Companies that will have the greatest success leveraging social media for recruiting will be ones that start inside, where the leadership actively encourages/guides their current employees to connect internally and externally using social media (… or at the very least avert their eyes and don’t block social networks).  Employees should be the most qualified, the most credible, and the best source of information about your company culture, the employment experience and why someone would want to work for you.  By enabling and distributing their stories across the web – companies create a powerhouse of information for job seekers considering working for your company.

You pride yourself on making good hiring decisions, so since you hired them, you should be able to trust them as professionals (I know this still makes many companies uncomfortable, but let’s start with this premise, and maybe that you even already have a social media policy).  So how do you get Employees to talk about their experience online? Educate them.

Are Internal Communications and Recruiting a secret OR not so secret alliance in your company?

In many companies Internal Communications often falls under Marketing or Corporate Comm (and sometimes HR), while Recruitment or Talent Acquisition falls squarely under HR. In my experience, Internal Communications is rarely present at Employer Brand/Recruitment Marketing related meetings (unless their presence is specifically requested). I’ve also observed amazing Internal/Employee Communication Chats that happen all the time on Twitter – but I rarely see any peeps from the recruitment side participating.

Maybe my observations are wrong — but this apparent separation seems to block what could be a friendship made in heaven. Why? From a recent post on The BrandBuilder Blog, Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new Social Business:

Employees of P2P (People to People) businesses don’t hate their jobs. Why? Because they are empowered by their management team to collaborate with employees and the communities they touch. As a result of being  clearly aware of their operational boundaries and because they receive ongoing, multilateral support from their organization, they know how to act professionally when dealing with the public.

Proactively educating employees through internal communications is a critical component to successfully using social media for recruiting.  Employees need to know where/how to help if you want their help listening and responding online.  Continually monitor your online reputation and then let employees know where conversations are happening about you as an employer (hint: Indeed Forums; GlassDoor Reviews; Vault; JobVent). Solicit their support in leaving their own honest reviews, responding and commenting on other reviews, answering job seeker questions etc.

Use your Intranet, email, SMS etc to regularly communicate to your employees things they can do online such as:

1. Where they can help answer your candidates questions (maybe even create a forum specifically for this purpose on your career web site)
2. Discuss why their work for your company, or their latest project
3. Post pictures and videos from Company Events
4. Post reviews and information about you
5. Tweet or contribute to the company facebook fan page (become a “fan” even )

Align with Internal Comms to create an Army of Davids out of your employees, guide them to tell their/your story via social media, and watch your social recruiting machine flourish.

So who’s doing this well?

- Shannon

Shannon co-authors EXCELER8ion with her other half Julian Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Shannon is a regular speaker in the HR & Talent Acquisition space where she’s known for her work in social media and integrated digital engagement. By day Shannon works at a Recruitment Marketing Agency.

a

At work a few weeks ago, I was asked to answer questions for an upcoming InsideCRM story on the promise of Web 2.0 technologies for human resource departments looking to make internal changes. My focus is really on employer branding and the candidate/employee experience, so I have no idea if my input was ever used, but thought I would post my responses here on EXCELER8ion as well to see what our little community has to say. How would you answer these questions?

1. How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?
2. What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?
3. What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?
4. Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?

Here are my responses:

How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?

Web 2.0 is a term used to describe the tools that people are increasingly using to connect to one another and share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and more. The information that is shared can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. This ‘user-generated content’ and the web sites that contain it are often grouped into the term “Social Computing” or Web 2.0 web sites. Popular social mediums include social networking web sites that allow two-way communication, message boards, as well as videocasts and podcasts, blogs, wikis, social search and tagging, and rss are connecting people and distributing information in new and efficient ways.

What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?

Utilizing the web 2.0 principles of authenticity, collaboration and participation – solutions are being developed at a rapid pace to allow companies to easily incorporate real first hand stories into their career web site and within social networking groups such as those on facebook. As compared to more traditional offerings, web 2.0 is about communicating, not advertising. Creating, publishing and distributing authentic information about an organization creates opportunities and forums through which to directly connect with customers, employers, or talent. Utilizing these principles will introduce a level of transparency, authenticity, and credibility into how an employer is perceived. Building employee social networks or participating in social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and facebook, allow companies to communicate with customers and candidates where they already spend time online.

What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?

The authentic information that is generated and shared through social web sites can powerfully influence the overall perception of a company and give the audience, customers, as well as potential job candidates, a deeper and real understanding of an organization as an employer – greatly affect their consumer and employer brand. Concepts such as Social Search, tagging and ranking could be introduced into the career site. Social search results that are validated by the candidate community help to highlight the pages that they found most useful:

• Tagging: Candidates could tag content themselves based on words that they would use to describe the content. It will create “bottom up” categorization, which will be more relevant to the candidate community.
• Audience Rankings: Candidates rate the importance of content, pages, announcements or news, which will make it simpler for other candidate to uncover what is important and create a mechanism to provide feedback to the employer regarding where the career site user interests really lie.

HR specifically would benefit from utilizing evolving applications and tools that use concepts from web 2.0 such as social bookmarking and social networking to enable the sharing of information; collaboration; sharing information across different units and to help the important information bubble to the top – but within a secure framework.

New ‘web 2.0’ mash-up technologies are enabling the aggregation of data from multiple data sources, saving time for the HR staff by putting their most important information and common reporting tasks at their fingertips and adding insight to their most important work in order to work facilitate better decision making processes. Such data aggregation mash-up tools help bring disparate data point together (ATS Metrics; Job Board Metrics; Career Site metrics; Employee Research Data etc) and summarize existing data into useful new forms that promote analysis and informed action.

Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?

When making a career choice, candidates are searching for real “behind the scenes” information about a potential employer and they are often willing to spend the time to look for it. Web 2.0 tools and principles enable employers to make there career site that authentically communicates their employer brand and provides a window into the “employee-experience”. It has never been easier to literally “show” candidates the employee-experience by incorporating social features into the corporate career web site. Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep.

a

Hat Tip: Geek And Poke

a