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I work in an industry (automotive) that has experienced significant economic hardships during the past few years (understatement of the decade). As such, recruitment volumes significantly decreased and recruitment spend became non-existent. Even when we did have a job opening during this period, the labor pool was so large, that we generally did not have issues in finding qualified candidates. Over the past few months, I've seen significant improvements in the job market that appear will carry some momentum moving forward. In preparation for this upswing, I implemented a social media recruitment strategy for my organization, which I felt was imperative to stay ahead, or at least on par, with our competition. Here's the problem: I still didn't have a recruitment budget. Zero, zilch, nada!
After attending a few HR association workshops on the subject, and conducting some research on my own, it was apparent that we needed to build a presence on the "Big Three"...LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Today's blog entry will focus on how I was able to create a successful recruitment strategy utilizing these sites, without breaking the bank. In fact, I have yet to spend more than $100 total.
LinkedIn
The first step I took was to build a career center for my company. You can view the page by clicking on the link: http://bit.ly/azeOCX. On this page, I am able to post all of our global job opportunities, news about the company and any other relevant content that will engage the job seeker. The job postings are updated 1-2 times per week, and the whole process takes very little time. To garner interest in the page, I posted the link on my profile which all of my contacts could see. I've found that virtual word of mouth is a powerful tool on LinkedIn. As of today, we have over 100 professionals that have joined our career center, and I was able to accomplish this with no paid advertising.
Secondly, I joined several industry groups on LinkedIn, each of which has their own job board. By doing so, I am able to post my job opportunities on sites that have a targeted audience (e.g. SAP programmers, supply chain professionals, manufacturing engineers, etc). Some groups may require permission to join, but I have only been turned down by a few. Posting on the group boards has proven to be an effective recruitment tool. Through the first quarter of 2010, LinkedIn was the second highest source of candidates for us. Because LinkedIn is considered a professional networking site, it tends to produce the highest quality candidates as well.
Twitter
I think the jury is still out on how effective Twitter can be in terms of recruitment. Nonetheless, I created an account for my company, knowing that there is the potential for Twitter to become a major player in the recruitment game. Also, there are no costs involved in establishing an account, so why not give it a try?
I post jobs on Twitter with same frequency as LinkedIn. Because you are limited to 140 characters per posting on Twitter, you must be able to "sell" your job opportunities succinctly. If you decide to utilize Twitter for your job postings, I highly recommend you establish an account with http://bit.ly/ (also free!). This site will take your generally long job posting links and shrink them down, thus reducing the number of characters in your postings. Since many Twitter users elect to get updates via their mobile devices, you're essentially implementing a mobile media recruitment strategy as well. Once again, at no cost.
I also made a decision to spruce up our job page on Twitter. This is where I spent a whopping $79. I utilized http://www.twitterbackgrounds.com/ to build a custom background for our page. You can view the work they did on our page by clinking on this link: http://bit.ly/c3hL8c. This has helped personalize our page and make it a better fit with our employment brand. As of today, we have 26 followers on Twitter. Nothing to brag about, but we expect that number to increase as we continue to establish our recruitment strategy.
Facebook
The jury is still out on this one as well. However, we have more fans on Facebook than we do on LinkedIn and Twitter combined. This alone indicates that there is some serious potential for Facebook to become a critical part of our recruitment strategy. Like the other two sites listed above, establishing an account is simple and it's free.
The first step on took was to secure the account name for my organization (e.g. CompanyXJobs). Because Facebook has very little restrictions on user names, I wanted to insure that nobody else snagged our name. I then used the (free) customizable name tool which allowed me integrate our company name in the url. Click on the link to view our Facebook jobs page: http://bit.ly/9U4I6J.
Be sure to include some basic information about your company, including your company logo. If you have a strong employment brand, be sure your page reflects that brand. You will be surprised just how quickly the news of your jobs page can spread. Because it truly is a fan page, friends of friends become aware of the page once their friend becomes a fan. Although we have yet to make a single hire from our Facebook presence, we have seen an increase in the number of job candidates driven to our careers page via Facebook. Many of which are quality candidates.
There are two additional (free) steps I have take to enhance our social media presence. The first is to send a weekly e-mail blast to all "Open Prospect" candidates in our applicant tracking system. Our definition of an open prospect is an individual that has shown an interest in our company by submitting their profile via our careers page, but did not submit their information for a specific job opening. Because I know the interest in our company exists with these candidates, I want to continue to make them aware of future opportunities when they become available. I know for a fact these individuals will be accessing their LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts more frequently than they will be visiting our corporate website. It just makes sense!
The second step I took was to download and utilize TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/). This tool allows me to post updates on all three of the sites from a single source. There is no cost for the download, and I found it saves me a great deal of time when posting my job openings.
So there it is...my social media recruitment strategy as it stands today. I will continue to research and pursue best practices on the subject. If I find any worth sharing, I'll be sure to keep you posted. In the meantime, feel free to e-mail me if you would like more information on my social media strategy. Happy recruiting!!!
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