Last week I blogged on why so many recruiters have a shallow understanding of what ‘competitive’ in our business actually means.

And so how do we thrive in a competitive world? What is the way to differentiate in 2010 and beyond?

Well it’s not cool to say it out loud, but as far as I am concerned it’s what technology cannot do that our clients will continue to pay for.

It’s a source of constant amazement to me how many of us in this industry have been completely seduced by the technology spin doctors. We are terrified that the Internet will wipe out our business. We agonise over social networking and how it will change the talent-sourcing model. We quake at the power of LinkedIn, and we are hypnotised by the thought our competitors will develop a piece of technology that somehow will make our service redundant.
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Don’t get me wrong. Technology is reshaping our business and having leading-edge technology is crucial, in as much as it allows your consultants to compete on an even playing field, and gives them the tools to give clients and talent what they really want.

But technology will not destroy our industry. At least not all of it – and definitely not the part we want!

And here is why.  Finding a job or recruiting a new staff member is not a commodity purchase. We are not dealing with the same psychology which drives i-Tunes, e-trade or amazon.com.

This is important because it means that the real value provided by quality recruiters will still have a market.  That is, screening, evaluating, persuading, assessing, negotiating, advising, consulting and acting, as an advocate for employers will still have tremendous value.

It is on these competencies that we need to compete.

But it’s also more than interpersonal recruiting skills (which by the way were largely lost during the decade-long hiring boom that preceded the GFC). Talent management is where the real battle for recruitment dominance will be fought. Building talent communities and managing effective communications channels with those communities is where the holy grail lies.

And we will need to compete in other ways too. Customers will increasingly call the tune. And by customers I mean talent as well as clients. The customer experience will build or tarnish your brand like never before. This is where social media will be able to destroy your business. Get it wrong and your brand will be brought down at viral speed. That’s where we have to compete. How we deal with customers and manage their expectations and experience with us.

Lack of personal interaction is doing our industry no favours. In fact I consider it one of our deepest flaws. Many recruiters use technology to avoid connecting personally with talent, when in fact the real advantage of technology is to get much closer to many more quality candidates.

So social media and technology generally is a threat to you only if you fail to recognise this fact…

… there will continue to be a market for tailored, personalised, high quality business solutions based on an advisory, consultative model, where access to talent is the differentiator.

Don’t be sucked in to competing on the basis of who can commoditise what we do the best. Don’t play the low margin, process game.

As your competitors claim, “we are bigger, have cooler technology and therefore we can do it faster and cheaper” or technology-driven platforms push to cut out recruiters altogether, your premise for doing business is…

“I can solve your problem because I understand your need and I know where the talent live”

During my recent RCSA speaking tour around Australasia I spoke to over 500 Australian and 150 New Zealander recruiters, on the upbeat topic of ‘Riding the Recovery’.

I have to admit it was refreshing to talk about positive ideas and strategies to ensure we take advantage of the opportunities presented by an economic revival.

One of the key areas I covered was the use of Social Media as a sourcing and influencing tool for our industry going forward. I have already blogged on my finding that Australian recruiters use Twitter in tiny numbers and followed that up with a similar story on New Zealand. However, I also used this opportunity to survey (by show of hands, so not very scientific), the use of LinkedIn by New Zealand recruiters.

It turns out that in Auckland and Christchurch, only about 70% of recruiters have a LinkedIn Account (I have to say I am wondering what the other 30% are waiting for). However when asked whether their LinkedIn accounts were worked ‘actively’ with status updates, participation in groups and all the other available applications, only between 10% and 20% kept hands raised.

I am no LinkedIn expert, but it seems self-evident that it’s a great branding tool, a fantastic sourcing tool and an exceptional way to connect with otherwise inaccessible people-not to mention its research capabilities.

I have spoken to clients who acknowledge freely that the first thing they do when assessing a new recruitment service provider, is to review their LinkedIn profile, including an evaluation of history, stability and quality of the recruiters network.

