Own a Ferrari, but can’t drive stick. Twittering and Googling never out-corner a well trained hiring manager.

That’s right. All the googling, hunting, twittering, blogging, myspacing, linkedin-ing (that one is hard to say) in the world is not going to close a hire for you. But guess what – neither did the cold calling, Monster crawling, careerbuilding, or yahoo-ing (this is getting fun). All these processes and tools just identifies the candidate.

People take jobs for ALL kinds of reasons. But its rare that it has anything to do with how they were found. Its about how they are treated. 

Yes – unemployment is up. But guess what – more people are holding on to their jobs more than ever. If you think there are people “available” now – wait until 18 months from now. When the people who are holding on to a job are at their wits end and the economy recovers. Do you really think that a candidate is going to be impressed because you connected them via Twitter? Because your company was crafty enough to find them on Facebook because they forgot to change their security settings? I am sure they will be impressed right until you tell them that job is a lateral move. Or further impressed when the manager is late for the interview. Or when the manager asks “are you pregnant?” Yeah – I just had someone tell me that war story.

These behaviors and other like them, are happeningmore now than every. Why? Maybe we got lazy. Maybe people are out of practice. Maybe we stopped hiring and let go our recruiters. Funny thing is that most companies are getting more traffic than ever before. Call your recruiter and see if the conversation goes like this: “Are we getting more resumes…..yeah…..uh huh…. We are huh?….. Well, who is respond….oh, we let her go huh…..ohhh…they are getting a standard reply via email….”

See what I mean. That will make you stand out. One of 300 auto reply messages that candidates are getting daily. That’s their feedback. That is about as exciting as deals I get in my spam box.

Not to worry – candidates will be impressed with one key item. They will be impressed with the ease and ability to tell everyone via text, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on that your employment process is weak. There is no fury…like a poorly treated candidate with social networking skills (I know – not as catchy as the other phrase). Do you really want people to think NOW that you don’t care about them? That you think you are all high and mighty and you don’t need to give them feedback? That you were not organized? That your interview questions sounded canned or like the ones they heard 30 minutes ago from the interviewer next door? That you didn’t even look at their resume before the interview?

NOW IS THE TIME.
This is such a fantastic time to focus on the fundamentals of recruiting, and why people take jobs in the first place.

NOW IS THE TIME.
Control your brand. Control yourself. Don’t get sloppy – get lean. Contrary to popular belief there is not more talent out there. Why are we saying that? Because more people are out of work? Because companies are going down? Because bonuses are being skipped? Guess what – those people were there. They had their heads down, and were working. There is this myth that in October of 2008 we created a bunch of people in a lab, and they are on blue light special at KMart. They are just talking to you now because they have to – not necessarily because they want to.

NOW IS THE TIME.
Ask yourself why you are working at your company, and make sure that you can explain that better than anyone. Tell each and every candidate you know. Better yet, tell everyone. For every resume that comes across your desk, make sure that person gets a “thank you”. That they are taken care of. That they remember that even though they did not get the job, they were treated with decency. It will come back to you 7x over.

Fireside Chat:
In order to make that “Ferrari” (all your twittering) turn like its on rails, rather than stalling on the hill, review what people tend to consider when taking jobs in the first place. View this diagram that help walk you though the “four corners” of an employee value proposition. Take these into consideration and have strong points of view on each. You will inevitably create better jobs, be able to provide more value to the interview, create a better experience when interfacing with candidates, and likely make better decisions about a hire.