What is the True Role of Social Media in Recruitment?

While social media makes it easy to find a thousand, dare I say it, mediocre candidates in one day, locating the perfect match for your unique business needs is still a job best left to a professional, specialist recruitment agency.

Besides the size and quality of the applicant pool, what has changed in recent years is the way people advertise their skills and the way they network with potential employers and other industry professionals. Building a career and job hunting are now a lot more complex than sending the same resume to prospective employers via snail mail, or even via email. For example, LinkedIn, the social media channel developed specifically for professional networking, now has over 200 million members from all over the globe.

While LinkedIn is leading the way in professional communication and business development, other social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are not far behind. In fact, back in November of 2012 Facebook launched a new US based job board feature that gives recruiters the ability to connect to users who are looking for work in their local area. While Twitter is less conducive to professional networking since it restricts posts to a limiting 140 characters, it can still be tremendously useful for locating local talent. By advertising open positions to followers and searching the user database with keywords that are related to your business, Twitter can be the perfect tool for supplementing other social media channels.

RELATED: How Many Companies Use Social Media to Recruit?

In the practical sense, that means any recruiter can use a searchable database to pull hundreds of candidates with resumes and skills that seem ideal for any open position within your company. But, what reads perfectly on paper doesn’t always translate the same way when you meet and interview the candidate. The difference between recruiters who use social media to locate active candidates, and independent professional recruiters, is that the latter are trained to find passive candidates who not only have the background you are looking for, but who also have the most potential to grow within your company and fit in with your employee culture and team dynamic.

While it seems like a no-brainer in today’s economic climate, there is an inherent problem with relying on social media and the Internet in general to find your perfect candidates quickly. It’s simply not a sustainable strategy in terms of future growth as the pool of highly-skilled, professional and specialist candidates will inevitably shrink as domestic and international economies rebound further, jobless rates will fall meaning more vacant roles become available, making finding the best possible employee be a lot tougher than throwing a few keywords into a social media search engine.

To secure and retain the quality of your employee team in the future, it’s important to maintain a good relationship with a truly specialist recruitment business who is well networked across your sector. This recruitment partner will have the capability to utilise a variety of traditional recruitment methodologies, combined with all available social media channels to help you handpick the perfect candidates for your business in any economy.

Author: Paul Simms is an executive recruiter with 15 years of experience across the Australian and UK markets. He is the founder of Wright Executive, a specialist business within the Accounting and Professional Services sector.

Original Article can be located: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/social-media-role-hiring/

7 Reasons I’ll Turn Down a Job After Interviewing With You

By: RRachel Dotson  |  March 5, 2013  |

Interviewing is an art-form for both the job seeker and the hiring manager. A simple mistake by either party
can raise enough doubt to leave the other looking elsewhere. After much reflection on what’s turned me off to a job in the past, I’ve come up with seven interview red flags that will leave me saying, “Thanks, but no thanks” to your job offer.
1. You’re Negative
If you’re bad-mouthing the company, other employees, your workload, or even yourself, then chances are slim that I’ll come on board as your newest employee. Why? Because negativity is toxic. It tells me that morale is low and that you don’t enjoy your job. I recognize it’s possible that you’re just having a bad day, but it’s just too big of a risk to take.
2. You Asked Me Obscure Questions Just for the Sake of Doing It
Yes, I know why manholes are round; what I don’t know is why you are asking me this question. Is it because Google asks it? Is it because you want to see if I can think on my feet? Or is it some other reason that neither you nor I am aware of? Rather than waste our time with such a silly and off-putting question, ask me a situational question that’s relevant to my prospective job.
3. You Talk Too Much
I’m delighted that you’re enjoying our time together, really, I am. But I’m a bit worried that I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise. You see, if I haven’t done any of the talking, then you can’t possibly know if I’ll be a good fit for this position. That makes me nervous. How can I believe in my own ability to excel at this position if you haven’t properly assessed my abilities and fit?
4. You Talk Too Little
Let’s look at the opposite side of the point above. If you don’t tell me enough about the job, the company, and so on, then I cannot, in good faith, agree to devote years of my life to you. When I ask you questions about why the position is vacant, what a typical day is like, and what the goals of the company are, I expect solid, well-thought-out answers. It’s these answers that will help me determine whether our values and goals align.
5. You Don’t Tell Me About Your Company Culture
If I’m going to be spending more time with you than with my friends and family, I want to know I’m going to be in a fun and positive working environment. You don’t have to provide organic lunches or have a company bar to show me you’re a great company to be at. While these perks would be nice, I’d much rather know about the people and the culture. How do employees interact with each other? How are employees recognized for a job well done? Do colleagues go to lunch together or see each other outside of the office? If so, do they do this because it’s mandated or because they genuinely enjoy spending time together?
6. You’re Unprepared
I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy. I get it. People are spread too thin. But when I spend hours preparing for my interview and take time out of my day to attend said interview, I expect you to show me the same level of professionalism and respect that I show you. So please, don’t make me wait in the lobby for half an hour, don’t take five minutes to review my job application in front of me, and don’t make up the interview questions as you go along.
6. Your Interview Practices Are Illegal
So you want to know if and when I’m planning on getting married and you feel it necessary to let me know that you typically hire from a certain age group. The fact that you’re bringing these items up tells me one of two things: 1) you haven’t taken the time as a hiring manager to educate yourself on employment law, or 2) you’re discriminatory. The best case scenario here is that you don’t know how to do your job (and your company hasn’t bothered to train you how), and the worst is that the organization is sexist, ageist, or some other “ist” that I don’t care to be around.

