|
|
How to use Twitter to Recruit
As Twitter grows faster the speed of light, companies, recruiters and business owners are discovering new and useful business functions for the micro-blogging world. Massive layoffs across several sectors have increased the number of job hunters. Despite this numerical increase, however, the recruiter’s job hasn't become any easier.
Quite the opposite J
Recruiter’s note that very few of the résumés that inundate their Inboxes these days are from qualified candidates. Twitter is a tool that helps recruiters quickly identify the right talent; using social media tools, such as Twitter, for recruitment may no longer be an optional extra. Businesses may have to do it just to stay in the game. Job boards are a good way to source active candidates, however social media provides a new way to engage with potential employees – and it's free. For starters, recruiters should work on building a brand-related Twitter profile. "Follow key players in your industry, who are interested in your company's news."
A Sweet-Tweet way to begin
Start Tweeting about your company and who you are, but not just as a recruiter, but someone who gets the micro-blogging. Then, slowly aggregate followers in your industry interested in what your company has to say The only successful way to use Twitter is to allow your profile to build up over time – you have to be an active Tweeter and update your profile continuously and to use it as a teaching tool as well show a part of humor as well. There are currently 7 million users on Twitter and that number is growing daily.
By sharing company news – such as new products or industry best practices (sharing knowledge) – you will naturally make both passive and active candidates aware of reasons why they might like to work at your company. Use Twitter to market your brand to potential candidates why? You may ask, well Brand is communicated through the messages you broadcast, right? Everyone on your "followers" list had opted to be there, so anything you post about jobs is seen by active, social people in your industry who may directly respond or share that message with other well-connected users.
Many Tweeters are actively engaged in the micro-blogging forum and aren't afraid to 'retweet' or 'RT' an important message on their own page – if they feel their followers may benefit; which is an awesome tool to incorporate in. The only drawback to the Twitter strategy is it is a long process, this is in a social atmosphere!. You will need to find the time to develop your online brand, identify followers and understand how to integrate Twitter in your social media marketing mix. The process can be overwhelming and placing a skilled person in charge of the company's Twitter account can be a useful way to manage messages and relationships with followers.
TOP Tweets/Tweeters
By building an online profile and reaching out to users with similar Tweets, a company or recruitment can easily pinpoint other Tweeters with similar interests and goals. An established brand online helps you pull in passive candidates Everyone is looking for a job – even if they're not actively looking then Twitter helps companies perform data mining, initiate a dialogue and contact candidates in a less intimidating way than cold calling and it creates the trust between the two parties. Recruiters should not only consider people who follow them, but should also use free sourcing tools, which search key words to find new people. The micro-blog allows recruiters to literally view on potential candidates and find out if they are who they say they are care about the industry.
Despite the search advantages of Twitter, many recruiters still prefer to look through résumés that find their way to their desk or come in through the companies ATS. That's mainly because recruiters believe, wrongly, that social media is a more time consuming social tool. While searching for people in your industry and doing additional research on the person with LinkedIn, blogging or Facebook (yes, even Facebook), may take a bit of extra work, response times on Twitter are usually much faster due to “what are you doing right now and OR the instant direct messaging.
Twitter on its own is usually not enough to find out about a candidate – but it's a great place to start and create the conversation. Just like the LinkedIn there are Tweeters who use the forum to gain hits on their Web pages, and who follow thousands of people regardless of industry or interests. Is this useful? To some yes and to others no, however think of this: When someone follows you, it takes a few minutes to check out three things to find out if they're worth researching further: their profile, their tweets and their URL. These three indicators should tell you a lot about a person and whether or not you want to follow them.
For instance, if the URL goes to a black hole or a cookbook blog, they're not worth following, unless you are looking for a good recipe J In general, Tweeters are usually savvier than folk on other Web 2.0 apps. As Twitter is a fairly young application, you know they're up on technology and actively engaged in dialogues about your industry.
Tweeting about YOUR job postings
The flip side to actively searching for candidates is to also tweet about job opportunities at your company, which will have many users finding you through keyword searches. You can also use a new Twitter application called Tweet –A-Job www.tweetajob.com pretty cool. Twitter is a smaller arena for job hunters to search through and a free tool for companies to take advantage of. And many find it more appealing to respond to a Twitter job posting, rather than a job board because it allows users to associate the posting with a real face and get to know the recruiter. Twitter puts the humanity back into recruiting.
There are currently hundreds of recruiters already on Twitter so it is important to add a categorization, such as "Marketing" or "IT" to your profile name or bio to make sure the right types of job-seekers are finding your profile and job postings. WARNING…I am totally against posting only job information. Businesses need to develop their online identity by posting about you, news, or employee promotions so candidates get a holistic view of the company. Get creative with Twitter. Why not post a link to a YouTube video with a employee testimonial It is also a great tool to stay in touch and continue to grow your relationship with company alumni and keep them up to date on news. When the economy picks up – you may want these people back."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment