Attendees settled in to the cozy conference room at Wild Apple Design Group in Post Office Park in Wilbraham on January 12th to learn more about using social media as a hiring tool.
Presenter Michael Vann of the Vann Group and Hire EQ leveraged his expertise in this area to share the viewpoints of recruiters as well as candidates. Daniel Morton-Bentley Esq. followed up with a legal perspective.
Michael suggested a few best-practices for using social media and other e-tools when recruiting. He brought up an often-overlooked fact that recruiting for new employees is a function of marketing. It is no different than enticing new customers and should receive the same level of attention and detail. Michael recommends that companies who are consistently recruiting consider a dedicated web presence and social media sites that allow for the benefits of working for your company to be displayed. He offered an excellent tip on starting groups on Linked-In. A company can open an industry specific group to entice other like-minded talent to join in to share articles and information with each other. Many who join may not be job-hunting right now, but it creates a targeted group of the right type of people to receive postings about job opportunities that they may pass along or take advantage of themselves. Advertising through Linked-In and Facebook and others is also a great way to reach a targeted audience, but Michael warns that it can get expensive.
Michael pointed out that the voyeuristic nature of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and others make it easy to peek into someone’s world and glean personal information. He shared a fictional case study about “Dream Candidate Ken” to illustrate how a professional recruiter would review public information on a social media site. Our “Ken” appears to be the perfect candidate on his resume for an up-and-coming but conservative global sales company. However upon examining his social media presence, the recruiter notices that “Ken” belongs to several millionaire themed groups, often tweets with celebrity/millionaires and just posted bragging rights about his new BMW Z4 Roadster. None of these things make “Ken” a bad guy . . .but they certainly don’t make him the right candidate for the conservative employer.
Daniel took the floor and helped attendees understand how the law interprets and creates exposure for recruiters using social media to do their culling. He shares these interesting survey results from CareerBuilder.com:
Nearly 50% of employers surveyed screen potential candidates by using
Of the nearly 50%, 35% of employers found information that caused them not to hire a particular candidate.
Daniel points out that there is no specific law that prohibits the use of social media in the hiring process, but there are legal risks. The risks generally stem from concerns regarding discrimination, constitutional rights, labor laws and privacy.
Once an employer/recruiter obtains specific knowledge about a candidate from social media, they cannot legally pretend not to know and must disclose sources. In order for recruiters to protect themselves from this scenario, Daniel recommends they designate a professional recruiting service to act as a screen. A good provider can be trained to gather only the information needed for the hiring process and can protect the employer from knowing too much.
Daniel shares in his closing that social media can be a great tool to assess someone’s character, but we all need to be aware of the “characters” out there. All of us need to be mindful of the information we post on our social media sites.
You may think those photos you took at the New Year’s Eve party are super funny . . .but what would someone seeking to hire you think?
Amy Scott of Wild Apple Design Group is a marketing veteran in Wilbraham, MA. Amy and the team at Wild Apple specialize in marketing solutions for non-profits as well as many other for profit niche industries. Amy often speaks & workshops on marketing topics. Learn more at www.wildappledesigngroup.com