Personally, I could do far more with my LinkedIn account. However I do review it every day, participate in groups, answer questions, update my status and add connections every week. I have also connected my blog and Twitter account to my Linked In page, making an attempt to integrate my Social Media messaging and content. And it works. Even though I am only using the free functionality of Linked In, so far I have hired new Aquent employees from LinkedIn, won clients, secured speaking engagements and generated publicity in many countries and many media.

So Kiwi recruiters, let’s get with the programme. Slow to buy into Twitter I can half understand.

But if you are not LinkedIn… you surely will be left out.

Over the past week I have conducted RCSA seminars for over 150 New Zealand Recruiters in Auckland and Christchurch. The topic was “Riding the Recovery” and part of my session was on Social Media and how we need to build that technology into our talent sourcing strategies.

Well, I grabbed this opportunity to conduct a little mini-survey on the Twitter habits of attendees. It was totally unscientific and very impromptu, so take from this what you will, but I was somewhat surprised to find that only 5% of the attendees (by show of hands) in Auckland, and probably even less in Christchurch, actually have a Twitter account at all.

I am not sure what I expected. Having done a similar survey in three large Australian cities late last year, I should have been prepared because the Australian average was only between 5% and 10% as well. But on the other hand, Australians and New Zealanders are massive early-adopters of technology, and at the general level have swarmed into Social Media use. Why not recruiters?

I think this is going to have to change – and fast. New Zealand recruiters won’t be able to rely on job boards for candidates going forward. The cream of candidates, especially passive ones, will need to be sourced through an increasingly fragmented variety of channels. In my view Social Media will be one of those channels.

But for recruiters, Twitter will be far more than a simple source of candidates to fill todays’ job order. More important than that is that smart use of Social Media is an opportunity to be perceived as an expert in your industry niche. Recruiters are going to need to use Twitter to foster relationships (and not to spam people by the way), build credibility, and actually interact with communities of people they might want to place in the future, or who are influencers in their area of interest. That will be increasingly powerful for those who get it right.

In my view it’s like this. Social media remains a TOOL – not a strategy – to reach people. There are still tons of people who will not be found on social networking sites. Recruiters don’t want to be seduced by Social Media and the hype surrounding it — but equally recruiters must acknowledge its’ role, and figure out how to work it into the talent acquisition mix

So Kiwis (and Aussies, by the way) get to it! Build social media into your communications armory. When that talent shortage comes roaring back, you are going to need it!

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I am no social media expert. I am not even that familiar with the ‘ins and outs’ of Twitter, although I have built up 3600 followers during my nine month as a Tweeter. Truthfully, I only plunged into the social media world, including this blog, because I am a recruiter, and I run a business that works in the digital and marketing arena. I felt I needed to know what the medium offered, how it worked, what I could contribute to the conversation, and how our clients and talent could benefit it from it.What better way to do that than diving right in!

And even though I am learning, I am in no position to offer advice on how to use the social networks.

But I can tell you why I won’t follow you back on Twitter.

I suppose I get 5 -10 new followers a day on average. And when I get time – it might be a few days later — I will click on each of their Twitter profiles and see who they are and what they talk about. And, often, I will follow them back if I feel they will add to the conversation and help me build my knowledge and reach. I imagine most people do the same.

But often I won’t follow back. And just recently I was pondering why I choose not to press ‘follow’. My first thought was that the decision was simply intuitive. But when I went deeper, I realised that I do have a sort of mental check-list I flick through when deciding to follow, or not.

Firstly I look at the picture or avatar of the new follower. No avatar is a big #fail, and personally I prefer a real picture of a real person. Twitter is about engagement and conversation, and it’s so much easier for that to happen if you have an image of the person you are tweeting with.

Then I read their most recent tweets. That is key. Lots of one-word Tweets or meaningless phrases and it’s a ‘no follow’. Loads of trivial stuff about how much beer was drunk last Friday, or what they like on toast in the morning, also means ‘no follow’. Self-promoting ads for products or services, or endless streams of automatically generated tweets and it’s a no-go too. I also tend not to follow people who tweet bad language, or who have a penchant for being routinely argumentative and mean-spirited in their comments. That is not what Twitter is about for me and certainly not what I want to see in my Twitter stream each day.

