Unhappy Campers and Opportunistic Hiring in Recession, with Web 2.0

By Anthony Morrison on April 27, 2009 in Article, Newsletter

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a training event for third party recruiters presented by a very well known industry expert. Having over 10 years of past experience as a staffing recruiter myself, it brought back some memories, some good, and some that reminded me why I am now a “recovering recruiter”. What it really did was further convince me what an impact Web 2.0 technologies will continue to have on the recruitment industry, both for Corporations and Third Party firms.

The training was focused on helping recruiters get through these recessionary times by effectively positioning themselves with their clients and prospects as being “better connected” and able to fill your open positions faster than your internal staff in this down economic time. He provided a number of examples of voicemail marketing messages they could use to not only accomplish this, but to also establish that they are “connected in your industry”. These messages heard in a vacuum sound great and effective but unfortunately from my experience, I know there are a number of voicemail and email boxes out there that contain a number of these messages from a number of different recruiters, leaving you to determine who is the most “connected”, usually by trial and error.

One message example in particular was the one that brought home the affect I believe Web 2.0 technologies will have on the future (if not current) relationship between corporations and third party recruiters. The message centered around providing some industry or competitor information to their prospect, highlighting a current challenge, and then indicating that this has caused a lot of unhappy campers and an ability for some opportunistic hiring and they are the best vehicle because once again, they are better connected and can fill your positions faster than you or your staff.

So I put my “corporate hat” on, and my immediate thought and reaction to this was, that in a Web 2.0 world, if corporations become savvy enough, this type of approach will change.

The most prominent Web 2.0 technology is of course Social Networks and if used correctly, they can have a profound effect on a corporation’s recruitment process, especially as it relates to their employee referral program. Employee referrals have forever been sought because corporations for several reasons, here are a few:

· Corporations know that their employees are “in the industry”

· They are “connected” to other people (possibly even at competitors)

· They “know the internal culture”

· They know the types of people that would be a great fit

The challenge has always been how to gain access to their personal networks and to make the process of referring easy. Web 2.0 has the capacity to change that forever.

As a corporate recruiter, you can now become “connected” to your employee base in a way and on a scale never seen before, through social networks. With the proper motivation (usually cash) your employees will become associate recruiters, and can provide permission based access, and sometimes automated access, to their personal networks for the purpose of referral recruitment.

Furthermore, think of all the contact and conversations recruiters have with candidates outside of their company, who have submitted their resumes through the career site and/or the multitude of traditional job boards out there. This is a huge opportunity to get connected in an effort to begin and cultivate another referral avenue. I read one statistic that within the “Top 100 Companies to Work For”, each company averages over 90,000 submittals a year. They aren’t going to be able to hire them all but think of the potential to be able to connect to a % of this crowd on a social network in order to be able to have permission based access to their networks for the purposes of referral recruitment! Getting the picture now?

So, the next time you listen to a voicemail from someone informing you of all the “Unhappy Campers” out there, and that they are uniquely positioned to bring them to you as an opportunistic hire because they are connected, would you like to be able to ask yourself:

“Are they better connected than I am to all my employees and the people in my applicant tracking system, and do they have permission based access to all their networks for the purposes of referral recruitment?”

Or, would you rather still ask yourself, if you believe the claim and whether it would be worth investing the time to find out. More importantly, ask yourself:

“Would I rather pay a hefty fee or would I like to pay a reward for a referral from our social networks of employees?”

Web 2.0 and Social Networks can make this decision a viable “no-brainer”, IMHO .