Why large organisations are using social media to recruit

You will have no doubt heard the word ‘brand’ bandied about a lot recently. Usually followed by the two biggest buzz words of the 21^st century; social media.

There’s no getting away from the fact that social media has taken the business world by storm recently. Companies who have managed to harness its true potential for generating brand awareness are reaping the rewards; those who haven’t are losing out.

It really is as simple as that. What social media can offer, in the way of brand exposure, is unparalleled in terms of its cost and effectiveness. What’s more, you can make your brand accessible and build relationships with your fan base using minimal effort.

Once you have an established network of followers, you are in a position to boost your brand and bolster your company’s reputation. Not only that, but you are effectively building your very own talent pools with which to source candidates from.

The beauty of using social media to recruit in this way is that, not only is it easy on resources, but you are also able to vet your own candidates. LinkedIn is a prime example of this. Really, what you have is an online CV database with a myriad of additional extras.

You can instantly ascertain whether a person possesses the necessary skill-set for a certain role, but added to this you are able to see what other professional activities they partake in. It helps to give a far more rounded portrayal of a person and adds depth to your understanding of whether or not they would be suitable for the role.

It’s worth investing the time to have a presence on all of the major platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, so as to tap into each of the unique audiences they attract. This will increase your brands exposure and will allow you to make use of different techniques within your social media strategy.

Statistics from jobvite show that 80% of companies are using social media platforms to recruit and 9% of the remaining respondents said that they plan to begin. When asked whether or not they had successfully hired a candidate using a social network 2/3 (64%) answered yes. The trend for utilising social media as a hiring resource is certainly on the rise.

For companies, the incentives to go social are both rich and plentiful. It won’t have escaped your notice that our economy is suffering and so, with recession, comes cut backs. The biggest draw of social media is that it’s wallet friendly and fairly easy to implement.

What it requires is people and, more importantly, people engagement. To achieve this, companies need to provide a generous mix of high quality content and consistent interaction. Transparency is the key here. It’s no good a company trying to control every aspect of the message they are putting out. People just won’t buy it or bother taking an interest. What needs to happen is for people to make up their own mind and the company just to provide the back drop for people to say what they think.

A really good example of where this was effectively rolled out was when Ford decided to reinvent the brand’s damaged reputation. They gave out 100 free Fiestas to people who were big on the social media scene. This included popular bloggers and social networkers who were already documenting their lives online.

Their stories made for an authentic and compelling narrative which was completely organic and not at all dictated by Ford. It generated much respect for the brand, as it made it appear more personable and real.

Crowdsourcing: Harnessing the web for what it was built for what it was built for

Designing a strategy that services an organisation’s talent needs has become an increasingly complex task for the hiring manager. Not just because of the unpredictable shifts in the economic climate, but also the constant introduction of new technologies, paving paths for new talent channels.

Recently, Matthew Jeffery described a relatively new concept – recruitment 4.0 and crowdsourcing. It involves using social communities to outsource tasks traditionally performed by internal employees.

How does it work? A company posts a problem online and a large number of individuals offer their opinions and ideas as to how to solve it. The winning idea is rewarded in some form, and the end result is the company adopting the idea for its own benefit.

Often described as a win-win solution – crowdsourcing is cost-effective for businesses and fosters innovation among their social communities. In fact, Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, IBM, Pepsi and Starbucks have already used crowdsourcing techniques to generate ideas that have already or are expected to turn into new products and service innovations.

Whilst there is still a way to go before we see a scalable crowdsourced recruiting solution, key elements can already be incorprated into companys’ social communities, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here are some of the basics for businesses considering leveraging their social communities to crowdsource.

It’s an additional resource, not a replacement:

First and foremost, it’s important to remember that crowdsourcing is not being used to replace any human decision making processes.

It is a form of attraction, a platform to promote your brand and encourage your social followers to send you suggestions and ideas that can be used within your company, and ultimately create a pool of talent.

If you want to attract talent, you must make yourself attractive:

Building an attractive culture and work environment that will encourage star potential to your social communities is the basis of getting the most out of crowdsourcing.

The only way you’re going to be able to build these communities is if you build an incentive structure that will attract them to your social platforms – whether that’s through gamification, a place to share videos and photos, or offering exclusive access news.

Outsource clearly defined tasks to achieve your goal:

Crowdsourcing is best suited for simple tasks such as a new logo, website or product name.

Be specific. Make a detailed list of what the person is supposed to do. For example, if you’re looking to re-launch your company website, you could ask people for their feedback regarding layout, the readability of text and attractiveness of the design. From there you can get inspiration.

Align Incentives:

To those who develop a winning solution to your problem, you must offer some type of reward, whether that’s financial, a holiday or an iPad.

In return, each person who takes part in the challenge is focused on doing their best work so that they might win. And as such, the ideas and solutions you receive should be pretty fantastic.

Overall, it seems fair to say, keeping talent engaged and interested in your brand and business is not going to get easier. The influence of social media, it’s ease of access and the desire it creates to connect on a global level, makes crowdsourcing, simply another natural progression of time.