Milkround Shines Spotlight on Social Recruiting and Generation Y

Milkround’s Social Recruiting & Gen Y breakfast event saw clients, agencies and industry experts share their knowledge and experience of the job hunt, with a clear emphasis on using social media to recruit graduates.
 
On Thursday, February 16th Anne-Lise Johnsen, Communications Executive at Milkround, kicked the session off showcasing the way Milkround engages with its users on social media channels. This included a case study of a Hyundai campaign using social media as a recruitment tool. More than one in 10 of Hyundai’s visits to their graduate recruitment page were from Milkround’s social media channels. 
 
Earlier in the year Milkround collaborated with aia worldwide to ask more than 1,000 students and graduates their social media habits. The results formed the basis for the second presentation with Anne-Lise and Darren Harris of aia revealing how respondents use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.
 
Facebook was predictably the favoured social network used every day by 84 percent of respondents. Other popular networks such as YouTube (28 percent), Twitter (16 percent), LinkedIn (four percent) were far behind Facebook. Surprisingly 16 percent said they use Google+ daily.
Despite being a digital savvy generation, more than half would like more assistance in how to use social media in a job hunt. In addition, a second Milkround survey looking at social recruiting habits among students and graduates of more than 500 respondents found one in five (21 percent) use Facebook daily to job hunt. Some 16 percent use Twitter to find work daily, and nearly a quarter (22 percent) use LinkedIn on a weekly basis.
Other important findings were:
-          96 percent of respondents have a Facebook account
-          68 percent of Facebook users aren’t comfortable with employers looking at their profile.
-          57 percent have a Twitter account
-          Just 17 percent use hashtags on Twitter for job hunting.
-          LinkedIn is the social media platform of choice for jobhunting.
 
Finally social media experts including Richard Waite of Grant Thornton, the Director of OME Dominic Sumners, Head of Digital at Hodes Andy Hyatt and social media savvy graduate Carl Ellis took to the stage for a panel discussion chaired by Ben Nunn from ThirtyThree.
 
Topics included how Grant Thornton use graduates to create and implement their social media strategy and that content needs to be genuine with a real personality behind it rather than the automation many companies opt to use. Twitter users take note: the best use of graduate profiles is keeping them human, credible, informative and relevant.
 
It was also noted that listening and engaging is just as important as broadcasting and that HR departments should work closely with their marketing colleagues to get the most from social recruitment. Panel chairman Ben Nunn, Head of Digital at ThirtyThree, said: “It's about giving it a go and taking a chance: don't just talk at them, engage!”


The event saw Tweeters avidly contribute to the discussion using #gradsocrec and Anne-Lise was delighted with the results. She said: “The event exceeded my expectations.  I am certain that we are closer to bridging the gap between how our candidates are acting and what employers are doing on the social media front. In the past 6 months we have seen a 127% increase in our social media community and now we are seeing employers taking note. The turnout and feedback has left Milkround with a stronger commitment to continue giving students and graduates career confidence.  By engaging and communicating with them on these channels, we believe we are on the right path of doing so.
 
Darren added: “The findings of the survey clearly show that students have an appetite to engage with employers on a variety of social media platforms and we believe that the results will help shape the thinking of graduate recruiters’ social media strategies over the next few months and beyond. Feedback from the event has been very positive with a number of requests for the full survey.”
 
If you would like more information about Social Recruiting & Gen Y or the full survey results please contact Anne-Lise at annelise.johnsen@milkround.com.