It was a great pleasure to have attended the
Social Media in Recruitment Conference last week. Personally, I think the content of the event and the conversations within the conference itself was quite valuable.
Not to mention the networking, and meeting with persons that I have followed on Twitter or who have followed me likewise.
In this review, I will focus on the issue of Case Studies for Social Recruiting. Over the next few days, I will write more on specific presentations for likely all the speakers on their respective subjects eg LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Gen Y etc
Something a lot of attendees of the conference (in this case Corporate Recruiters / Recruitment Suppliers) will appreciate is the volume of information provided and how they can add a Social Media strategy as part of their recruitment process. And trying to quote
Lisa Scales : online commuities and social media recruiting should be an enhancement and not a replacement.
Yes, it was also great to hear from
Jonathan Hart-Smith and
Elkie Holland (please follow them) regarding what they are actually doing via Social Media and how they have been successful.
They presented very interesting and admirable strategies, some of them albeit unconventional. Elkie reiterated a quote that: LinkedIn is like a conference, Twitter like a cocktail party and Facebook like a pub.
After the case studies, I had a conversation with someone who said he wished their were more cases studies and someone else wanted to see case studies from corporate recruiters. This is true, but I think somehow we are missing some points here.
Let us not fall back to the seeing is believing way of thinking. In the one hand, Social Media Recruiting is using Social Media to attract candidates and engage with them. Are there companies doing so now and finding people? Of course there are - and we don't have to sit back and look for who is actually getting things done, before we actually appreciate this sourcing tools.
In my previous life in recruiting, I have sourced people from LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and this is happening everyday. But, its just another way of doings things, amongst the other traditional methods.
While people may be generally cynical about new things, even some Social Media Recruiting advocates are asking for more evidence - maybe to get some reassurance or confidence when they sell to new clients. My answer to the latter is: Go out there and get the case studies yourself!
Then again, the two case studies presented at #smir took their time to detail what they have done right and wrong and made quite public how the strategy was implemented in their company. In fact, Jonathan was asked why he had to discuss all of these strategies publicly, as his competition will learn this also and use these tactics.
His response was that this is also part of their own strategy; that they want to be open and have a transparent approach to their business. That is something else that many (probably UK) companies don't wanna do. They do not want to share information on what they have done, how it faired and how successful (or not) it has been. It is all part of keeping your strategy a secret! #Fail.
In the Social Media world, conversations are key, and engaging with the online audience is very important. You can no longer hid behind your Corporate websites. If you become more open and talk about your successes in Social Recruiting, especially at this developmental stage, you become an
early adopter , and effectively get more press coverage that could add value to your overall business goals and strategies.
Your competition will listen to you and learn from you, but more importantly, the media will be more than happy to bring you in as trendsetters. With more free press and media, both online and offline, tell me if you won't get more business than your competitors.
So, if you have had some successes in
Social Recruiting , get the word out and let the world know - and you'd be glad you did.
It is possible that you have ticked all the right boxes and eventually created a 
