10. Resourcing – How can social media enhance the process?

This is the 10^th post in a series of 13 of “So you’ve become a recruitment consultant…” and considering one of my initial blog posts about LinkedIn before I started this series (link below) had the most hits up until 2 weeks ago, it made sense to have this topic in the series.

I am amazed at the amount of resourcers and recruitment consultants that are not taking advantage of sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Bing etc. As a recruiter, as well as being a fountain of knowledge on candidates, clients, competitors, industry sectors, specialisms, jobs and companies alike it is also fantastic for generating leads of companies recruiting for specific positions in your chosen location. It’s like all of your research is being handed to you on a plate – or at the click of a button! And this is all free. If you want to upgrade, then there’s even more available to you, but I’ve managed so far without having to pay a penny to LinkedIn.

Tip 1 – Utilise what’s available

Spend some time on these sites and plan it into your working day to spend at least 15 minutes reviewing information and making key comments and sharing useful information as well as profiling yourself in a positive light. This is a major part of your job, so if you’re not doing this everyday, then you’re missing out.

Tip 2 – Focus on positive PR

When adding information to these sites, make sure that what you are sharing is going to be of interest to your connections – make the conversation interesting to them. You can join groups relevant to your sector, but I see so many recruiters just posting job after job onto these groups.  That’s not what they’re there for. The groups are for interesting discussions and to share information. Keep the jobs to the job area and make a positive impact on these groups and forums, instead of annoying them!

This is The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3 and is a great representation of how social media should be used in conversation.

The second major point here is to cultivate recommendations. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only been in recruitment for 3 months, if you already have 10 people saying how good you were. I’ve currently got 33 recommendations and these range over 4 years. My tip would be to make sure you always have one that is from the past 3 months. Also, of course, you can get previous customers to write some comments about your service or even easier is when they endorse you. I’m in two minds about LI endorsements. Some mean a lot to me, but when someone I’ve never worked with clicks that button I think “What’s the point?” In the end, if your profile of skills is full, then it can only be a good thing.

Tip 3 – Have a strategy

95% of businesses see the benefit of Social Media tools, but only 13% actually have a actual strategy on how it should be used. So don’t wait for your company to make the decision for you. Decide for yourself how you want to use it and set yourself some goals – even if it’s a simple and targeting 10 new connections / followers per week. I did this when I started promoting Connemara UK. 100 connections on LI each week for 4 weeks. Here is the post that I wrote after week 3 Utilising LinkedIn in your Sales Strategy

I took a holiday last week and my usual number of weekly views of 125 went down to 39, but the times that my name came up in a search actually hit it’s all time high of 232 for the week. I’d put the work into my strategy beforehand, so I was still getting the opportunity of having my name in front of potential customers, even though I was lying on a beach.

Tip 4 – Ask your customers

Firstly, ask your candidates what sites, forums, blogs, media tools that they use or visit. If your candidates are going there, then it’s likely that other suitable candidates will be there too! Then ask them what they are most interested in seeing or reading when they do visit. It’s a simple question that informs you of the type of information that you should be sharing. This works just as well with your clients of course.

Tip 5 – Protect your connections

Ok, so on Twitter the whole world can see who’s following you, but on LinkedIn it’s not necessary to make it easy for your competitors. Change your personal settings so that only you can see the people you are linked to.

It seems that it’s not only me that’s getting more ‘sucked-in’ to the social media world. First Direct commissioned as UK based survey to see the extent of our passion in this. They came up with 12 distinct personalities

First Direct reached these conclusions by conducting an “in-depth, month long experiment, where people were focused to change their social media habits, and on an associated nationwide survey, examining people’s social media attitudes and behaviours.” I wonder what one you are?

Next week we’ll look at performance reviews and how you can strategise your desk based on your findings.

Angela Cripps, Connemara UK