Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies Andy Headworth Published by In association with
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Chapter 1: History of recruitment How recruitment has evolved There are many people who will read this report believing that they know all there is to know about recruitment and its place in their organisation. Over many years working with various companies I have found this to be a fascinating bone of contention. Recruitment represents different things to different people, depending on where they sit in the actual recruitment process within a company. So let s start by defining what recruitment is. The Oxford English Dictionary defines recruitment as the action of finding new people to join an organisation. 1 This really is the embodiment of an activity which many people choose to make very complicated. Ask those in a business to describe what recruitment is and the definition evolves into something much more complex: recruitment is the process of identifying and hiring the most qualified candidate (either internally or externally) for a vacant job position in a timely and efficient way. While seemingly trivial, this distinction is important when social media and technology is brought into the equation of recruitment, as will be demonstrated in this report. Recruitment itself has, of course, been around for hundreds of years in one guise or another, but the concept of paying people to identify talent for an organisation is a relatively new concept. Recruitment has changed greatly in recent years and, as talent became harder and harder to find, third parties began to provide recruitment services to organisations. This heralded the birth of the recruitment consultant and the body of companies known as recruitment agencies and recruitment consultancies. During the heady days of the now fabled dot com era back in 2000-2001, recruitment companies took a real foothold in the business world. The proliferation of start-ups, fuelled by venture capitalists, created a scramble for talented people that surprised even hardened recruiters. CEOs, managing directors and HR directors worldwide were suddenly willing to pay whatever it took to acquire the skills they believed they needed to make their companies succeed. For the recruitment industry in those two years, it really was a licence to print money as fee structures and preferred supplier lists (PSLs) went right out of the window. As we all know, the dot.com bubble burst in a spectacular way. But for the recruitment industry it was the real catalyst for what we see today as social media recruitment. As a recruiter during that period, apart from being very busy, it was a time of huge technological change. The foundations of online candidate sourcing began to form. By 2000 the company formed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin Google, of course really started to gain traction in the world of online searching. A few years later, in 2002 and 2003, websites like Friendster, Friends Reunited and MySpace suddenly appeared and, by default, created the concept of social networks. LinkedIn soon followed, and 1
Chapter 1 suddenly switched-on recruiters found themselves with websites on which they could access millions of prospective new candidates. The real game changer in terms of social networks arrived in 2004. While it certainly wasn t recruiter friendly in the early years, it started to make people realise the real power, reach and amplification of an online network of people. Then in 2006, a website appeared that had many (including me at that stage) very confused indeed., defined as a microblog with its own unique terminology tweets and followers and with an imposed message limit of 140 characters, very quickly became the next big thing in terms of social networks. Fast forward to today and the world is full of different social networks, large and small, as can be seen on the map in Figure 1. The world map of social networks Why is this so important to recruitment in your organisation? Recruitment evolution is happening fast. Driven by social media, candidates the world over both young and old are fast adopting new methods of communication, engagement and decision making. One of the biggest sectors of change, both now and in the (near) future, is how organisations attract, recruit and retain their employees. Whether or not you as an individual are a fan of the concept of social networks like, or LinkedIn, your future employees are. Employees (both existing and future) are becoming more attuned to the behaviours associated with social networks: instant communication, the ease of sharing information with their friends, the ability to influence others through opinion and the sheer volume of people that you can easily reach out to in these networks. United Kingdom Dominating networks according to country QZone VKontakte Odnoklassniki Orkut Mixi Zing Cloob Draugiem USA LinkedIn Germany Xing Spain Tuenti LinkedIn Russia VKontakte Odnoklassniki Japan Mixi China Qzone Sina Weibo Renren No data Data for February 2011 Source Alexa.com Social networks with the largest number of registered users, mln people Brazil Orkut Egypt India Orkut South Africa Australia 640+ Qzone 480 The circle s diameters correspond with the figure Habbo 200 Renren 200 160 LinkedIn MySpace Orkut Bebo VKontakte Tagged Badoo 125+ 120+ 117 110+ 100+ 100+ Data from various sources for July 2010 - February 2011 LinkedIn Australia LinkedIn Most popular social networks in the country Data for February 2011 Source Alexa.com Figure 1: The world map of social networks (RIA Novosti Infographics, 2011) Source: http://en.rian.ru/infographics/ 2
Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies Social media has embedded itself into our lives in relation to both work and pleasure. Many organisations around the world have already taken the inevitable step of starting to use social media as a complementary part of their recruitment strategies. The recruitment landscape has irrevocably changed. Candidate expectation is facilitating the need for companies to adopt social media in one form or another. In my opinion, recruitment departments and recruitment companies will have little choice but to accept that social media will become part of their everyday recruitment processes. differently. For many companies, recruitment has never gone away even during the toughest months during the recession. There is always employee turnover, and therefore there are always roles that have to remain staffed simply to maintain corporate equilibrium. Aside from those roles, there have been many organisations that have continued to grow over the last couple of years in one way or another. One thing did become ever present in the boardrooms around the world: the desire for CEOs and CFOs to drive as much cost from recruitment as possible. The different recruitment methods and how they will evolve There are many variants of recruitment around the world, but they can be broken down into these methods: Permanent; Temporary contract or interim; Executive search and selection; and Fixed fee a relatively new approach. These methods of recruitment would typically be carried out by (in no significant order): In-house recruitment teams (directly); Recruitment agencies/third party recruitment providers; Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) organisations; and Internal referral schemes. One of the big catalysts for change in the recruitment industry has been the need to reduce costs in the hiring process, whether that be a simple fee negotiation, staff reduction or a reduced spend in advertising (or even, in many cases, all three). The different types of recruitment methods have, unsurprisingly, all fared Permanent recruitment During the recession, permanent recruitment was the largest of the four sectors to suffer as recruitment freezes took effect and headcounts were reduced. As already mentioned, recruitment still took place during this time in many cases, more often than people may have realised but the methods companies chose to use (or used out of necessity) did change. Suddenly, organisations had to adopt direct sourcing methods to attract and recruit talent. With no budget for recruitment agencies and third-party recruiters, HR departments and in-house recruitment teams had to become more efficient. It quickly became apparent that existing recruitment processes, methods and company career sites were not up to the task in hand. Many organisations did indeed hire in experienced recruitment consultants, to create new in-house recruitment teams or supplement what was already in place. Online recruitment software companies (applicant tracking systems or ATS) got busier during this time, as organisations struggled to cope with the huge numbers of job applications they were receiving. Then social media entered the equation. 3
Chapter 1 News of new job opportunities became the equivalent of gold dust for jobseekers. Social media was one of the reasons why there were such large numbers of job applicants, as the likes of, and LinkedIn facilitated the sharing of these opportunities on a very wide scale. From the corporate perspective, this could be deemed a positive result. After all, these companies were now receiving large numbers of direct candidates: surely they could dispense with the need to turn to recruitment agencies in the future? However, when there are few or no people resources to manage the large influx of job applications, the concept of quality recruitment becomes harder to successfully execute and manage. Social media (coupled with recessionary pressures) became the catalyst for change. One of the pre-recession issues that many companies faced candidate attraction has now been resolved, albeit on a temporary basis. This has been one of the more positive aspects of the changes in the recruitment industry recently. For too many years, companies have simply relied on recruitment agencies to provide them with their people resource. But with business restrictions (i.e. a lack of recruitment budget) in place and the continuing need to recruit, even if only to replace natural turnover, these same companies have realised that direct sourcing of candidates can be successful. There are now many companies that have changed their whole recruitment strategy to one based on the direct sourcing model, supplemented only occasionally with the use of recruitment agencies where needed. For a large number of companies around the world which are adopting this direct sourcing model, the social media channel is now a key part of their recruitment strategy for new permanent hires. Temporary recruitment The term temporary refers to non-permanent employment and therefore encompasses part-time, contract and interim roles. During the last two years this has seen huge fluctuations; some companies have culled temporary roles to reduce recruitment costs, while others have increased the number of temporary workers to hide the headcount payroll costs in accounting statistics. The reality is that during a recession companies are reluctant to commit to increased headcount spend unless it is absolutely necessary, which of course suits the temporary recruitment market very well. The significant change that has occurred has been the rise of RPO organisations. Companies with large temporary or contract recruitment needs have increasingly turned to these organisations to drive down the cost of recruitment. Recruitment businesses over the last two years will likely have seen significant deep creases in margins. As with permanent recruitment, the proliferation of potential candidates on all of the different social media channels has also helped the RPO organisations source candidates directly, which they have had to do to maintain their very low margins. Has social media intrinsically changed the temporary recruitment marketplace? No, not really; the change has been borne more out of the need for cost reduction. Of course, there are the candidate attraction and candidate sourcing benefits of social media but, as many organisations hire temporary workers through third-party organisations, it is not as impactful as in the permanent recruitment industry. 4
Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies Executive search and selection The executive search and selection marketplace has for many years worked to a traditional format with an even more traditional pricing model. Typically this would be 33 per cent of the salary, split into three parts the first one payable on retaining the search company. This was accepted by companies which engaged these types of recruitment organisations. This sector can effectively be segmented by salary. Typically, the large global search firms such as Korn/Ferry International, Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Egon Zehnder International, Russell Reynolds Associates and Odgers Berndtson have operated on recruitment assignments of 150,000 salaries and above. Many of the medium-sized and boutique search firms will typically work on recruitment assignments starting at 50,000 to 100,000 upwards. The big differentiator in the world of executive search and selection has historically been the level of detail and quality of the research carried out on each recruitment assignment. Prior to social media and social networks coming along, the detailed research and the subsequent shortlists could sometimes take two to three months to put together. This was the value and level of expertise that companies were happy to pay for. Search firms were typically experts in their vertical markets; companies needed to utilise their services to tap into these exclusive candidate networks, and so would pay the premium fees. Then social media with its social networks came along, at the precise same time as the global recession took hold. These two events were the perfect storm for the executive search industry, and they have combined to effect significant change that is likely to continue into the future. To many people outside the recruitment industry, it may appear natural to assume that headcount freezes and budgetary restrictions have had the biggest impact. However, it is the power of social media and social networking combined with the power of the search engines that has impacted the search industry the most. The exponential growth of the social networks has made it easier for prospective candidates to be found online via search engines. Sites like LinkedIn, Xing, Hi5 and a host of other people networks now enable search firms to produce their long and short lists in a much shorter time frame. And, of course, this data is no longer exclusive to the search firms; it is available to anyone with a browser and search engine. This fact has not been lost on the companies engaging them. The large global search firms have and will maintain good levels of business because (at least for the moment) very senior executives are not typically found via social networks. They are still accessed by personal networks and traditional relationship building. However, the medium-sized and boutique search firms now have a problem. They now have to evolve the way they work, to satisfy the new client company expectations. As more and more companies become social media savvy, it means that they too have access to the same pools of talent. With social networks growing so fast, it stands to reason that more and more senior executives will be appearing on them sooner rather than later. The value proposition of the executive search and selection firms has to change, and change fast, if they are to have any longevity in the recruitment industry. Companies will become more and more reticent to agree to retained fee structures, where the data the search firms source from is no longer exclusive. 5
Chapter 1 Of course, the search firms can add value to a client company in many different ways; how they do this, and differentiate themselves from good contingency recruitment companies, will be the difference between success and failure. Fixed fee In recruitment terms the fixed fee sector is a relatively new entrant, but it is one that is growing very fast. Very simply, these providers charge a fixed fee usually less than 1,000 to carry out the candidate attraction and basic selection process for organisations looking to recruit. The recession and the driving down of costs have really allowed this sector to grow over the last two years, and it has now become a firmly established part of the recruitment landscape. Due to the pure transactional nature of the fixed fee recruitment service, social media involvement is limited to using the social channels such as and as pure job distribution channels. While these providers operate on such low fee structures it is unlikely that they will really embrace social media over the next few years, other than automated job distribution as already mentioned. Recruitment methods There are of course many different methods to attract and recruit new employees to an organisation. The different types of third-party recruitment companies have been covered previously, but there are many more methods that are widely used. Social media is already having an impact across all of these methods, whether the various vendors, industries and software providers like it or not. Job boards Anybody that has worked in the recruitment sector client side will at some stage have used a job board to place job adverts for their organisation. There are thousands of job boards around the world, all placing adverts for companies or third-party recruiters in the hope that they will attract candidates to their jobs. They range from the huge generic boards like Monster, Totaljobs, CareerBuilder, Dice, Indeed, CareerJunction (South Africa), Naukri (India), Oak Tree, JobsDB (Asia) and SEEK (Australia) to sector specific niche job boards. In the recent Kelly Global Workforce Index survey Social Media/Networking; The Evolving Workforce, 97,000 people in the workplace around the world were surveyed. 2 The top place that job seekers go to find a job is still job boards, with Generation Y leading the way on them. The recession has obviously impacted an industry that relies on jobs being advertised for revenue. Conversely, while advertising revenues were decreasing, candidate registration numbers were increasing as more people sought new jobs. Social media was not high on the agenda for many of the job boards during this time. After all, they had more than enough job seekers going through their sites every day. The majority of the job board industry is based on visitor traffic statistics for their websites and the number of people that click on the adverts themselves. Of course, with large visitor numbers their metrics looked very positive. Why would they need social media? In mid-2010 I had the pleasure of speaking to executives from two of the largest global job boards, and their response to the question of social media was surprisingly dismissive. They were genuinely not interested in investigating the benefits of adding social media functionality to their job board: Why would we want to 6
Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies consider social media when companies are successfully making hires through adverts placed on the job boards? Social media is a gimmick when it comes to recruitment; companies aren't going to hire staff by using social media. One year on and of course things have changed. They have accepted that social media is now firmly entrenched in the recruitment landscape. But that doesn't mean they have embraced social media on their websites. Many are still lacking any social media integration and, in my opinion, they have resorted to sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that they won't need to get involved. There are of course innovative job boards that have firmly embraced social media and are looking at ways they can integrate it into the candidate's experience. One such job board is Monster, which has an active page, a account and a YouTube channel as well as other social media presence on Flickr, Digg and SlideShare. The challenge for job boards using social media is an interesting one. Fundamentally, the jobseeker wants a job board to help them find a job. Why would the jobseeker want to be a fan of a job board s page, a follower on or a subscriber to its YouTube channel for any other reason? However, during the period of time when they are looking for a new job and have engaged via social media, then jobseekers are a captive social audience. So where will job boards end up in the huge spectre that is social media sitting above them? Will they stay transactional, and simply deliver what they have always delivered candidates for companies and jobs for jobseekers? Will they add mobile recruitment packs to their repertoire? (See Chapter 13 for more on this.) Or will they go as far as becoming engaging recruitment portals, where companies and job seekers interact and engage with each other before any application is made? Maybe that is just a step too far in 2011! One thing is certain: to survive, the job boards have to innovate. Print advertising The recruitment print advertising sector has seen significant change over recent years, with the recruitment advertising agencies right at the front end of both recessionary budget cuts and the growth of social media. Not only have the recruitment advertising agencies had very profitable income streams decimated by huge cuts in recruitment advertising budgets, they have also had to deal with a very fast uptake of social media in their sector. The demise of recruitment print advertising (in the UK, anyway) has been intrinsically linked to the changes we have seen in the executive search industry. For many years, companies by default would be paying for recruitment adverts in newspapers, magazines, trade press and other printed media. These were sold to them as the necessary recruitment solution for their particular assignment by the search firms, which in turn used the advertising agencies in the process. The massive decrease in demand for expensive recruitment adverts and the inability of the advertising agencies to realign themselves to the online world of digital media, including social media, meant many went out of business. While this may be said of the UK, other countries are experiencing a different trend. Although we assume that social media is irrevocably changing the recruitment landscape for print advertising, this is not necessarily true in some countries in Europe namely Sweden and Germany. In both of 7
Chapter 1 these countries recruitment print advertising spend is not only high but it is increasing in volume. The reason is actually very simple: companies are still having success at recruiting people through print adverts and, more importantly, the candidates are still applying through them. Career sites The career site has evolved greatly over the last few years. While many are still just a few pages of a website that companies use to publish their latest job vacancies, full online recruitment systems incorporated into company websites are now more commonplace. This has been down to the wide range of online recruitment technology vendors that provide companies with the engine to power their career site more commonly known as applicant tracking systems (ATS) or talent management systems, as some vendors are now calling themselves. An ATS is a software application that facilitates all the online needs of the recruitment process in one central location and acts as a full database of all a company s recruitment efforts, tracking the candidate process from beginning to end. There are hundreds of different ATS providers, ranging from the established large enterprise level global providers such as Peopleclick and Taleo right through to the new, innovative and free (or low cost) ATS providers like Bullhorn and SmartRecruiters. This industry has been slow to innovate and adapt to the changing needs of both the companies and the candidates wanting to use such systems. One company that stepped forward and broke the standard ATS mould is Jobs2Web, an interactive recruitment and marketing company. It was one of the first providers to really try and understand the candidate user experience and help give companies better candidates that are more engaged and relevant for the jobs they are applying for. It integrated different aspects of social media interaction into the recruitment process and has won many awards for recruitment innovation. Aside from this market leading innovator, the majority of ATS providers have been very slow to incorporate innovation and change around the candidate user experience. Social media is a good example of this. While some of the big social