Thanks,

http://www.justcareers.com/PressReleases/SocialMediaSurveyResults-ImpactofSocialMediaAndRecruitment.pptx

We had over 800 responses with some critical insight to where companies are struggling today. Struggling to create and develop “employer brands” on the web – struggling to understand how they should be using social media in their current recruitment strategies.

The last question of the survey asked – “When it comes to embracing social media and how to best leverage this medium, where do you see the greatest pain point for your current company and area of need”?

“Pain points” the respondents shared were:

• Time
• Knowledge/Training
• Implementation
• Filtering out the Noise (i.e. screening through the sea of responses and resumes)
• Confidentiality

So Why the Professional Recruiter?

The results from the survey clearly show employers are struggling on how to effectively and efficiently embrace social media and the information overload that can come from it. As employers gain knowledge and learned techniques of social media, the element of time and implementation to create a robust “employer brand” could be at risk.

First – A professional and specialized recruiter makes it their life to develop and build a network of contacts of specific talent and expertise…. If you have not heard of communities’ web 2.0 technologies, then standby as it is coming.

It is our job to establish a “community” that produces a compelling content and/or facilitation and engagement of candidates, industry trends and other relevant industry data. This process takes significant time and insight to how to build and continue to create followers of a community. They will leave as quickly as they come if you do not establish the value of the community.

Using the word “community” may roll off the tongue easily, however an effective and robust “community” is more than just a catch phrase. Establishing a “community” in our industry is all about creating relationships of value. Supporting each other of mutual interest and need.

Second – The talent or hidden talent that most employers seek to hire will be savvy and they want to be engaged like never before. They expect the online job seeking experience to mirror that of shopping or banking. Whereas you can track an order online, you can’t track how your job application is doing because it stops at the point that it is submitted to the employer. Then it’s down to individual recruiter to ‘engage’ with jobseekers. The better the engagement, the better the consumer/jobseeker experience and end result of winning the best talent for the employer.

The professional recruiter is the bridge between engagement and candidate “experience” with an employer. If you want the right talent – the most suited to the “need” talent – this cannot be overlooked or thrown to the wayside.

A professional recruiter will find out and headhunt where their audience hangs-out online. We monitor where relevant conversations are taking place and learn how to take part. Most organizations do not have the resources and or time to hang-out in these online communities. Again social media is a great tool when worked effectively but it is not the complete picture.

Third – A professional recruiter promotes their client job openings amongst select and targeted groups of trusted contacts. This has the opportunity to vastly increase the reputation, visibility and activity around a vacancy.

Fourth- Hiring managers typically come to a specialized professional recruiter because dedicated internal HR resources are struggling with filling a role. The struggle is sometimes about reach but more often than not it is around the true understanding of the role that needs to be filled as well as the Corporate cultural “fit” that will position the candidate and their new employer for success after the start date of the new hire. Social media does not correct this but actually makes it more difficult as there are now so many more people to view and sort through than ever before.

Fifth- Contrary to what some might believe- not everyone has put themselves on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. In my mind, the dedication, professionalism, skill, tenacity and creativity of which professional recruiters employ their craft still has undisputed value to the hiring process.
YES – The continued emergence of social media as a force to be reckoned with. Discussions around employer branding and the changing way job searching is conducted, is forcing the conversation. Change is here. They way we embrace or do not embrace the change is the interesting paradox.
There is no doubt in my mind – the future of social media does offer a wealth of new ways to interact with core audiences. As true a statement is the fact that either we, as professional recruiters must keep up or we will miss out in both opportunity and success in our field of expertise.

The “death” of the professional recruiter or need for our involvement is still open for debate, however ensuring you are attracting the best talent should not be taken for granted and the professional recruiter is best positioned to ensure success.

I’ve created a guide to installing LocalSolr onto Solr 1.4 on the windows platform. It’s available here:

http://craftyfella.blogspot.com/2009/12/installing-localsolr-onto-solr-14.html

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