Are you a Social Recruitment wanker?


Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 9:47am Monday 07 December 2009

There may come a time where you are so immersed in social media you become a wanker. You forget about the real world. Real relationships. A world where you pick up the phone to call a candidate or catch-up with a client for a coffee. For all those who know me, I would rather communicate over the phone than correspond via Twitter.

Social media commentators don't understand the Online Recruitment industry. Forget the hype and talking from the overseas markets, the Australian online recruitment market is not quite shifting yet. Yes, I know there are many recruiters who are finding candidates via social media, but overall the majority of hires is coming from other mediums.

Job seekers USE job boards. In fact, job board traffic is at a all time high. Just have a look at the latest Job Board Statistics for November 2009. Job seekers use job boards because they are a one stop shop to conduct a job search. The latest RCSA survey shows that 96% of Recruiters source Candidates through mainstream Job Boards.

Social media is not a fad, and it is very important for recruiters to understand each of the different types of social media and how they can be used in the recruitment process - a process where you need to automate as much as possible. If not, you are wasting your time and resources. Maybe no one wants to follow your recruitment agency on Twitter?

If you answer yes to any of these, you may be a social recruitment wanker.
There are a lot of people who think job boards are dying, and will be replaced by social networking sites. Unfortunately, they tend to forget about the underlying dimension of a job board. It is a type of classifieds - like Carsales, Realestate, etc where 2 parties meet - the advertiser and the job seeker.

Last week, Google released the 2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist for Australia and the 10th most popular search term was SEEK just behind larger more dominant online sites including Facebook, Google and Youtube. 

Job boards are already connected with social networking sites. In fact, they are more connected then ever. SEEK was the first to launch a sponsored Facebook group in November 2007 and CareerOne has powered MySpace Jobs since January 2008. Statistics I produced last week show that 45% of the job ad links on Twitter click through to SEEK, followed by 15% to the Recruiter/Employers website and ATS. 35% of the job ad links on Facebook have no URL or email address listed, followed by 20% to the Recruiter/Employers website.

So before you go out and cancel your job board subscription for social media. Start small, dip your toes in the water and give it some time to work. The more channels you are on, the harder it is to control. Remember to measure the ROI and compare the difference.