sites like LinkedIn, and are moving very fast and allowing recruitment innovation via third parties on their platforms, very few ATS providers are integrating them into their recruitment processes. The combination of ever-changing technologies and the massive increase in social media adoption will, I believe, start to change the landscape of corporate career sites over the next few years. These sites have historically been reliant on their software to drive the online recruitment process and subsequent candidate user experience. In my opinion, a very large percentage of corporate career sites offer an incredibly poor candidate user experience. This is down to the software being overly processdriven, making the recruitment application too long and tedious to complete. Social media has started to change the way that companies look at their recruitment process. As we all know, social media interaction is immediate and easy to use; this in itself is starting to drive change in online activity, particularly in online recruitment. Candidate expectation is changing fast. No longer will they accept a long, drawn out recruitment process online: they want a faster, more informative and simpler way of applying for jobs via career sites. With this in mind, it is not surprising that some companies are looking to embrace new recruitment process models based 8
Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies on some of the social media platforms. A good example of this is : already there are third party companies utilising the platform to create effective social media career sites which harness the full power of the huge social network. Case studies and examples of these new social media career sites can be found in later chapters of this report. As we look to 2012 and beyond, career site evolution simply has to happen in order for companies to maintain their effectiveness in recruiting and hiring the best talent available for their organisations. Recruitment has definitely turned to once again become a candidate-driven marketplace, with candidates having choice among employers. Companies that fail to address their poor candidate user experience via their career sites will ultimately fail to deliver the talent that their organisation needs. Online pay per click advertising for recruitment One could argue that, since Google started, it has been a key addition to the armoury of thousands of recruiters worldwide. Whilst search is the obvious tool used, pay per click (PPC) advertising via Google AdWords has been a very popular method of driving candidate traffic to career sites, job boards and recruitment advertising campaigns. If you have ever used the Google search engine then you will have seen adverts down the right-hand side of your search results page these are the PPC adverts via Google AdWords (see Figure 2). The way they work is very simple: the AdWords adverts are displayed along with search results when a user searches Google. You select and pay for specific keywords that are relevant to your business, and when a search is carried out on Google using one of your chosen keywords this will trigger your advert to appear against the search results. Where your advert appears depends on the amount of money you have bid on the relevant keywords the more popular keywords attract higher bids. Google AdWords has proved successful in driving geographically targeted recruitment traffic, but as it has become more widely used by companies keyword costs have increased accordingly. While it is still a cost-effective way of driving prospective recruitment candidates to a career site or campaign website, levels of success are governed by accurate targeting, expert advert writing and (typically) increasingly large budgets. In 2010 a new competitor to Google AdWords started to gain traction: advertising. Similar in its approach to Google AdWords, advertising is PPC based with adverts appearing on the right-hand side of profiles and pages. The big difference is that adverts are generated not by search terms but by the content on your profile or page. This includes all of your bio data and information you post on your Wall. The biggest difference to the recruiter, therefore, is that with advertising you have the ability to precisely target your audience. When users sign up for a Figure 2: Google AdWords Source: http://google.com 9
Chapter 1 account they are required to provide a lot of personal information. As an advertiser on, you can use all of this information to set up your targeted adverts. These adverts will display only when people who matched the exact criteria you have selected log on to. So, from a recruitment perspective you are able to target specific candidate groups with relevant advertising and as with Google, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This is a great example of how social media has helped recruitment advertising evolve, and as part of the digital recruitment strategy advertising can be very effective. Demographic factors that are forcing the changes in recruitment methods One of the biggest changes in the recruitment marketplace is in the generational mix of the workforce. We've all been talking about the impact of Generation Y (also known as Millennials ) in the workplace and the demise of the Baby Boomers for a number of years now. Just to remind you: they question everything; they demand continuous feedback and training; they have higher salary expectations; and they change jobs regularly. If you then add social media to the equation and understand that many of those in the Generation Y demographic have grown up in the advanced digital age, it is not a surprise to find that they have different expectations of the recruitment and job application processes. Some countries have been impacted more than others by Generation Y employees. Australia is probably the best example of this: as a relatively small country in terms of its working population, a larger than usual proportion of its workforce 35 per cent is now made up of the Generation Y demographic. Its work culture would therefore be different from more traditional work environments in Asia, Europe and the US. Going forward, these changes will