Q&A with Facebook’s Recruiting Lead Richard Cho: Social Media for Demand Generation versus Demand Fulfillment
By: Michael O’Dell
This week at ERE’s #SocialRecruiting Summit in Minneapolis, Facebook.com’s recruiting lead, Richard Cho, lead a break-out session about using social media tools for demand generation (DemandGen) versus for demand fulfillment (DemandFul). His session was intriguing and sparked quite a bit of interest in the audience. I caught up with Richard this week to drill down a little deeper into the subject.
Many recruiters interested in social recruitment want the practice to become the sole source of making hires for their organizations. There is a big group of recruiters who want to make the whole recruitment process free too. They profess that social media could become the means to their end. But can it really happen? I don’t think so, neither does Richard Cho. Cho takes a very pragmatic and realistic view of how companies can use social media tools (like his own Facebook) as a recruitment demand generation tool. However, his is just as practical about getting job seekers over the hump from seekers to applicants. Here are his thoughts:
Social media is great for recruitment demand generation
To explain what he means Cho uses the example of consumer brand demand generation for Adidas with the decision funnel. The decision funnel is a well known B-school tool to show how people make decisions; whether it is a purchase decision or career decision.
Brand Discovery – Brands like Adidas use all sorts of advertising and marketing mediums to expose consumers to the Adidas brand. When a consumer sees the Adidas brand, they immediately form an opinion or have some idea of what that brand represents based on previous exposure. When Richard mentioned the Adidas brand, I immediately thought of Glee’s Cheerios coach Sue Sylvester’s unending parade of Adidas track suits (honest). 
Brand Affinity – After repeated exposure to the Adidas brand, consumers start thinking of it as a viable option for their sporting goods needs. When a consumer finally has a need, brand affinity makes that consumer ask the question, “Where is that brand sold?”
Brand Decision – Later in the process, the buyer knows about the brand, knows where to get it and finally has made the decision to make a purchase. At this point, the funnel takes its turn from DemandGen to DemandFul and that’s where social media won’t best serve recruiters.
So what does this all mean? Let’s put the decision funnel into social recruitment terms. A company’s presence and exposure in any variety of social platforms helps (or hurts) in the brand discovery process. This may take the form of a Corporate Careers page of Facebook, a recruiting Twitter handle, or a company page on LinkedIn. From these culture brand outposts, many job seekers get their first exposure to the career opportunities available to them.
A job seeker may also know someone who works for your organization and form decisions about the company that way. Cho points out that, “How you affiliate yourself with a job often happens to be through a person you know and respect.” In other words, my group of Facebook friends may have had their entire opinion of the company I work for shaped by what I do and say about it in my status updates, tweets, and blog posts. This is brand affinity.
In the Adidas example Cho says that one of his friends might see that he bought a pair on Adidas golf shoes on Facebook. That friend knows that Richard is a good golfer and may respect his opinion of footwear. So out of the hundreds of options in golf shoes, Richard’s friend now has at least one (positive or negative) data point to make a buying decision on in the future.
Finally we come to brand decision. At some time or another in any passive or active job seeker’s job search a do-or-die moment is reached. The job seeker determines whether or not to apply for a job with company X. This is the decision. Has your organization’s presence in social media positively affected that job seekers opinion of your company or have you left them lacking?
At this point we go from the generation part of the funnel to fulfillment. How can social media help in demand fulfillment? Well it really can’t. Much to the chagrin of many pro-social media recruiters, social tools cannot take the place of your ATS, the application process or the vacancy announcement. These tools are requisite in the employment process. As much as some would desire, social tools can’t take the place of job announcements. Even a 1200 employee company like Facebook who has a good cadre of recruiters (at 75) for its size cannot hope to replace the traditional tools for DemandFul. Facebook has some 40 opening in sales and marketing alone today. The company can’t expect its team of recruiters to have so many solid prospect relationships that they can just reach out to individual job seekers when a job comes available. They need their careers site to help facilitate the move from interest to action.
Social media can help with this transition piece. Food services company Sodexo does a good job with this. Sodexo has one of industry’s best online talent communities to keep would be job seekers engaged when both actively and passively seeking employment. But what they do to bridge the gap between applying and not applying is genius. Richard Cho says, “They get it.” Job seekers who view one of the company’s job postings on job boards like CareerBuilder.com get two apply options…Apply Now and Not Ready Yet. As Cho relates, the recruitment process is like getting married. He says, “Popping the question at the right time is key.” Sodexo gets this too. By directing job seekers who are not quite ready to commit from traditional recruitment media to their social talent community, Sodexo is able to maintain that courting relationship. They don’t pose an ultimatum for the would-be employee. Instead, Sodexo says let’s get to know each other a little better. According to Cho, that’s what social media should do.
Cho also offers a couple of nuggets as best practices:
1. Let job seekers test the waters.
The use of a Company Careers Facebook page may not be the best way to attract passive candidate (or those unhappy in their current employment). Since many Facebook users are friends with their bosses and colleagues, most will be uncomfortable telling their professional circles that they “Like” your company’s careers. Instead Cho suggests an alternative. Give them the option to “Like” your company’s culture brand page. Cho points out the “Life at Google” Facebook page. Ostensibly, this page is nothing more than a careers page. However, the title won’t scare users from liking it. Google Careers screams “Hey I want to work at Google.” This culture page merely says you are interested in what this company is all about.
2. Use Twitter for courtship unless your job seeker base already wants to get married.
Use your corporate Twitter handle to dispense culture gems to job seekers. Don’t just ask them to apply, apply, apply. He notes one big example, again via Google. Google has done such a good job of espousing the power of their brand, that once job seekers find @GoogleJobs on Twitter, they are ready to take the plunge.
3. Think Tiger Woods.
Before his sex scandal what did consumers think of when they applied a brand image of Nike to Tiger Woods? Performance, endurance, perfection, style. Does your social media representation of your employment brand produce good connotations like this?
4. Empower an army of employees that can act as social advocates for your brand.
Don’t just rely on the recruitment department to be the social media voice of your employment brand. Teach your employees the best way to interact online for the benefit of your referral program. Social connections are probably used to seeing someone complain about their boss online, but how often do they see an employee rave about your company’s mission statement, technical achievements, etc.?
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Comments
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Omowale Casselle and Michael O'Dell, Michael O'Dell. Michael O'Dell said: @chorichard: Thanks for the interview. http://bit.ly/btSbrE [...]
I am an Executive Recruiter in the UK and naturally hope that Social Media remains a Demand Generation process as a large part of my role is to transform that generation into fulfilment. My organisation works with clients using Social Media as a truly proactive approach to recruitment where the attraction of talent is based on the premise that if you start recruiting before you have a need you will have time to identify the very best individuals and then build a relationship with them. This has produced some fantastic results and given clients access to talent they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to using the more traditional recruitment methods. It has also given them an opportunity to really sell their employer brands and the opportunities they can offer.