When e-recruitment goes bad

This is part 2 of a 5-part series on e-Recruitment. Resource Management are sponsoring the “RPO and e-Recruitment Forum” on the 29th September. To find out how to book your place, click here.

Last week we looked at innovative ways that recruitment companies were using web technology and social media for recruitment. This week, we’ll have a look at a couple of the worst uses of social media, starting with Habitat’s use of Twitter earlier this year.


Habitat and Twitter

As you may already know, #hashtags are ways of highlighting a Tweet on a popular subject or a “trending topic”. (See this post from the Sticky Media Group on the #lists trending topic)

But labelling a Tweet with a trending topic hashtag that has absolutely no relevance, is considered spam by the Twitterverse and is duly shunned.

Habitat posted a series of Tweets in June about upcoming sales and a competition, but wrongly added a series of irrelevant trending topic hashtags, outraging the Twitter community. The aim was to “build profile” but clearly fell short.



Habitat did apologise, but passed the blame onto an “overenthusiastic intern”.

For more on this, see Social Media Today’s article on “How not to use Twitter: Habitat as a case study”


Penna/Barkers

Back in June, human resources company Penna acquired communications agency Barkers for £8.6m, but in the process managed to anger around 200 ex-Barkers staff made redundant at the same time.

The anger arose over the fact that media experts Barkers were remaining tight-lipped over several matters including their redundancies, the acquisition itself, and the distinct lack of the ex-employees company pensions due to an alleged lack of funds.

This caused the ex-Barkers staff to create a Twitter profile to speak out against the injustice of their redundancy, and the lack of clarification from Barkers.



Penna/Barkers lack of communication appears to have been a bad move. And given Barker’s supposed media expertise, this makes it all the more surprising.

For more info on the Penna/Barker’s debacle, have a look at Netnatives’ article.

So take note. Whether you’re recruiting or simply trying to get ahead with social media, you should be communicating with your followers and fans on a regular basis. Don’t let it go quiet on the Twitter front.

Next week we go back to basics and look at some of the negatives of e-recruitment and what we can do about them.