1. SOCIAL MEDIA
ENGAGE PEOPLE
Social Media: It’s about Engagement
Some of the same social-media mistakes being made by recruiting departments
were made when job boards were new. Social media can work, but not
when concepts like “community” are given lip service.
By Raghav Singh
T he basic idea behind using social media for
recruitment is simple: people are social animals,
and that means one of two things. First, they have lots
shows an inverse correlation between self-esteem and ac-
tivity on social networks.The likely explanation is that on-
line social networks let people develop an illusion of hav-
of friends, so send them job postings and they’ll ing hundreds of “friends” that they can broadcast their lives
distribute them to their friends, which should produce to. Most of us know of at least a few people who post the
candidates. Second, they want to belong to groups. most trivial and intimate aspects of their lives on their Face-
Involve them in talent communities and eventually they’ll book pages, things that they would never say in a face-to-
become candidates.That’s how it’s supposed to work, but face conversation.
the record shows that getting hires is Another study recently found that for
elusive.The CEO of a vendor that makes men, the number of connections on a so-
an application for recruiting with social cial network is a status symbol: a way to
media recently told me that the vast impress others, especially women. Re-
majority of its clients make only a small Many [recruiters] make search also shows that the primary basis
number of hires through social networks. the assumption that for people to choose whom they connect
social networks work with on social networks is ethnicity, age,
The Personal vs. The Professional the same way religion, and sexual orientation.
One reason why getting results is dif- All the main motivations people have
for personal and
ficult for recruiters is because many to join and participate in social networks
make the assumption that social networks
professional purposes. are personal, and the benefits are not
work the same way for personal and Research shows that equally available in the workplace. Social
professional purposes. Research shows this is not the case. capital is hard to build in the workplace
that this is not the case. because relationships with others are
The popularity of social networks at a not primarily social, and policies and cul-
personal level is largely because they ap- ture restrict speech. Programs like diver-
peal to people’s Id—the part of their psyche that consists sity programs discourage limiting one’s circle of contacts
of desire.The desire to build social capital and support their to individuals of similar ethnicity, age, religion, and sex-
aspirations. Social capital is created by the relationships ual orientation.
that give a person a sense of belonging—friends and con- Employers are increasingly using social media to screen
nections that may be of help in say, finding a job.This can out candidates and even monitor them after they are hired.
contribute to a person’s sense of well-being and self-es- Whatever the merits of doing so, such behavior creates an
teem.This is borne out by data that shows people who are environment of distrust.This is why products that are in-
most active on social networks tend to have low-self es- tended to foster collaboration between employees and tap
teem. This doesn’t mean that everyone who is active on social networks in the workplace are not used much, while
Facebook is suffering from low self-esteem; the research collaboration in the public domain (Wikipedia, Linux) is
14 Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership | crljournal.com | February 2011 ©2011 ERE Media, Inc.

2. SOCIAL MEDIA
ENGAGE PEOPLE
flourishing. Informal and off-the-cuff remarks, risky and ly you get to know the others there.The social cost of leav-
unusual ideas, are guaranteed to result in mistakes and fail-ing is high.
ure.Who would want to set themselves up to be attacked Employers that have created successful talent commu-
based on what was recorded on an officially provided so- nities—a reliable source of hires—include Sodexo, Mi-
cial network? crosoft, and Hewitt, among others.Their success has come
All of these factors make for powerful headwinds that as a result of focused and diligent efforts to create a high
a recruiter confronts when attempting to use social net- level of engagement with the members.The model that’s
works for finding talent.The fact that making referrals has emerging also suggests that talent communities work best
no negative consequences is not relevant. Most people when they are narrowly focused—the same types of
don’t make such distinctions in using social networks as- jobs, at a similar level, or narrowly defined skill sets.That
sociated with their employers. ensures that the participants have a lot in common. But
once they are set up, creating engagement requires an on-
Talent Communities going effort to keep the participants coming back. This
A talent community is supposed to be a pool of talent means starting and encouraging relevant conversations and
to be used to get hires. Most are set up providing content that’s valuable to the
to collect business card information from members. Data on participation in social
anyone on the career site who does not networks shows that less than 10% of
want to apply for a job or leave a resume. people in online communities typically
This does not create a community. It pro- [Collecting] business drive most of the content. About 1% are
duces a marketing database—a list of heavy contributors, and 9% are intermit-
card information from
prospects who may have an interest in tent. The bulk—90%—are just there to
employment at that employer.That may
anyone on the career read and observe. Given this 90-9-1
work if the employer does not require site who does not want rule, it’s critical that a talent communi-
skilled professionals—retail stores for to apply for a job or ty be seeded with some heavy contribu-
example—but for any position that in- leave a resume...does tors if it is to succeed. Find people who
volves even a modicum of specialization, not create a community. are very passionate about the field, indus-
this is near worthless. Knowing that a per- try, or discipline to join.
