The Sales Enabler - Jeff Ernst - Sales Enablement Best Practices

Social Recruiting can't make a bad workplace look good

I was able to catch several of the sessions from Monday's #SocialRecruiting Summit via the video stream, and couldn't help but be impressed by some of the great examples of ways companies are using social media for recruiting. 

But another thing I noticed is that these companies that are held up as bright, shiny examples for social recruiting have a culture that fosters a great work environment, and makes people want to work there.  You can bet that this attitude towards treating employees well starts at the top and permeates through the management ranks. 

Social media doesn't make them great companies to work for, social media simply makes it easy for them to make their great culture and environment very visible to the outside world, especially to future employees.

That makes the flip-side true.  A few days ago I was working with a sales manager who's looking to hire 4 or 5 inside sales people in the next 30 days, and has been frustrated by how hard it is to find strong candidates.  I was coaching him on how to add social recruiting to the mix, to profile some successful sales people, and give prospective candidates a feel for what its like to work there. 

He mentioned two things that startled me.  First, the company has a ban on the use of social media of any kind at work, and second, that employees really don't like working there.  (I suspect the two points are connected) I won't go into why, but suffice it to say that a social recruiting strategy for this company could backfire, and make it more transparent that this is a bad place to work.

Using social media for marketing or recruiting is about being genuine, personal, and transparent.  You can't pretend to be something you're not. Social recruiting can't make a bad workplace look good.

#SocialRecruiting Summit - 11/16/09 - recruiting is a blood sport

I thought about traveling to NYC to attend the #SocialRecruiting summit yesterday, because I am passionate about applying social media to recruiting, but living on a start-up entrepreneur's budget, I'm too cheap. 

So instead I decided to lurk, and watch the proceedings from the comfort of my home office on the live video feed.  I didn't get to see every session, or partake in the what sounded like rowdy networking events, but did take away some key observations.

I liked many of the points Fred Wilson made in his keynote, especially how recruiting is a "blood sport" and it's best to have the best weapons.  This is especially true for tech companies in the valley. I'm experiencing this with many of my clients, who get bombarded with resumes for any job opening, but have narrowed their requirements so much that there's a small potential pool of qualified candidates.

This ties to another point he made about how valuable the internet is in reaching passive candidates, and gave some great examples of how he's spread the word about openings using his blog and social media sites.

I was a little disappointed that he focused so much on the social media companies in his VC firm's portfolio, and how they can be used to find specific candidates, as I know Fred has so much more insight he can shed on social recruiting.

Luckily, the rest of the day hit on some things I'm very passionate about.  I found the panel discussions and some of the practitioner presentations to be the most useful.  I especially liked the talk from Jessica Lee from APCO worldwide, who like me, says she's cheap, and has done an impressive job building her company's reputation as a great place to work despite her claim that she's an introvert.

The theme I heard, which I love, is that social recruiting is more than just using social media to recruit candidates for specific openings.  Leading HR pros and recruiters like Jessica are expanding the definition of social recruiting to include those things that give people, especially potential future employees, a better view into what its like to work at that company.  Profile successful employees and cool projects.  Talk about company events that exemplify the culture.  In fact, there's so much to be said about transparency and authenticity that I'll save that for my next post.

I'm pushing for a #SocialRecruiting Summit in Boston.  I think despite the great ideas shared by leaders at this event, most recruiters are just scratching the surface with how they use social media, and are confused about where to go with it.  We've got to get them tapped into events like this.