Social Network Recruiters: Coming to an Office Near You?
Chris Russell at Jobs in Pods thinks that companies will soon start creating new job positions for “social network recruiters” (or perhaps “social media recruiters”) — people who are active on sites like Facebook, MySpace and using tools like Twitter, etc. looking for talent.
I don’t disagree. But…
I think the path of least resistance for encouraging companies to use social networking and social media for recruiting is through Marketing. Joel Cheesman, writing at The Industry Standard, points out that there’s often a disconnect between Marketing and HR at corporations. He’s absolutely correct. But in smaller companies I’d argue that’s less the case, and really that’s where the uptake of new technologies and approaches will be stronger. Eventually…the big guys will wake up and try desperately to catch up.
So how does Marketing play a role in recruiting?
For starters, recruiting is marketing.
Secondly, marketing is more apt to test out new techniques to reach customers - and so we see a bigger usage of social networking and social media in marketing. It’s not an avalanche of use just yet, but certainly marketing tends to be more aggressive than HR. Along with that we’re starting to see a new job position being created at companies — the “Community Manager” or “Social Media Manager”. Other titles we’re seeing crop up on a more regular basis:
- Bloggers, Writers, Researchers
- Senior Marketing Manager - Social Media
- Social Media Coordinator
- Social Media Expert
These are fairly new job titles. And we’re going to see more of them. What I would encourage companies to think about is how these social media / community / marketing / blogging / social networking people can help with recruiting. They’re already out there, interacting with people - interacting with customers (some of which are going to be candidates too), and they’re familiar with the techniques and principles behind social media. Those same techniques and principles can work for recruiting.
The sooner companies realize that recruiting is marketing, and social media/networking/blogging are great forms of marketing, the sooner companies will be able to take more control of their recruiting and generate better results.
The real driver behind creating a dedicated position like this is the amount of complexity within recruiting functions today. Complexity coupled with variances in skills between recruiters and those that can effectively leverage social media and branding online are different. And, that is also important to discern and leverage in a building and managing a recruitment function. This role should also serve as the online employment brand steward. Support from marketing is great but the reality is that HR/recruiting needs to build the partnership and then drive their needs. Marketing typically does not have the budget or the bandwidth to own it and when they do recruiting too often falls to the bottom of the list. Thinking of talent attraction as biz dev/sales instead of HR creates a very different need and competitive spirit. And, while marketing and employment branding/talent attraction are closely related, the approach and underlying expertise are quite different. Recruitment function leaders have a significant opportunity to drive the use of social and potentially even contribute back to marketing as they learn from their experience and growing expertise in the social space. Yes, this is an area I am quite passionate about and together with Steve Fogarty - http://recruitingrevolution.blogspot.com/, designed a senior sourcing strategist position to do just that in 06/07. Happy to share what it looks like if anyone is interested.
Susan - Thank you for the great comment. I love the phrase, “online employment brand steward” — every company should have someone dedicated to that.
How is talent acquisition different than marketing/sales? Of course, I think of authentic marketing - not overly polished marketing / hardball sales tactics, because I do agree that trying to over-polish your image/brand for talent acquisition will backfire.
Benjamin - Yes, I agree completely and am thrilled to see you use the word authentic - which is exactly how I would describe the development of a sustainable employment brand. Anything else is simply spin which has a relatively short shelf life and results in increased attrition and employee dissatisfaction. Developing an authentic AND exciting brand often proves elusive for many companies. And, yet - it seems all too often easier than creating and managing spin. Looking forward to hearing and seeing more from StandoutJobs!
@Susan: Thank you for continuing the discussion … and keep an eye on things here. I hope you’ll stick around.
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