Blogs Could Become Newest Recruiting Tool
As reported by SHRM, Employers, recruiting analysts and consultants all have begun to extol the virtues of using web logs—better known as blogs—as a way to identify and attract job candidates. However, corporate web logs that are specifically used as recruitment tools are few and far between.
“I think employers are well aware of the value of blogs as a recruiting tool,” says Ted Demopoulos, management consultant and co-author of the book Blogging for Business (Kaplan Publishing, 2006). “There just aren’t many that have made recruiting the specific goal or focus of their organization’s blogs.”
But blogs offer businesses an excellent and interactive communications tool, and many leading corporations have extensive web log programs. Microsoft, for example, is one such company with close to 3,000 blogs posted by the company’s employees. Blogs can give an insider’s view of an organization and could provide the best and most accurate picture about a company’s work environment to potential job candidates.
A number of other high-profile companies such as General Motors Corp. and Boeing Co. have joined the corporate blog bandwagon this past year and are following the footsteps of high-tech firms like Microsoft, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Honeywell Corp. The primary reason companies are choosing to make the blogging leap is because they don’t want to risk being left out of an online phenomenon in which an estimated 5 percent of Americans maintain blogs and 20 percent read them. A Gallup poll conducted in February did find that the number of new blogs is tapering off; however, the number of people reading blogs regularly definitely seized the attention of corporate boardrooms around the nation.
Companies that don’t have employee blogs clearly could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in recruiting qualified workers. A good example of blogs’ benefits, Demopoulos says, is the story of a man who recently read employee blogs at Microsoft to learn as much as he could about the company. He discovered that Microsoft employed many people who shared his interest in long-distance cycling and that the company also encouraged participation in cycling events. The man then decided he wanted to work for Microsoft and interviewed with the company.
“This shows how blogs offer the information that job candidates can use to make a very informed decision about their careers. And the job candidates that employers want and need are the savvy and well-educated people that blogs would tend to attract,” says Demopoulos. “So it’s a tremendously powerful tool.”
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