Are You Slow to Embrace Social Media?
A recent artilce by Ira Wolf on BizMore.com entitled Why Many Businesses Are Slow to Embrace Social Media talks about seven different levels of social media engagement a company can be involved in. The article lists the levels of participation as anywhere from “inactive” to “creator.”
I see some great parallels to this chart and social media recruiting. Where does your organization’s participation in social media recruiting stack up? Do you avoid it like the plague or does your strategy include creating content to attract candidates. Let’s have a look at the levels proposed by Mr. Wolf’s article and connect the dots to recruitment.
Inactives – This group is an organization that has no social media presence. You don’t tweet, participate on LinkedIn, post jobs to Facebook…nothing.
Spectators – Spectators are not as fearful as inactives, but they haven’t taken a step themselves in participating. A spectator might search #jobs on Twitter, read recruitment blogs, and wish they could have a cool YouTube recruiting channel. However, the spectator is yet to create anything or contribute to employment conversations.
Joiners – This group is like my mom…she has a Facebook page and looks at the pictures of my kid, but she doesn’t post her own pictures. If you are a recruitment joiner, you have probably created a LinkedIn profile but it’s never been updated. You might have a Twitter account, but you are yet to send any relevant tweets. A joiner’s WordPress blog probably still says, “Hello World” on the homepage.
Collectors – So collectors are a little more active than my mom. In recruiting terms, a collector will follow lots of recruitment related Twitter accounts, subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds from recruiting blogs and look at tons of LinkedIn profiles. However, they are still yet to post a job on Twitter or send any InMails to a prospective candidate. This is one step away from actively participating on social media recruitment.
Critics - So the critics group might be the group that frustrates me the most. Critics are eager enough to include both good and bad feedback to forums etc., but still not helping anyone get a job or fill any vacant reqs. These folks are big time consumers of social media content related to recruiting, but still haven’t yet done it themselves.
Conversationalists – Ok…now we are starting to meet some social media recruiters. The conversationalist group does just have a Twitter account, they post job announcements on it and use the #jobs hashtag. These folks probably have an active LinkedIn profile and use the tool to source or screen candidates. A conversationalist might also have or moderate a corporate Facebook presence. I imagine that this group makes up the largest chunk of active social media recruiters today. Conversationalists have conversations which is key to recruiting. They use social tools that they have at their disposal to find quality hires.
Creators – The last and most engaged group of social recruiters is the creators. Not only do creators have Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts, but they also likely publish thier own blog or write for the corporate blog. Creators also contribute videos, podcasts, interviews, etc. to their organization’s talent community. This group is by far the most active and probably get the best results from social tools. There is a pretty good chance that if you are reading this blog you are a creator, not just a conversationalist. It will be interesting to see what new tools become available for the creators in the coming years. The early adapters will always be the most engaged and help drive these technologies forward into the mainstream.
So, where do you find yourself on this spectrum? Chances are you are not inactive as you are currently reading a blog. Yet, that doesn’t mean you are actively creating your own presence on the social web.
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