Friend Me, Follow Me, Recruit Me: The Rise of Social Media in Talent Acquisition

Guess who nabbed one of the greatest social media hires of all time?

What I’m talking about happened way back in 2007, when YouTube was only two years old, you still had to be invited by a friend to create a Facebook account, and Twitter was in its early infancy — when people didn’t even really use social media as a means of recruitment because, well, what were all these platforms anyway? Turns out the talent pool was already getting pretty deep back then — we just didn’t know it.

So, the answer to the trivia question above? Scooter Braun. Doesn’t ring any bells? Maybe this will:

Oh yeah. You just watched that.

Bieber jokes aside, Scooter Braun scored big when he found that video on YouTube and flew a 12 year old from Canada to the ATL. Biebs became a household name, Braun became a major player in the music business, and the rest, as you know, is history.

Guess who else was discovered on social media (on Myspace, no less)? Hello, its’ me — no, it was Adele.

But what if that A&R guy decided it was just too much effort to browse for talent on social media when there was already a whole pile of submitted demos on his desk?

Well for one, some other musicians out there might have a few more Grammys and BRIT awards, so I guess they would be happy. But would you be happy if you were the recruiter who missed out on Adele? Just sit with that for a second.

Do you see where I’m going with this extended metaphor? Well, over in business-corporate world, it took a couple of years to figure out that we could actually use social media to recruit amazing talent. Maybe we had to wait until companies got a little bit younger, or maybe we had to wait until we were sure there wasn’t too much risk involved. People in HR are almost universally risk-averse, after all. We have a system and it works, right? Who knows?

Anyway, now that we have finally figured out that social recruiting works, how are recruiters using social media and messaging apps to find and engage talented candidates?

Alexander Mann Solutions and Social Talent recently conducted an online survey of about 1,000 sourcers and recruiters around the world to see how social media was being used in the recruitment space. Alexander Mann’s Liz Weeks, head of employer branding and candidate attraction, was able to give me a rundown of their findings.

“What we found was that, while LinkedIn continues to dominate the landscape for recruiting, we’re seeing an emergence of other social media platforms,” Weeks says.

According to Weeks, platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are on the rise, as are messaging apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Viber.

“We discovered that the most effective sourcers and recruiters are those who are social media savvy,” she says.

The recruiters who are savvy have been using social media to search for people who are qualified for specific job opportunities. That’s the power of LinkedIn, of course — enabling sourcers and recruiters to find candidates based on a variety of criteria, including skills, location, length of experience, etc.

Of course, there are limitations with that process.

“The average recruitment funnel yields 282 candidates for each role, but about 70 percent of those aren’t relevant to the position,” Weeks says. “That’s about 200 profiles per search, which adds up to a lot of wasted time.”

Still, LinkedIn’s not the “gold standard” for nothing — there will always be candidates worth searching for.

That said, recruiters are beginning to combine their search efforts with a second, more consumer-oriented strategy that has recently come into play. In order to attract passive candidates, companies can use social media to actively promote their employer brands.

Whether you’re posting on a job board or social media platform, Weeks says it’s important to make job listings more interesting through the use of video and storytelling. This is where platforms like Instagram and YouTube can be really powerful tools in any recruiter’s arsenal.

“Candidates aren’t just looking for jobs based on matching skills,” Weeks says. “They want to do interesting work at companies they believe in.”

With millions of potential candidates active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, a smart, dynamic, story-driven social media campaign is going to bring droves of candidates to you — the kind of candidates who are inspired by your brand and who truly believe their story will help make your story even better than it was before.

But once you’ve reeled your dream candidate in, you can’t forget that recruiting is still and always will be a personal business. According to Weeks, “the most effective talent acquisition professionals are those who combine technology tools with a personal touch.”

Always follow up with a candidate via email, a phone call,  or a carrier pigeon if you’re into that kind of thing (personally, I’m a fan of snowy owls named Hedwig) — something anything, that says “we like you, we want you, come work for us, please.”

So, what’s the moral of this story? Be personal, be smart, be inspiring. And, if you want to find the next corporate-world Adele, you should #definitely #start #hashtagging.