Social recruiting experts – who needs them? Not you. | Workplace Romances

Social recruiting experts – who needs them? Not you.

// August 13th, 2010 // Employment Branding

There’s an old saying that applies to social media. “If all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.” For those of us who have been swimming in the social media pool for a while, it’s easy to start thinking it’s a silver bullet. And maybe it is. Except that even silver bullets need to be well-aimed and fired from a gun that works.

Using online social networks as a channel for attracting and engaging talent is a great idea. It’s a great idea because it allows you to communicate in real-time with an opt-in talent pool. It allows you to stand up as part of the tribe, as a voice worth hearing in your industry. And it allows you to tell the story of your brand, your employment experience, and amplify the messages you want to send about your culture. Most other media, such as newspapers, videos and careers events, let you do that too. The only real difference is that online social platforms give your audience a voice to converse with you, too. The democratic nature of response-focused online media gives your brand greater access to feedback and conversation.

Being able to use social media to engage people isn’t any different than being able to talk at a real-life networking event, or present on a stage, or do phone-screens for candidates. Being able to communicate on social media requires two things – knowing who you are, and knowing how to speak. And while it’s pretty easy to learn how to speak using social media’s pantheon of tools (there are certainly enough blogs, video tutorials, articles and resources out there), it’s a lot harder to know who you are and how to talk to people as a brand.

To acquire the knowledge of who you are, you need to rely on the principles and values that underpin your brand. Your tone of voice, your communication style, the content, frequency and responsiveness are all things that descend from your brand. If yours is a brand that is friendly, approachable, picky about getting the details right and wants to add value, then those are the defining traits of your brand on social media. The platform doesn’t change the personality of your brand.

So much of what’s discussed in social recruiting applies to recruiting skills in general. Good communication, timely response, the ability to identify talent amidst the chaff – these are recruiting skills, not social media skills. You wouldn’t hire a Job Board Expert to teach you how to post a job on SEEK. You’d try yourself, and if you got stuck, you’d ask people you know (usually someone who’s naturally aligned to this sort of thing) and maybe attend a one-off training course with SEEK. You wouldn’t hire an expert just to show you how to use one channel – you hire an expert to show you how to apply the brand to all your channels. That’s where brand agencies and internal employer marketing teams come in – here’s the message, regardless of the place you want to shout it from.

A social recruiting expert will teach you the tools, which you can learn for free and trial for yourself without them. A social recruiting expert can show you how Twitter works, and show you the mistakes they’ve made. However, a social recruiting expert can’t tell you who you are, and how to accurately and authentically create the brand using social media as an additional channel. They can show you how to hold a guitar, but not how to write music.

If you’re ready to explore social media to find and engage talent, because you have a strong brand, a well-defined value proposition and a good idea of how to appeal to your prospects, then you don’t need a social recruiting expert to show you how to do that. And if you don’t have those things, all the social recruiting expertise in the world won’t help you find out who you are and help you connect with the talent you need.

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3 Responses to “Social recruiting experts – who needs them? Not you.”

Paul Jacobs says:

August 13, 2010 at 7:14 pm

Hey Jared – agree with some of what you are saying and good on ya for putting a position out there. There are lots of people who are light weight in the social media space, just as there are some sad ass “experts” in the recruitment and HR professions – in both corporate and third-party roles. But I disagree with some of your comments and ummm … generalisations?!

I’m somebody who has an interest in social recruiting and employment branding – I consult and participate in this space and am constantly learning. I don’t think of myself as an “expert” (though the term doesn’t irk me, as it seems so for many). I believe much of the traditional recruitment and employer branding methods and approaches are under par and should be blown up. I also see enormous opportunities for employers to use the social web to reach and “touch” talent in ways they never thought possible. I spend a lot of time trying to understand my clients’ unique business. I listen to my clients, but I also challenge them. I don’t know everything and often my clients come up with some stunning ideas. I offer lots of ideas, things my clients haven’t always thought of. I also coach and educate. I often play intermediary between the corporate recruitment teams and the marketing / comms / social media teams. And I’m constantly reminding myself and my clients of the meaning of “social”.

I’ve met with lots of HR and recruitment professionals over the years. I can map their capability, knowledge, and interest in recruitment and “social recruitment” on a bell-shaped curve. Most don’t think of their “audience” – they didn’t in 1999 and they aren’t in 2010. There are also lots of commentators in social recruiting – some have an enormous following, attend every conference, are constantly tweeting and posting their thoughts – some are very articulate with strong personal brands and people view them as purveyors of knowledge – rightly or wrongly. However, there is a lot of chatter coming from a select few – and not all in this small group put their ideas into practice or think differently and innovatively outside the hot topics du jour.

In summary, I strongly believe, from my experience, that many employers can benefit from people who have more knowledge and expertise on a topic than they do.
Justin Hillier says:

August 14, 2010 at 10:10 am

Firstly Jared, great article and an interesting view point. I would have to say that I agree with you however there are some points I would like to raise.

