Increasingly, job-seekers are using social media to find and secure job openings. In order to handle the rising number of job-seekers, organizations have, in turn, increased their presence on social networking platforms. The result is that recruiting has become more cost-effective and time efficient. With more effective ways of reaching and communicating with potential hires, organizations now excel at finding employees whose skills more precisely fit what they need and look for in employees.
The ability of social media to spread information rapidly allows recruiters to collect numerous applications from highly qualified individuals within a relatively short period of time. Information regarding open positions and what the job and organization have to offer can be rapidly passed on to myriad and widely-spread job seekers online. Prior job seekers who have used social media to secure employment can, in turn, pass information about job openings on to friends. This fuels a robust ecosystem in which qualified people within friend, educational or professional groups can rapidly spread information about potential postings and opportunities. Indeed, even a single positive comment about the job posting from a knowledgeable and connected person can spread job information to other online friends, followers, or connections, a process that encourages ever-increasing numbers of individuals to take cognizance of job openings and to apply for them.
Using social media to announce job opening and engage job seekers saves organizations time in terms of recruiting new hires. Rather than waiting for job seekers to apply via traditional online job boards, organizations that use social media to address their hiring needs can have access to a broad pools of job seekers waiting and ready to apply. The resultant positive interactions between employers and job seekers can encourage new applicants to come forward to join employers’ professional online circles.
The exchange of information online between recruiters and job applicants and among job applicants can provide a clear process through which to handle questions that commonly arise. The resultant overall communications on these social media platforms can provide a collaborative venue in which job applicants and recruiters propagate job opening information and spread this information to other online communities. Instead of handling or dealing with individual job applicants as each case arises, recruiters empower job applicants to spread the news about job openings and encourage other job applicants to apply.
Reviewing job applicant profiles via social media can provide a way for prospective employers to single out the best possible candidates to come in for in-person interviews. Moreover, job applicants’ comments on social media pages can be directed to their social media online profiles, such as their individual LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube pages. Recruiters can check a job applicant’s online reputation or even their references before contacting the job applicants. By checking job applicants’ backgrounds at these early stages of recruiting, employers can narrow the circle of qualified job applicants who can come forward for in person interviews.
To attract talented people to apply for jobs, organizations will attempt to brand themselves by labeling themselves positively with people, objects or words that describe their central missions and the benefit for them. The job links on the social media pages can be directed to the webpage of the organization’s human resources division homepage at which are described job openings and other information pertaining to the employers. To engage job applicants, each of whom has unique sets of learning preferences, the employers can describe the job descriptions in writing or video or photo presentations. Employers can also have recruiters engage in real time online dialogues with groups of job applicants or with one individual at a time. In sum, employers have tried to engage job the interests of applicants in a variety of ways so a to attract the best possible pool of candidates.
Over time, recruiters, who interact with job applicants via social media can develop an array of skills that allow them to interact with job applicants in ways that allow them to uncover whether and the degree to which their strengths and weaknesses fit within what the company needs and wants. Recruiters can post some test-in-disguise information or activities that can provide the recruiter information on the job applicants’ qualifications. Experienced recruiters have become skilled in characterizing job applicants’ online postings, and understand that comments that can reveal information about the applicants’ character and disposition. Since references are connected to the job applicants’ social media accounts, recruiters are more likely to check job applicants’ backgrounds before they even meet job applicants in person.
Online interactions with job applicants on social media can provide feedback to the recruiters and their employers regarding how to improve their overall interactions with job applicants. Feedback from job applicants allows both sides to have a clearer sense of what the job entails, both in terms of its general description and also with respect to the work environment and the possibilities for professional advancement, among other things. Feedback from applicants can teach recruiters and their employers how to brand or even re-brand themselves in ways that can help the employers project precisely the image that they went to portray to outsiders.
Employers themselves can compare their recruiting policies and practices with each other. Employers can use social media to learn from each other when it comes to how best to brand themselves in ways that distinguish them in the minds of applicants, but in a way that engages and attracts top talent. Employers can also incorporate positive features from other employers’ websites onto their own websites, so long as they do so in a manner that will not violate any trademark regulations and laws.
The positive features of using social media for luring top talent are quite attractive to both employers and job seekers. Surveys on recruiting show that, “83% of employers will recruit in social networks, 46% will spend more on social recruiting, and 36% will spend less on job boards.” Surveys on job seeking show that, “82% of US job seekers have used social media networks to look for job, 70% of job seekers have agreed that positive online experience with employers would make them more likely to apply, and 14.4 million job seekers have found their jobs via social networking.”
Roughly three-fourths of American organizations require their recruiters to undertake online searches and screenings of potential job candidates in order to understand better their background for recruitment purposes. Indeed, more than 80% of employers report that candidates’ online reputations can affect individual candidate hiring outcomes. Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, provide popular online locations through which human resource workers search for potential candidates and check backgrounds for job openings.
The idea of using social media as an integral part of the recruitment process has grown out of the assumption that candidate-generated online content can provide a powerful indicator of employee fitness and compatibility with company cultures and interests. “Hiring managers are using the Internet to get a more wellrounded view of job candidates in terms of their skills, accomplishments and overall fit within the company,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment