Talent Tip # 17: The Social Networking Shift in Recruiting

Brought to you by SourceRight Solutions

In a highly competitive and constantly changing labor market, recruiters need to redefine the hiring process and help streamline the HR function. As labor markets evolve, successful hiring companies will make use of social networking to help innovate their talent management strategies.

Social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are providing highly effective avenues to encourage global conversations in the recruiting space. There are several ways hiring companies can make use of these social networking platforms:

1. Elevate their brand awareness. Social media sites enable organizations to promote their brand to a broad range of prospective employees, locally, regionally and globally.


2. Promote transparency. Social media sites allow hiring organizations to share news feeds and critical company updates with a global audience.


3. Interact with prospective candidates. Social media networks are especially useful for passive candidate recruiting, which will be a primary focus for companies as the economy starts to rebound and they need to scale up quickly.


4. Identify candidates. Organizations across all sectors will be faced with a declining labor pool – according to the Department of Labor Statistics, 24 million people will exit the U.S. labor pool by 2010. Recruiting teams will need to incorporate social networking into their sourcing strategy, particularly for “hard-to-fill” and “high-priority” positions.
   

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) – one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing practices in HR today – can boost hiring companies’ leverage of social media in these volatile hiring times. Working with an RPO provider can bring a unique ability to utilize these tools; the provider’s placement across market segments and a wide variety of organizations enable them to gain insight and expose key trends in the market not always available in-house. RPO providers are leading the conversation on post-recessionary hiring and how companies can successfully deal with the challenges that this new hiring landscape will present.