Of course I read the bio. I am looking for some connection. In my case a recruiter, or a marketer, or someone in design. But any field can still get a follow from me, if the bio is interesting and well-written. No bio means almost certainly no follow.

My next criteria is location. Not that I will eliminate anyone because of where they live! No, in fact the worldwide reach of Twitter is a major appeal. But if there is no location on the profile, it leaves a gap in my mental picture of who this is and so they are less interesting and less trusted.

I am always disappointed if the new follower does not list their web address. A link to a blog or a company website obviously adds huge insight to who the person is. It adds credibility too, and it will certainly weigh heavily in my decision to follow you back or not.

But it doesn’t end there. I usually have a quick look at your following/follower ratio. This is not a deal breaker, but in conjunction with other measures, such as Tweet content, can be a knock-out factor. For example, you are following 9697 people and three are following you back. That is a problem.

Twitter, like a lot of technology, can waste lots of time. But I want to extract value out of my involvement on Twitter. So I am rigorous in screening who I follow, and I expect others will be with me too. It’s worth the effort because you end up with a Tweetdeck full of interesting relevant comment at best – and humorous, harmless chit-chat at worst.

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This year, in my capacity of International CEO of Aquent, (the only global staffing company dedicated to marketing and design) I was very excited to help launch our new website, which specifically promotes the ability of our talent and clients to connect with our Agents, via social networks, if preferred.

You might think then, that I am a social networking evangalist, a true believer that is convinced “old recruiting” is dead and a new world of connecting via web-enabled networks awaits. A world where recruiters will manage armies of “friends and contacts” and slot them neatly into web-generated clients, themselves sourced via a gigantic pool of “Linked-In” connections.

Well, you would be wrong on both counts. No, I am not a social networking fanatic, and nor do I believe a new recruiting world will unfold, based on social networking per se.

Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of the potential power of social media. I have my “Linked-In” page, and I find it fantastic for information and idea sharing and locating lost colleagues and also accessing talent. I am “Face-booked ” up to the max, although in truth its primarily a way to see what my daughter is up to, and share photos with my sisters overseas. And I fully “get” how Twitter, and the rest, are going to revolutionise how we communicate with people on a broad scale. We are in a dynamic, fast-changing world, and technology is impacting many aspects of human interaction — no doubt.

But remember this! Faxes were going to revolutionise recruitment. Remember? The Internet was going to wipe traditional recruiters from the landscape. Have we forgotten already? Email was going to mean the end of consultative recruiters. Web-testing and screening would mean selling skills and closing skills and candidate management skills were going to be redundant for poor old recruiters like me, living in yesteryear.

And none of it came true. None of it.

Sure we are in a recession now and recruitment as an industry is suffering, but that’s pure economic cycles. The truth is that for the five years up to 2008, the staffing industry was growing like it never had before. Record revenues, record profits, record take-up of our services by both clients and candidates, right across the world.

The Internet and email and job boards didn’t kill off recruiters! New technologies helped them to new heights and new riches! And the truth is that the recruiters who are doing the best now are those who are able to integrate the traditionally required skills with new technologies, and make one plus one equal three.

As I commented in our press release announcing our new website “’Job boards don’t find people jobs. People finds people jobs!”

(See the full release here )

Just before the market tanked about 18 months ago, an exiting employee of my firm, commented “Aquent is great place and Greg a good enough guy, just too old-fashioned”. Apparently most of that opinion was based on my refusal to pander to spoilt Generation Y’ers in our business who wanted everything, gave little in return, and had tantrums along the way to boot. The departing employee who made that remark was going to a new staffing world of in-house café lattes, flexible work hours, torn-jeans dress code — and a talent management strategy based entirely on scanning Facebook all day.

Sadly that business is gone, along with many of its ilk. And of course it’s the “old fashioned” recruiters, people who actually look to connect, personally, with talent and clients, recruiters who consult and add value, staffing professionals who can read between the lines, influence, persuade and truly match beyond a bland job description — who will survive this downturn and thrive in the inevitable upswing.

Social networking is a communications channel recruiters must embrace. No question. But lets be smart about this. It’s NOT the Holy Grail. It’s just a tool. An enabler, and it needs to be harnessed like all the other mechanisms we use to manage our relationships with clients and candidates.

