In case you havenít heard, the latest craze to hit the Internet is something called social networking. Itís a service offered at such sites at Friendster.com, Itsnotwhatyouknow.com, and Ryze (www.ryze.com).
Social networking uses technology to help people make connections with other people who are friends with their friends. If genealogy traces the ancestors you never knew, social networking (at least as it is practiced online) traces the contacts you never knew you had. At Friendster.com, for example, you sign up for the service by filling out a form (with self-descriptive information) and linking that form to all of your friends. They, in turn, do the same thing which brings their friends into your network and your friends into theirs. Do that with 100 friends, Friendster claims, and youíll have 800,000 people with whom you can connect.
Can social networking help recruiters connect with high quality candidates? Well Ö sort of. Networking, after all, remains a key component of candidate sourcing, even on the Internet. Indeed, as my long-time readers know, I believe cyber-networking or e-networking is the most underrated aspect on online recruiting and the one with the greatest potential for advancing an organizationís position in the War for the Best Talent.
How does e-networking work? Just as it does in the real world. You connect with prospective candidates and develop relationships with them through personal interactions. In the real world, those interactions are typically one-on-one and face-to-face. On the Internet, they are one-on-many and occur via e-mail. Traditional networking usually takes place around business meetings or at the annual conferences and monthly get-togethers of professional and trade organizations; networking online, in contrast, takes place in the discussion forums and the bulletin boards of association, alumni organization and affinity group Web-sites. In the real world, youíre talking to a single prospect, while in cyberspace youíre writing to and reading posts from all of the participants in the virtual conversation.
In both cases, networking enables you to:
-find high quality prospects who (a) have not applied for one of your openings, (b) are not familiar with your organization and/or (c) may not even be looking for another opportunity;
-pre-qualify them or make an initial evaluation of their potential contribution to and fit with your organization; and
-pre-sell them or begin a private conversation (away from the meeting or online forum) where you endeavor to convince them that itís in their best interest to consider joining your organization.
Traditional networking, however, is both time consuming and limited in scope (after all, there are only so many one-on-one conversations you can have in a single day). By networking online, you can interact with hundreds, even thousands of prospects at one time and do so from the comfort of your office or even at home.
Now, donít misunderstand; Iím not saying you should stop your traditional networking. What I am saying is that you should start e-networking. And, that brings me back to Friendster.com and its fellow purveyors of social networking. While those sites can, indeed, put you in touch with other people, the lack of community communication among them essentially eliminates your ability to pre-qualify them. In other words, when prospects are speaking to their peers at association or trade sites, the interaction, itself, enables you to spot prospects and form opinions about their capabilities. Those early impressions need to be validated, of course, but they are infinitely more helpful than reading a couple of paragraphs about a person and peering at a photo (unless your real purpose is to find a date).
More importantly, why go to some other site to do your networking? Why go to Friendster or to an association or alumni site, for that matter, when you could interact with great prospects right in the comforts of your own Web-site? The answer to that question is the best kept secret in online recruiting. Iíll tell you, but youíll have to promise not to ell anyone else. Are we agreed?
O.K., hereís the secret. The single best way to win the War for the Best Talent online is to network at your own corporate career site. Thatís right. Create a discussion forum or bulletin board on your own site that stimulates, informs, entertains and educates the best and brightest in key career fields and they will come (and, even better, bring their friends and colleagues) by the hundreds or even thousands.
Huddle with the hiring managers who most need this talent and ask that they select ìAî level performers to moderate the forums and/or bulletin boards you set up on your site. Then, devote the first thirty minutes of your day to reading the posts to see who stands out and to interacting with those prospects privately to pre-qualify and pre-sell them. The return on that 2 hour investment each week will dramatically enhance the quality of the candidates you recruit and lower your cost of doing so.
Online networking works because top talent shares two unique attributes:
They like to hang out with their peers
and
They like to strut their stuff.
Yes, you can put those attributes to work for you at association, trade organization, alumni and certain affinity group sites. Networking at such locations can and does yield great prospects. But, using them means that you are competing with other recruiters who are also networking online. Bringing your networking ìin-house,î on the other hand, enables you to acquire its benefits privately and brands your organization as one that uniquely walks the talk when it comes to supporting top talent.
Thanks for Reading,
Peter Weddle
Can social networking help recruiters?
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