Are Your Recruiters Socially Competent? #HRTechConf

Oct 8, 2013 | By Shannon Smedstad | Social Media

As recruiting leaders, you are most likely involved in somewhat regular conversations about social and its role in recruiting. Those conversations may revolve around Facebook pages, job feeds, vendors and tapping into your employees’ social networks. The convos might also include measuring success, ROI and ensuring that proper processes and procedures are in place. But, are any of you talking about recruiter competency in the social space?

At the end of the day, you can roll out all sorts of platforms, guidelines and training, but if your recruiters aren’t competent in the execution, it could all be for naught.

Table of Contents

3 KEYS TO BEING A SOCIALLY COMPETENT Recruiter

Knowledge, interest and time. KIT. Do your recruiters have the necessary tools in their “kit” to be socially competent?

Knowledge

Have you recruiters properly set up their social profiles? Do they really know how to use the different platforms? Can they create compelling messages to job seekers that encourage an action or response? Have you provided the in-depth, necessary training to enable your recruiters to be successful? Is there more that you can do to educate your recruiters — experienced and novice — to be more proficient?

Interest

Are your recruiters even interested in using social tools to source, brand and engage? Or, is another item on the to-do list that ends up overwhelming your team?

Time

Do your recruiters have the time it takes to dedicate to social? Can they commit to daily social sourcing? Do they have a few hours a week to spend cultivating a social presence?

Knowledge without interest or time is a dead-end street. Knowledge and interest without carving out time is a set up waiting to fail.

CONNECT WITH YOUR RECRUITERS

I would encourage you to connect with your recruiters … the people who are expected to carry out much of your social recruiting strategies.

Ask them to rank their knowledge of social recruiting: would they consider themselves a novice, moderate or expert?

What about their interest level: are they passionate or luke-warm at best?

And, how much time do they have to dedicate to the efforts: none, maybe two hours or an opportunity every day?

What are your thoughts about this idea of recruiter competency? Does the K.I.T. concept resonate with you? Please share your comments below.

Posted in

Shannon Smedstad

Shannon Smedstad has nearly 20 years of recruitment, employer branding, and communications experience. Currently, she serves as the Principal Employer Brand Strategist at exaqueo. Previously, she held employer branding and recruiting leadership roles at CEB and GEICO. She’s a work at home mom raising two awesome girls who also enjoys reading, running, leading a Girl Scout troop, and her morning coffee. You can connect with Shannon on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Trackbacks

How Social Media Can Improve the Candidate Experience HR, Recruiting, Social Media Policies, Human Resources, HR Technology Blogging4Jobs says:

November 8, 2013 at 3:18 pm

[…] chatter about using social to source, brand and increase job visibility. Another “prong” to a solid HR social media strategy is using social media to communicate with candidates. Like the telephone to the 80s and email to […]