" which was put in to compliment the Online Businesses category that currently exists. Overall the new categories are: - Looking For, Networking and Events - Review My... - Social Network and Media - Brags and Rants These came as a result of Ringo doing research on other forums and thinking about what could be improved on ours to give a better experience for everyone. I hope you enjoy them! David, I'm looking forward to reading your Brag / Rant!
Re: Marketing 2.0 - What Are Your Thoughts - Hi Shri, Thanks for posting this. I also read it and I believe Social Media is here to stay, until the next best thing comes up. Social media proved to be useful for me many times and I think everyone should use it for their business.
Re: Social Media Marketing Ignorance - [quote="vbn411":7qciluxl]Social Media is space that you have to be in to succeed in our current climate. People are going to be discussing your brand / product whether you like it or not, so you might as well join the conversation and add value. [/quote:7qciluxl] I think that's probably one of the most realistic way to think about it. There's no real textbook way of understanding Social Media, it's the networks of people and their interactions that will exist with or without your input. As for Jennifer, You can always have 2 Facebook pages. Many people do. There is also LinkedIn, which is like a professional networking version of Facebook. The only way to know is to try it.


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