Impact of Social Media on Recruiter Experience

Let’s get serious. How does social media and all of those super popular sites like Facebook, LinkedIN, Tweeter, Spokeo, Plaxo, Glassdooor, and a couple of dozen others impact our job search? Can they actually help us land a job, or are they just sites with cool usability that are fun to use, but can’t deliver?
 
In business world, people often say that social media does everything except sell products and services. This opinion, however, is not unanimous. The goal of social media is to engage in a conversation with potential customers. The focus is not on transaction, but rather on the interaction. Let’s examine a few case studies of how large organizations are using social media:

• GM keeps a blog to communicate with their customers and share with them news on car designs and various green technologies. The goal is to educate consumers on what GM is doing, so when consumer is making a decision they remember a company they interacted with over a long period of time.
• Delta has a video channel, photo sharing site, where their customers can share images from their recent trips and a fan page on Facebook that support their philanthropic initiative. The goal is to get Delta’s clients to interact with each other and become advocates of the brand. 
• Learning from what the companies are doing, it is safe to say that the goal of a job seeker is not to seek job openings, but rather seek connections. Here are a few strategies on how to interact with decision makers.
  

1.    If you want to work for a specific company, do the appropriate research. Do any company employees have blog, LinkedIN page or a Twitter account? If so, what are they saying across those sites? Use Spokeo (www.spokeo.com) to research current employees and learn what they are doing across social networks.

2.    Once you find some information that can help you establish a point of contact prepare a plan of attack. It goes without saying that sending a desperate message ‘please hire me’ will not work well. Your goal is to add value to the conversation. The contact has to be established over a longer period of time, one short interaction will not get the job done. For example, using LinkedIN you can look at the groups the person has joined. Try joining the same groups and engage in a conversation. Q&A feature on LInkedIN will allow you to post answers to some of the questions that people have, thus establishing yourself as an expert.

3.    If you can’t find any company employees using social media, and you can’t establish point of contact try looking at local news. This way, even if your only option is to send a letter to the Recruiter, at least you can demonstrate your knowledge, and make your letter stand out more. Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) and Alltop (http://www.alltop.com/) will help you keep track of the company specific recent news.
Some people use social media to launch their own social media campaigns. TwitterShouldHireMe.com a campaign to get Jamie Varon a job at Twitter was a huge success as Jamie not only landed a job, but became a celebrity.

My next blog postings will focus on specific social media applications and how they can be used to interact with potential employers.

Recruiter Experience
Why does this blog matter, when in minutes you can find hundreds of other blogs that are competing with this one for your attention? The answer is user experience. Every time a company designs a product, it has to think about the user experience. Company that can teach all of us about user experience is Apple. You experience their product from the moment you walk into their beautifully designed stores, open a box with their product and start using it. Although, I am a PC user myself, I can’t help but admire the work that Apple is doing.

My question is how do I design a winning user experience for people who spend their time reading this blog. My goal is not to have another blog on social media and a job search. My goal is to help you design a winning recruiter experience.

What is recruiter experience?
Let’s say you are a company, and you have a service to sell - this service is your expertise, it is your knowledge and experience. Recruiter experience is how a recruiter experiences contact with a job seeker. Sometimes it is limited to seeing applicant’s resume, sometimes the experience lasts through the interview. A good company like Apple is in a full control of their product experience, are you in full control of the recruiter experience?

Recruiter experience consists of thee components:  recruiter needs, technical requirements and business constrains. Technical requirements is the skill set of the applicant. Usually it is a set of tools and experiences that an applicant needs to have. Business constraints summarize what organization is able to offer in return. For example, an employer might be willing to offer you a certain salary, benefits and some kind of an opportunity for promotion. Recruiter needs is the hardest to understand. This requires a lot of research, as it is your job to understand where the organization is going, what their business objectives are and how you can help them get there. The last component that is by far the hardest to design is the context. It includes everything that impacts recruiter’s experience. The goal is to know as much as you can about the context.
 
The goal of this blog is to help people create their own recruiter experience where they are in control. Any job coach will tell you that the last thing you want to do in a job search is hope that somebody will find you and will offer you a job.

My upcoming blog postings will focus on each stage of designing your unique user experience. From the moment you register on social networks to the time you connect with employers until the moment you are hired, you have to control the experience a recruiter has while selecting you. 

Post 1 - Another Job Search Blog, So What?
Michael Loban

My foot was softly tapping on the carpeted floor of the waiting room. I was sitting on yet another uncomfortable office chair with a metal frame, and just a little bit of cushion to make this sitting experience bearable.  At least the office where I interviewed yesterday had a sofa, and they even offered me something to drink. Not here though.

I could fill my shirt getting stuck to my wet back, a common experience among people who get nervous before they are about to be interviewed for yet another position. "Why do I want this job, why do I want to work for this company, what can I offer to this organization?" these questions were flying around in my head, and I tried to concentrate on rehearsing the answers one at a time.  Every few minutes the flow of my thoughts was getting interrupted by the secretary telling yet another candidate how to get to this office. I was competing for a job that I did not even want but desperately needed, and I was competing with the whole army of people. I was not just sad, I was disappointed in myself, and I felt like I am letting down people who depend on me. Basically, I was screwed. As confident as I wanted to sound presenting a case for myself, I was overwhelmed with everything that was a direct result of something that I could not control.

Mr. Thompson will see you now.

I left all my emotions waiting for me on the chair, and walked inside the office. “

- Anonymous


We all can relate all too well to this story. Most of us have interviewed in our lives, and way too many of us have to interview every day for the jobs we have a slim chance of getting. I start to wonder if there is another way to get a job than applying for openings in a hope that your resume will be chosen among literally 300 hundred other resumes. We put our faith in the hands of the recruiter who looks at us as a bunch of keywords – VP, PMP, MBA…

There should be a better way. It seems that to learn this better way we need to understand how companies market their products and services, and learn guerilla strategies from them. In the past few years, I have done just that, I worked with numerous organizations to help them establish a powerful brand online, and use social media tools to engage with perspective audience, create long term relations and of course sell. Lately, I was asked to speak at a number of conferences and events on the topic of online guerilla job search. I want this blog to become a two way conversation, where I do not only share the tactics and advices, but where you get to share your insights and results.

To your success.