Today’s guest post is by Laurie Ruettimann, the blogger behind PunkRockHr.com, who attended Social Recruiting Summit at the Best Buy corporate headquarters in Minneapolis on Monday
The Social Recruiting Summit is a conference where attendees learn how to implement social media tools into a corporate recruiting function. The goal is to inspire HR and Recruiting professionals to think differently and incorporate new technology, tools, and practices into their hiring processes.
Susan Strayer‘s presentation, Engaging vs. Broadcasting to Job Seekers on Twitter, was one of the most interesting sessions of the event. Strayer is an early adopter of social media. She has been blogging since 2001 and witnessed the social media landscape in its early days. Strayer believes that both recruiters and job seekers often misuse social media tools. Her biggest example is Twitter. She demonstrated that smart companies, such as EMC and Sodexo, are aligning their corporate and employment before using technologies — such as Twitter — to communicate thoughtful messages to consumers, shareholders, and job seekers.
Strayer believes that the power of Twitter is diluted when recruiters and HR professionals use it in a shortsighted way. Twitter should operate as an extension of a corporate brand and employment brand, and all social media tools should be “brand aligned,” she said. HR professionals and recruiters can find candidates and job seekers through more traditional means — such as job boards, career websites, and Facebook career pages. The best hiring processes are built on a strategy that leverages social media to research the market, engage customers, and have a dialogue with job seekers.
The attendees agreed with Susan, and the dialogue during the Q&A demonstrates that Human Resources is ready to stop thinking like administrators and start thinking like marketing professionals who understand the power of an important employer branding message.
It’s time to get started.