14 Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership | crljournal.com | February 2011 ©2011 ERE Media, Inc.

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ENGAGE PEOPLE

The basic idea behind using social media forrecruitment is simple: people are social animals,

and that means one of two things. First, they have lotsof friends, so send them job postings and they’lldistribute them to their friends, which should producecandidates. Second, they want to belong to groups.Involve them in talent communities and eventually they’llbecome candidates.That’s how it’s supposed to work, butthe record shows that getting hires iselusive.The CEO of a vendor that makesan application for recruiting with socialmedia recently told me that the vastmajority of its clients make only a smallnumber of hires through social networks.

The Personal vs.The ProfessionalOne reason why getting results is dif-

ficult for recruiters is because manymake the assumption that social networkswork the same way for personal andprofessional purposes. Research showsthat this is not the case.

The popularity of social networks at apersonal level is largely because they ap-peal to people’s Id—the part of their psyche that consistsof desire.The desire to build social capital and support theiraspirations. Social capital is created by the relationshipsthat give a person a sense of belonging—friends and con-nections that may be of help in say, finding a job.This cancontribute to a person’s sense of well-being and self-es-teem.This is borne out by data that shows people who aremost active on social networks tend to have low-self es-teem. This doesn’t mean that everyone who is active onFacebook is suffering from low self-esteem; the research

shows an inverse correlation between self-esteem and ac-tivity on social networks.The likely explanation is that on-line social networks let people develop an illusion of hav-ing hundreds of “friends” that they can broadcast their livesto. Most of us know of at least a few people who post themost trivial and intimate aspects of their lives on their Face-book pages, things that they would never say in a face-to-face conversation.

Another study recently found that formen, the number of connections on a so-cial network is a status symbol: a way toimpress others, especially women. Re-search also shows that the primary basisfor people to choose whom they connectwith on social networks is ethnicity, age,religion, and sexual orientation.

All the main motivations people haveto join and participate in social networksare personal, and the benefits are notequally available in the workplace. Socialcapital is hard to build in the workplacebecause relationships with others arenot primarily social, and policies and cul-ture restrict speech. Programs like diver-

sity programs discourage limiting one’s circle of contactsto individuals of similar ethnicity, age, religion, and sex-ual orientation.

Employers are increasingly using social media to screenout candidates and even monitor them after they are hired.Whatever the merits of doing so, such behavior creates anenvironment of distrust.This is why products that are in-tended to foster collaboration between employees and tapsocial networks in the workplace are not used much, whilecollaboration in the public domain (Wikipedia, Linux) is

Many [recruiters] makethe assumption thatsocial networks work

the same wayfor personal and

professional purposes.Research shows thatthis is not the case.

Social Media: It’s about EngagementSome of the same social-media mistakes being made by recruiting departments

were made when job boards were new. Social media can work, but notwhen concepts like “community” are given lip service.

By Raghav Singh

©2011 ERE Media, Inc. Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership | crljournal.com | February 2011 15

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ENGAGE PEOPLE

flourishing. Informal and off-the-cuff remarks, risky andunusual ideas, are guaranteed to result in mistakes and fail-ure.Who would want to set themselves up to be attackedbased on what was recorded on an officially provided so-cial network?

All of these factors make for powerful headwinds thata recruiter confronts when attempting to use social net-works for finding talent.The fact that making referrals hasno negative consequences is not relevant. Most peopledon’t make such distinctions in using social networks as-sociated with their employers.

Talent CommunitiesA talent community is supposed to be a pool of talent

to be used to get hires. Most are set upto collect business card information fromanyone on the career site who does notwant to apply for a job or leave a resume.This does not create a community. It pro-duces a marketing database—a list ofprospects who may have an interest inemployment at that employer.That maywork if the employer does not requireskilled professionals—retail stores forexample—but for any position that in-volves even a modicum of specialization,this is near worthless. Knowing that a per-son’s title is “Account Executive” does-n’t help much if you’re looking to hiresales staff.

