Make the right impact #SocialRecruiting

James Bywater

Objectives

• To reflect on the impact of social media on employer brand and recruitment practices.

• To consider the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of using social media in recruitment.

• To share the warning signs of ‘toxic assessment’ and some tips to prevent them.

Some perspectives on social media

It’s a mess…

Hard to fill

Easy to fill

Smaller number of

potential employers

Lots of potential

employers

Social media

Locations

Twitter

Facebook

Industry sites

Websites

etc…

Purposes:

Informing

Attracting

Hunting

Reinforcing

Selling…

CandidatesJobs

Which markets are you in?

Lots of potential employees Few potential employees

Lots of

potential

employersPerfect open ‘market’

Targeted hunting of candidates e.g.

IT, accountants

Search

Few potential

employers

Volume recruitment and industrial

applicant management

‘Job stalkers’

Rarefied talent

‘Virtual campus’

Analogies for social media

Plenty of vehicles out there…

• 1.28 billion users of Facebook, up from 1.1 billion a year ago.

• Twitter has added more than 500 million registered users over the last year.

• Google+ has added more than 200 million active users over the last year.

• Instagram – favourite for 23% of teens – has added 50 million users over the last six months.

• 172,800 new users join LinkedIn every day, 2.5 times the number who attended the World Cup opening ceremony in Brazil.

Social media is not just used to find candidates…

According to a recent study by Career Builder:

• 43% of employers research candidates on social media.

• 51% of employers have refused to hire candidates due to content found online; up from 34% in 2012.

• Additionally, 12% of employers who don’t currently screen this way plan to start doing so this year.

• Practical message to job seekers – clean up your social profile!

What judgements do you make if you find that:

Your candidate is:

• A part time model?

• A part time stripper?

• BNP member?

• Regularly posting mildly offensive ‘banter’?

• Regularly posting clearly offensive comments?

• Regularly pictured drunk?

Some context

Context

Social Media is important because

• Recruitment is difficult.

• Getting harder.

• Going to get harder still.

2013 Talent Q research highlighted

Across all industries, volume recruiters are finding life difficult.

In a recent survey of some of the biggest volume recruiters in the UK:

said that their biggest challenge is finding the right candidates.

are knowingly recruiting the wrong people in a desperate attempt to fill their frontline roles.

62%

37%

(Talent Q, 2013)

Talent Q assessment data tells us that...

40%of the population

are customer

focused37%

of the population

are comfortable

up-selling

but crucially, only 12% are both

Sony inundated with applicants couldn’t find people who could

explain a product to the customer in plain language.

(BBC, 2014)

And the right candidates are rare…

Whatever you do… gets out

74% share

a poorrecruitment

experience

70% research

the

recruitment

experience of

others

11% will be put

off by a bad

experience of

others

Affects:

• Employer brand

• Consumer brand

Some questions

• What are the trends you are seeing in candidate behaviour?

• Why does social media appeal to you as an organisation?

History of social media

Social media

Stage 1: Employer lead broadcast

Employer(brochures)

Social media

Stage 2: Narrow, transient, separate communities emerge

Employer

EmployeeCandidate

Social media

Stage 3: Candidate discussion grows

Employer

EmployeeCandidate

Social media

Stage 4: Groups flourish and multiply

Ex-

Employee

Employer

Candidate

Candidate

CandidateEmployee

Candidate

Candidate

Social media

Stage 5: The future?

Customer etc.

How will these Align,

Merge or Proliferate?

Who will

“own” these

access points?

How to make

best use of

Employees as

Advocates?

Ex-

Employee

Employer

Candidate

Candidate

CandidateEmployee

Candidate

Candidate

Some more questions

• What examples have you seen of the positive influence of social media in recruiting?

• What examples have you seen of the negative influence of social media in recruiting?

• Any horror stories you want to share? (‘toxic’)

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Who comments? Good Bad Ugly

‘Breaches’ can lead

to toxic behaviour

Candidate Positive

Aligned

Gets retweeted

Negative

esp. about

operational aspects

of the process

Negative about how

organisation failed to

deliver in practice

Employee (including

ex employees)

Positive

Interesting

Regular

Aligned

Irregular

Random

Not thought through

Negative/unaligned

or reality with the

corporate brand

Corporate Aligned

Intelligent

Brand building

comments

Irregular

Random

Too salesy

The Good

The Good - candidate

The Good – employee (current)

Proactive

Tone

The Good – employee (ex)

Would you want to

work there?

