What’s Your Organization’s Social Recruiting Score

What’s Your Organization’s Social Recruiting Score

A recent post on the ERE.net website by Dr. John Sullivan titled, “Authenticity:  Assessing Whether Your Recruiting Messages are Effective” had a neat section about assessing your company’s social media recruitment initiatives.  I took the quiz for my company and did pretty well.  The only thing we really lack is a good presence in China!  Have a look at the assessment below and score your organization.  How well are you doing?

Assessing Your Social Media Initiatives

Corporations can’t control what people post on social media sites, even though they may try! Many companies today use social media profiles, much like they use their corporate website: just another place to blast generic corporate messages using one-way communications! They turn off the ability of profile visitors to comment, and in many cases, even limit the ability to submit messages to the profile administrator. These practices are so anti-authentic that if your organization is guilty of them, you should start this assessment with a negative 20 points.

Examine your social media initiatives using the following checklist. Tally your points to determine how authentic your efforts are.

  1. Corporate profile page (4 points) — your organization should have a profile page on each of the major social networking sites that service your target audience, including but not limited to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Qzone, and MySpace. If you set up such profiles, award yourself one point. If you do not restrict comments and wall posts, award yourself another point. If non-recruiting related employees, managers, and page visitors routinely comment on profile wall postings, award one point. If you assess your profile page using the checklist in part one of this article and score 16 or better, award yourself another point.
  2. Function/Group profiles (2 points) — if your organization has set up profile pages for each of the major functions/groups within the organization to “dialogue” with customers, applicants, and other stakeholders, award your effort one point. If you have dedicated individuals throughout the organization who post and respond to posts daily on each of the function/group pages, award your effort another point.
  3. Employee profiles (2 points) — if your organization actively encourages employees to establish profiles on social media sites and identify their company affiliation, award yourself one point. If you actively author social media posts designed for your employees to voluntarily share, add another point.
  4. Blog development (2 points) — if your organization actively encourages decision makers, managers, and employees to blog about their work experience and learning, award yourself one point. If your organization actively publicizes employee blogs by linking to them via social media posts, award an additional point.
  5. Driving visibility of social media (2 points) — does your organization drive visibility of social media efforts by linking to them from corporate maintained websites? If yes, award your efforts one point. If your organization also links to social media efforts in print via business cards, brochures, etc., award an additional point.
  6. Using groups to engage (2 point) — Even a Facebook page established for the finance function of an organization can become overwhelming if too many conversations occur at once. To ensure adequate focus and better interaction, add two points if your organization uses social media groups in addition to profiles to support specific audiences.
  7. Employee referral content/application (1 point) — if your organization has established content to support employee referral via social media or installed one of the applications available to support employee referral, award yourself one point.
  8. Use of video (1 point) — more videos are viewed online each day than searches conducted on Google. If your organization acknowledges the popularity of video and makes non-scripted communication available via video hosted externally on sites like YouTube, award yourself one point.
  9. Twitter (1 point) — while twitter can be a distraction, research shows that users sharing links among friends to other web-based content results in a significant increase in traffic to said content. If your organization uses Twitter (preferably via multiple accounts targeting specific audiences) to drive visibility of content, award yourself one point. If your organization uses Twitter as a market research tool to discover what people are chatting about, and actively seeks out talent to follow, award yourself two bonus points.
  10. LinkedIn (1 point) — having employees visible on LinkedIn can be a curse, as LinkedIn has become the defacto phonebook for recruiters, but it also provides individuals interested in learning more about the organization with opportunities to dialogue directly with those individuals most likely to be able to answer questions share stories about life at your organization. If your organization routinely supports individuals publishing and maintaining their LinkedIn profiles award yourself one point.

How authentic are your social media initiatives? If you scored:

14-18 You are a social media best practice firm, congrats!

9-13 You’ve got a solid foundation, but probably need more focus on supporting specific populations.

1-8 You are not there yet, chances are those profiles you have created are rather dusty!

How did you do?

Promote

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

Comments

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bonnie Cranmer and ForHireJobs.com, Michael O'Dell. Michael O'Dell said: What's your organization's social media recruitment score? 5 minute assessement. http://ow.ly/1DQxG #socialrecruiting #recruiting [...]

Say Something