Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, mobile phones and other social media conquer the recruitment market nowadays. Employers are increasingly using social media for the recruitment of employees. Advertisement in a newspapers and even posting a vacancy online (Monsterboard) is outdated according to Recruitment consultants. A recruitment consultant is responsible for attracting candidates and matching them to temporary or permanent positions jobs with client companies. According to the leading recruitment consultants the future is in social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and mobile phones will dominate in the future.
Imagine you are an employer and you have a vacancy for a communication manager near Eindhoven. Social media can easy filter all the candidates that fit the profile. The employer buys advertisement space on the particular social media site and the site will automatically filter possible candidates. For example, just graduated communication students or communication managers near Eindhoven. Only this people will see the banner (advertisement) on their profile. You can select potential candidates on age, education, Geographic’s or even hobbies and interests.
Google already links advertisement automatically to specific keywords, LinkedIn matches the whole profiles. Furthermore, advertisement by Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are paid per click, this is efficient because only people who are interested will click on the banner. According to Andy Headworth of Sironsa Consulting in England, it is only since December 2010 that companies see social media sites as a serious recruitment channel. It exists already three years, but this trends often seem to blow over. In case of the social media trend is seems not to blow over, it is just getting bigger. In fact is grows so fast that companies now realize that social media is not going away any time soon, at least temporarily.
LinkedIn- the only social media site with the goal to be a recruiter has developed a special application that allows the employer to search through the network of the current employees (within the company). This is called “Social referral” also known as social reference. Employers make the vacancy and LinkedIn provides the best matching profiles. The benefits of “Social referral” are evident, the quality of the candidate is very high, because he has already endured a selection.
According to Geert Jan Waasdorp founder of Group Intelligence, research and consultancy work in communication, “social networks” are networks of the same-minded people. With a company of 25 people, a employer has soon a social referral from 8-9000 people. The number of followers on Twitter and the number of connections on Facebook, Hyves or LinkedIn can often literally in a higher salary. If you’re important online it adds a certain value to the company. Like anything else online it is all about personal branding. A photograph, membership and even the type of media on which you can be found can make or break your image. A recruiter is using social media to get a opinion and first impression of you.
Many people think; “people should take me as I am” but you better think twice about how you present yourself online.
The latest novelty is recruitment “augmented reality” on the mobile phone. The phenomenon can be described as a computer animation which covers the real object. Something (text or images) are projected over the actual image. This is already happening on television, for example in football when lines indicate which path the ball has traveled. The same thing can be used on your mobile phone. You can download an application which you can scan your environment just by looking through the lens of your phone camera. If you are looking at a particular building through the camera of your phone, not only the building is shown but also available vacancies (or anything else). Or when you are scanning a product in the supermarket, some details about the product is shown covering the real package. This application is still new and not developed properly. Yet, there are great opportunities, and will totally change the recruitment market in the coming years.
The current 15 and 20 year olds have never heard of the website Monsterboard, but they have grown up with social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