Social networking devotees talk lovingly of “friends” and “contacts,” when in most cases, they are nothing of the sort. Who are we fooling when we call someone we have never met (quite possibly never heard of), “a friend”. Clicking “I accept” does not buy you love baby! How strong are your “friendships” when your “friend” can rid themselves of you by clicking a mouse (and hey, you don’t even get notified your “friendship” has bitten the dust). And your “contacts and connections” on Linked-In can be kept real if you are vigilant and disciplined, and there is huge value there. But accept everyone who wants to connect to you, and you build someone else’s mailing list, little more.

Every day web-advertising spruikers spout scare tactics suggesting recruitment companies who don’t pour money into social networking recruiting will be left behind, and be unable to attract talent. Total nonsense of course.

The real value of social media for the recruitment industry is building communities of like-minded people. Communities where you can showcase your credibility and build up networks that will allow you to source in the future. In fact I think the real value of social media is as an “influencer’,'more than a way to tap into talent . Those recruiters who use social media as a de facto job board, listing endless links to job descriptions juts don’t get the main game at play

Eventually a more structured and fruitful way to mine networking sites will be developed, and then it will behoove recruiters to get serious. But by then the social networking phenomena itself would have evolved into something different!

In the meantime, posting a job vacancy via a Tweet is even less targeted than the least targeted job board. You may get a valid response, you may not. But the fact remains, the real work of a skilled recruiter happens once the talent has applied, not before.

Social networking “gurus” and evangelists pontificate about how its web 2.0 that will make or break the next generation of recruiters, when in most cases these experts have never placed a person in a job and would have zero idea of the dynamic that has to occur for placements to be consistently made.

And that’s what we are talking about here, fellow recruiters. Don’t be seduced by the bright lights! Don’t be hooked into the promise of untold riches based on browsing your Facebook page. Sure, use Twitter, but don’t be a Twit. Play around with Facebook but face up to the reality that the hard work of building an offline reputation and real-world skills is still required. Link-In for all you are worth, but don’t allow the missing link of people interactions skills to be your downfall.

Of course, candidates and even clients, will originate from your social networking activities. I have had success that way myself. And that’s cool and its very welcome. But I also pick up candidates and clients from amongst the parents on the sidelines of my sons rugby matches! No one is really suggesting that as a targeted, sustainable way to re-invent recruiting are they?

Here is the nuts of it. The hard work of developing a sustainable relationship, building trust, proving you can add value, must be done in the “old fashioned” way. The way that has kept me in the staffing industry for thirty years, making money and having fun during every single one of them!

So as Aquent enters a brave new world of a totally transparent website which connects our customers to our people, note that social networking is intrinsic to our plan, but note too that the real theme behind our website is kinda “old fashioned”.

Connecting people and building real relationships.

Because its people who find people jobs.

During my recent RCSA speaking tour around Australia I spoke to over 500 Australian recruiters on the upbeat topic of ‘Riding the Recovery’.

I have to admit it was refreshing to talk about positive ideas and strategies to ensure we take advantage of the opportunities presented by an economic revival.

One of the key areas I covered was the use of Social Media as a sourcing and influencing tool for our industry going forward. I have already blogged on my finding that Australian recruiters use Twitter in tiny numbers, but I also used this opportunity to survey (by show of hands, so not very scientific), the use of LinkedIn by Australian recruiters.

It turns out that in Sydney and Melbourne about 80% of recruiters have a LinkedIn Account (I have to say I am wondering what the other 20% are waiting for). However when asked whether their LinkedIn accounts were worked ‘actively’ with status updates, participation in groups and all the other available applications, only 20% kept hands raised.

In Brisbane, 70% have LinkedIn accounts but again, only 20% of those are ‘worked actively”.

I am no LinkedIn expert, but it seems self evident that it’s a great branding tool, a fantastic sourcing tool and an exceptional way to connect with otherwise inaccessible people –not to mention its research capabilities.

