Social recruiting = excellent ROI

There is no doubt that companies are embracing the idea of leveraging social platforms in their talent acquisition strategies (EMC is a great example of a company that is utilizing social media to go above and beyond the status quo, by not simply posting on their careers page).
 
However, there seems to be one common drawback in most companies’ strategies, which may be directly affecting their sourcing success. 
 
In order to obtain effective and long term sourcing results with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, companies must be ACTIVE and ENGAGE their audience. Having a career-oriented Facebook page or Twitter account isn’t enough to draw in the right people.  After all… we have all seen how effective the post and pray method is to recruiting top talent. 
 
Take AT&T (Twitter handle: @attJOBS) for example. Their Twitter feed is an extension of their job board. With nearly 5,000 followers, they are potentially losing out on an opportunity to be interactive, and engaging with the very people who have demonstrated an interest in working for them.  Furthermore, by not engaging this talent in an effective way, they could also be missing an opportunity for social referrals.
 
In a recent interview with The New York Times, entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky (best known as the co-founder of Groupon) says a company’s hiring process should be a “social experience”.
 
“Think about the way most companies currently hire.” says Lefkofsky.  “You post a job and then get a blind resume in response. There’s no reason to hire people that we can’t learn something about through some connection of our personal network.”
 
Granted, monitoring several social media platforms or actively engaging everyone that connects with you is no easy task. Most companies have limited recruitment resources and simply cannot spend the necessary amount of time weeding through the numerous respondents in order to identify the top 10%. However with the average cost to hire at roughly $10,000.00, wouldn’t it be prudent on our part to explore creative ways in tapping into the free social sites? The question we must ask is whether to incur higher costs on the front end with a high ROI on the back end?
 
In an advice column on ERE.net, Jason Warner says the “root of this gap is the fact that candidate expectations and behaviors have changed … but the toolsets in corporate recruiting generally have not. He says the “front doors” to companies are still the same, meaning they give the appearance of being open by providing interactive job boards on their corporate websites and even posting those open jobs on their careers Twitter feed, but in reality those methods are still the same methods used by companies 10-15 years ago.
 
The fact of the matter is that there are very few companies who are actively engaging their talent pool in a way that will generate further leads or filter out the right people, for the right positions. My suggestion to companies that are interested in improving their talent acquisition strategies is to explore creative ways to engage those that have shown an interest in your company. Support, and challenge your recruitment team to achieve results by being “social”.