The Essential Guide To Developing A Social Recruiting Strategy Bigger. Better. Hired.
Table of Contents Welcome What is social recruiting? Bringing in the new 3 3 4 Where to begin? Why are you doing this? Setting goals 5 5 6 How to define voice and company culture Understanding your employee interactions Defining company culture 7 8 9 Who are your ideal job seekers? Finding a common thread Social networks and job seekers 10 11 12 What to look for in an application Is it time for a change? 13 14 Review 16 About Jobvite 17 Page 2
Welcome This is the first part of a three-part series on building a comprehensive and cohesive social recruiting strategy that is unique to your company. What is a social recruiting strategy? Social recruiting is a word we often hear, but what does it actually mean? And, more importantly, what is it and how can you use it to find quality candidates? Instead of weed-whacking through the countless blogs, surveys, whitepapers and ebooks to find the answers, this workbook is specifically designed to help you hunker-down and focus on the core values of your company s social recruiting strategy. That s right, not a general strategy overview, but your own. One that can truly help you to develop a comprehensive and cohesive social plan of action that is customized to your company s unique needs. First, what is a social recruiting strategy? Strategy is defined as a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major goal. In order to take strategy into consideration for social recruiting, we must go back a bit and define what your goals are as well as what social recruiting means to you and your company. Let s get started. Page 3
Bringing in the new Recruiting is all about building relationships, finding the right people. We are universal connectors, matchmakers, headhunters, etc. All social networks have done is make our jobs easier and more focused. Still, with any new technology, strategy and best practices must be considered. But how do you develop these or find the right ones when you are faced with brand new innovations where best practices don t necessarily exist yet. With any new function, you take from the old. Take what you have and use social to make it better. It s adding a new coat of paint and tuning up the engine of a car. You re bringing your current recruiting strategy into the future. Here are a few benefits, or goals, that you can retain by using social: 1. Connect to the largest pool of active and passive job seekers 2. Encourage employees to refer to their networks 3. Send authentic and multimedia messaging 4. Lower the cost of sourcing Page 4
Where to begin? What Networks Are We Using? The hardest part about beginning something new is making the decision to do it. Congratulations! You ve already made the decision to move forward. The rest is simple organization. You will need a framework to begin your planning. The best place to start is not how, but why. Why are you doing this? 100 80 60 Companies Job Seekers Understanding the business objective, or goal, of why you want to use social is key. Everyone is doing it is not a sufficient reason why. 40 What does social media and social recruiting mean for your company? And why is it important to your target audience (i.e.: quality candidates that would fit in your company culture)? 20 Narrow down your why to one or two sentences or a list of a few objectives for social. For example: Social recruiting will spread employment brand awareness and target like-minded candidates for open positions. What is your social recruiting business objective(s)? 0 Facebook LinkedIn Twitter 64% of companies use 2 or more networks Source: Social Recruiting Survey 2011, Job Seeker Nation 2010 Page 5
Setting goals Now that you have defined your objectives, or goals, think about what you would like to have accomplished within the next month, quarter, year and beyond. Where do you envision your social recruiting to be a year from now? Long-term goal (>1 year): Mid-term goal (1 year): Short-term goal (this quarter): Page 6
How to define voice and company culture? Defining your company s voice is essential. Chances are, your marketing department already has this very clearly defined. Ask whoever is in charge of the marketing message of your company, and then review how the company brand message circles back to your corporate, or employment, brand message. This is, in essence, your brand promise; also know as a unique selling proposition a statement that your company makes to customers. This statement sets the bar for expectations. When translating this promise into an employment brand, consider your job seekers and what you want them to expect from the hiring experience and from working at your company. The questions below will help you develop context. What is your company s current brand promise? What is your company s current or desired employment brand promise? Page 7
Understanding your employee interactions Next on this list, is to see if your company s brand promise and employment brand promise match up with how your current employees interact with each other. One of the most important aspects of recruiting is determining whether or not a candidate would be a good fit based on both skill and culture. Social recruiting can be tailored to help you find candidates with the required skills and who fit into your company culture, especially as job seekers grow more curious about the people behind the machine. Open the curtain a little, and give them a sneak peak as to who are the employees. (Tip: Engaging with employees is also great fodder for a socialized career site one in which job seekers can interact with and share jobs.) In order to do this, you must get to know your employees. To progress with this strategy, you ll need to ask yourself a hard question. What are the values, vision and mission every employee embodies? Start by asking your employees what they think is great about the work environment at your company. What do your employees love about the work environment at your company? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Referencing the list about, what is the one value/vision/mission every employee embodies? Page 8
