Social sourcing can save your company a ton of money when it comes to recruiting, says expert Kelly Dingee. But it’s easy to spin your wheels if you’re not careful.
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Dingee, who is the director of strategic recruiting at Staffing Advisors, presented some helpful hints in a recent webinar presented by BLR and HR Hero.
What Is Social Sourcing?
Social sourcing is the use of online media for recruitment purposes. Thanks to the ever-expanding social media landscape, there is a wealth of information about almost everyone online, and much of that can be valuable to a recruiter, says Dingee.
Think about the information you have shared online via social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you have probably inadvertently (or purposefully) created a pretty accurate profile of yourself online. Social sourcing is a way to use this exact feature of social media to find the perfect candidate to fill your open position.
Why Is Social Sourcing So Important?
Using social media for sourcing and recruiting is the future. Here’s why:
- You can use social sourcing to learn who is on the playing field. Dingee says that as of 2014, 71 percent of online adults use Facebook. Around 25 percent use Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. She suggests using those figures to justify spending time and money on social sourcing.
- Social sourcing can really help offset recruiting costs. Print ads, online classifieds, and other methods for posting jobs can be prohibitively expensive, says Dingee. Thanks to the trend of social media engaging diverse users, traditional methods of recruiting become more and more obsolete.
- A range of demographics is at your fingertips. If you don’t believe that social media is the solution to your costly recruiting strategies, take a look at the research! Nearly every major social media platform is being used by ever-expanding demographics, advises Dingee.
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How Do I Get Started?
Dingee uses Google to find two simple tools that she likes to use to source online: Connectifier and Social 360. She uses a quick search on both of these tools for her name as a method to introduce the kind of information that is out there for any professional, and to remind people how they can be represented online. She also believes this helps people to think about how they might find candidates online.
And remember, social media is about a lot more now than just Facebook and Instagram. While these social media giants are always going to be massively useful resources, Dingee cautions that you shouldn’t stop there. Other social media outlets like Snapchat, Glassdoor, Periscope, and Meerkat are just as important for recruiters.
The best way to make sure your recruiters aren’t missing out on important social media outlets is to make use of a social media map.
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Dingee says running through the map while sourcing can help make sure you cover all of the bases while creating a profile of a potential candidate. This is especially helpful when the usual suspects like Facebook and LinkedIn are not getting you the results you want.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, Dingee tells us how social media sourcing can make all the difference when it comes to recruiting and an introduction to the free best practices report, Scaling Up Social Recruiting: Three Steps to Successful Social Media Recruitment.