Using Social Networks to Communicate and Engage: The Future of Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

Written by Susan Burns

People_TreeThe growth, adoption, and momentum of social networking over the past 18 months brings another round of significant change for recruiting departments. The first question that needs to be answered is whether or not you believe social networking is all hype or if it will result in lasting change. Then you can answer the question, “If social networking is here to stay, is it right for our organization?”

Some look at the social networking trend and say that it’s all a bunch of hype. Some look at it and feel the need to, and will try to,ERE_Journal-logo be everywhere. Some will consciously decide to be nowhere — we have the phone and that works very well, thank you. Many are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening, the pace of change, and the fears about transparency. In most cases you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be everywhere. And, you may decide to be nowhere, but make sure that’s a conscious decision and not just resistance to inevitable change.

As for fear of social networking, the pace of change and transparency, think of it this way — whether you engage your brand in the discussion or not, the conversation moves on — nothing stands still, except that eventually people may just not care about your brand at all, and, well, at that point you won’t need to recruit anyways. If you want to influence the conversation about your brand and if you want to engage people in your brand story, then social networking has a lot to offer. The complete article featured in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership October issue, will delve further into that, but here are my more brief thoughts for the time being.

Social Media and Social Networking: Strategy or Tactics

The underlying premise of this article is that social networking is not a passing fad and that it deserves significant positioning in your talent attraction and management strategy.

Let me begin my differentiating, for the purposes of this article, the difference between social media and social networking. The terms are often used interchangeably, but I see an important distinction, especially for recruiting. Social networking is the application of social media, which provides the tools to share content and information, engage in conversations, and build networks. The key difference is what you choose to do after sharing your information. Social networking is pursued with the underlying intention of dialogue, engagement, and interest. It also results in a more sustainable talent strategy that differentiates your brand and brings forward many other business benefits. If you are simply pushing jobs out to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you are socializing job postings by using social media, but not necessarily engaging in social networking. If you’re engaging prospective talent in discussions and building active communities, you are pursuing a social networking strategy.

There’s also a significant difference between the two that influences how you design an effective strategy and how you define your desired outcome. Social media is in part strategic but mostly tactical and is really saying: “Hey, these are new channels through which we can reach people and we should broadcast our jobs.”

That may be fine, but it limits the value and doesn’t fully realize the potential or move you toward a sustainable solution. Also, and most importantly, when you use social media there is an expectation for networking! If you push a job out on Twitter and someone reaches out to you, they expect a response. When you don’t respond, the brand can be viewed unfavorably and over time this type of behavior will dilute the brand reputation and value.

This is similar to what job seekers expected with the introduction of corporate recruitment websites. They wanted a way to reach and connect with someone in a company they were interested in joining. Remember all the discussions about the “black hole of recruiting”? Well, in a social world, the expectations and consequences are higher. And, while today’s job market may be in favor of the employer, the cycle will turn again and the strategy that you develop and implement today will absolutely impact future talent attraction effectiveness — positively or negatively. If you want to develop a sustainable talent acquisition strategy and actively invest in the longevity of your brand, then it’s time to engage.

They Really Are Interested in You — Really!

The evolution of technology, social tools, and ease of access are driving rapid advancements in communication. People like to play, create, share, and comment about your company and brand. The fear you may be feeling about letting people “in” to your brand, so to speak, can be looked at one of two ways. You can either be fearful of what they may do to your brand, which “they” will do anyways, or, you can celebrate that people are interested in your brand, products, and services. Listen to what they have to say. You may learn something. Engage them in your business challenges; they may solve them for you. Yes, they want to hang out with you — if, that is, you have something interesting to say! A UK student who found his job through Twitter shared this with me:

Personally, the companies that I’ve been most interested in have been the ones that are blogging and therefore appear to be knowledgeable industry leaders … also, some companies have begun posting jobs on blogs, which I think is better than on a recruitment website or in a newspaper, because the candidates applying have read the blog and are interested in the company.

Now, that’s something to think about. Does silence imply your company has nothing interesting to say? That you’re not knowledgeable about your industry? Pursuing a social strategy isn’t just a way to attract and engage talent. It can also be a way to expand the innovative capacity of your organization — perhaps something we should consider as the talent function evolves.

Clearly the impact of “social” is still emerging and the potential is just beginning to be understood — although it’s already profound. We are still at the edge of what the social media wave will bring. The potential for sweeping change is enormous. We will certainly see the future impacted and unfolding before our eyes.

You’ll  find the complete article in the October edition of the ERE Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.  You can subscribe to the Journal or to purchase this article only please contact the editor, Todd Raphael.

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Do you offer what you seek? The front-end of your employment brand.

Written by Susan Burns

moods_graphicThink about a brand that you admire.  What comes to mind?  How do you feel when you interact with the brand’s product or service?  How about when you interact directly with the brand through their website, retail store, phone service, advertising or other means of outreach?  Brands are emotive and most people like brands that make them feel good, are dependable, provide some desired combination of quality and value, and have a fun factor.

