A follow up to the \'How in-house recruitment professionals use social media to aid their recruitment strategies\'. Key points and observations

1. ‘How in-house recruitment professionals use social media to aid their
recruitment strategies’ - September 13th 2012
A follow up and some observations by Marcus Panton, event organiser
First of all let me say a quick thank you to; Anne Carrigan (Director of Resourcing, Balfour Beatty),
Colin Minto (Global Head of Resourcing, G4S), Charly Stephenson (Talent and Resourcing Project
Manager, KCOM), Katrina Collier (Founder, Winning Impression) and Rebecca Drew (Enterprise
Account Executive, LinkedIn) for giving up their time to help make the event such a success. Also,
thank you to James Kerr (Recruitment Practice Leader, Lockton) for providing such a great venue and
keeping everyone fed and watered.
Introducing the panel
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2. For those of you that couldn’t make it…A quick overview:
In the panellists we had a real depth and breadth of in-house, social media and recruitment
experience and I am sure people would have turned up just to hear them speak. However I was
really keen that the event focused on what the delegates wanted to talk about rather than what the
panellists wanted to say. To enable this, I encouraged everyone who registered to post questions
and topics to me before the night with a view that the most popular would be the focal point for the
evening. From the questions and topics I received, 5 themes arose; so on the night the room was
divided into 5 tables with each one being allocated a topic and a panellist. After the introductions,
delegates were asked to sit at the table of most interest, whereupon the panellist facilitated a
discussion around the questions everyone had relating to the tables topic. We played a couple of
games of musical chairs and everyone got to sit at 3 different tables.
The 5 topics were:
1 – Using social media to engage: sharing insights, creating talking points, blogs, news and events
2 – Using social media on an international level
3 – Utilising LinkedIn’s free applications
4 – Using social media to position your brand
5 – Fears about using social media
Table Discussions
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3. Here are some of my observations from the night:
Keeping up with the Jones’s
A common theme coming from one of the tables was the sense that there is an element of peer
pressure surrounding the use of social media in recruitment, almost as if one of the main reasons for
using social media is, ‘because everyone else is’. There is a lot of hype surrounding social media in
recruitment, and it’s moving very quickly, and there is a feeling that you’ve got to keep up. One
might say there is a fear of being left behind.
I was talking to Colin Minto about this, and he points out that this mind set is not the right place to
start any social media strategy or campaign. Colin noted that if this is a key motivator that triggers
an action, then you will probably face resistance from senior management when you pitch your plan
to them, and then if they do give you sign off, you risk not generating the results that you hope for.
Colin rightly says that the starting point has to be ‘why are we doing this, and what value will it add
to the business’? Ask the following questions ‘Who is my audience? Are they on social media? How
are they using Social Media? Why are they using Social Media? What are they talking about and
what do they want to get from using social media? Talk to the various platforms and gather the data.
There is more to social media recruitment than LinkedIn
Ok, so we know this already. One of the criticisms of the event was that it felt a little bit ‘LinkedIn
centric’ with not enough emphasis on other channels – Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc., etc. I take
this on board and agree it would’ve be interesting to have a relevant someone there from one of the
other platforms, or perhaps someone from the in-house profession who has specifically used other
channels in various campaigns they’ve run. As I write this, I think to myself ‘if this had been one of
the 5 tables, it would have been the one I’d have picked to sit at first! Perhaps I could do an event
specifically on this topic?
However, LinkedIn are the ‘go to’ site when it comes to recruitment and there were some
interesting observations made by Rebecca Drew who facilitated the popular ‘Utilising LinkedIn’s free
applications’ table. Number 1 – don’t underestimate the importance of your personal profile, and do
invest time getting it to 100% completeness; get your picture taken (you are 7 times more likely to
be contacted if you have a photo), complete your summary, and fill in the skills and expertise
sections. Number 2 - Join relevant groups, they’re free to join and you can start engaging with target
candidate communities straight away. Number 3 – Get your company page to 100% completeness
and Number 4 - Keep your status updates on your company page fresh with news stories, events and
awards. People are selective when it comes to the companies they chose to follow, so if they choose
to follow your company, make sure you communicate with them.
