Who Manages your Facebook Careers Page?
How Should a Corporate Facebook Careers Page be Administered?
A 2010 survey of senior executives conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, found that attracting and retaining human capital is the highest priority and concern for organizations. Risk-averse companies and prudent hiring managers concerned about the costs of making a bad hire are turning to social media networks to recruit top talent. The professional network LinkedIn is indispensable to recruiters for sourcing, seeking and assessing executive and professional level candidates. However, it may not be as effective for recruiting college graduates and younger workers. So, organizations are going where the action is: Facebook. With 800 million active users socializing, networking and gaming, companies are recognizing the importance of engaging prospective candidates through interactive career pages .
Should Recruiters Manage Facebook Career Pages?
But should busy recruiters be expected to administer a corporate recruiting page? Perhaps Facebook career pages should be left to social media marketing professionals and HR, with recruiters brought on board for special career chats, networking in Facebook’s groups or for question and answer sessions. Both in-house recruiters and third-party recruiters have enough on their plates with pipelining responsibilities, promoting the brand, establishing constructive relationships, sourcing, assessing, scheduling interviews and retention. Tack on other social media channels, such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and having to handle a multitude of opportunities posted on job boards, and recruiters are soon facing sensory overload.
Referrals are the Name of the Game
Besides the obvious branding advantages to an interactive and informative career page, Facebook networks are worth their weight in gold when it comes to quality referrals. And referrals must be encouraged internally, by making it easy for employees to share job opportunities with their Facebook friends. Some companies have recognized the tremendous value of Facebook as a referral machine and have integrated Facebook into their applicant tracking system. With just a click of their mouse, employees can distribute a job opening across their own networks, linking back to the company’s recruiting page. Hires made through referrals are inexpensive, are of high quality and tend to stick around. Facebook is free for companies, so referrals obtained through Facebook are a win-win.
Group Conversations
Facebook now offers access to a wealth of potential candidates through its groups. Much like LinkedIn, recruiters can leverage the social networking power of industry and special interest groups to engage and interact with Facebook members. Remember, Facebook is all about social interactions, relationship building and making connections. When recruiters make the time and effort to build an effective network of contacts, it’s much easier to engage in real recruiting activities. Since many users flock to Facebook for non-work related functions, such as sharing family photos and inviting friends to social events, some users don’t take kindly to a recruiter’s attempt to contact them through the platform. So, the softer method of networking in groups may be more useful to a recruiter in the long-term.
Powerful Search Functions
With dozens of new recruiting apps now available, Facebook is certainly a valuable platform for sourcing candidates. Recruiters can conduct searches based on name, email, school, type of degree and company. And their pipelines of quality candidates can be expanded with friends of friends of friends. A recruiter’s time would be better spent leveraging Facebook’s powerful search features and initiating conversations in groups, rather than managing a company career page. Adding Facebook to a recruiter’s social media toolbox, can help with sourcing and assessing tasks, as well as increase a professional network. But leave corporate career pages to Marketing, PR and/or an administrative HR function. Facebook may have millions of captive users, but recruiters must still focus on aggressively seeking out candidates, and not get too caught up in passively attracting talent. In short, they have to create the action, not just be where the action is.