News about Social Media in the World of Recruitment.

• February 8, 2010


• 2 Comments


• Admin

Make Hires; Encourage Employees to use Social Media as an Employee Referral Tool

About a week ago, I saw a tweet from one of my friends who I follow on Twitter announcing that the web strategy agency he works for was looking for a new programmer with CMS and Ruby experience. I saw this tweet and instantly remembered that another one of my friends who is a stud programmer is currently looking for a better job. I forwarded him the tweet, he reached out to my friend and a connection was made. Within a week, friend number two was in with friend number one’s boss interviewing for the job.

At its very core, this is the power of social media. One person used his social network for help him solve a problem. The problem in this particular case was to find a new employee. Because of this person’s action, he has a great candidate interviewing for the job that his organization got for free.

What can be learned from this example? I think the moral is that social media just simply works for recruiting. In this case, the company looking for a new worker is a small, 20 person ad agency. My buddy was able to quickly and effectively impact his company by finding a qualified new employee by simply tweeting about it. This is very simple when the organization is small. But what if you were a large business with constant hiring needs across the nation?

Many, if not most, large companies have an Employee Referral Program (ERP) where employees that recommend a candidate for an open position get a referral bonus of anywhere between $100 – $5000 if that referral is hired. I am personally a big fan of ERPs as I have recommended three of my own friends for jobs with my organization and have reaped a nice sized cash bonus for each.

If an organization has an ERP, there is a pretty good chance that (engaged) employees know about it and keep it in mind when new jobs come open. Yet, even the most engaged employee can’t know of every opening when it comes open, or for that matter, realize they know someone that might be qualified for every opening at the company. This especially true for companies that have say more than 500 employees.

So what do we do with this? Let me offer a couple of take-aways.

1. Companies should empower employees to use social media to connect their social networks with job opening within the company. I use the word ‘empower’ very much on purpose here. Today, many companies discourage employees from using social media sites at work. In many instances this is understandable as some companies see social media network as time wasters. Yet, if a company can engage its employee base enough that the employees want to share their work environment with people they know and like, there should be no worry about said employees wasting time. They are in reality being very productive.

Another concern that some companies have is that the employees don’t always represent themselves on social networks the way the company wants to be represented. Here is a time when selecting certain social media tools (i.e. LinkedIn or Twitter instead of MySpace) might be appropriate. An organization may pride themselves on the professional manner in which their employees present themselves to customers only to see that certain employees post less than flattering things on their various social media profiles.

Having said all this, I still think companies should encourage their employees to reach out to their networks to find quality candidates. There are a couple of things that a concerned company can do to make sure the right image is being put out there. Human Resources departments can send out best practices memos to employees both extolling the virtues of participating in an ERP and reminding them that they should be professional when representing the company. Secondly, a company can arm its employees with tools to best use their social networks to participare in the ERP.

2. Companies should give employees tools to help use social media in ERP programs. Today, there are various tools a company can use to help its employees leverage their networks. One simple suggestion is the use of retweeting. A retweet is when a Twitter user shares a tweet that another Twitter user has already put out on Twitter. If a company tweets and open position, it should encourage Twitter users internally to retweet these recruiting announcements.

Companies can also use LinkedIn similarly. HR should be an active participant on a company’s LinkedIn company group page. From this page, HR can tell its internal stakeholders about opening they can announce to the stakeholder’s LinkedIn network.

Another very cool tool for sharing an ERP program is TMP’s Work With Me Facebook widget. This widget allows a company to provide its employees with a corporately sponsored Facebook widget that shares job opening automatically on an employees Facebook page. This tool is great as it takes the work away from the individual employees and in the hands of the people responsible for hiring.

There are many options to choose when looking to use social media to extend the reach of a corporate Employee Referral Program. Each company has a unique culture and a unique set of needs though, so whatever strategy is chosen it should fit the particular company. Today, the largest lead networks are not meeting on Wednesday mornings at the Lions Club. They meet all day, every day online. To get the most out of an ERP, an organization must trust its employees to get the message out using the tools popular today.

Promote

If you enjoyed reading this article, help let the world know about it by sharing it on your favorite social networking site

• Twitter
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook

Comments

Say Something

Name:

Email:

Website:

Comments: