Law firms are leading the way in using social media to build online communities of potential new recruits, according to the social recruiting platform BraveNewTalent.com.
BraveNewTalent, which brings candidates and employers together via a social network, has signed three top 20 law firms - Eversheds, Pinsent Masons and Allen & Overy - to its service in recent months. CEO Lucian Tarnowski says, “Law firms recognise that building relationships early on with potential recruits will help them secure the highest quality candidates. Recruitment is becoming more proactive than reactive and engagement with future talent is more important than ever. This is ideal for the legal sector as the recruitment process normally begins in an undergraduate’s second year and a professional social network provides the perfect environment for firms and potential recruits to get to know each other.”
Commercial law firm Pinsent Masons has recently started using social recruiting. Edward Walker, Graduate Recruitment Manager, said, “We are always looking for new ways to attract the highest quality candidates, especially as we are finding that more traditional advertising methods no longer have the impact they did in the past. BraveNewTalent is helping us identify and engage with these candidates and then bring them all together in one place. Having made the initial contact with them, the aim is to build a meaningful relationship through an on-going and genuinely two-way conversation, something BraveNewTalent will allow us to do.
We anticipate that social recruitment will both save us time and lower our average cost per hire.”
A recent survey* concluded that graduates would advise law firms to stay away from traditional social media sites. Lucian Tarnowski commented, “This survey echoes what we’ve been hearing from students for a long time regarding employers on Facebook. They don’t want them looking at their photographs or seeing what groups they’ve joined in an attempt to engage. There is growing demand for professional sites that can facilitate these interactions and take the conversations away from sites like Facebook.”
Recent research by the Association of Graduate Recruiters** found that 79% of its members are looking to use web technologies for recruitment. According to BraveNewTalent this paves the way for a new era of social recruiting where relationships are built online over time and recruits join with a better understanding and knowledge of their new employers.
Caroline Lindner, Graduate Recruitment Manager from Allen & Overy, another firm that has adopted social recruitment, supports this view, “We have been using BraveNewTalent and find it to be a really effective way of connecting with our candidates in a professional environment.”
For more information about BraveNewTalent and social recruitment call 020 7287 0330 or visit BraveNewTalent.com