Lilian MahoukouAmong all mediums influencing recruitment, we quickly come to “social media technologies.” Not only are these great tools and means for reaching out to people, but also deeply connecting with them. Social Media facilitates the communication on the internet. A company should ask themselves: where are the candidates, which social media platform to use, and what actions/messaging do we craft for each of them?
The current economic outlook encourages companies to do three things:
#1. Getting used to chaos and push for change.
#2. Going LILO (A Little In, A Lot Out i.e. Businesses with low initial investment and a lot of hard work)
#3. Building relationships with candidates, ahead of any recruitment needs.
Regarding these three points, intuition is at the center. Social media channels are great opportunities for recruiting talent; however, there’s no instruction. Each company has its own specificity and history. Logic alone couldn’t do much, and it’s risky to duplicate old school tactics on new media channels. ROI questions are important for planning viable actions, but still difficult to integrate for relationship-building initiatives. This highlights the power of more intuitive decisions and actions, not only during the recruitment process but also before advertised jobs.
Here are six reasons (and points of differentiation) to use a more intuition based talent and recruitment strategy:
1. Human behavior is hardly predictable.
2. Some of the most relevant candidates may have atypical profiles and great soft skills, but unfortunately may still be overlooked.
3. There is no “universal” instruction book for using social media channels, but a series of test-and-learn moves.
4. “Black swans” are not likely to be anticipated.
5. Other employers are targeting the same talent profiles.
6. An inspiring workplace is still priority number one (and this brings us to a more intense internal collaboration).
We’re talking about building relationships and recruiting at the same time and the idea may be the same when employees play their advocacy role through referrals. However, excessive control, rigid processes and generic external messages can turn your employees into an army of robots, which won’t sound human to your potential employees and will underline micromanagement practices. Managers should strive to create an open, intuitive talent management culture.
Your employees may act upon their intuition to introduce you candidates. And there’s a need to trust and serve them after clarifying the specific goals of the advocacy programs.
Lilian Mahoukou is a France-based marketing professional interested in leveraging social media to spread the word about people-centric initiatives. He also blogs at Doppelganger.name on the use of social media for employment and talent marketing. Photo Credit Articlesounders.
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