Don’t get ahead of yourself – e-recruitment basics

This is part 3 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 highlighted some social media mistakes made by big business. This week, we go back to basics and identify how to deal with some of the problems of e-recruitment.


Current e-recruitment issues

As with any form of recruitment, e-recruitment has its challenges.


HR Magazine recently reported that “on-line recruitment is failing to take account of jobseeker’s views”. This came after a Changeworknow survey of 800 applicants found a variety of statistics showing jobseekers were disheartened with their experience of online job boards.

On a similar note, a “twitition” (or “Twitter Petition”) aimed at Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs was launched by Twitter user @Amebo recently asking for changes in their approach to the job seeking process. Interestingly, though a good idea, it doesn’t yet seem to have picked up much support.

It is obviously important to take the views of the jobseeker into consideration, and not just see the process solely in terms of profit. To this end, as a recruiter, you must be making sure that you address the concerns of jobseekers. Whether this is by providing online support through live chat, a Twitter link and an email address on your jobsite, or though regular communication using a forum, polls and feedback buttons.


Potential problems with e-recruitment

Other problems can include increasing the number of unsuitable employees, applicant overload, losing candidates more easily due to a poor design, and ineffective use of e-recruitment in the first place, resulting in low responses.

Since the advent of social media and social networking for recruiting purposes, it has got far easier for applicants to get noticed and especially those who have the ability to create a top-notch CV, and none of the skills required to do the job. One such application making the process hassle-free is VisualCV.

VisualCV allows anyone to create an online CV much more easily than that of a traditional one, but do better CV’s make it harder to spot poor candidates?

Ineffective use of e-recruitment or weak design will result in poor response. For more tips on this and the other issues covered in this post, have a look at some of the links below:

• Top Ten Best Practices for Using Social Media as a Recruitment Tool – Career Builder’s guide on e-recruiting
• 25 Articles on Social Media Recruiting – From The Recruiters Lounge
• Do You Pass The Social Media Recruitment Test?

Next week we'll look at whether social media as a recruitment tool is really worth it.

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.

Recruiters: Do you really get all this social media stuff?

This is part 1 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.

We all know what social media is, and according to eMarketer.com, 62.5% of 16-54’s worldwide have a social networking profile. But how many of us really ‘get’ it? Especially where business is concerned.

To highlight some of the statistics surrounding social media, take a look at this video by Socialnomics.net.

It’s a real eye-opener as to how we should be utilising social media (in addition to traditional media) where sourcing new talent is involved.


Tools for e-recruitment

“80% of companies use LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees”

[Socialnomics.net]

As well as the usual social platforms, some companies are thinking out of the box when “e-recruiting” new talent. Back in 2007, Informa announced that they were using the virtual world “Second Life” to advertise new positions, and help employees develop their careers.

Kelly Services launched their virtual island providing “in-world job scenarios” to show potential employees what their job would actually look like, along with a microsite.



And in November 2008, Kelly launched “The Jobbit” for searching Second Life for real-life jobs in real-time – still with me?


Associated benefits

So why e-recruit with social media?

According to the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), e-recruitment:

• Reduces costs
• Decreases time it takes to hire
• Adds a greater flexibility for candidates
• Strengthens the employer brand image

Perhaps most importantly, e-recruitment helps us to form relationships with potential candidates and build a talent pool for future use.


Next week, we’ll be smiling inwardly to ourselves and looking at some of the worst uses of social media to date.