Social recruiting is over. It was a nice idea – social media would make candidate networking easier and more effective – but it fell apart in the face of human nature. Most people can’t be bothered to network unless they have to, and will only do so if there aren’t other and easier ways to connect with employers. So, we’re now in the era of post-social recruiting where the key to success is to skip all the unproductive networking and focus, instead, on creating and engaging proto-employees.
Even the least experienced of job seekers knows that the best way to connect with an employer is on its own organizational website. Historically, however, those connections have been tone deaf. Despite the pretty pictures and flowery benefits descriptions, visitors to these sites are treated as outsiders and thrust into a process that funnels them through job listings and an application form that only a cog could love.
Active job seekers have to tolerate such treatment, but passive prospects don’t and most won’t. They have options. They’re probably employed so they can stay right where they are, or they can move on to another employer – one that recognizes a simple, but profound truth about talented people. They want to be treated as the top candidates they are, not as just another cog in some dehumanizing system.
What does that mean? Top talent want to make smart career decisions. They’re already successful and are determined to remain so. Therefore, they shop for a new job the same way they shop for a car – they pick the winner by test driving its employment experience. Since they can’t actually go on-the-job, however, they create a surrogate: the employer’s recruiting process. They assume that the way they are treated as a candidate is a good approximation of the way they’ll be treated as an employee.
Build a Community for Proto-Employees
While an employer’s recruitment process has a large number of moving parts and players, the front door, in almost every case, is its career site. Therefore, that site should be designed not to administer candidate cogs but to emulate the organizations’ employment experience. As much as possible, it should make every visitor feel as if they are already a member of the family – a proto-employee of the organization.
Employers are only limited by their imagination in designing such an experience, but the following two features are worth considering:
- Peer blogs by career field. The blog authors describe what it’s like to work in their field for the employer – the tasks they perform, the challenges they face, the rewards they receive. Visitors can then interact with the authors, posing questions and requesting additional information from a person who would be their colleague if they joined the organization.
- A “friends of the family” newsletter. This publication should be posted on the site regularly (at least once a month) and focus on the activities and achievements of employees (e.g., their conference presentations, bowling team victories). Visitors can then get a feel for the culture and values of the organization and even get to know some of its employees.
Social recruiting misunderstood how and where candidate relationships are best formed. They’re not built by networking with strangers on social media sites, but rather by transforming strangers into proto-employees on an organization’s own career site.
Thanks for Reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
Next Practices – The Book
Best Practices are so yesterday! They are sourcing and recruiting techniques designed for a time that has passed.
Next Practices are strategies and tactics for winning the real War for the Best Talent – the one you actually face today and will face tomorrow. They modernize your approach to:
- Recruitment Advertising
- Social Recruiting
- Candidate Engagement
- Optimizing the Candidate Experience
- Managing Your Own Recruiting Career
so you maximize your success.
The book is composed of short, straight-to-the-point essays that can be read in ten or fifteen minutes and still transport you to a whole new dimension in the state-of-the art for recruiting and sourcing talent. With titles like Become a Talent Whisperer, Post-Social Recruiting, The Inconvenient Truth of Recruiting and Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect, they are sure to entertain and enlighten you.
So, don’t recruit with yesterday’s techniques. Get Next Practices and start recruiting right now with the next generation of recruiting mastery.
The book is available on Amazon. Click here to place your order.
What’s Happening In the Job Market?
Despite all the happy talk about the growth in job openings, it’s still incredibly hard to find a GOOD job and one that pays anywhere near what it costs to live in this country. That’s as true for recruiters as it is for everyone else in the workforce.
So, what’s going on?
There are plenty of talking heads opining on cable and more than enough blog posts and magazines offering their take on the situation. But, wouldn’t it be nice to look into this situation and its causes without having to endure a lot of self-appointed punditry?
Well, now you can. Read Peter Weddle’s novel about the 21st Century world of work in America called A Multitude of Hope. It uses the fictional tale of three job seekers to explore what’s happening to individual working men and women in a workplace and job market churning with change.
To read a FREE excerpt of A Multitude of Hope, click here.
The Recruiting Resources You Deserve
The best recruiters use the best resources to get the job done. And, when it comes to reaching top talent online, their choice is clear. It’s WEDDLE’s Books. Get yours today!
WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 11th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
The Talent Sourcing & Recruitment Handbook. This is Shally Steckerl’s tell-all guide to his sourcing secrets and cybersleuthing for hard-to-find talent.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind guide lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.
Make Weddles.com Your Recruiting Headquarters
Modeled after Pinterest, Weddles.com offers four channels of information and resources found nowhere else on the Web. And, one of those channels is specifically tailored for those Employers and Recruiters who are determined to find the best talent for their openings!
What’s in the Employers & Recruiters channel at Weddles.com? There are:
- Books & Tools for recruiting & sourcing excellence
- An archive of Next Practice Recruiting Tips
- An Association Directory organized by career field & industry
- Insights on Career Activists – the passive prospects who are so hard to recruit
- And much, much more!
So, make Weddles.com the place where you start your business day! And, encourage your colleagues to join you there, as well.