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Posts Tagged ‘social media and employee relations’

Applying Social Media for Recruitment

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

A Human Resource personal’s most important task is to hire best available talent for a position that will lead to substantial growth of an organization. Indirectly, the HR role becomes as significant as any other department. Earlier, industry contacts and expertise were the best methods to locate a perfect match. But today, things are a little different.

Changing Playgrounds

While contacts are still very important source for finding a key member for a team, recruiters are also looking to social media and finding success in spotting the right person to hire, regardless of the type of organization or industry they work in.

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

Whoever you may be, a job seeker, a professional recruiter or an organization looking to hire, and wondering if social media can help you hire, the answer is Yes! International entertainment giant TiVo reported an 11 percent increase in referrals thanks to social media tools like LinkedIn. The company has also made job opportunities “portable” so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status across major social media platforms.

Improving the Game

What is more, specific job searching tools on social media platforms have also been introduced. This is just an indication of how serious this phenomenon is. TweetaJob is a tool that uses targeting technology to tweet jobs which match the location and career interests of job seekers. This comes out of the fact that just as candidates don’t want to be contacted with irrelevant positions, organizations don’t want their openings to be overwhelmed by other offerings.

TweetaJob Tool for Twitter

Where to Play

While such tools are being developed across social media platforms, many recruiters struggle with the options of various social media platforms itself. Which platform to use is something everyone wants to know? While it is obvious that LinkedIn is the global playground of professional and an obvious choice for recruiters and job seekers, one cannot rule out the usage of other platforms. With social media, everyone has a particular platform that they are most similar with and vocal on. Someone on Twitter may well be as much the right choice even of s/he is not on LinkedIn.

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

Going Global

Another advantage of using social media tools is their global potential. One post can reach across the globe in matter of seconds thus giving a healthy exposure to your requirement as well as your organization. This works at two levels. First, an economical way of hiring from across the globe with proper background knowledge about the candidate. Second, the talent is rechargeable and in infinite quantity if you know where to look.

Hidden Benefits

While there are benefits of recruitment through social media which are evident, there is another benefit that comes as a part of the process. Through the usage of Social Media for recruitment, organization tends to build a better relation with people. Since it’s an interactive medium, the recruiter and the candidate engage in one on one conversation thus making it more conducive to a positive result.

Get into the Gear

It may be pointed that while the hiring manager looks for the right candidate, having the right profile too is very important. A complete profile with a display picture and all the professional details on LinkedIn acts like a digital resume open for anyone looking to hire. Similarly, a good twitter interaction can help in showing your charming personality to potential recruiters.

Complete Profile on LinkedIn

Conclusion

While it can be said that in no ways, Social Media Recruitment can be the only method of recruitment in an organization, but it can surely be one of the most viable method to contact people who can fit in to the company. In a survey conducted by us, we found that 48% of the respondents have been contacted for jobs via different social media platforms. Of these, almost all had an offer made to them via LinkedIn and few of them even had offers through Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook Poll (above) LinkedIn Poll (Below)

Thus, it is safe to say that although Social Media recruitment is yet not mainstream process, it is surely gaining popularity. And no one platform can cover all the possibilities that you can avail of.

Tags:HR, Human Resource, Recruiment, Social Media, social media and employee relations
Posted in Employee Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 3

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Now that you have read part 1 and part 2 of ‘Who is afraid of social media’, hope you enjoy the last and final part of the series as much as the earlier ones.

‘We don’t know if our workforce will be excited about social media’

A very valid concern. Sometime employees might just not be ready to embrace social media and its toolss. However, one needs to remember, that most of the younger workforce have already embraced social media to a large extent and the others will too, given time and encouragement.

It might make sense to start the reluctant workforce on some simple social media tools, hand hold them and provide continuous encouragement and demonstrate the value. Tough isn’t it… but who said life was easy?

Other ways to ensure participation would be to encourage top management to actively use social media and be ‘visible’ in their efforts. Develop internal ‘evangelists’ to demonstrate the benefits and spread the good word on your behalf.

Make sure any successes achieved from the use of social media are celebrated. Incentivise the use of social media internally. For e.g. reward and recognise top bloggers in the organisation. It won’t take long for others to follow and see the benefits. Promote interesting themes and spark of interesting discussions that pique the curiosity of reluctant employees.

‘We don’t know if it makes business sense for us’

Defining a quantifiable value using social media is the toughest part of being a pro-social media internal communicator. The management is not interested in ‘increased dialogue’ and ‘community building’ unless there is a tangible attached. Sometimes you really need to show them the money.

To help deal with sceptical bosses you can pitch it as an inexpensive way for teams to collaborate and for cross-learning to take place. Draw attention to the fact that social media project can help achieve specific business and communication objectives.

Start with a pilot and get internal champions to participate and share their positive experiences, so you have something tangible to report back to management.

‘But will we be able to measure success?’

Yes you will, provided you give it even time and effort. Help yourself by quantifying the value of social media tools that you put into use. Decide what you want to achieve and how social media is going to help the organisation.

Include well-thought out goals, build in guidelines and rules and you should be able to measure success. Gather quantitative and qualitative data to support your claims. Some things you can use to measure success are – has employee satisfaction gone up, have innovative business ideas and solutions come out of the use of social media, has employee productivity gone up, have more issues been identified and resolved due to use of social media.

Hope this will help you start on the path of using social media in your internal communication plans. Keep in mind the golden rule of communication – ‘Communicate, communicate, communicate’

Start the dialogue and keep listening to and analysing the comments. Spot opportunities within the organisation where social media could provide a good fit. Start small and learn from your mistakes. Understand management concerns and address them. And get some internal influencers on your side before you start. After all, everybody needs a little help!

Here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year!

Tags:Corporate Communications, Employee Relations, internal communication, PR, social media and employee relations, social media and internal communications
Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations | No Comments »