It has taken me a while to get this lists published, I originally had the idea six months ago! Below are 50 51 52 ideas on how you can use social media within your HR and Recruitment strategy.
Not all of the ideas are practical for all organisations, and I would never recommend you trying to implement all of them at once! Or for that matter without an overall strategy *insert ad for Inspecht social media consulting here*. The list is more designed to stimulate ideas and discussion on how all these new tools can be used in business today. You will notice most of the ideas require no financial outlay other than a bit of time, so most have a very solid demonstrable ROI.
- Get out and personally engage with your peers, join groups such as Recruiting Blogs or HRM Today
- Sign up for Twitter
- Start an external blog on HR areas that interest you
- Join groups on LinkedIn and contribute to the conversation
- Get a feed reader and subscribe to blogs about HR & recruiting
- Upgrade your internet usage policies so employees understand the “rules of engagement” with social media
- Encourage your hiring managers to begin engaging with potential candidates before they are needed
- Setup content watchlists and alerts to track suspects & prospects and your competitors key hires
- Setup an internal tagging site to allow anyone in the company to “tag” external suspects who might be potential candidates
- Use social bookmarking tools to collect links of sites and articles that are relevant to your hiring practices, share these amongst your peers
- Teach managers how to use RSS, watchlists and alerts to find out when people are discussing your company and products, as they could be potential candidates
- Publish exit interview results (remove incriminating personal content), encourage employees to comment and suggest ways to resolve the issues
- Create a wiki for new policy or process development
- Create an open 360 degree feedback tool that allows anyone in the company to rate and provide feedback on anyone else
- Allow people to bid internal credits for additional project work, once complete the manager then rewards employees with additional credits to be used on other projects
- Create an alumni social network to allow you to connect with ex-employees, retirees and long term leave employees, you might get some of them back
- As part of outplacement activities provided online branding programs to manage their existing online reputation and to build a sustainable online presence.
- Use these tools to focus on headcontent not headcount
- Implement a microblogging tool, such as Yammer or Co-op, internally
- Publish exit interview answers (personal details removed) on the internal intranet so everyone can see why people are leaving
- Deploy a wiki on your careers web site and allow both successful and unsuccessful applicants to document your recruitment process
- Implement a Live Chat feature on your careers page so if candidates have questions on jobs or your company they can contact recruiters, or the hiring manager directly
- Instead of sending emails, write blog posts, tag them & refer employees to the key posts for information
- Develop micro-training programs
- Create a employee group on Facebook/MySpace to allow your employees to join together online
- Get people blogging internally about their learning experiences, especially those expensive university courses, such as MBAs
- Create a page on your intranet (maybe using Yahoo Pipes) to consolidate the WatchLists for key candidates and competitor hires, then share the link to your key hiring managers
- Monitor sites like Glassdoor to see what people are saying about your HR practices
- Have a blog setup for new employees before they arrive
- Include training on blogs, wikis, and sharing tools as part of the induction program
- Invite new employees to post welcome messages on intranet, wiki, forum or blog (technology of your choice)
- Conduct background research on candidates using search engines
- SMS Interview reminders to candidates so they don’t forget, or shift reminders if you are in retail or hospitality
- Start a YouTube channel and allow anyone to post videos of their experience either working for, with or being recruited by your company
- Create video’s of mock interviews and post on YouTube
- Create a cool company recruitment video and post it on YouTube, then pass it around a few friends and see what happens. (Don’t know what a cool recruitment video is, then don’t try.)
- Create videos job ads for some of your key positions, post them on YouTube and link tot hem in the job ads
- Create a jobs podcast to support major recruitment drives, such as graduates
- Create podcasts on your interview process with sample questions and even sample answers to that you get the best results from your interview process
- Add your company to Jiibe so the right people come to work for your organisation
- Add a share on Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon link to your job ads
- Look at advertising job on social network sites such as Facebook or MySpace, of course the right type of job
- Implement the My Company’s Hiring Facebook application
- Sponsor some blogs to help prospective candidates understand what it is like to work at your company, or what the recruitment process is like
- Use social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, LinkMe, Twitter, World of Warcraft) to develop relationships with potential candidates
- Use employee networks and your own social networks as referral networks for jobs
- Run a Career Fair in SecondLife
- Have your employees & managers run online career fairs, talk about life in the company, court potential talent using social media
- Invite your new graduates to your company Facebook group before they join so they can begin engaging with people
- Deliver induction/on boarding training via Facebook using the Udutu Teach Facebook application
- Have multiple people involved in your campaign, in case someone leaves
- Have fun!
Hey Michael. That is a great list. Can you send me that it a word document? How long did it take to put that together?
To be honest about a day of writing, however many if the ideas have developed gradually in the last year or so talking to people.
Word document? For you sure, just say where you got it from π
Further to #5 # Get a feed reader and subscribe to blogs about HR & recruiting
Sign up to http://www.recruitmentblogs.com.au and receive all news from 19 sources π
@Thomas, now there’s a bit of shameless self promotion!
Michael,
Excellent list, is it ok if I share it with my HR Technology students (with attribution of course)?
Thanks Michael, I put it on RecruitingBlogs.com
Steve, Yes you can share it with your students.
Jason thanks!
Michael, great list. Thanks for taking the time to put it all together. Where I work (Atlassian) we do a lot of the things you mentioned and our intranet is infact a wiki (one of our products – Confluence π where all company communication and info (including our policies, procedures, plans etc) are stored. We also use our wiki heavily as part of induction and request that all new starters blog to introduce themselves to the rest of the company.
The suggestion of a wiki for candidates to discuss their recruitment experiences is an interesting one. Do you know of any companies that do this?
– sarahsez on Twitter.
I was emailed this list by a friend and had to say – thank you for posting! Great list. I have to say I was a little surprised by 45 and 47 in which you recommended using video games like World of Warcraft and Second Life to develop proffesional relationships with candidates. Have you done this, and has it worked?
@Sarah Great to have you stop by. No companies I know of use a wiki to document their recruitment process. I glad to see Atlassian is putting all these ideas into practice. BTW love your products, use them almost daily.
@Matt There are several companies using Second Life as part of their recruitment strategy, the latest being the US Navy. While no one I know uses WoW for recruitment it is being recognised as a valid learning experience. Not all of the ideas work for all industries or companies but some should work. Glad you liked the list.
Web 2.00 Technology site.
Please view at
http://www.peopleonline.com.au
Comments welcome.
I tried to leave a comment yesterday, not sure why it didn’t get through…
Terrific list. I Stumbled it and dugg it for you.
Here are some more suggestions:
53) Setup a refer-a-friend program with bonuses for successful referrals and a leaderboard to engage participants and encourage competition. Use either one system for everyone or separate systems for employees and non-employees.
54) Have your HR team guest post and actively comment on other recruitment blogs and even (potential) client blogs.
55) Your careers web site should have a page of testimonials, ideally from past workers.
56) Use Outbrain-type ratings or Digg-style voting on your documentation, and then make changes to improve results.
57) Meta-policy: encourage transparency in all the activities on this list to build trust, confidence and credibility. Give every mistake or mis-step its silver lining.
Michael, you have some interesting information here. I’m new to this concept of social media as a source of recruiting. In fact, I’m doing some research on it to get a better understanding. Do you think any one medium works better than the other or is it relative to types of jobs/industry/candidates in the market, etc?
Hi Micheal
Your pointers are really useful & simple to implement. What is required is a bit of training on an organization’s part to allow the change to social media as part of the recruitment strategy
I have recently started a Human Resource website http://www.karishmadaswani.com
Pls do go through it. It would be nice to know what you think.
Thanks
Exelent list!
good work! π