This post is sponsored by Mighty Recruiter. Be sure to join their upcoming webinar, Katrina Collier’s Top Priorities for Social Recruiting Success in 2017, on Wednesday, December 7, and ask your questions first hand!
What an exciting year of change 2016 has been for social media recruitment. We’ve seen companies embrace Snapchat for personal and employer branding, LinkedIn engagement drop to an all time low, Facebook declare its step into the foray with their new company page jobs tab, and then Google announce their Cloud Jobs API; who saw that coming?
It looks like 2017 will be a year of shake up amongst the big players, and understandably, it can be somewhat challenging to make sense of it all and decide where to invest your time and energy. In the interim before the webinar, here are just 3 of the key trends that will be discussed and that I encourage you to embrace to keep ahead of the curve in the coming year.
1. Recruiting in the world of transparency
Like it or not, you are recruiting in the world of Google. Just as easily as you can go to the Internet to look things up, so can your employees and your potential new recruits. That potential candidate is most likely looking at you before they even respond to your email, job posting, or call – and when they do, what do they see?
Back when I started out, the only jobs I could see were the ones posted in the newspaper, and I didn’t know if 1 person or 1000 people had applied, nor did I know how many opportunities were actually on the market. That meant my company could treat me poorly, and I’d stay because the fear of being unemployed held me there.
How different the world is today! A quick search for relevant jobs here in London and 2700 possibilities pop up for consideration in just the first three results.
Are you treating your employees well?
Today, employee engagement is also impacting your ability to recruit because your employees have the opportunity to leave their thoughts about you and your organisation on Glassdoor, Indeed, Facebook, Twitter and more.
What do your reviews say? Would you join your organisation?
And what about your own profiles and those of your hiring managers; do you look approachable? Are you sharing great insights into what you’re doing as a company? Can future recruits hear excitement from their future boss and colleagues? In 2017, your management is going to need to get social.
2. Employee Branding
That’s not a typo! Credit for the term goes to Craig Fisher at CA Technologies, and I love it.
Now I know this is a turnaround. Not that long ago we were banning our employees from using social media, thinking gagging them was the best way to avoid negativity, but now people have access to social media in their pockets and employees can use it freely. So embrace it!
Why shouldn’t your happy employees share photos of their working lives? Why should that be controlled by marketing or HR? You trust your employees to use the phone and email, so why not trust them to share about your organization on social media?
Do you feel a little skeptical when you see those PR polished employer branding videos? Do you wonder at the authenticity and the missing ‘ums’? Your future recruits may prefer to see real videos of real employees that were taken simply on a smartphone, full of shakes, ‘ums’ and authenticity. I know I would.
In the webinar, I’ll show you some great examples that you can emulate with ease (and a very low budget).
3. Being human
Call it profersonal or using hyperpesonalisation; in 2017 you’re going to need to be more, ah, well more human to succeed. Sure, you are seeing a rise in robotics, AI, HR Chatbots and more, and I am sure they’ll find their place, but recruitment is fundamentally a person-to-person interaction.
As candidate engagement rates drop and as transparency increases people will be looking at you to see the real things about you. Like when they look at me and see more than my social recruiting expertise; they see my Aussie British-ness, that I live in London with my 2 dogs, and that I am usually to be found on a plane or in a field.
People will also expect you to make an effort and look beyond a LinkedIn profile. As you’ll see in the webinar, there are tools to use that make this easy for you and that give you conversation starters and true insight. Personalised messages from caring recruiters will win in 2017.
But also remember, no matter how much you see about a person online, there will always be things they don’t share that will stop them taking your job. Be human, talk to them.
Don’t forget to sign up to the free webinar on Top Priorities for Social Recruiting Success in 2017, on Wednesday, December 7, to learn more about what to expect come next year!
About the author, Katrina Collier: Since 2009 Chief Searchologist Katrina Collier has trained everyone from HR professionals and recruiters in SMEs to global corporates around the world to source their new employees effectively on social media. With knowledge gained from over a decade of social recruiting and full-cycle recruitment experience, Katrina is one of The 100 Most Influential People in HR & Recruiting on Twitter, and her social recruiting opinion is quoted in HRReview, SHRM, The Staffing Stream, and Cambridge University’s Strategies for Success.
