Social Recruiting

There are a few other areas where social media can have as tremendous an impact than in customer service and human resources. In this chapter we will briefly touch on some strategies, resources, and tactics for making those areas of your business socially savvy and filled with digital sense.

According to the Jobvite Recruiter Nation survey of 2015, relationships are the key to most hires at the organizations surveyed. Recruiters are facing an increasingly demanding and competitive talent market.¹ Consider the following statistics:

• 95 percent of recruiters anticipate the job market to remain or get more competitive.
• Over a quarter of companies anticipate hiring 100-plus people in the next 12 months.
• 30 percent of recruiters report an average employee tenure of just 1 to 3 years.

Today's dynamic recruiter uses every tool available to connect with job seekers.

• Only 4 percent of recruiters are not using social media in recruiting efforts (Figure 11.1).
• 72 percent of recruiters say data analytics is somewhat or very important in the hiring process.
• 19 percent of recruiters find quality hires via mobile career sites.

To recruit and retain the perfect fit, recruiters must prioritize relationships.

• After referrals (78 percent), recruiters find their best candidates through social and professional networks (56 percent) and intern-to-hire programs (55 percent).
• 69 percent of recruiters have increased their initial salary offers in the last year.
• 63 percent note that offering employees benefits like medical and dental care is the most attractive incentive for new candidates, over perks like free snacks or casual dress code.

It should come as no shock but it turns out that your business is all about relationships in recruiting, as well. Almost every part of your business deals with relationships which is why the EMF structure is held up and together by the three walls of Purpose, People, and Process. Isn't it crystal clear, by now, why we have invested such an ample amount of real estate in this book to improving your understanding of the archetypes of people in your organization, self, and the power of your mind to become a more effective communicator and leader? As Chris likes to say, “Stevie Wonder could see that.”

Use Social Media to Evaluate Cultural Fit

Social media works both ways in social recruiting. If you are a job candidate and you are a total jackass online, guess what, you ain't getting the job at a reputable brand. Likewise, if you are curious whether a brand is a fit for you, you can do efficient research by following the brand and listening to the voice, tone, and message delivery and matching it up against your personal style and core values. Using your digital sense and these listening channels is a common sense way to sort through candidates and opportunities.

The other reason that social media is a great tool to leverage in your hiring process is that you could be hiring Zombies into your organization unknowingly. Perusing their social media can give you a peek into their personality, their circle of influence (peers they hang around), lifestyle habits, and so on. There are also some sentiment analysis tools out there than can help you out.

As you go about your talent hunt, focus on converting passive candidates to your brand. Most talented candidates already have jobs and anyone worth getting is typically not on the sideline for very long, but they may not be in the best vehicle for their goals or talents (remember the story about Amplifiers from Chapter 2). This means that they are passive in their job search. So you have to actively find ways (Figure 11.1) to get in front of them. Facebook ads work very well, which we will talk about in a bit.

The New Face of Social Recruitment

For many recruitment agencies, the days are gone when a well-placed ad in a newspaper was the go-to way to collect prospective employee information and build a pool of applicants. Social media has changed the way we recruit and the data that's available. This means more than posting a Facebook ad or letting a static job posting on LinkedIn do the work. HR recruiters now have more information about applicants than ever before. As it is with superheroes, with great power comes great responsibility.

It might seem like navigating endless information is akin to understanding biotech vapor compression. It turns out there is such a thing as too much data. Understanding when to collect social media data and when to go bare-bones is critical.

Are You Totally LinkedIn? Casting a job announcement to the LinkedIn world might get you flooded with responses. Some of the candidates might be appropriate fits and some are completely out of left field. If you have the time and staff, and if the position requires extensive knowledge or experience, take advantage of everything LinkedIn has to offer.

Many candidates will have references, sample projects, bibliographies, and photos. While it may not be acceptable in the United States to ask for photographs of applicants, if it's readily supplied on LinkedIn it's bound to make an impression. This kind of data is highly subjective. However, if there is a photo, try to stick to gauging the professionalism of the photo. Does the person have a professional headshot or is it a blurry self-portrait?

Play Sherlock

When you're charged with filling an important position, you're free to use whatever means are at your disposal (reminder to see our legal disclaimer from earlier that we are not offering you direct advice). This might mean Googling shortlisted candidates' full names or finding them on Facebook. Playing fair here is also subjective, but try to give everyone a fair shot by conducting the same level of investigation for every candidate. It's common knowledge nowadays that people should either keep their Facebook profiles private or make sure nothing “inappropriate” is on the page. “Inappropriate” can mean anything from the Mardi Gras profile pic to a page riddled with poor grammar and spelling. Is it fair to use this kind of social media data when filling a position? That's up to HR (and your legal team) to decide.

Another great resource on the subject is the blog Recruiting Daily. The editor in chief, Matt Charney, published an e-book called Structure Hiring: The Advantage of the New People Team. He has been at the forefront of the social recruiting space, and his book lays out the structure and processes necessary to lead a social business initiative in the human resources dept.

“Without structure and training, even the most strategic or innovative of recruiting processes fall apart.”

—MATT CHARNEY, EDITOR OF RECRUITING DAILY.³

Themes for Your Advertising

An analytics client that needed to hire 100 data scientists in one year came to CCP Digital to have them find some data scientists around certain parts of the world. We used a hero image (Figure 11.7), an image showcasing culture, a woman engineer, and various other pictures and themes to test them out to different demographics and see what worked.

Another client, Ensighten (Figure 11.8), wanted to hire an operation manager, a UI developer, and a director of Product Marketing Management. These represent roughly a $90K–$100K role, a $145K–$175K role, and a $115K–$140K role. In total, it added up to roughly $400K–$450K in salaries. It's crazy how quick half a million dollars goes in Silicon Valley. Sad thing is all four of these folks probably ended up sharing a two-bedroom apartment since they couldn't afford to live alone on such paltry incomes in the Valley. Yes, that was a not-so-subtle recruiting plug by both of us for talent that wants to build something great in Phoenix and KC (Chris and Travis's respective markets).

So we targeted ads for people that were the right kind of candidates. And to top it off, Travis and his team narrowed it down to only these types of persona characteristics: “PLUS they like Star Wars.” The CEO of Ensighten, Josh Manion, is a huge Star Wars fan. The Ensighten HQ conference rooms are all named after places in the Star Wars universe. One room is the Death Star, one is Dagobah, one is Tatooine, and so on. It's part of the culture fit and was able to be part of the targeting effort.

On this particular campaign, we reached 14,576 people, got 456 clicks, and 17 resumes. Total ad spend: $209.15. Imagine if Ensighten would have used a headhunter to find you those employees, and took 20–30 percent of their annual salary for helping them? That would have cost around $100,000 in fees alone. That's another person's salary that they could be using! Ensighten actually filled all of those roles on just $209.15 and they remain employed today.

Having digital sense and creativity allows you to come up with different ideas to help utilize social media in your business as it relates to the most important foundational aspect of your EMF structure, your people.