I have spoken to clients who acknowledge freely that the first thing they do when assessing a new recruitment service provider, is to review their LinkedIn profile, including an evaluation of history, stability and quality of the recruiters network.

Personally, I could do far more with my LinkedIn account. However I do review it every day, participate in groups, answer questions, update my status and add connections every week. So far I have hired new Aquent employees from LinkedIn, won clients and secured speaking engagements.

So Aussie recruiters, let’s get with the programme. Slow to buy into Twitter I can half understand.

But if you are not LinkedIn… you are lucked out.

Recently I conducted an RCSA seminar for over 400 Australian Recruiters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The topic was “Riding the Recovery” and part of my session was on Social Media and how we need to build that technology into our talent sourcing strategies.

Well, I grabbed this opportunity to conduct a little mini-survey on the Twitter habits of attendees. It was totally unscientific and very impromptu, so take from this what you will, but I was somewhat surprised to find that only 5% of the attendees (by show of hands) in Sydney and Melbourne actually have a Twitter account at all. In Brisbane the percentage was also dismally low, but better than the rest at about 10%

I am not sure what I expected. Maybe the percentage is no higher in my own company, so who am I to judge? But on the other hand, Australians are massive early-adopters of technology, and at the general level have swarmed into Social Media use. Why not recruiters?

I think this is going to have to change – and fast. We won’t be able to rely on job boards for candidates going forward. The cream of candidates, especially passive ones, will need to be sourced through an increasingly fragmented variety of channels. In my view Social Media will be one of those channels.

But for recruiters Twitter will be far more than a simple source of candidates to fill todays’ job order. More important than that is that smart use of Social Media is an opportunity to be perceived as an expert in your industry niche. Recruiters are going to need to use Twitter to foster relationships (and not to spam people by the way), build credibility, and actually interact with communities of people they might want to place in the future, or who are influencers in their area of interest. That will be increasingly powerful for those who get it right.

In my view it’s like this. Social media remains a TOOL – not a strategy – to reach people. There are still tons of people who will not be found on social networking sites. Recruiters don’t want to be seduced by Social Media and the hype surrounding it — but equally recruiters must acknowledge its’ role, and figure out how to work it into the talent acquisition mix

We are recovering from this downturn, and when we do, the talent shortage is going to be more severe than anything we experienced a year or two ago. Finding talent, connecting with those talent and building talent communities is going to be what separates the winners from the losers in the recruitment industry, in my opinion.

Sourcing talent will become far more fragmented in the future, and candidates will be accessed from an ever increasing variety of channels including social media, blogs, specialty sites, as well as user and special interest groups. Job boards will play a role, certainly, especially niche boards, but increasingly they will become less effective, particularly when it comes to connecting with the elusive passive candidates.

At Aquent we have taken what I believe is a bold but decisive decision to remove all job search or job board functions from our website, completely.

Aquent.com attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, and many of our best talent are captured this way. But we are are entering a brave new world of talent management I think, and now we must focus on connectivity at a human level with our candidates.

Aquent.com now encourages job seekers to search directly for an Agent (our name for Consultant) who specialises in the area that the candidate is interested in. The candidate can now connect with a personalised Agent URL (PURL), and from there can connect with the Agent directly via phone, email or social network.

We believe it’s time for a fresh approach to candidate communication. Talent are tired of applying for jobs via a job board, and never hearing back or getting a “Dear John” standard response. Ironically, our research suggest recruiter websites are the very worst offenders in this regard.

Now Aquent is taking the concept of connectivity and visibility to a whole new level, embracing the social medial model as an intrinsic way of doing business.

Lack of personal interaction is doing our industry no favours. In fact I consider it one of our deepest flaws. Many recruiters use technology to avoid connecting personally with talent, when in fact the real advantage of technology is to get much closer to many more quality candidates.

On our agents’ profile, a job seeker will see the Agent’s face and their contact details. The job seeker will know what our Agent specialises in, and what they are passionate about. They can read our Agents’ testimonials from talent and clients, and then connect directly.

We want to turn the tables on the recruitment industry. Many recruiters go out of their way to make themselves uncontactable, hiding behind job reference numbers and generic email addresses.

