October 30, 2013
As a job seeker, you tend to use who you know and what you know when looking for a new job. Comfortable with Monster and Reed websites or even looking at the local papers or Post Office? Plenty of companies are still hell bent using traditional advertising methods.
I am a huge social recruiting advocate, I genuinely believe and have working knowledge that creating the right social media branding will increase the company’s profile with a demographic different to the consumer and similar to the workforce. But what does this all mean if we are still not seeing any good speculative CVs or applications to social media job posts? A recent story published on FT.com, claims “Candidates still prefer traditional methods because few have any faith in social media as a legitimate application tool”. I can see how this is a true statement, I think it is down to education in to social media.
Applications are mostly coming through the company’s websites and job boards, this is what we know and trust. We know when we go on to a company’s website, see a job, and press apply it will be a suitable and trustworthy means of application. It seems candidates are slow to react on social media as they have a preconception it will put them at a disadvantage. It won’t, speaking as a recruiter – I do not care where your application came from, if you have the right experience and qualifications for an open job – I want to speak to you.
Social media is a needed source in recruiting, you need it to search and network – both job seekers and recruiters will find lots of happy matches using social, but still job seekers do not have enough confidence in social media to use it as a job seeking platform and neither do recruiters. Everyone knows we need social media in recruitment and it’s growing every day. How do we make people feel comfortable with applying for a job through social media – patience? education? I believe it comes from employer branding. Let’s start with ensuring all companies have the means to run successful social media careers campaigns, from tweeting general job posts, to exciting savvy content, to engage with those passive candidates that we all want so much! So what are employers saying?
It seems employers are satisfied by social media in the main, but it’s not exciting them in the same way it does when they are using it for personal reasons. I would love to hear your feelings on this, comment below and let’s get the debate going!