Social recruiting
Encyclopedia
Social recruiting is a contested term. It is a concept at the intersection of recruitment
and the embryonic field of social media
. There are several terms used interchangeably including social hiring, social recruitment and social media recruitment.
The most popular Social Media sites used for recruiting are:
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Viadeo
Xing
Google+
candidates through the use of social platforms as promotional and/or advertising channels by employers and recruiters
. Career placement offices at university
campuses also use social recruiting since social media is familiar to and often embraced by students and graduates as a job searching medium.
Since late 2009 there has been some discussion in the recruitment and social media communities about whether simply using social media as a communication and marketing channel can be called "social recruiting". The argument is that for recruiting to be truly social, it needs to build a community, facilitate communication within that community, and rely on social connections between community members to recruit.
Counters to the BooleanBlackBelt.com article's position that nothing has changed is growing as more data is collected on the actual activities of recruiters in 2010 and 2011. JobVite.com, an applicant tracking system
(ATS) provider, released an interesting report in May of 2011 regarding the use of social media for recruiting indicating that 80% of the 600 employers surveyed answered "Yes" to the question, "Do you use social media for recruiting."
By the end of 2011, social media recruiter postings appear on a regular basis on job aggregator sites like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com, and number well over 1,000 in an October 2011 search. So, it would appear that this is a new - and growing - field.
One Social Media Recruiter position opportunity described the primary duties as:
"Coordinate candidate sourcing by utilizing all available recruiting tools including: social media, job boards, employee referrals, recruiting tools and vendors, and others. Use LinkedIn, FaceBook, Google, Twitter and other forms of Social Media. Requires the ability to recruit through use of social media, navigate all social media avenues, and knows how to maximize recruitment through those sources."
Recruitment
Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...
and the embryonic field of social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
. There are several terms used interchangeably including social hiring, social recruitment and social media recruitment.
The most popular Social Media sites used for recruiting are:
Viadeo
Google+
Competing definitions
The most common definition used for social recruiting is that it is the process of sourcing or recruitingRecruitment
Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...
candidates through the use of social platforms as promotional and/or advertising channels by employers and recruiters
Employment agency
An employment agency is an organization which matches employers to employees. In all developed countries there is a publicly funded employment agency and multiple private businesses which also act as employment agencies.-Public employment agencies:...
. Career placement offices at university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
campuses also use social recruiting since social media is familiar to and often embraced by students and graduates as a job searching medium.
Since late 2009 there has been some discussion in the recruitment and social media communities about whether simply using social media as a communication and marketing channel can be called "social recruiting". The argument is that for recruiting to be truly social, it needs to build a community, facilitate communication within that community, and rely on social connections between community members to recruit.
Counters to the BooleanBlackBelt.com article's position that nothing has changed is growing as more data is collected on the actual activities of recruiters in 2010 and 2011. JobVite.com, an applicant tracking system
Applicant tracking system
An applicant tracking system is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment needs. An ATS can be implemented on an enterprise or small business level, depending on the needs of the company...
(ATS) provider, released an interesting report in May of 2011 regarding the use of social media for recruiting indicating that 80% of the 600 employers surveyed answered "Yes" to the question, "Do you use social media for recruiting."
By the end of 2011, social media recruiter postings appear on a regular basis on job aggregator sites like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com, and number well over 1,000 in an October 2011 search. So, it would appear that this is a new - and growing - field.
One Social Media Recruiter position opportunity described the primary duties as:
"Coordinate candidate sourcing by utilizing all available recruiting tools including: social media, job boards, employee referrals, recruiting tools and vendors, and others. Use LinkedIn, FaceBook, Google, Twitter and other forms of Social Media. Requires the ability to recruit through use of social media, navigate all social media avenues, and knows how to maximize recruitment through those sources."