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John Smith, VP of Social Geekness

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I am not sure that title will stick, but its true that social media in talent/recruiting is here to stay. If you do hundreds of hires a year, its likely you are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others to find candidates and break into the elusive passive candidate marketplace. If you are doing dozens of hires, you are likely considering using these tools, and if you are doing thousands of hires, this is probably a hot topic between you and your corporate communications group.

Over the past few years, and we just celebrated our fifth year, we have taken an unusual position on social media – i.e. we really don’t have one. We don’t endorse any particular theory, system, community or whatever mainly because we hold firm to our original concept that each organization has a unique mix and makeup of tools and resources that will work effectively for them. Not to mention that we are not in the business of selling short term strategies or technologies. Social media is going to be around for a while, but the players and features and leverage points change faster than the seasons.

Back to John…social geek. You will need him (or her) someday. You will need to control your brand on these mediums, and use them to attract, source, and even retain talent. So let’s forget about what John should be doing each day, and lets talk about what competencies John will need. Here are just three:

1 – John can interpret current and new features of social mediums to your brand easily and demonstrate value quickly. John is not simply a LinkedIn LION network holder. Or has 3000 facebook friends. Or has a YouTube channel. Please don’t measure the value of a social media expert on the size of their network. You don’t know its relevance, how well those people are in contact, or why they are in contact with John to begin with.

2 – John knows how to translate the processes of social media to lamen, and educate executives effectively and efficiently. My mom could probably run my facebook page if I taught her, but it doesn’t mean that she can explain why, how, and instruct the value to executives. John is a poised speaker, and can answer questions diplomatically and with ease. Realize that some social media experts are so because they are introverted and lack the ability to deliver ideas in person, thus they stay in front of a screen all day.

3 – John can design strategies and processes, and teach to others well. He is not especially fond of maintaining or executing the actual social media plan. Are you really going to hire someone to place status updates on FB all day? Or are you going to hire someone who can show you how FB, YT, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be used to drive 30% more passive candidates towards your staff up in sales through a campaign they have designed and can be automated?

These are just a few – but hopefully I got you thinking. When you find your “social geek”, make sure you are designing that job to be strategic and customer facing on purpose. John’s expertise is in managing change quickly and effectively – not posting on your Wall.

Proactive, Aware or Reactive Talent Acquisition?

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Start using those words to describe your talent acquisition / recruiting organization and its behaviors. Proactive, Aware, and Reactive.

I totally stole this from HCI on a webshare the other day, but it hits a nerve:

Proactive – you start sourcing for a role before its posted or the manager is ready
Aware – you know about it, but don’t start working on it until its posted
Reactive – manager is ready, job posts, and you get moving

In the study HCI did, 25% of organizations said they were proactive, 50+% said aware, and the rest came in at reactive. My challenge to you is to go through your organization functionally, by business, or by level – whatever – and start figuring out what you SHOULD be (utopia), and then do what you COULD be (given realistic re-alignment of resources) and then what you ARE (your resources today).

Now have a discussion with your leaders, especially the business, and tell them the could and should, and have real business reasons for it. You can get more sales, higher retention, better quality, expand growth platforms – and so on.

I think you would find the PROACTIVE, AWARE, and REACTIVE definition combined with the SHOULD, COULD and ARE will get you a nice roadmap for 2012 🙂

 

Hey Twitter – you find me a job yet?

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Social networking is here to stay – that’s not news. But its funny how I am not hearing how it is finding people jobs. I have not heard that much about it, and I am in the industry.

Stop. I know there are people finding jobs via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Recruiters – I know what you do for a living 🙂 Your job is to find people using all means necessary, whether you call someone on the phone or tweet them or FB them or whatever. You guys are doing an awesome job leveraging these tools.

I am referring to how people TALK about finding a job. When someone I know gets a job, I ask how did they find out, and they usually say “I found it on the web” or “my friend got me in” or something. But not as much “I found it on Facebook” or “I found it on Twitter”. Which I find interesting…

MEANWHILE…I keep hearing how friends and family are find dates on Match.com, eHarmony, J-Date or whatever.  What is wild is how people brag about finding their mate online. Their parents brag. Their siblings brag.

But why aren’t we bragging about our jobs the same way? Are we embarrassed? Is it considered weird to find your job that way? Many of the social aspects are the same.

I have a theory…people think and communicate differently professionally than they do personally. There is something about telling people about your professional experiences versus your personal experiences. Think about it – how often do you tell your parents about some meeting that you had at the office, conversely you tell everyone about how a meal you had at some restaurant was awesome. We post on FB our friends dancing, laughing, smiling and so on – but when was the last time you posted a pic from the office of a colleague…hmmm.

I don’t know if social media between professional and personal will converge completely for gen Y / gen X / baby boomers. I think the millenials will get it more. But we may need one more generation before work and play via technology completely merge and can’t be distinguished.

The trend may be  similar to how smartphones are perceived by teenagers. Every phone they have ever owned has texting, a camera, and the ability to facebook. I remember using a a car phone in the Cutlass Ciera wagon back in 93 and people rocking the Gordon Gecco phone in airports.

As you use these social networking tools to communicate – either as a recruiter or a candidate finding a job – realize that there is a difference between personal and professional communication strategies. If you find poeple on Twitter that does not mean their better, and finding a job on Twitter does not mean its weird. Assess people and jobs as you have in the past – we are still learning to communicate using these tools.