Social Networking Sites for Recruiting

Hunting dog

Do any of you use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any other social networks as a recruiting tool? If so, will you provide some do's and don'ts, how-to's for those of us that haven't tried that yet? I'm so old school, I don't even have a Facebook account. I've never had the desire to spend time on such sites, however, I'm wondering if I should, specifically as a tool for recruiting. I'm open to any and all opinions and advise.

Sharon McKnight SPHR

Hunting Dog,

On the HRHero home page, on the left side, look for Audio Conferences & Webinars. Click on Upcoming Conferences. Scroll down the page to Audio Conferences on CD. Under the topics list click on Social Networking. Several are listed including:


[LIST]
[*]2010 Recruiting: Feed Your Talent Pipeline Using Twitter, Facebook, and Other Social Media
[*]Are You Ready for the Millennials? What HR Needs to Know to Recruit and Manage the Ipod Workforce
[*]Recruiting and Retaining 2.0: Using Social Media to Hire the Best
[*]Recruiting Top Talent With Blogs, Podcasts, and Other Social Media
[*]Using Google, MySpace, and Facebook to Weed Out Job Applicants: Legal Pros and Cons for HR
[/LIST]

I hope this helps.

Sharon

NaeNae55

I think whether or not you use it depends on the type of people you are trying to bring into your organization. Paul uses FB to communicate with employees because so many of his employees are younger. The employees essentially live together and keep in touch after they move on. His FB page helps them. I don't know whether he uses it as a recruiting tool or not, but I imagine he does even if he isn't trying.

We do not use social media here at all, and even if we hire someone young, I use the standard background check. I think it really depends on your culture and the people you are attracting to your business. I can see it coming as a normal thing to do in the future, but so far there are more companies who don't allow FB, etc, than there are.

Good luck!

Nae

Paul in Cannon Beach

My 2 cents on social networking sites for recruiting.

Myspace - Nobody is on Myspace anymore.

Twitter - A waste of time unless your target demographic is on Twitter. They aren't.

Facebook - FB is an interesting tool and whether you use it or not depends on what kind of organization you have, your own comfort level with technology, and the demographic of who you are trying to recruit. Companies like Starbucks and Honda are using Facebook to reach their loyal fans and connect to potential new customers.

Craigslist - not exactly a social network but its a decent recruiting tool. You can post job openings for free.

The only thing worse than not using social networking sites for recruiting is using them poorly. You are wise to think twice before jumping on the bandwagon.

I have my own HR profile on Facebook and I am connected to over 700 current and former employees. I use FB to communicate and stay in touch with this group of people. Yes, its definitely a recruiting tool. I think of it as "consciousness". Not to sound new age but I want to keep my organization in their consciousness as much as possible. If I do, they'll think of us when looking for work or recommending to a friend.

I also administer our Facebook "fan page" for our organization. We have 1700 "fans". These are mostly guests who have an emotional connection to our organization. Our typical guest only comes here once a year but with FB I can maintain a "connection" with them all year long.

Groups - I use FB groups like "Summer Staff 2010" to create mini-social networks for specific groups. Our summer staff can interact with eachother on FB long before they arrive to work for us. They can also post photos to the group page during the summer.

All of this works for me because its compatible with our organization and the kind of service we provide. It may not be right for all organizations.

If you are considering Facebook, my advice would be to create your own personal page and explore Facebook on your own. Once you are comfortable with it, you can decide whether you see potential for using FB to recruit.

Paul in Cannon Beach

Ok, that was more like 4 cents.

NaeNae55

and worth every penny.

Paul in Cannon Beach

And NaeNae is our resident Farmville expert.

dlongawa

You guys are funny. I like funny...

Still Need Coffee

As Paul said, if you're going to jump into the social media/recruiting world, you need to do it right. In my opinion, using social media sites does double duty as a recruiting tool and brand awareness tool. Here's some things we've learned:

Facebook: Our company isn't big enough, and doesn't have a product "cool" enough, to be popular on Facebook. Instead, we ask employees and clients to "like" our page on FB, so that we create a network. When we have jobs come available, we post it on FB, and then 2000+ people see we have a job opening. Even if it's not the right job for them, they might know someone who it would be perfect for, and passes it along.

LinkedIn: I love LinkedIn. I get better quality candidates from this website than I do Monster.com resume searches. To use its full functionality it gets pretty pricey, but they have several options that may be better in your price range. We encourage employees to connect with our company webpage, and the three of us on the HR team will regularly post a "status update" about a new position that's open. To me, the great value in LinkedIn is the potential to create a "pipeline" of candidates. By searching for people who have the skill set you're looking for, you contact them, and ask if they'd like to be put on your e-mail list for open positions. Send your list out to your "pipeline" every few weeks or so, and it shortens the time it takes to hire.

Twitter: At this point for us, Twitter is more for brand management instead of recruiting. We are just now taking a look at Twitter for recruiting, but until our "followers" are a little more numerous, I don't believe it will do much good.

We are trying to promote all three modes of communication together (Twitter, LinkedIn, & Facebook), so that if someone follows us on one, they follow us on the other, thus our numbers increase at the same rate.


Well, if Paul gave 4 cents, I guess this was about 6. Sorry for the rambling, but I hope this helps!

System

While I don't do recruiting, I probably pay more attention to LinkedIn professionally than any of the other social networking sites. It became more important to me when I realized that it was a way I could help other people I know find jobs through my connections. Also, with LinkedIn's toolbar, if you go to a job listing on a site like Monster or Careerbuilder or Craigslist, it will show you who is in your network that is connected to that company. Really useful way of connecting you with information that is helpful.

Paul in Cannon Beach

And I roundly ignore Linked In. Perhaps its more geared to serious people?

dlongawa

All very helpful insights. If you avoid social networking & need to hire a programmer, would you then simply advertise in the local newspapers? Anything else?

NaeNae55

You might try a local association. We advertise on our local SHRM chapter website, but if I was looking to hire for an IT position I would also look at a local IT Association. I also posted a job recently on the state unemployment website. The latter was not as much fun as I was inundated with any resume that had ANYTHING remotely a match. They need to have a programmer update their software to do a better job of matching.