Do I Need Social Networking to Recruit & How Do I Get Started

Does your head spin when someone mentions Social Networking?
Do you wonder what it is or why you need it for your recruitment efforts?
Do friends and colleagues make you feel like you're an idiot if you're not LinkedIn to hundreds of people?
Don't despair.
You are not alone!

When I first started selling recruitment advertising in 1996 people would start our meetings by asking me what the internet was and what websites were and why their company needed one. Things have moved so fast since Mosiac, AOL, and others made the internet accessible to the public in 1993 and 1994. It took a few years, however by the late 1990's internet recruiting exceeded newspaper recruitment and has remained so (outside of networking and referrals which have always been the at the top). At first people thought internet ads were only effective for recruiting IT, engineering, and other technical positions. Now companies can find everyone from CFO's to general laborers online.
Just as job seekers and companies have gotten used to using job boards for recruitment and job seeking...WHAM! Here comes another recruitment tool for people to understand.
Below are the most common questions I get about social media:

DO I NEED TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA AS PART OF MY RECRUITMENT EFFORTS?
My answer: YES!!!!
Social media sites are just one more tool that you can use to get the right job candidate.
Don't be scared of them! Add them to your resources. Just like every other tool you use to hire people, they alone will not fill all of your recruitment needs, however they can help in many ways depending on the position or the demographic you are trying to reach. Social media sites are not going away anytime soon (they will change almost every day), so better to start leaning about them now than try and catch up later when everyone else has moved on to the next latest and greatest thing.

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO FIRST?
Before jumping into the worlds of Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, and countless others, you first have to decide three things:
1. How are you going to use social media? Is it to recruit new employees, build or reinforce your brand, communicate with employees, or just to network and be social.
2. Who is the audience you are trying to reach? Potential new employees? Customers?
3. Where is the audience that you are trying to reach? Are they people that even use social media, age, skills, occupations. Wherever these people "hang out," that is where you need to be.
Once you have answered these questions, there is a site or sites that you can go to.
I'VE ANSWERED THE ABOVE QUESTIONS, WHAT SITE DO I PICK?
If you are using social media for recruiting I would start with LinkedIn. Their niche is people networking in a business sense rather than just idle chit chat. As a warning, LinkedIn is not a streamlined easy-on-the-eyes type of site. There is a lot of information going on. Don't let all the things you can do on the site overwhelm you.

If you just want to try social media so you can get a better understanding of what everyone is talking about I would try Facebook. You can use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, family, classmates, and even see how some businesses are marketing and recruiting. The site is easy to use and can serve a variety of purposes.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?
You don't need an article to explain how to set up an account on any of these sites.
If you can write an email or do a simple query on a search engine, you can set up an account on your own. If you don't think you can, ask anyone under the age of 25 to help you set up the account.
Once you set up the account, just start playing around with the site.
See what there is to see and experiment. You are not going to learn how to use the whole site in one day (especially since they add features so often), so don't try. Just digest little bits at a time.

I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR SOCIAL MEDIA!
No one does. People said the same thing about learning to use computers, email, the internet, conference calls, HRIS systems, etc. None of these things were learned and added into our schedules all at one time. Start small and it will become part of your routine. Here is an article to help with time management and social media:

21 tips for optimizing time in social media:http://ow.ly/pWyP

THE PEOPLE I'M TRYING TO REACH DON'T USE SOCIAL MEDIA!
The key word missing is "yet."
15 years after the internet became public, 26% of the United States still doesn't have access (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm#north) to the web.
Remember that social media is just a tool, and every tool is not always perfect for the job.
While the person that you are looking for may not be using social media or even have access to the web, someone they know probably does and you never know when or where they will come across your company, position, or product and mention it to the person you are trying to reach.
As the use of social media grows, can you afford to NOT have some presence?

WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA AT MY COMPANY...
"Yet" is the word that is missing again. There are some industries that are so heavily regulated they don't allow employees to use anything web related except for email. If this is an example of your industry, there are a couple of ways that you can still be involved in social media:
1. Someday all the lawyers will figure out what is happening and come up with a policy and regulations for your industry. When that happens you don't want to be trying to catch up with the basics of how social media works
2. Try having a personal account with no mention or use of where you work. You can learn how to use different websites and even have a leg up on your competitors. When you are allowed to use it for work, you'll already know how to use the websites and where your candidates are on them
3. Even though your desktop might not have access, you should still access the sites from home or a PDA like a laptop or IPhone. Even though your company might not allow social media, your future job candidates might not have any such restrictions. If you can still be in their realm of thought when they start their job search, you and your company will benefit even though you company doesn't have an official presence.

I HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON _______. NOW WHAT?
There are lots of "experts (both self proclaimed and legit)" who claim to know the best ways to proceed. I'm not going to add to them at this time, however I will give you several links from people in Southeastern Wisconsin who I believe know what they are talking about and I encourage you to visit these pages and contact the individuals if you think they can help you.

Here are some places to help you get started:
Top 10 reasons to use Linked In by Phil Gerbyshak:http://bit.ly/linkedintips
Phil also teaches social media classes:http://www.philgerbyshak.com/courses/

A great learning event organized by Tom Snyder and Trivera Interactive and will be back soon:http://www.socialmediamilwaukee.com/

How to maintain your Twitter Account...and your sanityhttp://www.trivera.com/wordpress/?p=141

Wonder what a blog is:http://onmilwaukee.com/buzz/articles/blogarticle.html

How to use Facebook for recruiting (you have to follow the thread of conversations, however there is some good advice here): http://recruitingblogs.ning.com/group/facebookcorporaterecruitersgroup/forum/topics/facebook-tips-for-recruiters

Thanks for reading!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy