Thanks to the magic of Twitter and the sharing savvy of Maren Hogan, I read this article in Human Resource Executive Online about "social recruiting" as a core competency for the hiring of new recruiters.
HR occupations most commonly seeking these skills are recruiters and training specialists, according to the platform, created and monitored by Wanted Technologies Corp., headquartered in Quebec City, with primary U.S. offices in New York.
"We've heard the 'buzz' about social recruiting," says Bruce Murray, CEO of Wanted Technologies, "but the facts are showing that forward-looking companies are now expecting their recruiters to have mastered this core competency.
"Social recruiting," he says, "has moved beyond 'buzz' and is definitely mainstream."
Awesome. Allow me to step forward, and on behalf of all the bloggers, dreamers, and trainers that dug into this over the last seven years, I'd like to say, you're welcome. Thank you to all the readers and writers of Recruiting.com. Thank you to Kennedy Expo and ERE and OnRec, and to folks like John Sumser and Jason Davis and Craig Silverman and Heather Hamilton and Recruiting Animal and Anthony Meaney and David Manaster and well, all of the Jason's, and Dennis Smith and Dave Mendoza and Shally Steckerl and Joel Cheesman and Maureen Sharib and really, anyone who started pitching this as "extra sauce" in the core recruiting function.
And I'm sure I missed a whole slew of folks.
But seriously, this is a good sign for the industry that social media is seen as a core competency. It is.
But what does it mean? And how do you hire for it?
While we've taken great strides, there is still a fundamental disconnect between understanding social media and actually using it in the recruiting process. So if you want to hire someone with social media skills, can I just a simple remedy?
Ask them to demonstrate it.
If you know what you're doing in social media, it shouldn't be that hard to sit down in front of a computer and show it off.
This is a screen shot of LinkedIn, and at the very least, you ought to be able to demostrate how to use LinkedIn to find candidates. Show a trick or two.
And when done with LinkedIn, you can show how Meetup can help you find active candidates whose online profiles are passive.
Or perhaps you can demonstrate how you'd go about interviewing accoutants in Seattle when the job is in Tampa.
Or maybe just show how you can get direct phone numbers off old resumes in the database?
What you can't do is say that you know social media, put it on your resume, and then skate through the interview because your future manager doesn't understand what it means to be social savvy.
I'd be interested in finding out if this is case. Back in the old days, coders would sometimes interview by, you know, writing code. Now that technology is such an important part of every job, you'd think that we tested for skillsets. They used to give typing speed tests and number pad drills in an interview. Why wouldn't you have a LinkedIn run-through in your hiring process?
Say, that's not a bad idea. Maybe I'll call Tincup.
