The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of 140 Characters
By: Vitaly Latush
It is easy to come across the recommendations that pitch the same recipe to approaching Gen Y. Here is the gist:
First thing that you have to remember – Millennials will not read anything that exceeds the size of a tweet. That is why you recruiting message must fit into 140 characters or no one will bother. At the very least your message has to be split into small pieces (see above) and carefully sprinkled on top of a good deal of entertaining content. Suggestions include: sharing videos showcasing office gaming room, posting group photos of happily laughing employees, bragging about whose number of “Likes” is bigger, etc. Follow these rules and success is inevitable…
It would be funny if these ideas were not gaining momentum lately. Let’s take a moment to think about the implications.
First and foremost, this stereotype is quite unfair to many capable people of the Millennial generation. The popularity of social media simply cannot be used to define the entire social group. Gen Y is as diverse as any other generation and while it’s true that some Millennials are happy not to read anything longer than tweet, the question is: are you really after these people?
Are you really interested in people who made a choice not to make it beyond 140 characters?
I am not. For many obvious reasons, which I am not going to list here. But here’s the catch – because this idea is gaining momentum, Millennials who do not suffer from this new form of self-induced ADD can find themselves at a disadvantage competing in this framework, which will result in lower efficiency of the recruiting efforts. And Millennials will not be to blame for the low signal to noise ratio in your recruiting campaigns. You know, what goes around comes around.
I think this misconception stems from the fact that people fail to realize the difference between the marketing and recruiting environments. Don’t get me wrong: Twitter is a powerful information distribution tool that can be very useful. But let’s avoid “if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail” syndrome.
Effective marketing environment is not the same as effective recruiting environment.
Use the information distribution channels to bring people to the environment that is specifically designed to make your recruiting efforts more efficient, to give capable professionals more reasons to join your team, to interact, to collaborate, and to see beyond resume. The specific choice may depend on your hiring needs and your personal preferences. Just don’t do recruiting in a marketing channel – use each tool for what it was designed for.
With all the talk about social recruiting and how it’s going to change everything the simple truth is that social media were not designed to be a recruiting platform. And as soon as you accept it you will be able to use them much more effectively in your recruiting strategies rather than wasting your time trying to fit your recruiting message into 140 characters.
Vitaly Latush is a founder of BrightMesh – the knowledge network with naturally integrated recruiting tools creating a dynamic, collaborative hiring environment. Feel free to contact Vitaly if you are interested in innovations in this field.
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