become more and more pronounced as more Generation Y managers take their places in business and further question future recruitment strategies. Baby Boomers are defined as being born between 1946 and 1964; Generation X is defined as those born between 1965 to 1979; and Generation Y is defined as those born between 1980 and 1994. Whilst Generation Y is not quite the dominant workplace population just yet, it is already starting to bring about change simply through its presence in companies. These are some of the Generation Y traits that are impacting on the workplace in the 21 st century: low boredom threshold; impatience; the desire to multitask; the work to live not live to work attitude; The recession has changed the recruitment landscape As we have already seen, the recession of the last two years has had a massive bearing on the global recruitment marketplace. Aside from some of the issues already mentioned, the recession has caused companies to reconsider some aspects of their recruitment process such as interviews, travel and relocation. The recession has understandably caused much doubt among jobseekers with regards to job longevity, potential relocation and the cost of travelling to work. Social media and technology have allowed organisations to circumvent some 10
Smart Social Media Recruitment Strategies of this, with online tools such as Skype and videoconferencing being utilised to conduct certain stages of the interview process online. One new area that we have yet to see go mainstream in the recruitment arena, at any rate is the use of front facing cameras for videoconferencing on mobile phones and tablets such as Apple s ipad 2. This is likely to be one of the biggest areas of change over the next two years, not necessarily from direct clients but certainly where third-party recruiters are involved, as it will cut down on face-to-face meeting time dramatically. We are now seeing more companies use these technologies as part of their recruitment processes, and over the coming years they will become standard practice. The attitude of the job seeker has changed Over the last couple of years I have noticed that there has been a change in the overall attitude of jobseekers, which I put firmly down to both the recession and the dramatic rise in the usage of social media sites such as LinkedIn, and. During the period of recession where jobs were few and candidates were plenty, it was not uncommon for jobseekers to apply for hundreds of different jobs online via job boards, career sites and recruitment agencies. Rightly or wrongly, large numbers of jobseekers got no response from potential employers due, at least partly, to the overwhelming number of applications being received by companies without the systems to cope with them. Very quickly, something I call application apathy set in with jobseekers, leading to a complete distrust of recruitment applications across the board. At the same time,, and Linkedin started to expand very quickly. The same jobseekers realised that they could use these channels to initiate direct contact with companies regarding employment opportunities. Instead of relying on job boards and recruitment agencies, many jobseekers were now trying to find opportunities with companies directly. Many decided that enough was enough and, out of necessity, they decided to do all they could to find work rather than wait for opportunities to come to them. Many became skilled in using social media channels to engage with companies directly. This led to a rise in the level of expectation candidates and jobseekers now have in terms of company usage of social media; many expect companies to have a page and to engage with them on. As more and more Generation Y jobseekers arrive on the job market, they will bring their own expectations and attitudes to the process of finding new job opportunities. They have a low attention span and will not tolerate lengthy recruitment processes they want and expect things to happen immediately. This is going to become a big issue over the next few years: companies will struggle to deal with the necessary increase in the speed and pace of the recruitment process and response times needed to engage and recruit these individuals. If companies don't adapt, then they simply won't get access to the more talented individuals they will move to the organisations that can respond to their expectations. Employer branding An interesting dynamic to emerge out of the combination of the recession and social media has been the willingness of individuals to use social media channels to name and shame (and, equally, to compliment) organisations, recruitment agencies and 11
Chapter 1 other parties involved in recruitment. If candidates suffer a poor experience at any stage during the recruitment process, they are very happy to tell the world about it. The problem for companies is the potential damage that such information could do to their employment brand if it is shared on and. The viral nature of social media can be as negative as it can be positive. While organisations have always been conscious of their brand, the concept of an organisation s employment brand is relatively new. Of course, you could argue that they are one in the same, and many people do. Nevertheless, as the employment marketplace tightens up and the need to attract and recruit the best talent increases over the next two years, the subject of employer branding is becoming increasingly important for companies. These same companies may well have to look at repairing employment brands that have been affected by tough decisionmaking during the recession. Redundancies and negative press may well be at the forefront of people's minds with regard to certain brands in the marketplace. Social media has had a significant impact on the need for organisations to be aware of what their employment brand looks like. Social media can strengthen a good employment brand; conversely, it can do real damage to an employment brand that fails to meet the expectations of jobseekers. References 1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. 2. Available at http://www.easyir.com/easyir/ kellyservices/kgwi_social%20networking_ report.pdf. 12