son’s title is “Account Executive” does- One caveat here is that the heavy con-
n’t help much if you’re looking to hire tributors should not be restricted much
sales staff. in what they contribute. The best ones
A community means a group of people that share some generate controversy because they have strong opinions
common interests and interact with each other.What cre- and original ideas, which is what people like to read.That
ates a community is engagement. It is not a random group can make legal and marketing departments very uncom-
of strangers that don’t know the existence of each other. fortable, but an employer can’t have it both ways. Start put-
People coming into a store or movie theater don’t form ting too many restrictions on what people can contribute
a community. or require approvals and the community will become a
This is where social media can be the most effective for wasteland with little or no engagement.
recruiters. By bringing together a group of disparate in-
dividuals to form a true community—an engaged group— The Evolution of Tools
a recruiter or an employer can create a private pool of tal- Software applications for supporting talent communi-
ent to draw on. But engagement is not easily achieved, on- ties have started to evolve in the direction of creating en-
line or offline. Think about your close friends and the gagement. Much of the scarcity of results can be attrib-
groups you joined voluntarily. What made you join, and uted to applications that focused entirely on job distribu-
more importantly what makes you stay? It’s the engage- tion.This is just an extension of an employee referral pro-
ment you have with others there: the quality of conversa- gram, where participation by employees is rarely beyond
tions; the value of the content you receive; and how close- the single digits. Recruiters want simple solutions, and the
©2011 ERE Media, Inc. Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership | crljournal.com | February 2011 15

3. SOCIAL MEDIA
ENGAGE PEOPLE
early applications that emerged gave the impression that
distributing jobs through social networks was the way to
go—connect, select, broadcast. Paying rewards do little
to improve the outcomes since the likelihood that an em-
ployee will collect one is small, and the amount is not very
large.
This is a familiar path for recruiting. The social media
space is mirroring the job board space of the ’90s. Back
then the emphasis was on distributing jobs to as many
boards as possible—what can be labeled the Pontiac strat-
egy (wider is better).That was what their ad agencies were Through all of the changes and
recommending. Eventually, clients realized that only a innovation our industry has seen
dozen or so were useful, and the boards began to find nich- over the past decade, ERE Expo
es. Most recruiters have realized that going wide was not has been innovating right there
the answer, and they need is to go deep, not wide—to fo-
with you. And the 11th annual
cus their efforts on the niches they are targeting, despite
ERE Expo Spring conference is
anything ad agencies say.
Today, measurement of job board results is common,
no different.
and employers are moving away from them, but it took
15 years for that to happen. So job distribution is still
where we see the most products, and these have some val-
ue, but these are low effort, low yield solutions. Unfortu- Returning to San Diego with a brand
nately there’s no free lunch. Newer tools are starting to new speaker faculty and agenda,
emerge—Cachinko being an example—where the focus ERE Expo 2011 Spring will bring
is much more on creating engagement, but widespread you more than two days of
adoption will require a shift in thinking among re- learning and networking as you get
cruiters. your 2011 recruiting strategy up to
speed.
Raghav Singh is a partner at The A-List,a Minneapolis- Save
based staffing services provider. He has previously been $100 with
in product management and marketing roles at several
HR technology vendors. His career has included work as discount code
a consultant on enterprise HR systems and as a
recruiting and HRIT leader at several Fortune 500 companies.
SD11CRL!
REGISTER TODAY!
www.ereexpo.com
16 Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership | crljournal.com | February 2011 ©2011 ERE Media, Inc.