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4. People don’t work for you for the same reasons they buy your goods and services
OK, something else we already know, but there were some interesting debates around this point on
Anne Carrigan’s table, and the question of how to position an employer brand on social media was a
popular one. The key thing here is separate out your employer brand from your company brand,
Coca Cola’s wish to ‘refresh the world - in mind, body and spirit‘ isn’t a reason people decide to work
for them, and people don’t work for Nike because they want to ‘Bring inspiration and innovation to
every athlete in the World’. If you feel like this is a topic you are battling with, take some solace in
the knowledge that you are in good company; many people haven’t really started developing their
employer brand within social media spaces yet.
Tapping into stakeholders to build your network
On the ‘Using Social Media to Engage’ table, Charly Stephenson noticed that a common thread
amongst companies with well-developed social media strategies is how the in-house teams are
working closely with the various internal stakeholders. For example, partnering with the PR and
Marketing teams so they can piggy back onto any events they are attending/hosting, as well as
coordinating the distribution of event information across the relevant social sites. Charly also
highlights the importance of engaging with your employees and getting them to join groups, build
their networks and talk about relevant topics/get involved with discussions, after all potential
recruits are more likely to be connected to your employees than to you.
A question I picked up on that was being asked in various ways across each of the tables was the
‘should I post all my jobs onto social media sites’? This isn’t a yes or no question, the important thing
here is to mix it up a bit and in-between posting jobs, you should share articles, updates and news
and ensure that you are engaging with your audience in a way that they will appreciate. Social media
is all about engaging with and helping others, it isn’t a jobs board and you’ll risk seeing your number
of follows shrink if all you do is focus on what you want.
Have a plan in place…
So you know who your audience is and you know where they hang out in social media land, you’ve
worked out what they want and with a bit of social media knowhow you begin to engrain yourselves
into your target candidate communities and engage with them. However, what happens when they
start talking back? and what do you do if you don’t like what they have to say? Do you have a plan
for this? Have you put rules in place? And, do you have the resources to follow your plan through?
There is a lot of hype around social media and perhaps rightly so, never before have in-house
recruitment teams had such direct access to talent (take a look at all the companies cueing up to
help you tap into this resource), however, Katrina Collier noted on her table a number of interesting
questions about the drawbacks of direct sourcing, the main one being ‘how to deal with the deluge of
applications’? (especially in the current economic climate). This brings us neatly back to the earlier
questions to consider when thinking about how social media can aid your recruitment strategy, ‘why are
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5. we doing this? What value will it add to the business’? And, ‘Do we have the resources in place to
follow it through’?
Here’s what some of the delegates said about the evening:
Kelly Barrett, Resourcing Consultant at Talk Talk: ‘’A good evening and a great panel, it was good to
be able to choose the topics that we talked about’’
Abi Agyeman, Internal Recruiter at Amoria Bond: ‘’I thought it was run well and size wise very
manageable. The pre-question idea was good and the structure worked really well, it was not what I
was expecting. It was good to get so close to the panel and have the option of which 3 tables to sit at
(although I would have liked the opportunity to sit at all 5 tables and ask the other panellists my
questions)’’
Chris Gillham, Senior Recruitment Partner, Mahle Powertrain: ‘’It was a really good event and I feel
I’ve learnt a lot about other ways of using social media. As a result of the event, we have purchased
some social media listening software, we are talking to a media company about our careers page,
we’ve changed our Facebook pages and have signed up for an official twitter account’’
Kate Ball, Recruiter at Hotwire (part of Expedia): ‘’I really liked not being talked at! Charly was
fantastic, she spent time understanding everyone at the table and gave personalised feedback and
advice’’
Thank you to everyone that gave me feedback, I’ve not been able to include everyone’s in this follow
up, but I do invite you to post feedback onto the ‘Modern day, best in class, in-house recruitment’
and/or the ‘Institute of Recruiters (IOR) – Recruitment and HR Network’ groups on LinkedIn.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4362436&trk=hb_side_g and,
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3717538&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
Thank you
Marcus
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