This post comes from Su Oakley, Best Practice Consultant, with StepStone Solutions.  In this post Su discusses the use of social tools for recruiting.

Social recruiting is a hot topic amongst many of the customers I work with and something that most recruitment teams think they should be part of, though many are yet to identify how it fits into their recruitment and resourcing strategy and the approach they should take - this is not surprising, according to Department for Work and Pensions three quarters of employers are missing out on candidates by failing to use social networking sites to recruit staff.

Looking at some of the adoption statistics it would seem that the social web has a momentum that makes it compelling to recruiters:

• Socialising has become the number 1 activity on the web
• It took Radio 35 years to reach 50 million users, TV 13 years, the internet 4 years and  iPod 3years. Facebook had 100 million users after less than 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 4^th largest country in the world.
• There are currently somewhere between 3000 and 5000 social sites.
• By the end of 2010 generation Y will outnumber baby boomers, 96% of them will have joined a social networking site.

Yet some organisations have been reticent to make it part of their approach to talent acquisition because of fears over inadvertently discriminating and opening themselves up to negative comments.

Social networking sites can reveal personal information about a candidate that you wouldn't normally know from an application. Social profiles can include all kinds of "protected" information such as religious beliefs, age, race, gender, sexual orientation etc that are "out of bounds" for recruiters in the UK and so it seems risky for employers to get access to information they wouldn't normally ask at application stage but once an employer sees this information, they can't "un-see" it!

Organisations need to carefully assess the risks and benefits of using social networks in the screening process and, if they do intend use them to vet candidates, there should be policies set out for candidates and recruiters that detail how social media will be used.

At Enhance Media's "The Year Ahead Conference", Adrian Marlowe, MD of Lawspeed, indicated that if organisations are open about the way in which they are using the networks they should avoid legal risk. However, if this is not clear and candidates are rejected, because of their Facebook profile for example, then this is when employees and organisations risk legal challenge.

As for concern about negative content, this may already be happening but, if you aren't "out there", how would you know?  Being on the social web enables you to listen to what is being said, learn, participate in the conversation and thereby influence it.  Indeed, this approach can help organisations gain useful insight into candidate experiences and perceptions that "reality check" the employer brand.

Brand building and brand or reputation management are important reasons for becoming active on the social web.  In the video above Sir Terry Leahy (Tesco) is quoted as saying "Your employer brand isn't what you say it is, it's what people tell you it is" - I think this sums up the relationship between branding and social media

I believe that, properly harnessed, the benefits of social recruiting to attract, source and select candidates and to protect and develop the employer brand, can outweigh the negatives.  So where do you start?

The video below Social Media in Recruitment - My Number One Tip was shot at the 2009 Social Media in Recruitment Conference and contains tips from some of the leading figures in social recruiting in the UK.

Amongst my favourites from the clip:

• Begin with the end in mind - identify what you want to get out of it
• Don't try to sell just engage, it's a great way to engage with communities - don't put them off by selling to them
• Don't do it all at once - make sure you plan what you do and select locations that are consistent with your brand
• Start small, create a blog or choose one location to master before conquering the world of Social Media.

Tags: Advertising, Background, Brand, branding, enhance media, internet, Lawspeed, Media, network, Networking, promise, recruiting, reference, Referencing, Screen, screening, selection, Social, talent acquisition, web

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 11:20 am and is filed under Community, Talent Acquisition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.