All of this is just dumb business, because increasingly the recruiter who owns the talent market…will own the market!

Aquent’s processes are now transparent and gives total responsibility to our business – mature, specialised recruiters to satisfy talent enquiries. It puts the pressure on us to actually do what we say we do, and I love that.

Besides, the reality is that job boards don’t find people jobs. People find people jobs.

(Last year, Aquent won the 2009 WebAward for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development” in the “Employment” category. More information on this can be found here)

I have been reading quite a bit lately about creating a personal brand online. The subject fascinates me, not least because I see so many people making a total hash of it by the inane things they post on Facebook, Twitter, blog replies, and to a lesser extent, LinkedIn.

But recently I had such a powerful personal example happen to me, that I feel compelled to share it with you. This small Twitter exchange taught me a huge lesson in how quickly “Brand You” can be harmed by inappropriate online behaviour.

You see recentlyI was shocked to read a Tweet which, frankly, made a very disparaging remark, directed at me!

TweetDeck advised me I had several “mentions” overnight, and I glanced through them, smiling at some banter with followers, until I struck the Tweet that, for reasons still unknown to me, took a personal shot at me, by name. Look, it wasn’t a vicious remark. But it was personal, it was negative, it was totally unprovoked and of course, it was very public.

Now if this has not happened to you, I can confirm it is an unpleasant experience. The comment was untrue, and I hope it is not how anyone views me. So it rankled! I obviously clicked on the perpetrators’ Twitter page and found that I had never even heard of the guy! Never had anything to do with him in the real world or the online world, although I did work out he is a Twitter follower of mine (or was!). Nor was his comment in response to any Tweet of mine. It was not even directed to me, but to a third party, about me.

I searched for his LinkedIn page and found he holds a nothing-job in a widely unrespected company. I was not sure if this made me feel better or worse! I racked my brain as to why this stranger would attack me, publicly. I won’t lie to you. It stung. However after about 10 minutes I started to lose interest and decided not to respond in any public way. I resolved to forget about it.

But that’s when it got really interesting. Over the next few hours my Twitter DM inbox (Direct Message) began to fill up with fellow Tweeters who took great umbrage at the remark this guy had made. I had at least 10 in a single day, and the theme was “who is this guy?” and “Who does he think he is” and more specifically “What a rude jerk”, and interestingly “I will never use him or his company again.”

One follower –who I do not know personally at all, and only vaguely remember as an online friend, had done his research on the “offender” and Direct Messaged me to say that he was amazed this guy was in the advertising industry “because he has no idea of how to manage his personal brand”

And it was that remark that struck me hard. In a flash, I realised that it was not MY reputation that had suffered as a result of this online rudeness. It was the reputation and brand of the person who made the remark that had taken a huge hit. Just one Tweet and provoked such an active response from my followers, all echoing disapproval. The question is, how many people read that Tweet and thought “idiot”?

And so the lesson was learned. By me, if not by the person who chose to hurl cyber-insults. Online, we are what we write. In real life we can make a risqué joke to close friends because they “know” us and take the joke in context. In real interpersonal situations we can pass the odd sarcastic comment, accompanied by a smile, and the receiver feels no hurt because there is context and history, which makes it ok and appropriate. Dropping in the odd swear word while chatting with like-minded buddies does not raise an eyebrow because it conforms with the group culture.

Online we have no such protection.

All this got me thinking about my own online “brand”. I have 5,200 plus Twitter followers and get thousands of visitors to my blog each month, but a tiny percentage of those people are known to me personally. Yet many of the rest I have what I consider to be a great relationship with. We reply to each other’s Tweets, we DM, we offer advice, and we share good-humoured banter as well as seriously useful data. We pass on knowledge freely, and even do business together.

I thought about how I viewed these people. I have an image of them, they have a “brand “ with me based on their tweets, their humour, the quality of their information and their online generosity. And that ‘brand’ or ‘reputation’ is as real as if I had met them. And I will make decisions to trust them and buy their services based on the brand they have built up with me online, over time.

