Social Media – A must for HR/Recruiting professional

Social media  a medium for social interaction. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. The best way to get smarter about something is to surround yourself with people smarter than you. Just by uploading requirements in job boards like Monster, career builder and other job portal is not enough. I can say one of the latest way of finding potential candidates is through social media. It has many benefits- the program may result in hires who perform better on the job and have higher retentionrates. The dollar value of the program’s benefits may far exceed its cost, and the resulting ROI may be significantly higher than other recruiting programs. Higher offer acceptance rates which results in finalists. I consistently recommend experimenting with new approaches to sourcing, because I have found that the only way to win in recruiting is to get to the candidate first. Recruiting is just like marketing: Once everyone adopts the “new” tool, it loses its effectiveness and its competitive advantage.

There are many different ways where social media can be useful to HR professional/Recruiter. If you know some other ways other than mentioned, please add on!!

LinkedIn-is a business-related social networking site, used mainly for professional networking. LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in working.
When typing the name of a given company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided. These may include the ratio of  female to male employees, the percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a list of present and former employees.

1. Can find great candidates through these job boards. As the online social networking world is expanding, there are better ways to recruit superior employees.

2. Can use the LinkedIn network in a number of different ways to find employees including: searching by employer (current/past), using InMail, purchasing advertising, and networking.

3. LinkedIn  is a great venue to build and develop long term strategic relationships.

4. People seeking employment can search LinkedIn free of charge. Certain premium features are available to job searchers for a fee.

5.Pay a small fee and post your job in Linkidin ,and then recruit and hire candidates.

6. Respond to a question and raise your chances of profile in Linkidin community.

7. Being in touch with Ex, valued trusted employees for future employment.

8. Keywords rich profile helps the recruiter to find a prospective employee.

9. Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

10. Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.

Facebook-Frankly this won’t be my first few choices-First because, I feel people can create a fake profile and secondly because most people are not active to reach. But again Facebook is also a preferred mode of recruiting to most of the recruiters.

1.Advertising in Facebook- Facebook  advertising  targets  passive candidates who are actively looking for jobs career change. A properly executed Facebook campaign gain fans & will have an effect that will last a quite bit longer than other Internet advertising. A fan on Facebook will last for months, or even years after the ad that brought them to become a fan, and furthermore that fan can now influence their "friends" on Facebook for months to come.

2. Facebook fan page -Use Facebook by making a Fan or Business page for your video content. Can gain more subscribers to  Facebook page on a daily basis, than on YouTube channel.Learned that some people like watching video content on Facebook and do not have a YouTube account.

3.Facebook branch out- A Facebook app that allows users to easily network within their social graph. Most businesses ask for references from candidates they’re considering for hire, but BranchOut users can get broader insights, since the app collects feedback from the candidate’s own network. BranchOut also makes it easy to connect with people in your extended social graph, and tap into their personal experience with potential candidates.
4.Recruiting marketing agencies- This can be linked to the fan page ,where the agencies host free webinars sessions helping clients create and leverage recruitment advertising and social recruiting.
5.Cost- The advertiser/recruiter has control how much he wants to invest on ad.

Twitter-One of the incredible way for recruiting. Thousands of job seekers and recruiters are following each other, just to grap the correct person at correct time. Hashtag helps to add additional context & metadata to your tweets.

1. Announce & request Retweet- Announce your job openings with requirements & request for retweet. Retweeting helps to reach mass number of people and hit the bullseye candidate who may be interested for that job. Needn’t post about the requirements of the job rather focus on what type of candidate you need and why they should work in your company. Daily updates about the company like achievements, news, updates also fascinates the would be employee.

2. Super connectors- Needn’t be sad if you don’t have many followers. I believe followers reach you once, so you needn’t go in search for them. There are “super connectors” who will connect to you anyways.

3. Informal way of communication- Approach needn’t be formal, but need’s to reflect professionalism. Communication is important, reply to the tweets. If you have the “right audience” you can ask feedback from they will give you. Take those feedbacks positive and ask what they are looking for. You can also talk about personal stuffs as it shouldn’t look that you are in twitter just to advertise.

4. Sources & Resources-You should also follow associates and other recruiters that might be sources for candidates.

MySpace- MySpace is a social networking site also said to be as Generation Y or MySpace Generation. MySpace has taken the world by storm, registering more than 65 million digital inhabitants. This medium is also a powerful communication channel like Facebook.

1. Demographic –80% of members who are registered member fall into the core demographic of 16-to-30-year-olds.This demographic includes a large quantity of college-educated professionals with many years of work experience. You can find people who have about7-10years of work experience with ample of professions to choose from. It is very obvious that you will use MySpace to hire hourly employees, part timers, college students and mid-level management.

2. Networking- Search by field, sub-field, role, and keywords, and then refine your search and relevancy by specifying sex, age ranges, and location range. With the classmate finder you can find college graduates and students by searching colleges by name, country, or state. Also can search by age ranges, current students, alumni, graduation year, major, minor, department, fraternity/sorority affiliation, clubs, and keywords.

3. Company Profile- Create a company profile and add friends, friends of friends. Daily updates will help the members in the group to know the opportunity, the eligibility criteria and news updates about the company which will help you in selling your organization.

Google +-It is a social networking and identity service operated by Google Inc. Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introduces new services Circles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Huddles.Before the launch and still many believe that Google+ is going to take over Facebook and twitter. Personally, I don’t believe in this unless seen.There is much more traffic required in Google + as it needs invitation to be a member.

1.Google+ has the capability of actually organizing your contacts. You can take all your contacts and arrange them in your Circle. Recruiters can organize the group according to the talents & can set the privacy.
2. Another feature is the Google Hangout which can be used in either taking interviews or can be used for conferences,meetings etc.
I find that due to less traffic in Google+,people have not updated their complete profile & it becomes difficult for the recruiters. I believe,once there is  awareness for Google+, this social networking site would be the best as it has Google power!!