Society is changing rapidly and recruiters need to change with it. The latest trends in online social networking are not a fad, they are here to stay — but it’s important your forays onto the net are carefully thought through if you are to avoid embarrassment. Sue Weekes reports

Over the past 18 months, many recruiters have discovered the potential of social networking sites as a source of tracking down new talent. Suddenly, a way was found to hunt out the passive jobseeker who, while not looking for a new position today, may be an ideal candidate tomorrow.

Crucially, as well as help in the search for talent, such sites also gave organisations a powerful vehicle for building that all-important employer brand.

Ernst & Young's 'Oh Happy Day' video, reportedly German-made, may have started life as an internal recruitment film but somehow escaped to the web and found itself on the YouTube social networking website, where it has been the subject of much mirth and ridicule. One visitor posted: "This is what happens when you give 50-year-old HR people free rein."

Without doubt, there is much to learn about how to interact with social media and how to conduct matters in what can be difficult-to-control online environments. For recruiters, the challenge is two-fold: they must take responsibility for helping clients build, manage and safeguard their employer brand online, as well as find the most effective ways to use such tools to differentiate themselves so they are not left behind.

"It is easy to say this stuff isn't important. But, unequivocally, it will form the centrepiece of how we engage with and talk to candidates in the future," says Paul Harrison, managing partner of Carve Consulting, an offline and online marketing consultancy that helps organisations engage with customers and talent. "It is important from the perspective of external perception, internal understanding and damage to online employer brand."

Glenda Stone, director of niche marketing company Aurora, which delivers the www.wheretowork.com direct employer comparison website, agrees and says recruiters must understand how to best use these tools as part of the overall brand and recruitment strategy.

"They are not a panacea and you have to think hard about how you use them. When it comes to putting corporate video footage on a site like YouTube, for instance, we've learned that the most successful and less laughed at have been those which took a more earthy and real approach," she says. "But those who get it right, tend to get it very right."

More than one major organisation has had its brand savaged by disgruntled former and current employees, who felt sufficiently motivated to set up dedicated areas on social networking sites such as Facebook to vent their spleen.

As Jonathan Naylor, a barrister and part of the employment team at law firm Shoosmiths, points out, derogatory comments made about an employer to a friend in the pub would probably go unnoticed. "However, something written on a social networking site is far more permanent and potentially more damaging," he says.

Harrison has no doubt that safeguarding employer brand will form part of the remit for recruiters in the future, but also gives a sharp reminder to recruiters to keep their own house in order. He ran an experiment recently to see if a number of those companies who he knew would be represented at a recent online recruitment conference would pick up a web posting made about them which read 'My terrible/awful/excellent recruitment experience with...'.

Out of 20 names, just three picked it up, to their credit: JobsGoPublic, Jobsite and a person monitoring mentions for what was previously Emap Consumer Media (now Bauer Consumer Media).

"Recruiters must create responsibility for regularly checking key environments and using web tools such as Google Alerts for automatic monitoring," recommends Harrison. "They must demonstrate that they are listening to the online conversation."

Vigilance is a keyword for success when it comes to any social media activity, and from the outset it is important to realise that managing an online brand for yourself, clients or both isn't something that can be done on the side but needs dedicated time and resources. Nor is it as simple as merely posting a glowing profile on Facebook and hoping people will find it.

Focus Management, a recruitment consultancy dedicated to the food and drink sector and one of Carve Consulting's clients, has put a whole range of initiatives in place to help build its brand and better engage with candidates in the sector.

These include setting up an area on Facebook to build relationships with graduates and also launching a blog on its own site that talks directly to the sector. Focus is no newcomer to new media, having established its original site 10 years ago, and owner Stephen Jones says it learned an early lesson: be proactive and optimise your site.

"We have five people internally and two specialist firms externally working on it," he says. "This activity includes search engine marketing and optimisation, and we're using Google Analytics all the time to find out who's coming to the site, where they're spending time and how they are finding us."

Jones also tries to optimise all opportunities that come the company's way for better understanding how to use these new tools. Focus currently has an undergraduate on work placement and has set him the task of finding out what graduates want from the web. "So he's talking to his mates at Sheffield University and that will help us further use the web to engage with graduates," he says.

Future plans include helping clients to develop their brand online by introducing features such as blogs on their sites, and Focus is also looking at the possibility of developing a recruitment portal in the online universe of Second Life.

As for the potential threat to a brand that getting involved with sites like Facebook brings, Jones says it goes with the territory. "The online environment is a completely different world to what we've known, as is access to it. If someone has something important to say about the company, it's important we know about it," he says.

"Obviously it's important to safeguard the brand, but every business has a problem at some time and it's a case of keeping it in perspective and seeing the good out of the bad."

Highams, an established recruitment consultancy which specialises in the field of insurance technologists, has taken the bold move of launching its own social network for its target community, in conjunction with social website builder Kwiqq.

Highams is Kwiqq's first customer from the recruitment sector, but Kwiqq chief executive Jack Fairhall is certain it won't be the last.

"A lot of recruiters are looking at the concept and trying to figure out what they should do," he says. "Your own social network pushes the brand and allows those in the sector to connect and communicate with each other."

Highams chief executive Dave Pye says he isn't plagued by age-old recruiting fears that if you put people directly in touch with each other, you will be cut out of the equation. "In today's social world you've got to take a risk and if you build a good community and serve it well, you should feel the benefit, too."

And while helping it to differentiate itself from the competition is part of the company's motivation, it plays the Highams brand down within the network. which has its own branding and is called bluefuse.

Similarly, while job ads will appear, it wants to ensure the site delivers maximum value to the community through in-depth content, which will include podcasts, employer videos, CV and career support, opportunities for coaching and mentoring, as well as sector and general news feeds. It also plans to serve the community with face-to-face networking events.

"If I go anywhere and feel I am being sold to, I won't go there again. And it is the same with the community. Candidates have got to trust the organisation building the community or else it will break down," says Pye.

"We're a 25-year-old recruitment company, so we wanted to take the benefits of this heritage but do something that would make us look innovative and modern."

Those recruiters who aren't ready to establish their own social network can achieve a similar level of engagement and profile-raising through a blog. In competitive, candidate-driven markets, they can help mark an agency out as more than just a company that fills positions, but one that also instigates and leads debate.

Veteran blogger Tim Elkington, managing director of Enhance Media, says companies should realise that they take time and resource to build, and for the blog to be interesting, it can't just "regurgitate news" or be used for "chest-beating exercises", he says.

"People like the openness and informality of blogs, so be prepared to be honest and admit when things are hard and when you've made mistakes," he says. "This level of frankness will resonate well in the blogosphere and will help add credibility to your 'good news' stories."

Many lessons have already been learned in the short time social and business networks, blogs and other collaborative Web 2.0 tools have entered the world of recruiting, and the nature of them as a medium means there could well be more surprises along the way.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and as Focus' Stephen Jones says: "We know that not everything will work and we may get a bloody nose at some point. More pioneers than settlers get killed, but pioneers become wealthier."



Links

Aurora www.auroravoice.com

BLT www.blt.co.uk

Carve Consulting www.carveconsulting.com

Enhance Media www.enhancemedia.co.uk

Focus Management www.focus-management.co.uk

Highams www.highamsrecruitment.com

Kwiqq www.kwiqq.com

Shoosmiths www.shoosmiths.co.uk

Where to Work www.wheretowork.com