From Gautam Ghosh - June 28, 2009
Recently there was a Social Recruiting Summit held in the US at Google organized by ERE.
If you haven't heard of it so far, social recruiting being the use of social media and networking tools to engage prospective candidates (as Michael Specht defines it) with your organization and form a talent pipeline you might select from later.
Of course, social recruiting as a concept is not new.
Headhunters and Corporate recruiters have for over the last century cultivated networks using phones and rolodex - but the boost that the internet has given to communication, first with email then with social media tools and now with social networking has made this quite easy for recruiters of all stripes to cultivate their networks. You don't need to be part of the old boys network and to take out A list candidates to five star lunches to cultivate your network.
In fact as a corporate recruiter the Microsoft JobsBlog was one of the first dedicated approaches to social recruiting followed by Heather Hamilton's blog on MS Marketing careers.
Third Party recruiters like Dave Mendoza, Michael Kelemen were the first people I know of who used blogs, Linkedin to build their own expertise and reputation.
Now there is Facebook, Twitter and who knows what other social app round the corner.
The focus for recruiters using these tools has to be an ability to catch the next wave and speed and response to prospective candidates.
Whether you represent the 'corporate' recruiter or are headhunter (like Options Executive Search in India :-)) focusing on the people you want to impact is more important rather than focusing on the tools.
Guess great headhunters have always known that truth!
As a bonus here's a presentation that the Linkedin CEO made on Social Recruiting:
Reid Hoffman - Ere Social Recruiting Summit Keynote