A community means a group of people that share somecommon interests and interact with each other.What cre-ates a community is engagement. It is not a random groupof strangers that don’t know the existence of each other.People coming into a store or movie theater don’t forma community.

This is where social media can be the most effective forrecruiters. By bringing together a group of disparate in-dividuals to form a true community—an engaged group—a recruiter or an employer can create a private pool of tal-ent to draw on. But engagement is not easily achieved, on-line or offline. Think about your close friends and thegroups you joined voluntarily. What made you join, andmore importantly what makes you stay? It’s the engage-ment you have with others there: the quality of conversa-tions; the value of the content you receive; and how close-

ly you get to know the others there.The social cost of leav-ing is high.

Employers that have created successful talent commu-nities—a reliable source of hires—include Sodexo, Mi-crosoft, and Hewitt, among others.Their success has comeas a result of focused and diligent efforts to create a highlevel of engagement with the members.The model that’semerging also suggests that talent communities work bestwhen they are narrowly focused—the same types ofjobs, at a similar level, or narrowly defined skill sets.Thatensures that the participants have a lot in common. Butonce they are set up, creating engagement requires an on-going effort to keep the participants coming back. Thismeans starting and encouraging relevant conversations and

providing content that’s valuable to themembers. Data on participation in socialnetworks shows that less than 10% ofpeople in online communities typicallydrive most of the content. About 1% areheavy contributors, and 9% are intermit-tent. The bulk—90%—are just there toread and observe. Given this 90-9-1rule, it’s critical that a talent communi-ty be seeded with some heavy contribu-tors if it is to succeed. Find people whoare very passionate about the field, indus-try, or discipline to join.

One caveat here is that the heavy con-tributors should not be restricted muchin what they contribute. The best ones

generate controversy because they have strong opinionsand original ideas, which is what people like to read.Thatcan make legal and marketing departments very uncom-fortable, but an employer can’t have it both ways. Start put-ting too many restrictions on what people can contributeor require approvals and the community will become awasteland with little or no engagement.

The Evolution of ToolsSoftware applications for supporting talent communi-

ties have started to evolve in the direction of creating en-gagement. Much of the scarcity of results can be attrib-uted to applications that focused entirely on job distribu-tion.This is just an extension of an employee referral pro-gram, where participation by employees is rarely beyondthe single digits. Recruiters want simple solutions, and the

[Collecting] businesscard information fromanyone on the career

site who does not wantto apply for a job or

leave a resume...doesnot create a community.

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early applications that emerged gave the impression thatdistributing jobs through social networks was the way togo—connect, select, broadcast. Paying rewards do littleto improve the outcomes since the likelihood that an em-ployee will collect one is small, and the amount is not verylarge.

This is a familiar path for recruiting.The social mediaspace is mirroring the job board space of the ’90s. Backthen the emphasis was on distributing jobs to as manyboards as possible—what can be labeled the Pontiac strat-egy (wider is better).That was what their ad agencies wererecommending. Eventually, clients realized that only adozen or so were useful, and the boards began to find nich-es. Most recruiters have realized that going wide was notthe answer, and they need is to go deep, not wide—to fo-cus their efforts on the niches they are targeting, despiteanything ad agencies say.

Today, measurement of job board results is common,and employers are moving away from them, but it took15 years for that to happen. So job distribution is stillwhere we see the most products, and these have some val-ue, but these are low effort, low yield solutions. Unfortu-nately there’s no free lunch. Newer tools are starting toemerge—Cachinko being an example—where the focusis much more on creating engagement, but widespreadadoption will require a shift in thinking among re-cruiters.

Raghav Singh is a partner at The A-List,a Minneapolis-based staffing services provider. He has previously beenin product management and marketing roles at severalHR technology vendors.His career has included work asa consultant on enterprise HR systems and as a

recruiting and HRIT leader at several Fortune 500 companies.

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