Social Media & Recruiting – Interview Notes

Last November a reporter asked “How is social media impacting recruiters’ ability to recruit and candidates’ abilities to find jobs?”

This is my response:

I’ve given the subject quite a bit of thought. My company, Tunheim Partners, offers a recruiting/retention communications practice where we apply strategic communications principle and techniques to help clients improve their communications aimed at attracting and keeping talent. A big part of this practice is done through social media.

I get offers from recruiters frequently and the only reason for that is that I am steeped in social media (I have Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube accounts and I blog). Recruiters are all over social media due to the nature of the information disclosed at social networking sites and simply because of the way they work, they are ideal for very narrowly defining—and finding—a given audience.

Through the network aspect of these sites, you can examine associations: Who do they know within a given industry? What are the job levels of those to whom they are connected? Based on the content created on these networks, you can assess a given individual’s knowledge and competence and, especially, their language skills.

I teach clients to use these sites as expert positioning tools and for media and industry relations. The more people you know and the more you are known, the better your job prospects will be.

I see a lot of people sending job openings out to their networks for referrals and I’ve found talent for clients quite quickly using social media. It is breathtakingly efficient.

I think increasingly one of the biggest things employers will look at with new potential employees is the network they bring with them. That network is demonstrable on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter.