“But, remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” –Randy Pausch, Last Lecture
Unless you pay to run advertising on Twitter or Facebook, the direct cost necessary to use these sites is minimal. While this is not the only cost to consider when determining whether or not to use the tools, the reality is the financial barriers-to-entry are low. As a result, lots and lots of users, including companies, started using these tools for a wide variety of reasons.
This does not mean that successfully recruiting talent for your organization is easy. In fact, if you’ve used social media and social networking for recruiting, you have probably found that it is much harder than expected.
The critical mass of end users creates attraction for advertisers and marketers. Among this group are employers seeking to recruit prospective candidates for their organization. However, the downside of popular platforms is the associated clutter by those focused on quantity not quality.
This clutter makes it very difficult for your employment brand to stand out as you become guilty by association. Yet, when you consider the potential to connect with 500 million Facebook users or 100 million Twitter users; the chance to recruit those who would be a great fit for your employment opportunities is too compelling to ignore.
As Randy says, the brick walls are not there to keep us (your company) out; they are there to stop the people (your competitors) who don’t want it (top talent) badly enough.
–Omowale Casselle (@mysensay)
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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top employers and next generation leaders discover their shared purpose.
What a fantastic quote! Social Recruiting, and subsequently employment branding via social media, is unchartered territory for most individuals and companies. This terrain does not come with a manual, or guide, or a simple orientation but rather requires thoughtful planning, the ability to invest slowly over time, and the willingness to fail. The most certain variable that you will encounter is resistance. This resistance is not that of an adversarial nature, but one that is derived from either a lack of knowledge, or fear of the unknown. This is where leadership is born.
Garrick,
I definitely agree. The individuals and employers who can overcome the brick walls will be who others look to as examples of how to figure out the complexity and the unknowns.
This creates a virtuous cycle as they will gain additional insights by continuing to experiment with these new tools and reinforce lessons already learned by teaching others.
–Omowale Casselle
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Hi Guys,
I think the build-it-before-you-need-it mentality is crucial for a successful social recruiting approach. Tweeting a job post or whipping round a Facebook status update isn’t going to do a great deal if you haven’t built up an audience or engaged a community with your content. As Garrick mentioned, most companies will need to invest time and labour and a little love in building their employer brand before they can expect return from a social recruitment campaign.
Hung,
I agree, it takes lots of work to build up a social media presence so that prospective candidates will be receptive to your employment branding efforts. These efforts will pay dividends as the target audience of best fit candidates interacts and engage with each other as well as recruiters and hiring managers.
–Omowale Casselle
Great Post.
Social Media is all about engagement and post/pray tactics won’t really work – is so true!
We at Hireplug are approaching social media a bit differently.
We help spread employer ‘careers’ on employees’ facebook profiles to attract talent from their social networks.
This is like a win-win for employees and the employer. Employees opens up their social circle and spread jobs.
Employers reaches Top Talent on Facebook and 40+ Social Networks.
What would be your take on our approach?