So the lesson is this. Consider “Brand You” before you Tweet how many beers you sank on Saturday night. Consider ‘Brand You’ before you use gratuitous profanities online. Consider “Brand You” before you post that heavily politicised or semi-pornographic video on your blog spot, after months of building up credibility as a professional recruiter.

And of course, consider “Brand You” before you hurl insults at people who might actually have a stronger online brand than your own.

I was very reluctant to write this post initially. There has been so much noise about social media, and how it’s going to impact our industry, do we really need another blog on the topic?

Probably not. But the rhetoric and hyperbole about social media has been bugging me lately, and it will make me feel better if I offer some thoughts about how all this may play out.

Lets start ‘big picture’ and then focus in on social media itself. It seems to me that the big issue facing recruiters is the fact talent sourcing will become increasingly fragmented. Years ago we got our candidates from press advertising. Period. That was basically it. Then we had choice between press and job boards. In the future it’s going to be far more fluid. Far more dynamic. Todays’ whiz-bang social networking phenomena, will be replaced by some thing else in time, and that new medium, in turn, will be superseded by something even more appealing and pervasive.

So recruiters have to be super dexterous, tuned-in, and flexible when it comes to sourcing talent, or we could be fishing for candidates in a dead pond before we know it. And if that happens, the recovery will pass us by, and so might the industry alltogether.

What is certain is that candidates will be accessed from an ever-increasing variety of channels. These will include social media of course, as well as blogs. Job boards will continue to be part of the mix, but increasingly niche job boards will work best, as well as specialty sites, associations and user and special interest groups. In addition we will need to invest more in innovative networking and referral programs. Certainly I believe it to be true that those recruiters who stick with outdated sourcing methods, who fail to innovate, who fail to really work at sourcing, will fall way behind.

In relation to social media itself as a recruiting tool, I believe it’s like a very interesting picture that has not yet fully come into focus. I don’t believe we really know yet how it’s going to impact our industry. As with all new technologies, there is a great deal of hype surrounding social media, but I don’t think anyone can point to consistent ROI from this medium.

There is no doubt social media is going to form part of any talent sourcing stategy, but my own view is that there is a danger that recruiters see it as a one-stop solution. It is not. It’s another channel – a very compelling one for reaching large numbers of people -but it takes discipline, time and resources to make it work for you. I am no social media expert, but I have learned a lot about harnessing its power, so I speak as a user, not an observer.

gregsavage.com.au

https://twitter.com/greg_savage

http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregpsavage

I set myself a few goals when I really started to work at my Blog, Twitter and Linked In. (which was very recently by the way). I wanted to raise the profile of Aquent with clients and the staffing industry in general. I wanted to drive readers to my blog so I could have a platform to voice my own and my organizations views. I wanted to access top talent who might end up working for Aquent, and I was hopeful of media coverage.

It has been truly incredible how these three platforms (Blog, Twitter, Linked In) have been able to work together to drive my goals. A tweet mentioning I have published a new blog post brings a surge of hits. A change to my Linked In status advising that I am hiring a manager for Aquent Hong Kong business brings me three very interesting candidates in a day. Linked In has brought me acquisition enquiries, job orders and candidates, and all three have provided us tons of media coverage across the world.

So social media has powerful application, no doubt. But the most important thing for an on-the-desk recruiter to remember, is not to confuse ‘sourcing’ with actual recruiting skills. I remain nervous that social media, and other technologies, will weaken core recruiting skills because there is a tendency to hide behind the technology and forget that the real power is the human connection where we can bring to bare our negotiating, influencing, persuading and broking skills.

Social media can help, but it won’t do it for you

I think you need to use social media and technology to ensure you are perceived as an expert in your respective industry. We must actually use social media to build relationships, not to spam people. The real goal is to develop strong bonds with that category of candidate you want to place.

And one final tip. The rules that apply to real life relationship building also apply to online relationship building. Giving as well as taking, politeness, replying in a timely manner, tone, language. These things count.

But most of all remember, social media remains a tool -not a strategy – to reach people. There are still many great candidates who will not be found on social networking sites. You don’t want to be seduced by social media and the hype surrounding it – but equally you must acknowledge its power, and figure out how to work it into your talent acquisition mix.