Social Media and Recruiting
Much has been written about using social media for marketing and brand building, but social media and social networking sites are also great tools for recruiting. Based on the 2008 Social Media Survey of Real Estate and Construction companies published by Morgan Sullivan, many real estate and construction executives believe that people use these tools to find jobs, but few use social media to identify and recruit top talent and that’s unfortunate because it’s effective and often inexpensive. Here are some tips on how to use social media and networking sites in recruiting:
LinkedIn. This is a social networking tool is popular in the professional community. Set up a LinkedIn account, grow your network to 500+ primary contacts, and you’ll gain second and third party access to millions of people. Key word searches on LinkedIn can then be very effective in identifying top construction and real estate talent once your primary network is large enough.
LinkedIn also has various networking groups available for construction and real estate executives to meet people who might make good employment prospects. There are other social networking sites that can provide similar benefits including Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, and many more.
Blogging. Recruiting is marketing and companies that excel at marketing tend to do well when it comes to attracting and keeping top talent. Blogging is a powerful marketing tool because a blog with good information will attract people. This includes both prospective hires and clients.
RSS Feeds. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way to leverage postings on your blog. Many social media and networking sites including Twitter, Technorati, Blog Catalog, Zimbio, and many more allow you to register your RSS feed address with them to allow these sites to receive updated postings from your blog. This is an easy and inexpensive way for real estate and construction companies to communicate to social media sites and draw attention from both employment candidates and prospective clients.
Sign-up page. Include a sign-up page on your blog for prospective hires and clients to receive electronic communication from you. Electronic newsletters are easy to run through a blog with an RSS feed and a newsletter distribution service like Feedblitz or Feedburner. It’s also inexpensive and keeps your name in front of people you may want to hire somewhere down the road.
Video and Podcasting. Very few real estate and construction companies use video or podcasting according to our survey. This is a shame because posting a video or podcast to a web site or blog is not expensive and it’s a great tool for both recruiting and marketing.
Although many construction and real estate companies are not using social media for recruiting or marketing, my guess is that this will change as people working in these industries become more familiar with these tools and their benefits. Recent college graduates are also much more receptive to social media than traditional forms of recruiting and marketing and the industries will have to change to survive.
