Erecruiting: How to Recruit on Pinterest

Activity on the popular new social networking and idea sharing platform, Pintrest.com, now stands at 12 million unique visitors as of January 2012 via ComScore.  It is the social network that everyone is talking about. Pinterest is the fastest growing social network, and it has recruiters saying, “Think Social.”

Like throughout the social web, Erecruiting is occurring on Pinterest. Erecruiting, broadly speaking, is internet recruiting, but your erecruiting approach must match the nature of the website.

Pintrest is still via invite only beta which means that you must first connect with someone who has an account to receive an invite to the hottest social network.  Users pin photos, pictures, and infographics they like sharing with their network.  Other users “repin” photos and pictures sharing with their friends.  One of my favorite integrations on Pintrest is with Facebook.  Pintrest users can share recent pins and boards they create with their friends on Facebook driving awareness and conversations on a second social network about your brand, photo, or business.

Pintrest’s demographic is mostly female (97% of their users are women) and has a very scrapbook or magazine feel.  One of the challenges with Pintrest is the inability to search for users but the platform does offer keyword and topic search but relies on the users of the platform to tag the pinned picture appropriately.  Similar to Twitter hash tags this has caused frustration by some users.

Recruiting on a website on Pintrest offers two distinct Erecruiting possibilities:

• Driving Traffic with SEO.  Like any social network, the key to driving traffic to job openings and talent communities lies with appropriate tagging of pins.  Corporate recruiters can pin pictures and information about their company and job openings using photos and graphics including links or information contained within the photo as well as the pin description.  This search engine optimization approach relies on the use of organic search on the Pintrest site to drive candidates to your openings as well as learning more about your organization.  This is strictly a more Talent Pipeline approach.

• Sourcing for Candidates.  Pintrest provides yet another reason for inforgraphic designers to rejoice.  These are popular on Pintrest and have once again given rise to discussion surrounding the death of the resume and the rise of the infographic resume.  Personally, I like the idea but most applicant tracking systems are not equipped to handle a design document in lei of a resume or application.  Depending on the tags and information shared within the pinned items, recruiters can source Pintrest for potential passive as well as active candidates.

Plus, since the social network is heavily frequented by women, it can also serve as a diverse candidate source making companies who are government contractors and are required to complete an Affirmative Action Plan happy.

Pintrest and its rise in popularity gives more possibility in recruiting not only for its use and benefits as a social recruiting tool but other photo based social networks like Instagram.  Like any new social network, there will be successes as well as failures but for sourcing enthusiasts a new Erecruiting tool offers a new and untapped potential candidate pipeline at little or no cost.  Except for your time that is.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a HR consultant, new media strategist, and author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. Jessica is the host of Job Search Secrets, an internet television show for job seekers.

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