Using Social Media as a Hiring Strategy

It seems that HR professionals are now starting to recognize that social media can help them as well as the marketers. While marketers have been exploring social media strategies for quite some time to help them connect with and better understand their customers, the folks in human resources are just getting their feet wet in this arena.

Not only are they using it to help get the word out about positions they are trying to fill, they are also using social media sites like LinkedIn to verify claims made by applicants. I've personally heard from friends who are recruiters a number of anecdotal stories where experiences shared in interviews that seemed just too good to be true were in fact that. Quick searches on the internet make it easy to verify (or disprove) assertions made by eager applicants.

However, the task remains for HR professionals to figure out the best way to leverage social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook most effectively as a recruiting tool.

An article in entrepreneur.com by Chris Pentilla notes that most HR folks are not yet seeing the value of Social Media to their work. She also says however, that there are entrepreneurial firms that are reaping the benefits. Firms have LinkedIn profiles, company Facebook pages and post jobs to Twitter, and they find that these are great for networking and broadcasting.

We often think of the benefits of social media for getting us closer to consumers, but we must think more broadly about other possible stakeholder groups that can be reached through social media - such as future employees!