How to
use Twitter to Recruit
As Twitter grows faster the speed of light, companies,
recruiters and business owners are discovering new and useful business
functions for the micro-blogging world. Massive layoffs across
several sectors have increased the number of job hunters. Despite this
numerical increase, however, the recruiter’s job hasn't become any
easier.
Quite the opposite J
Recruiter’s note that very few of the résumés that
inundate their Inboxes these days are from qualified candidates. Twitter is a
tool that helps recruiters quickly identify the right talent; using social
media tools, such as Twitter, for recruitment may no longer be an
optional extra. Businesses may have to do it just to stay in the game. Job
boards are a good way to source active candidates, however social media
provides a new way to engage with potential employees – and it's free.
For starters, recruiters should work on building a brand-related Twitter
profile. "Follow key players in your industry, who are interested in your
company's news."
A Sweet-Tweet way to begin
Start Tweeting about your company and who you are, but not just
as a recruiter, but someone who gets the micro-blogging. Then, slowly aggregate
followers in your industry interested in what your company has to say The only
successful way to use Twitter is to allow your profile to build up over time
– you have to be an active Tweeter and update your profile continuously
and to use it as a teaching tool as well show a part of humor as well. There
are currently 7 million users on Twitter and that number is growing daily.
By sharing company news – such as new products or industry
best practices (sharing knowledge) – you will naturally make both passive
and active candidates aware of reasons why they might like to work at your
company. Use Twitter to market your brand to potential candidates why? You may
ask, well Brand is communicated through the messages you broadcast, right?
Everyone on your "followers" list had opted to be there, so anything
you post about jobs is seen by active, social people in your industry who may
directly respond or share that message with other well-connected users.
Many Tweeters are actively engaged in the micro-blogging forum
and aren't afraid to 'retweet' or 'RT' an important message on their own page
– if they feel their followers may benefit; which is an awesome tool to
incorporate in. The only drawback to the Twitter strategy is it is a long
process, this is in a social atmosphere!. You will need to find the time to
develop your online brand, identify followers and understand how to integrate
Twitter in your social media marketing mix. The process can be overwhelming
and placing a skilled person in charge of the company's Twitter account can be
a useful way to manage messages and relationships with followers.
TOP Tweets/Tweeters
By building an online profile and reaching out to users with
similar Tweets, a company or recruitment can easily pinpoint other Tweeters
with similar interests and goals. An established brand online helps you pull
in passive candidates Everyone is looking for a job – even if they're not
actively looking then Twitter helps companies perform data mining, initiate a
dialogue and contact candidates in a less intimidating way than cold calling
and it creates the trust between the two parties. Recruiters should not only
consider people who follow them, but should also use free sourcing tools, which
search key words to find new people. The micro-blog allows recruiters to
literally view on potential candidates and find out if they are who they say
they are care about the industry.
Despite the search advantages of Twitter, many recruiters still
prefer to look through résumés that find their way to their desk or come in
through the companies ATS. That's mainly because recruiters believe,
wrongly, that social media is a more time consuming social tool. While
searching for people in your industry and doing additional research on the
person with LinkedIn, blogging or Facebook (yes, even Facebook), may take a bit
of extra work, response times on Twitter are usually much faster due to “what
are you doing right now and OR the instant direct messaging.
Twitter on its own is usually not enough to find out about a
candidate – but it's a great place to start and create the conversation.
Just like the LinkedIn there are Tweeters who use the forum to gain hits on
their Web pages, and who follow thousands of people regardless of industry or
interests. Is this useful? To some yes and to others no, however think of this:
When someone follows you, it takes a few minutes to check out three things to
find out if they're worth researching further: their profile, their tweets
and their URL. These three indicators should tell you a lot about a person
and whether or not you want to follow them.
For instance, if the URL goes to a black hole or a cookbook
blog, they're not worth following, unless you are looking for a good recipe J In
general, Tweeters are usually savvier than folk on other Web 2.0 apps. As
Twitter is a fairly young application, you know they're up on technology and
actively engaged in dialogues about your industry.
Tweeting about YOUR job postings
The flip side to actively searching for candidates is to also
tweet about job opportunities at your company, which will have many users
finding you through keyword searches. You can also use a new Twitter
application called Tweet –A-Job www.tweetajob.com
pretty cool. Twitter is a smaller arena for job hunters to search through and a
free tool for companies to take advantage of. And many find it more appealing
to respond to a Twitter job posting, rather than a job board because it allows
users to associate the posting with a real face and get to know the recruiter.
Twitter puts the humanity back into recruiting.
There are currently hundreds of recruiters already on Twitter so
it is important to add a categorization, such as "Marketing" or
"IT" to your profile name or bio to make sure the right types of
job-seekers are finding your profile and job postings. WARNING…I am
totally against posting only job information. Businesses need to develop their
online identity by posting about you, news, or employee promotions so
candidates get a holistic view of the company. Get creative with Twitter. Why
not post a link to a YouTube video with a employee testimonial It is also a
great tool to stay in touch and continue to grow your relationship with company
alumni and keep them up to date on news. When the economy picks up – you
may want these people back."
Comments [1]