Yesterday’s Advisor looked at recruiting websites—including your company’s own. Today, social media and recruiting, and a look at an extraordinary collection of pre-written job descriptions.
Social media sites are moving into the mainstream of business recruiting, and every employer needs to take note. Social networking sites can help you in your recruiting by:
- Attracting individuals who are not necessarily looking for employment (“passive candidates”)
- Providing current candidates with an inside look at working life within your organization
- Locating potential candidates for particular job openings
- Targeting high-potential candidates who may or may not be looking for employment
- Maintaining ties with former employees or alumni. They can recommend, and may be enticed to return themselves.
Creating Your Social Networking Space
As more and more people use social networks in their job searches (and that’s likely—social networks are free), it’s in your best interest to create an attractive company profile on your site.
Set that keyboard aside! Your job descriptions are already written. Click here to see why thousands of managers have a permanent place in their offices for BLR’s classic Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.
Setting Up your Social Media Recruiting Site
Once you have a profile, you’ll start receiving information about candidates, and you will generally get a more holistic view of the candidate than you would from a résumé. Social media users are actively making their social profiles more employer-friendly. You’re likely to find out something about, for example, communication skills. (See below for a warning, however.)
Points to consider:
- Social networks may make the job search less frightening for some applicants. They will feel better establishing a relationship online.
- Many applicants (especially younger ones) are sensitive to collaboration and individual feedback; recruiting via social networking allows you to treat them as individuals.
- Social media can help you show your organization’s contributions to charity, involvement in the community, green philosophies, etc. Educating recruits on your organization’s values may be a deciding factor in landing the best applicants.
For examples of Facebook pages that do a good job of recruiting, take a look at the pages for Hyatt hotels, the US Army, and the CIA.
And, on the other front, if you have no social media presence that may send a message to some applicants that you are a dinosaur.
Warning: You Can’t Unring the Bell
When visiting social media sites, you’ll get good information, but you are also likely to get information you don’t really want, like sex, race, religion, disability etc. At the current time, we seem to be moving away from “Never look, it’s too dangerous” and toward “Yes, look, it’s part of your due diligence.” But, today, we’re in the middle.
Some experts recommend delaying the social media search until late in the recruitment process, which makes it less likely that a prohibited factor was involved in the decision. Others recommend that the hiring manager not be the one to make the social media check. Then, he or she can be given relevant business-related information without becoming aware of the forbidden information.
However you are doing your recruiting, it starts with the job description. Post it, mail it, e-mail it, and you’re on your way. As long as it’s well-written, up-to-date, and ADA-compliant. How about your job descriptions? Detailed enough to help? Essential skills delineated?
If not—or if you’ve never even written job descriptions—you’re not alone. Thousands of companies fall short in this area.
It’s easy to understand why. Job descriptions are not simple to do—what with updating and management and legal review, especially given the ADA requirement of a split-off of essential functions from other functions in the description. Wouldn’t it be great if your job descriptions were available and already written?
Actually, they are. We have more than 700, ready to go, covering every common position in any organization, from receptionist right up to president. They are in an extremely popular BLR program called the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.
First created in the 1980s, the “JDE” has been continually refined and updated over time, with descriptions revised or added each time the law, technology—or the way we do business—changes.
Prewritten job descriptions in the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia now come with pay grades already attached. Click here to try the program at no cost.
Revised for the ADA, Pay Grades Updated
There was a major revision, for example, following the passage of the ADA. In fact, BLR editors reviewed every one of those 700 descriptions to ensure they were ADA-compliant.
Another enhancement was the updating of pay grades for each job. According to our customers, this is an enormous time-saver, enabling them to make compensation decisions even as they define the position. You can see a sample job description from the program by clicking here. (Yes, it is the one for HR Manager—Pay grade: 37.)
The BLR Job Descriptions Encyclopedia also includes an extensive tutorial on setting up a complete job descriptions program, and how to encourage participation from all parts of the organization. That includes top management, the employees, and any union or other collective bargaining entity.
Quarterly Updates, No Additional Cost
Very important these days, quarterly updates are included in the program as a standard feature—key at a time of constantly changing laws and emerging technologies. We’ll send you new or revised descriptions every 90 days. And the cost is extremely reasonable, averaging less than 43 cents per job description … already written, legally reviewed, and ready to adapt or use as is.
You can evaluate BLR’s Job Descriptions Encyclopedia at no cost in your office for up to 30 days. Get more information or order the Job Descriptions Encyclopedia.
Download product sample
Download list of job descriptions included