Interviewing: A Rational Way to Make a Gut Decision

Hiring is too important to leave to chance.

Over the past few months I’ve written about the Most Important Interview Question of All Time and The Complete Two-Question Interview. These were developed as countermeasures for managers who quickly dismissed strong candidates using flawed or biased information. As you’ll discover, facts can often pierce the veneer of superficiality and fiction. Some examples:
I remember the CFO of a Southern California public company telling me that my candidate for a cost manager’s position had less cost accounting background than his 16 year-old son. This was after a 15-minute interview. I then asked if he was aware that the candidate was selected to lead the implementation of an international state-of-the art cost system at one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies. He re-interviewed the candidate, hired him the next day, and personally apologized. Over the next two years the CFO assigned us eight critical senior positions to fill.
I remember the VP Finance of a major business unit at one of the largest entertainment companies in the world telling me my candidate for a Director of Accounting wasn’t aggressive enough. The candidate wasn’t hired, but went on to become the #2 financial executive of a major competitor in the entertainment industry. He’s still soft-spoken, but has a backbone of steel. I met the candidate when he was a young manager at one of the major accounting firms. I presented him to my client since he was given the most challenging assignments every year in public accounting, far above what would be expected for someone at that level.
I remember a senior recruiter questioning my judgment about presenting a young woman for a director-level HR position when the person was only a manager who didn’t have the requisite 10 years experience. When I mentioned that the person was leading a companywide initiative reporting directly to the CEO of a Fortune 150 company she reconsidered. I also mentioned that prior to this project she successfully handled a struggling union negotiation without any experience, and earlier, was assigned to take a lead role in an international compensation project as a learning opportunity.
When reviewing a candidate’s resume it’s important to read between the lines for facts and evidence of exceptional performance. Here are some ideas on how to improve your own powers of observation:
1) Being assigned the toughest projects in the candidate’s peer group. The best people are always assigned the most difficult technical projects, the hardest customers to sell to, and the most important business problems to handle. When interviewing candidates find out if they’re doing work above their expected experience level. They ask how they got assigned the project. Find out what happened next to validate the initial success or failure.
2) Being assigned to important teams. To assess team skills, ask the person to put together a 360° team chart for each position held, then track the growth and make-up of these teams over time. A 360° team chart includes everyone the candidate works with or is exposed to on typical projects. Consider bosses, subordinates, peers, external vendors and customers, executives and those in other functions. The best team-oriented people are typically assigned by their managers to participate in these types of projects early in their careers. If they’re successful the assignments continue and the scope and size of these teams expand.
3) Continuous exposure to senior management. During the interview ask candidates if they were ever involved in important business matters with top company executives. Strong managers want to give their most promising staff members this type of exposure. Ask about the focus of the interactions, the frequency of any contact, and if any advice was sought and if it was acted upon. It’s great when this type of exposure is typical rather than the exception. Find out the topics of discussion and you’ll typically uncover the candidate’s critical strengths.
4) Being promoted faster than normal. The common theme of the above, and my favorite overall assessment technique, is figuring out the candidate’s current level of responsibility vs. total years of experience. Part of this is getting promoted into bigger jobs or taking on bigger projects faster than normal. It’s even better if this growth occurred at different companies, in different industries, and with different leaders.
5) Receiving important recognition. There are a host of ways companies recognize their best employees. Seek this out during the interview. It’s not hard to spot. For sales it’s getting into Club or taking the annual trip. For everyone else there are fellowships, unusual training opportunities, honors, awards, special bonuses, prizes and letters of commendation. Some companies give these away too liberally, diminishing the value for those who are truly exceptional, so it’s important to benchmark whatever recognition is received.
There is more science to interviewing than most managers imagine. Part of this is understanding how other leaders who worked with the candidate rewarded or recognized the person for doing outstanding work. Since we reward and promote people internally based on their performance, we should look for these same signs when interviewing candidates from the outside. This is a rational way to make a gut decision.
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Article by (Brought by a Rss feed from Linkedin.com) Lou Adler (@LouA) is the Amazon best-selling author of Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007) and the award-winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, is now available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.