One year ago, I created some message alerts that daily searched the web for articles related to social media recruiting or social recruiting or web 2.0 recruiting. The articles were few and far between. Today, I receive multiple alerts discussing the topic.
One year ago, I was unclear as to what the correct social strategy was for my work at Microsoft. What I did understand clearly was that the social media phenomenon was having an amazing impact on talent identification. For some reason people were self-identifying and segmenting themselves into their areas of interests. By openly declaring their affinity and interests, it made my role as a talent sourcer much easier. Well, to be perfectly candid, it made finding people easier; there was that little issue of how to engage talent on social networks. Today, our social strategy is clearer, but all the hype, buzz and conversation can cloud the key issues.
Confused about how and what to measure after you’ve launched your social recruiting strategy? You are in good company. After attending (& speaking) at Sourcecon 2010 and attending the ERE Expo Spring 2010 event, I know that finding a way to measure the impact and effectiveness of social media is top of mind for thought leaders in talent identification, engagement, & acquisition. While there were many anecdotes and success stories with respect to getting hires using social media, there did not seem to be the type of ROI analysis and rigor that leads to predictable strategy.
Perhaps you have created a Facebook page and now have thousands of fans; how do you know if these fans actually apply for your jobs? Perhaps you have created “groups” on LinkedIn and have a significant number of members; how many of the members actually apply for your jobs? Perhaps you were an early adopter to Twitter and have a large following; how do you actually get someone to stop tweeting long enough to apply for work?
For example, the graphic below illustrates the traffic generated by social media and networking sites for our division during 2009. Nearly 7% of our overall visitors came from social media sites. Facebook led the way, followed closely by Twitter with LinkedIn a distant third.
The graphic below illustrates the overall effectiveness of the social media channel in terms of the conversion of visitors to talent community members and then to applicants for jobs.
While the graphics are enlightening, they probably generate additional questions. Did I mention that the purpose of this post is to interest you in an upcoming Webcast (details are below)? So, I am going to simply summarize that the technology exists to measure the activity related to social media recruiting. Next time, I will dive a little deeper into the numbers and see how we can incorporate them into a strategy.
HCI Webcast: Turn Social Strategy into Tangible Recruiting Metrics
We have discovered how to architect a way use these channels and translate them into tangible recruiting metrics. Turn Social Strategy into Tangible Recruiting Metrics is the title of an upcoming HCI Webcast which airs on April 27, 2010. When I say “we” discovered how to architect, I am including our vendor partner, Jobs2Web, led by its founder, Doug Berg (who will be co-presenting the Webcast). The Microsoft|Jobs2Web relationship has led to some pioneering work in developing a recruitment marketing platform. It began with Jobs2Web providing a solution that we did not know existed; initially, I am not certain we even had the words to describe what we needed. It has into evolved into a unique synergistic experience as we seek to bring out the best in creating a 21st Century Technology Solution.
What Doug and I will present are ways to measure social media and to think strategically about measuring success in social recruiting. While we will view social recruiting through the lens of the Jobs2Web dashboard, it is our goal to present an approach that can be adopted in any environment.
As a Talent Community Evangelist, Marvin Smith's role is to identify current and future talent (employees) for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division (E&D). Specifically, he identifies the target talent that is needed for the businesses and creates opportunities for conversations with that audience. This workstream is an integral part of the pioneering talent community development pilot at Microsoft. He uses social networking and social media for sourcing and recruiting and is active in the conversation about social recruiting, talent pipelines and building talent communities. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn or “friend” on Facebook.
Image: Amy Loves Yah