As someone who runs a business largely focused on the use of social media recruitment, social recruiting as many call it, I would like to point out that any company wishing to use social media to attract and engage with talent has a lot to think about. I for one get very frustrated at the use of social media as a broadcast tool, with no interaction between an employer and their audience. Just pushing out jobs is not “Social” at all.

I wanted to comment on 2 particular comments below if I may:

However, a social recruiting expert can’t tell you who you are, and how to accurately and authentically create the brand using social media as an additional channel. That’s where brand agencies and internal employer marketing teams come in – here’s the message, regardless of the place you want to shout it from. (Ok, so I have connected these 2 comments as they seem to form part of the same thinking process). True, and that’s why any Employer Brand/marketing (ie Adcorp, The Face, Blaze) agencies also shouldn’t suggest to any company they are all over Social Media. Their role is to certainly advise their clients regarding the many different channels out there, however to be across ALL of the different channels to market with an in-depth understanding of each is not realistic. Their aim with the many media channels is to know “A little about a lot”. Having spoken to these agencies myself and my experience with UK and Australian agencies, the sheer volume of media they consider for their clients it is not possible to be “up to the minute knowledgeable” about each and every one. My advice would be to use each party for their strengths, and have them working together to deliver a strategy that fits your requirements. Why leave everything to one party, when you can have an army working for your cause.

A social recruiting expert will teach you the tools, which you can learn for free and trial for yourself without them. A social recruiting expert can show you how Twitter works, and show you the mistakes they’ve made. Absolutely, get out there, try everything you can, do as much as you can, and if you find things aren’t working for you maybe you do need to invest in an external provider that uses these tools everyday, reads everything they can in the space, for themselves and their clients, to take you through the maze that can be, and often is, social media. You can never know all aspects, but getting up to speed faster would certainly be of benefit. I find that a lot of the people I talk to simply have no idea where to begin, nor understand how different each site is and their use.

I think what we should take out of this is that there are people like Paul Jacobs, Matt Alder, Andy Headworth, Bill Boorman, Paul Harrison and myself to name a few, that have a wealth of knowledge, experience and know-how, to help companies use the vast array of social media tools that exist, adopt these into a recruitment and retention strategy in line with a companies needs, and deliver outcomes that produce results. We live and breathe these tools every day, we add value where some other people cannot. Social Media is a marathon, a never ending spiral of information, sites, tools, uses, metrics, and for many confusion. To use a phrase I use often with my clients from The Matrix, “You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes”.

We all have our place in the market and all focus on slightly different aspects, all with our own advantages, Employer Brand agencies included.
Jared Woods says:

August 14, 2010 at 9:43 pm

Hi Paul,

Firstly, thanks for your comments! I appreciate the time you’ve taken to articulate your response and your participation in the discussion.

I absolutely concur – I have drawn some huge generalisaitons across ’social recruiting’ as an area of expertise. They do match a lot of my personal experience with people who brand themselves as social recruiting experts, and it’s this behaviour which forms the basis of my comments.

This post was driven by a couple of key ideas, which I’m happy to explain. I’ve reviewed some ’social recruiting’ pitches and service offerings of late for friends in HR, and was very surprised to see the “you won’t survive without this” style of marketing employed. I saw a lot of sizzle and very little steak, if you’ll allow the expression. And a great deal of the discussion I’ve seen across the term ’social recruiting’ has been about supplanting traditional methods of operational recruiting with social media, which I believe that most recruiters are not skilled enough to do. I don’t mean this as any kind of criticism – the skills required for long-term, strategic communication aren’t usually part of the transactional recruitment skill-set.

I absolutely agree that companies can use social media to redefine their ability to source, seduce and engage talent. And creative uses of the new technology are both inspiring and challenging to traditional brand awareness and engagement models. My point was that without a fundamental understanding of the message you are prepared to share, an expert in the tools of the trade cannot add real strategic value. They can build walls but not create a home. Using the tools is part of the execution, but falls well beneath strategy (and further again under attitude) in a hierarchy of considerations.

What you’ve described as your approach goes well beyond what I would term ’social recruiting’. It’s a much more strategic and enthusiastic approach to talent as part of an overall business strategy. By comparison, those reaching out to companies because social media is the ’shiny new thing’ are promising returns that I don’t believe are possible without that strategic understanding. Having a personal trainer can help you understand more about exercise, but it cannot make you stronger unless you are prepared to commit to the ideal. That level of understanding and personality by the business needs to be there in order to provide impetus and support the efforts.

I agree with your position – a business can definitely benefit from specialised knowledge and expertise in this space. But they don’t need it. It’s an additional service they can hire if they see value, but I find it surprising to see so many ’social recruiting experts’ addressing the issue as if businesses will fail tomorrow without it.