Recruitment processes in organisations have undergone a sea change over the last three to four years. It all began with online portals acting as the gateway for recruiters and candidates seeking employment opportunities to know each other?s needs?replacing the placement agencies who did this job earlier or supplementing their efforts and the recruitment team?s efforts to find the right talent pool. Over time, apart from broadcasting the opportunities to the world at large through employment focused portals, social media is being used by many organisations for recruitment today. The network of friends and associates that recruiters have built is found to be helpful to share their needs and take their help to find or recommend the right candidates for specialised roles.
Not only large organisations are able take advantage of their brands to tap the right candidates through such networks, but small/medium scale businesses and startups are able to directly communicate with the potential candidates and build intimacy about their firms, thereby establishing their credibility quickly. Social media which was primarily meant for building personal networks has come to be recognised on a very short span of time as a powerful and integral channel to the recruitment strategy of an organisation.
Social recruiting is no longer seen as using the social media as a communication or a marketing channel. It is slowly evolving as a concerted effort to build a community and nurture that community, such that over a period of time, through the social connections of the members of the community and their recommendations, recruitments are facilitated effectively. Hence apart from the overall brand pull of the businesses which is created due to its multifarious activities, organisations are realising the need for the conscious focus on creating online communities which could be influential in facilitating attraction of right talent to the organisation. This activity calls for
investment in the right content and sustaining the community on a long term basis.
Social media for recruitment need not be restricted to popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. Organisations could tap niche channels and industry specific blogs where relevant and qualified people are likely to be found. It is also equally important, not to form opinions quickly, based on a few observations or a glance of the interactions between members of the community. Each channel has its own norms of functioning, and patience & consistency are required to build affinity with the channels such that the community develops interest.
We still do not have authentic reports on recruitments happening exclusively through social media or to measure the impact of social media?s support to other methods of recruitment. Yet it is now an accepted phenomenon that social media can provide useful tips or triggers which would augment the efforts of recruiters or job seekers.
Since social media is all about transparency and information being freely accessible, while it is a medium that could make quick connects and provide qualified leads to work with, it could pose challenges for the recruiters as well as candidates about how to deal with perceptions. Transparency and the speed of information exchange on social media make it necessary for anticipating how the information would be utilised or interpreted and be proactive in presenting the facts in an objective manner. Information is not available from a single source but can be cross checked from multiple sources. Hence even the slightest concern on any credentials, facts or incidents could be authenticated and verified.
Recruiters form views about candidates whom they wish to interview or hire not just based on the profiles sent across, but based on the friends they keep and the interactions that take place within their network; thus developing a view of the personality of the candidates from their social media presence.
Its not just when candidates actively scout for opportunities through their social networks that recruiters get to notice them, even those who are passive as well as those who could be influencers could be observed through their contributions to blogs and online communities. Big data and analytics are helping businesses who are on the prowl for such passive candidates who have specialist and niche capabilities and assist them in reaching out to them before their competitors do, thus giving them a distinctive edge in the marketplace.
Increasingly candidates are accessing company websites just a little before their interviews. Therefore companies who do not have mobile ready career pages, should put this in place urgently even before they plan to progress towards social media based recruitments. As social networking, cloud computing, mobility etc are maturing and creating
inter-operable systems and applications, social recruitment will assume new hues and offer new avenues to carry out more insightful assessments during the recruitment process.
Processes such as referencing from clients, tapping peer opinions and even new interview formats are possible to be created on the strength of simulated work environments involving real world co workers. While technology based tools and social media software applications will add more power to recruitment processes, the traditional one-to-one meetings and conversations are not going to disappear. On the other hand these conversations will become more engaging and productive because of all the research, interactions and analytics made possible by social media, making the recruitment process more vibrant as a result.
The writer is CEO, Global Talent Track, a corporate training solutions company