Defining company culture Employees can define a corporate culture. The dynamic of the office environment and how your employees interact with each other will define your culture not your products or services. Sometimes, defining a culture takes a little more time than merely jotting down a few notes on it. First start with the culture you have, if any. Then, decipher where you would like it to be and how you can encourage the right culture. You may want to add this to your overall recruiting and hiring strategy, apart from its importance within your social recruiting strategy. Describe your company culture. Describe what you want your company culture to be. Page 9
Who are your ideal job seekers? Target audience is another of those phrases we often hear. This is because you want to be able to define the types of people whose interest you are trying to attract. You can even get more granulated and determine which kind of personas are in the broader realm of your target audience. What is a persona? A persona is a prototype of a person, or rather, a stereotype. Recruiters can use personas to help teams focus on the kind of personalities and skillsets that work best with your company. Page 10
Finding the common thread Recruiters are supposed to connect with and attract a variety of personalities that generally come with job roles: engineers, product managers, marketing professionals, sales representatives, etc. The kicker is that you are looking for these people who also have a common personality thread in how they work and interact with each other as well as the company as a whole. Men, women, college grads, demographics, etc. are all things to consider when developing personas. Here are two examples job seeker personas: 1. Deer-in-Headlights Job Seeker just graduated college, has a BA/BS, hunting for a first job, early 20s, mid-level social media user, prefers Facebook to email, unsure of career path. 2. Lewis and Clark Job Seeker early career, 2-4 years of experience, 1-3 jobs within those years, BA/BS or more degrees, a little lost on career direction, looking for mentors/guides, uses multiple social networks. What personas define your ideal job seekers? 1. 2. 3. Page 11
Social networks and job seekers Now that we ve established who your job seekers are, let s talk about where they are. In the olden days, recruiters may have looked at meet-ups, bars, restaurants or pink slip get-togethers to find prospects. Today, it s social media. Of workers who said social networks led to their most recent job, Facebook was the leading source. And different job seekers use different networks. Which networks are your ideal job seekers? Check all that apply. LinkedIn Facebook Twitter 78% Demographics of Major Social Networks Facebook Source: Social Job Seeker 2011 female 42% male 58% female 51% male 49% female 43% male 57% LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Page 12
What to look for in an application It s a fact that social recruiting is a lot more difficult without applications to help you streamline and automate. A lot of applications will merely publish job descriptions to networks and job boards, which is good, but not enough. And it can get very repetitive. Since you are developing (or already have) an employment brand that, ideally, is appealing to the job seekers and candidates you want to hire, boring automation should not be the main driver of your social recruiting content. You should look at finding a balance between what s easy and what works. There are a lot of applications out there, and some companies embed social in their applicant tracking systems (ATSs). When looking at applications and software, think about how east it is to use for you, hiring managers and all employees. Yes, ALL employees. (We will discuss this aspect further in Part II of this workbook.) Page 13
Is it time for a change? The following questions will help you assess your current technology and review what changes need to be made in your existing plan so that you can adjust for social recruiting. What applications, if any, are you currently using for social recruiting? What applicant tracking system are you currently using? Does it include social recruiting and/or social reporting? social recruiting only social recruiting and social reporting I do not use my ATS for social recruiting Does it scale to your long-term and short-term social recruiting goals? Page 14
What three things would you change about your applicant tracking system? 1. 2. 3. Who are your competitors? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What applications are your competitors using? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Page 15
Review When including a new structure into your existing system, it helps to re-evaluate each step so that you can seal any gaps and capitalize on any opportunities that you hadn t initially foreseen. Bare in mind that the basic core of any social recruiting strategy should always be your company and what its employment brand promise means to job seekers. Social recruiting shouldn t fall too far from the spectrum of recruiting in itself, which is to connect people to jobs. Now that you ve laid out the foundation of your strategy, you can begin to look deeper into the execution, or plan of action, and how you can use social media to make it easier to connect a wider pool of qualified people to your jobs. We will discuss all this and more in Part II of this workbook. Page 16
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