The Internet has fundamentally transformed the recruitment process. It started with corporate career sites, continued with the rise of job boards and, more recently, expanded to enable companies to generate candidates using search engines. Social networks extend this evolution, offering for the first time the ability to create a two-way relationship with candidates and to engage the most qualified talent in an ongoing dialogue.

This is a dramatic shift in how recruiters need to think about talent acquisition. Many equate recruiting success with the philosophy of “post it and they will come.” Ironically, the huge pool of candidates available through social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn actually allows recruiters to create relationships with a targeted pool of talent that will have a long-term impact on the quality of hires and enhance the company’s employment brand.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed trying to determine how to blend this sourcing channel into a company’s existing recruitment mix, but remember that social networks are not a replacement for everything else recruiters do. At their core, they are another source of people and communities with some unique attributes. Social media is a powerful new consumer channel that – when used as a part of a mix of sources - can have a substantial impact.

The ability to target communities of people who share specific skills and interests, combined with the power of two-way conversation, makes it a great channel for niche roles in areas such as sales and engineering. At the same time, recruiting for entry-level service jobs can be a chore, since casting a wide net over a very large ocean can be overwhelming.

One key advantage social networks offer over traditional job boards is the ability to attract both active and passive candidates. As of September 2010, more than 500 million people are active on Facebook, with 50 percent logged in daily, according to Facebook.

While the numbers look promising, here are a few tips to help recruiters narrow the field.

1. First, they must build the employment brand by creating a profile presence on these sites and building pages that communicate the company’s values and goals, where candidates can search for jobs and the two-way employment conversation can be initiated. Instead of creating a generic corporate profile, they can add pages unique to job categories – for example, engineers want to see different content than salespeople or accounting professionals. It’s important to ensure the ability to capture submitted information and feed this into an applicant tracking system (ATS) or candidate relationship management (CRM) tool. Updating content frequently is also a must.

2. “Pull” candidates to the company. Don’t expect that putting up a LinkedIn page will attract the best and the brightest. Major social media sites offer targeted advertising programs where one can create highly specialized messages – this is how recruiters can start to “microtarget” the talent acquisition process. For instance, they can advertise accounting jobs by running an accounting audience-focused ad campaign – pulling them to the company’s accounting-specific microsite and starting the mutual courting process.

3. One can also leverage one of the biggest opportunities on social networks: employee referral. Active Facebook users have an average of 130 friends; LinkedIn’s most active members have more than 300. According to a recent Jobvite survey, referrals still drive the best-quality candidates. However, an effective social media referral program needs to be tightly managed. Several companies offer employee referral program software specifically designed for social networks, where recruiters can easily push out new referral contests to employees, control what they post and track success.

4. Tracking success is crucial to any social media effort. It’s easy to get dazzled by the number of clicks and friend invitations, but how many of those actually get hired or become part of the future hiring pool? Recruiters can think about working with talent acquisition partners who understand a pay-for-performance approach to sourcing. They should never begin a social media initiative without knowing what success looks like and how it should be measured.

Think of the company’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn presence as the vehicle to bring candidates to the door. But without the ability to invite them in and start an engaging conversation, how long will they stay? A well-executed CRM program allows recruiters to create lasting relationships with this talent pool – this is especially important for those active and passive candidates that the company may not be able to hire at present but would like to re-engage in the future.

by Adrian van Haaften | Talent Management
[About the Author: Adrian van Haaften is senior vice president of sourcing strategy for First Advantage.]

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