Since the beginning of time (as I remember) talent was sourced from one of three ways.
- Head hunters
- Advertisements
- Employee bonus
Each one of those ways of sourcing has it’s problems in the internet, mobile and social media charged world.
- Headhunters - The idea behind recruitment consultants is simple. Passive candidates, the most loyal and high performing employee are difficult to find and to prise away from their employment. So you use recruitment consultants to source these candidates. But we all know it does not work like that. In many cases people who lose their jobs call up recruiters. Headhunters are no longer a way to get to passive candidates.
- Everyday the average person gets bombarded with 1,000 messages a day. In amongst those messages is your job ad. There is nothing that will make it stand out. I’m sorry, you can have the best messaging in the world, the best photography in the world it is still 1 of 1,000.
- Employee referral is still a possible option, but you are reliant on other people to do your selling for you.
And this is the elephant in the room when it comes to recruitment. How are you going to get access to the best talent especially at such low levels of unemployment?
This is why we are suggesting the use of social media. Not as a tactic in the way you use it at the moment, but as a strategy. Posting jobs on Twitter is a tactic and not a strategy.
Look at this latest data on internet use, social media use, mobile use:- https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-global-digital-overview
To quote the report
“More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet at the start of 2020, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of this year.”
Social media has changed the world, it’s changed the way we live and it’s changed the way we work. You might not like it, but it’s the way it is and we need to embrace it.
Based on the research above we can safely say that your employees, prospective employees are on social media. But the old ways of posting and hoping belong in the 1990s let’s look at you getting access to the best candidates or even being the employer of choice.
The first thing we need to do is empower the people in Human Resources (HR) so candidates can find people and these people in HR can set an example of what it looks like to work for the company. Your active and passive presence on social media is the companies “shop window” as to how cool it is to work at your company.
Next the HR team need to have strong networks and they need to connect to everybody who could be a candidate or could be influence a candidate. Why is it that headhunters have strong networks? The people in HR need to emulate this.
The third thing is that the people in HR need to create content. Not “adverts”, but authentic blogs on what it’s like to work at your company.
What you are doing is sharing your culture online. If you think about Google, Facebook, etc, people want to work there, how ever difficult the recruitment process is.
By sharing your company culture online it will discover the passive candidates and the best candidates as they see the best profiles on line, you see these people as they have proactively pulled you into networks and you read their inspiring and educational content.
When you are connected to your future employer, you see that the people in your future employer are inspirational and the content they create is inspirational too. Where else are you going to work?
This means you get the pick of the best candidates.
But that’s not all.
If you are recruiting, to attract candidates to your company then often you are in a Dutch auction. To tempt people away from their employer requires you to get into a pay and benefits war.
If you are already the employer of choice then would you need to do this. At Facebook, Google etc do you think there are major discussions on pay and benefits. No, because you want to sit in a hammock and eat jelly beans all day.
By placing your culture on social media you will be able to increase the effectiveness of recruitment at a lower cost to the business. A classic, more for less opportunity.
Is it time you re-looked at your recruitment process.
Come on you Changemakers in HR you know this makes sense, it’s time to stand up and be counted.
PS: Better still active all your staff to talk on social media about your company, it’s culture, it’s products and services. This will then enable you to get access to candidates in their networks as well.
A new report from LinkedIn warns that only half of employees think the on-the-job experience is positive, reducing productivity and harming retention. “If they’re not on their way out,” the report cautions, “they’re likely performing well below their capabilities.”
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