At Arithon we are very dubious of social media “evangelists” (who in my opinion for the large part are like motivational speakers – good at talking about recruitment but not very good at it). We do however recognise the power that social media brings to a recruiters desktop and thats why we integrate with those very tools. Being in a position to capture the imagination of a recruiter is all very good, but being able to support a good recruiter building relationships is a great achievement.

By the way, I love your new website

I think that it is a bold and confident recruiter that will rise to this challenge…certainly I am happy for anybody, client or candidate, current past or potential, to read my twitter feed and my blog, I see these as just 2 more ways to communicate with my community, to show them something of me. Ultimately though, the community will only remain strong and develop though personal interaction.

The industry did grow in the 5 years before the downturn, as businesses in general were on a hiring frenzy to sustain growth. Unfortunately, I think our industry was also too busy banking the cheques to think about how sustainable it’s growth was, and how robust it’s business models were.

As always, a tremendously thoughtful post. An interesting corollary from Chris Thorpe of the Guardian this week, speaking at a Social Media MashUp event in London was this: “It is not social media, it is just social.” What did he mean? SM is not a media, it is a means of communicating with a wide range of people with a wide range of methods – in essence extending the reach of your contacts via web based tools, engendering two way and group discussions on common topics.

Recruiters who believe that this approach will replace traditional sourcing methods (and how ironic is it that we now automatically include job boards as a traditional media?) instead of including SM in a blended sourcing mix will miss out on a huge proportion of the population who are not yet on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. After all, even FB only has 40-50% of the internet population as members in the major countries (their own data).

At the same time, recruiters who ignore the power of instant communication that some of these tools bring, will also miss out on a large proportion of candidates who are from the world of ‘immediate’ communication.

The good news? There is a lot of buzz about SM, recruiters are talking to each other and debating what should be better recruiting practices and methods, and we are finally starting to see more conversations about the important person in all of this: The Candidate.

We will put the links and a precis of this post up on RCEuro.com, to spread the word.

best regards

Alaj

This is always the same! Great example with Fax, the same was with Radio vs TV, or Radio vs Newspaper, or TV vs Newspaper. The fact the Internet is knocking the final nails into Newspapers (perhaps) only give the media more pleasure in highlighting the extreme.

As with all media in days gone by (including the www and your website) a recruiter should make the most of the opportunity. But the “sell” should not be to replace sensible business practices.

Gareth Jones says
Sorry, me again. Just to pick up on what Michael’s comment as i missed it while typing out mine! On the subject of ROI, i can count on – probably less than – one hand, the amount of recruiters who have been bothered to prove an ROI on job boards. Just talk to the job boards themselves and they will tell you few, if any, recruiters ever talk or produce hard numbers in relation to the return on job board spend. Most job boards talk about applications and most recuiters only measure this too. I recently asked my new friend at Monster and he confirmed he had not heard of one recruiter who had produced placement data. We have done this. it took some time, but we did it because we were not happy with spending the money on the basis of applications. We wanted to measure applicant relevancy, those that made it to interview and ultimately placements.

Im not saying that we should not be concerned with the ROI of social media, of course we should. But its a bit rich for everyone to be banging on about it when they dont even measure existing channels beyond pure applicant numbers.

Ill go now

Firstly, whilst it is true that in the 5 years up to 2008 our services were used more than ever, it is also important to remember that they were used proportionally less. Our efforts have continually been marginalised, over the last 10 years, by RPO’s, clients own efforts and, as you have pointed out in previous posts, by the spreading of job orders across a larger and larger pool of recruiters on a competitive basis. This trend was largely ignored, particularly by the larger recruiters and you only have to look at their comments as the recession began to see proof of their spectacular ignorance. Many of these companies are publicly listed, with responsibilities to shareholders and really should have known better.

Secondly, social media is more than just a channel. Sure, its no panacea and its so new, particularly in recruitment terms, that to make any claims about its impact at the moment are pure speculation. Also, if you cant hold a conversation or build a relationship over the phone or face to face currently, you stand no chance over social media. In fact, its more likely to do you more damage. However what social media does do is create a sense of connectedness that that nothing else has done before it and its not appropriate to compare it to the impact of job boards.

Our industry is in desperate need of innovation – a conversation with any client will tell you that. Unfortunately, innovation requires disciplined, objective and realistic thought which is sadly lacking in our industry. Most people in it are polarised in attitude, either in the camp that is announcing the immanent death of the recruitment industry or at the opposite end of the spectrum saying its going to return to the good old days inside 6 months. Neither are right and we need more recruitment leaders in the middle of the spectrum to make any headway in responding to the challenges facing the industry.

10 years ago many people, including recruiters said that IT people were the only people who would ever use the internet to find a job!

Great post Greg, look forward to more debate!