Social Media Platforms: The New Go-To Place for Recruiters

– Cheran Chandrasekaran, CEO, Infoview

Regardless of the growth stage that an enterprise is in, the fact that employees are the cornerstones on which the past, present and future of any company rests upon is a long-established truth. But if you’re an employer on the look-out for potential talent to bolster your ranks, you’re not alone. Every business, from start-ups to established business ventures, seek the best and the brightest within their ranks to fuel their success story. As if competing against rival businesses was not a task in itself, you now need to battle with hundreds and thousands of competitors over every human resource that you want for your organisation. The pressure is enough to make you tap every resource you know and invest heavily in head-hunting to find the best out of the existing talent pool. The endeavour may look like discovering the inconspicuous nail in a hay stack. What employers have not yet realised is that an entire network of job seekers is at their ready disposal if only they are to look in to the right place i.e Social Media platforms.
Surprised much? Don’t be. Social Media platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and StumbleUpon have emerged as the major talent database for employers looking for professionals to hire. With 75 Million users on LinkedIn and 500 Million users on Facebook, social media platforms offer employers an ocean full of unearthed pearls to choose from. So popular has the trend been with the recruiters that it has led to the development of several web-based applications called Social Recruitment Tools which can optimise applicant engagement and hiring through Social Media channels.
How social media aids recruitment
But why has the trend changed, and that too so dramatically? Like everything else, blame it all on the internet. With the recent explosive penetration of digital devices and high consumer internet adoption rates, it would be tough not to. You can inform potential job employees about upcoming job openings through your social media channels, who also allow professionals to follow a particular job in your business. There are even industry and location specific groups which see many prospective applicants browsing through various openings in their area of interests. With young Indian professionals who are always seamlessly connected to one another and everyone else, Social Media has emerged as a veritable magic wand in the hands of recruiters, matching their recruitment needs adequately in terms of outreach and impact.
However, Social Media tools require careful handling to optimise their functionality. A recruiter can no longer be content with just posting a job to think his or her task is completed. Attracting talented individuals in this day and age of information overload requires a seamless blend of interaction and engagement to hold user attention. What’s more, create an attractive enough campaign and you may find your job vacancy shared by individuals amongst their own social circles without any prompts. This increases the campaign’s reach to a larger audience base at a fraction of the cost of traditional mediums. And since sharing and supporting ideas has become the new order among Internet users, why not use it to power your own recruitment drive?
Recruitment is no longer just about what the applicant can offer the company, it is also increasingly about what the company in turn offers the employee; personalised interaction through Social Media is the opening gambit in the game to attract potential employees. Managers and recruiters no longer open Facebook or Twitter to change their statuses; they do so to scan the talent pool for the best fit for their organisation. So forget the age-old practices of posting a job vacancy in newspapers and scouring job fairs for potential employees, Social Media recruitment has very much arrived and is here to stay for a long, long time.