The Good - corporateResponsiveness

Tone

Delivering on

promises

The Good - corporate

Responsiveness

Tone

The Bad

The Bad - candidate

High

expectations!

The Bad - candidate

High

expectations!

The Bad - employee

What is your disciplinary policy

on social media?

Quantity? Quality?

The Bad – employee (ex)

Frequency?

Similarity to me?

Relevance?

The Bad - corporate

“Years ago, we did a study to determine whether

anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring.

We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and

everyone who had done the interviews and what

they scored the candidate, and how that person

ultimately performed in their job. We found zero

relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except

for one guy who was highly predictive because

he only interviewed people for a very specialized

area, where he happened to be the world’s

leading expert”.

Google’s Senior VP of People Operations

Laszlo Bock

Social media training?

The Ugly

The Ugly - employer

Delivery?

How will you know?

Getting it wrong

Level 1: ‘the individual complaint’ (a direct letter/e-mail of complaint to you or your CEO)

• Are almost invariably from unsuccessful candidates (‘procedural justice’).

• Are usually one-sided.

• Are frequently ‘quasi legal’ in their language.

Getting it wrong

Level 2: ‘the wider complaint’

• Unhappy customers used to tell an average of, say, eight people.

• An unhappy candidate may now post it onto a blog, wiki or other venue and tell a potential audience of thousands or even millions.

• These discussions are happening all the time whether you like it or not.

• You may as well choose to host/contribute to this site so you can see what is being said, rather than drive it underground.

Getting it wrong

Level 3: ‘the assassin’ (taking active, covert, hostile steps to get back at you)

• Stalking your jobs, organisation web and ‘bricks and mortar’ sites.

• Multiple legal actions (e.g. HM Attorney General v Groves – Restriction of Proceedings Order on legal suits that are ‘habitual, obsessed and vexatious’ and become, in effect, victimisation.

• Leakage of your assessment content/answers and other IP.

• Leaking advice and intelligence on your selection process (do you check candidate passports, references, qualifications?)

• Hacking, web denial, virus propagation and other illegal activity.

The psychology

The psychology of candidate-oriented assessment

Social Validity Theory (Schuler)

1) Informativeness: the degree to which candidates perceive the information is useful.

2) Participation: the extent to which candidates feel that they can be involved.

3) Transparency: the extent to which candidates feel that the selection methods are unambiguous.

4) Feedback: the amount of information provided to candidates regardless of whether or not they secured the job.

The psychology of candidate-oriented assessment

Candidate perspective (Gilliand)

1) Ensure the system is job-related

2) Give candidates the opportunity to perform

3) Give candidates the opportunity to challenge their results

4) Ensure that procedures are consistent across all candidates

5) Provide candidates with informative and timely feedback

6) Provide explanations and justification for procedures or decisions

7) Ensure that administrators are honest when communicating with candidates

8) Ensure that administrators treat candidates with warmth and respect

9) Support a two-way communication process

10) Ensure that questions are legal and not discriminatory in nature

Candidates want practice and insight into jobs

Free practice site Realistic job preview

Candidates want feedback

• About two-thirds of job seekers expect more personalised communication from a recruiter, according to a 2014 survey by CareerBuilder.

• “If (candidates) hear nothing or get auto-generated responses, they’re disappointed,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president.

Conclusion

Some tips

1. Finding: you need to ask the question ‘where does your audience hang out?’

2. Attracting: you need to be part of the community – ‘trusted adviser’, ’respected’.

• Many of these sites are ‘digital cocktail parties’.

• Specialist blog, targeted social networks, industry communities.

3. Reinforcing: candidates seek ‘social proof’ of your employer brand.

• Employee advocates are increasingly critical.

• Passive viewers seek content that is useful, engaging and validated of a ‘visibly great culture’.

4. Adapt!: new sites proliferate so this is the start of a journey - Slideshare, Vine, Tumblr, Triberr, Manetch, Hootsuite, etc etc.

5. Candidate orientation: design your selection process with the candidate in mind

• Explanation, practice, realistic preview, relevant, feedback

6. Investigate: watch out for and investigate examples of ‘toxic selection’.

info@talentqgroup.com www.talentqgroup.com+44(0)1844 218980