Called, the “Zagat of online recruiting.” by the American Staffing Association, WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet is the Gold Standard of guidebooks to the 100,000+ job boards, social media sites and career portals now operating on the Web.
In these challenging times, being a smart consumer of employment sites is a core competency of recruiters. Make sure you measure up.
What’s in this 10th edition of WEDDLE’s 2011/12 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet?
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The Art of Social Recruiting
Social recruiting is both a science and an art. The science of social recruiting encompasses the technology that now makes the development of sourcing networks possible on the Web. The art of social recruiting, on the other hand, involves the skills and knowledge recruiters must have to ensure those networks actually yield the talent required for their openings. Said another way, science creates the potential of social recruiting, while art gives social recruiting its power.
Applying the art of social recruiting is fundamentally an exercise in learning how to forge networks of candidate relationships on the Web. Now, most of us have been in relationships, so we know a thing or two about them, at least those that occur in the real world. We recognize that building such relationships is both hard work and a time commitment, and today’s already hard-pressed recruiters can ill afford either. So, we’ve turned to the Web with the expectation that it will enable us to network with talented prospects effectively and to do so without the hassle of traditional relationships.
Relationships, of course, are built on two pillars: familiarity and trust. For a recruiter, that means the top prospects with whom they are networking must both feel as if they know the recruiter and believe the recruiter is focused on their best interests. The art of social recruiting, therefore, addresses the dual challenges of building such familiarity and trust quickly for an organization’s immediate openings and over time for its pipeline of talent. I call these two requirements:
and
Before I discuss each of those outcomes, however, it’s important to explain why relationships are needed at all in today’s candidate rich environment.
The U.S. Department of Labor Statistics reports that at any given time, just 16 percent of the American workforce is in transition. These individuals are active job seekers and, in many cases, good candidates for our openings. While they don’t need a relationship to apply, however, the other 84 percent of the workforce does. That group represents the so-called passive population, one that is rich in the hardest-to-find skills and “A” level performers. These individuals are almost always employed, so in order to recruit them we must convince them to do the one thing we humans most hate to do: change. We have to persuade them to go from the devil they know – their current boss, employer and commute – to the devil they don’t know – a new boss, employer and commute. And, the single best way to do that is with a relationship – a connection based on familiarity and trust.
Blink and Red Shirt Relationships
How do you build familiarity and trust in the blink of an eye? Whether you’re using LinkedIn, Facebook or a new technology like Jobfox Boost, the key is to message like a headhunter. You must transform your network of prospects into a network of trusted collaborators almost instantaneously. In the space of a single message, you must convince those prospects that you are someone they can count on to help advance their career.
To do that, your messages must provide the right information in the right way.
To build red shirt relationships, in contrast, you have to message like a mentor. You want to build enduring relationships so your network doesn’t experience the attrition that plagues so many pipelines, especially those populated with the best prospects. And, enduring relationships are forged with familiarity and trust that linger:
You can build lingering familiarity in two ways:
You can build lingering trust in two ways, as well:
Social recruiting has become an important new tactic in the War for the Best Talent. To deploy it successfully, however, an organization must both build and use talent networks effectively. The former is accomplished with the science of social recruiting. The latter depends upon its art.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
P.S. Please tell your coworkers and friends about WEDDLE’s Newsletter. They’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness, and so will we.
Become an “A” Level Recruiter
You need the best resources to do your best work as a recruiter. No matter how good you are, if you don’t have the right tools, your performance will be undermined.
What are the best Resources for Recruiting Success? They are:
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Cast Your Vote for …
… the best employment sites on the Web!
Each year, WEDDLE’s conducts an open poll to determine which job boards, social media sites and career portals are considered the elite of their industry, according to the toughest judges on the planet. That would be YOU, the users of those sites.
At the end of each year, the the 30 sites with the most votes are recognized as the User’s Choice Award winners. It is not, admittedly, a statistically valid selection process, but it does clearly measure the intensity of support sites have among their customers. And, as the only accolade in which actual users – recruiters and jobs seekers – select the winners, the awards are among the most coveted online in e-commerce.
So, let the world know your choices for the best employment sites on the Web. Click here to cast your ballot for WEDDLE’s 2012 User’s Choice Award winners.