Now, think about your company’s recruitment process.  What does the candidate experience feel like?  At the most basic level, is it efficient? Respectful?  Is it easy for a candidate to get to know your company in a meaningful way?  Has appropriate attention been paid to the importance of design? Are the job descriptions well written? Do they get the candidate excited?  Can the candidate see not only how their work contribution benefits the company but also what opportunities employment could provide?  Would they be excited enough about what they’ve learned to tell someone else?  Keep in mind that these elements only begin to address the front-end of your brand experience.  If you don’t have a clear talent philosophy and process that delivers brand continuity through each point in the application and interview process, your front-end experience will be quickly diluted.

If you read my post on Adaptive Talent Strategies you know that employment branding is one of the key elements.  In that post I discussed the importance of resource allocation, technology and process design to developing an adaptive strategy. An adaptive talent strategy provides you an architecture to meet the evolving needs of business and develop a value-oriented talent function.  The employment brand is a key component of the strategy.  Closely related is the use of networks, which has been increasing in importance to the brand and establishing an adaptive, sustainable approach – see the post on community managers.

Employment Brand and Networks
Employment brand and networks are tightly linked and should not be looked at as being independent from each other.  We also should not lose site of what’s at the center of the external employment brand and networks – the prospective employee.  And, yet, most candidates have less than desirable experiences with a company.  The job seeker’s experience will directly affect the company’s current and future competency in attracting and hiring the talent they desire.  This starts with the front-end experience and all too often deteriorates further as the candidate moves forward and expresses interest in a job.  The fact is that most corporate recruitment sites have become incredibly boring.  They’re flat, static and lack engaging attributes.  Very few catch your attention and draw you in.  I can hear the arguments. “But, we’re not really hiring now.”  ”We don’t have the resources.”  ”Business is way off.”  These may all be true but there other important truths.  What doesn’t happen today will be significantly more costly tomorrow because it will be much harder for you to catch up and secure the talent you need when you need it, which is why brand and networks are part of an adaptive strategy. Ultimately, the job seeker doesn’t care what your issues are – they only want a good experience and to be treated respectfully as they move through the application and, potentially, the interview process.  Even making relatively small investments today will provide exponential value tomorrow.  Think of it this way.  After connecting with friends on Facebook, exchanging tweets on Twitter, or connecting on LinkedIn they come to your website. Does it measure up?  Is the experience as interactive and engaging or does it feel like it needs an infusion of energy?

Moving from Fragmentation to Integration
The first place to look is at your corporate recruitment site – the center of your employment brand for prospective talent.  Aesthetic design, the application of technical elements and community spaces haven’t continued to evolve.  I do like Microsoft’s new site, and am still playing around on it.  The job search integration is sweet.  I also had a sneak peak at what Steve Fogarty is getting ready to launch at adidas and can only say that it will significantly raise the bar….stay tuned.  In many instances, brands have become fragmented through the introduction of new channels that are shifting quickly, but also important to connecting with prospective talent.  The model included below provides a view into the complexity of the recruitment ecosystem.  The corporate career site is at the core and each of the spokes shooting off from the center are brand touchpoints.  While it certainly isn’t necessary to be represented through every touchpoint it is important to understand who your trying to reach, what they do online and what is brand appropriate for your company.  However, This approach willmodel_corpsites help you capture and drive the most relevant job seekers to your site and set the stage for providing a positive experience.  Integrating a set of touchpoints into the corporate career site and supporting bi-directional links delivers a more enhanced brand experience and adds value. The dashed line circling the corporate career site and intersecting with each touchpoint represents the tools used to communicate and manage (CRM), support viral behavior (sharing), and push out content (RSS). Lastly, implementing an SEO and SEM strategy will advance visibility for your brand and drive relevant traffic to your site in a very cost effective manner.

Evolution
Ideally, the corporate career site has an embedded community.  Extending the corporate career platform to support actively engaging job seekers in a dialogue is simply an evolutionary step.  Why not engage job seekers in a discussion about the company, its products and services?  What are you proud of?  What problems are you trying to solve?  What are you working on?  Wouldn’t this type of interaction be more rewarding then having someone stop by for a visit and read, watch or listen to what you have to say?  Blogging is a good way to begin.  If your interested in learning more about how to incorporate a blogging strategy here’s a link to the Definitive Guide to Corporate HR Blogging.  I had an opportunity to work on this guide with Ben Yoskovitz of Standout Jobs.  Trust me, blogging is hard work and can take a lot of time but there is value in staying the course to develop your voice and a regular writing habit – I’ll let you know when I’m there! You’ll find that there are a lot of opportunities for companies to enlist a variety of voices as part of a blogging strategy that can make developing a diverse mix of content much more manageable.

As your thinking about your recruitment strategy, the talent your trying to reach and the experience you want to create, think about your favorite brand and how it makes you feel. Then, go to your website with the “eyes of your job seeker” and experience the brand. Are you smiling?

