The Digital Divide

Five years ago, I mentioned Twitter in my annual Fearless Forecast where I predicted that it might be useful as a recruiting tool. But only a few could imagine saying anything useful in 140 characters. And only two years ago Facebook was considered useful for personal communication, but not for recruiting. Corporate recruiting sites were static brochures, not the interactive sites that we see today.
This change has happened quickly as more and more potential candidates are creating Twitter and Facebook accounts and as more people move to mobile devices that are well suited to social media.
Now the issues recruiters face have changed. Should the recruiting function have it’s own social media pages or should they be included as part of the corporate page. Is the Twitter account owned by a recruiter or a team? Do you have a community of interested potential candidates? Who manages this? What are the appropriate messages? What marketing strategy should we use? Should we use the marketing strategy or our marketing team? What messaging draws good candidates and what messaging is useless?
The answers to these issues lie in analytics, strategy, and the social media maturity of the organization. There is no one strategy that works for everyone, but recruiters need to deeply understand the culture of their organization, how to best market the organization and the opportunities, the potential benefits of social media, and they need access to the data that helps make decisions.
This week we’ve included blogs on this issue from people who have navigated the divide between recruitment and marketing. Also take a look at a great blog by Simon Townsend from Allegis Global Solutions on Symbiotic Mentoring and the the importance of sharing what we know. I’ll be participating a webinar on mentoring with Simon , facilitated by Trevor, on Thursday the 23rd of April. We will be discussing the changing way people are bridging divides with knowledge sharing, and peer to peer mentoring. You can join our discussion here.