August 17-2015 Author: Rupali Raghavan
It is a well-accepted fact that leveraging social media in recruitment improves candidate selection significantly over more conventional recruiting methods like phone screening and filtering resumes based on experience. Social media outlets feature detailed information about candidates’ experience, skill, lifestyle, values and their cultural affinity. From the unique perspective of recruitment, having a well defined social media brand will be helpful in attracting the best and versatile talent.
Online Information is Treasure (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+)
LinkedIn is a goldmine as far as recruiting is concerned and it is difficult to find another place where 330 million aspiring professionals list their job experience, skill and education. Although all social media platforms can be used for recruiting in one or another way, LinkedIn is more professional, business focused and more relevant to recruiting. Employers also utilize LinkedIn as a platform to create a company profile, showcase employees, and highlight their career opportunities. A better picture of candidate’s multifarious skills in contrast to a simple resume can be obtained from LinkedIn.
According to a 2014 job market report, seventy six percent of social job seekers found their current position through Facebook. Finding people to recruit in Facebook is incredibly easy and employers are frequenting this most prominent social media vehicle little bit more than LinkedIn to search potential candidates. Directory search, graph search, and x-ray searching are the most prominent methods to search candidates through Facebook. Placing job advertisements in the Facebook marketplace is another prominent way of candidate sourcing.
Twitter is rapidly emerging as an ideal platform to identify and engage potential job candidates. Vocal advocates of Twitter firmly believe that it is a great source for finding more candidates with progressive skill sets. Tweet My Jobs is a service that features posts based on specific job function and geographical areas. Business organizations can easily and quickly distribute jobs through a Twitter network or even their employees’ Twitter network.
Google Plus is often referred as a natural resource for recruiters and recruiting with Google Plus involves searching candidates through Google’s social network. The ‘Circle’ function within Google Plus has strong potential for use by recruiters and they can share jobs with specific group of professionals. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus attracts tech savvy professionals in Information Technology, Telecom, Management and Electronics fields. Interviews with favorable candidate can be scheduled with Google Hangout, an excellent platform for video conferencing.
Recruiting Power Packed with Social Media
Accessibility, convenience, privacy and freedom are the reasons behind the inclination of candidates towards smart-phones. The smartphone has been recognized as a unique recruiting tool that provides single point of contact allowing usage of messaging any time. Many organizations empower their recruiters with smart phones and it has supreme significance as a modern strategic recruiting function. Accessibility during idle times, remarkably fast response, accommodation of personal preferences and global capability are the major advantages of smartphone as a recruiting tool. It often serves as a unified interface to nearly every form of candidate communication. Recruiting firms can send all forms of communications to candidate’s mobile phone instead of getting their multiple phone numbers and multiple email addresses. Traditional messaging outlets like letters, phone calls to the office and emails have a low response rate because they may be received only when someone is sitting in front of their computer. At this juncture, smartphone may very well be the finest messaging platform for recruitment beyond doubt. Indeed, new age companies are using texting to introduce recruiters to candidates, setting up interview times, and answering simple questions.
Different Facets of Social Recruiting
Video chat as a recruitment strategy offers employers a glimpse into the personality of a candidate. Skype, Google Video Chat and Go To Meeting are the most common video chat applications that brought new era of innovation in recruiting. According to recruiting managers, choosing video interviewing technology tailored specifically for recruiting has some distinct advantages over using applications like Skype. In prerecorded one-way video interview, the recruiter creates a set of questions and candidates may record video responses to them on their own computers. As recruiting managers are not required to be present during interview, it is a practical solution for scheduling issues. It gives recruiting managers a unique opportunity to review candidate interviews at their convenience. They term prerecorded one-way video as an effective screening tool for multiple candidates and it is an amazing time saver.
If social media is used as an effective tool for recruitment, every company will get the services of gifted and rock star professionals who will give a renewed outlook to their work places.