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Adaptive Talent Strategies….a beginning

Written by Susan Burns

Hedge GardenThe ability for companies to move quickly is more important than ever before.  Change is constant. Uncertainty is a reality.  Complexity is on the increase, and the need for agility is rising as a core organizational competency.  We’re living in a new business environment being shaped by shifting talent patterns, increased competition, shorter business maturity cycles and lower barriers to entry, just to name a few.  These are the elements shaping today’s and tomorrow’s business ecosystem and your organizational talent capability.  Your organization’s ability to shape an adaptive talent strategy and proactively develop response capability will allow you to harness these influencers and gain the upper-hand.

 An adaptive talent strategy provides you with an architecture to meet the evolving needs of business and develop a value-oriented talent function. Complex? Actually, it’s simpler and more streamlined than what you may have today. Expensive? Developing an adaptive talent strategy is more cost-effective than not developing one. Will it mean we’ll have to change how we do things? Oh, yes! But, what doesn’t require change? The cost of “standing still” or not adapting may be less expensive in the short-run but over the long-term the cost of not adapting will cost you considerably more, and quite possible even the survival of your talent function or organization.  And, more often than not, change is good.  The hardest thing about dealing with change is getting over the initial shock that you need to change.  Once your open to new ideas and new ways of thinking an entirely new set of possibilities emerges.

 Adaptive talent strategies are based on alignment and clarity around the organization’s strategic business directives.  They succeed when there is active dialogue between the business units, finance and talent acquisition leaders during the strategic business planning process.  In too many instances, recruiting becomes a just-behind process. If the talent acquisition leader is not part of the business planning discussion then the organization is already at a disadvantage and successful implementation of the business strategy is compromised. Now, granted, its up to the talent acquisition leader to ask the right questions and then develop an effective plan to ensure support and success.  The key here is involving talent acquisition early enough in the conversation to shift from reactive tactics to value-oriented strategy development and implementation.  When the talent acquisition leader has sufficient information early enough in the planning process they’re able to effectively allocate resources, structure their team, make investment decisions, and guide the company’s strategic directives by providing critical insight into the availability of talent.  This conversation becomes the pivotal point in developing an adaptive talent strategy. From here, the company can benefit from increased clarity. 

Three other key components that shape developing an adaptive talent strategy -  

Know the talent you have
 Visibility into the company’s existing workforce should be easily accessible for the recruiting function.  Knowing where the strengths, weaknesses and gaps exist informs external recruitment. When the talent acquisition leader has this information they can more effectively develop a recruitment strategy and direct resources by partnering with their organizational development peer to identify the key skills and competencies needed to support the organization. An internal talent management system can deliver a number of benefits.  It brings efficiency to the talent planning process and facilitates the movement of talent throughout the organization to meet the needs of employees and businesses.  If employees know they have opportunities to pursue elsewhere in the organization chances are your going to improve retention. External recruitment should always be informed by the internal gaps and talent plans to make smarter investments and decisions when pursuing new talent.

 Develop a talent plan
 Clarity around workforce structure guides how the organization shapes thinking about talent today and in the future?  Which roles need to sit in a specific geographic location and where do you have flexibility to pursue the best talent regardless of location? Where can you infuse elasticity in your workforce through part-time, contingent and job share roles? When do you build and when do you “buy” talent? How do you broaden reach by identifying where work can be done outside the organization and engage collective collaboration to generate ideas and drive innovation?  What is your plan for knowledge transfer? How will you prepare for a maturing workforce with different needs? What does the supply and demand look like for the talent you need to support the strategic business directives? For which functional areas and roles do you have a recruiting core competency and where will you outsource recruitment to a third-party? These are just a few of the key questions that should be asked in developing a talent plan to guide recruitment.  Without having clarity around these types of questions and the resulting impact on your organization, chances are you’ll experience significant talent pain points over time rather than operating as an adaptive, value-oriented talent function. 

avature_pipeline1

Leverage technology
 In addition to an internal talent management system, a CRM tools is a key component to building an effective suite of recruiting technology solutions.  The CRM serves a number of critical needs.  It supports the recruitment function’s ability to manage communications, build relationships, integrate state-of-the art sourcing capability and provide visibility into the readiness of your talent pipeline.  This last benefit, visibility into the readiness of your talent pipeline, is key to supporting an adaptive talent strategy.  You’ll be able to provide better guidance to the business partners and make smarter decisions around how and where you allocate resources to external recruitment.  The Reports screenshot to the right, courtesy of Avature, provides an example of the benefits gained when you have visibility into your talent pipeline.  You know the readiness of talent and the depth of your pool by type of talent needed.

This will begin to provide you with an idea of what shapes an adaptive talent strategy.  The benefit to the organization is enhanced support of the strategic business directives by improving alignment, opening up an active dialogue early enough in the planning process, and anticipating the types of talent needed.  The benefit to the talent function is improved clarity around strategic business directives, the ability to be more planful in developing and implementing a supporting strategy, and the ability to deliver greater value to the organization. The ROI can be significant. You’ll realize the benefits of reduced third-party recruitment fees, reduced time-to-hire, increased recruiter productivity, reduced marketing / job posting costs, and increased efficiency in the movement of internal talent. The remaining elements  - employment brand and networks, metrics, and internal communication will be covered soon.  You might also want to take a look at the model on the home page to get a visual image of the framework for an adaptive talent strategy.

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Talent Synchronicity