Bullhorn Reach Blog | Social Recruiting, 3 Social Recruiting Insights from #TRUBoston

3 Social Recruiting Insights from #TRUBoston

Last week Bill Boorman brought the #TRU “carnival” and its participant-driven unconference format to Bullhorn’s Boston headquarters. The two-day event was filled with insights from recruitment thought leaders, hailing from corporate recruiting and employer marketing departments, third-party agencies and independent consultancies.

There’s a lot of great coverage of the events (see below for an incomplete account), but here are three insights that I took away from the discussions.

Recruiters often forget the “social” part of social media. Central to Boorman’s approach to social recruiting is the notion of being “a social human being.” During his session on UPS’ social recruiting efforts, TMP Worldwide’s Mike Vangel agreed: “Respect for dignity as a person is often lost in the automation of social recruiting.” In a similar vein, recruiting veteran Steve Levy, an endless fount of funny but poignant sayings at #TRUBoston, added, “The best unused social media tools are the phone call and the handshake.” We at Bullhorn Reach tend to agree. While on the front lines of social recruiting, we realize that social media are just a means to an end. We see Bullhorn Reach as a simple tool to reduce the time and energy recruiters spend on managing and doing research into their networks, freeing up time for more important matters, like building relationships.
It’s more about “test practices” than “best practices.” In Max Heywood’s track on “Slaying the BS Dragon,” the room was divided on whether they believed recruiting marketers should attempt to strategically forecast their companies’ social media efforts, as opposed to “just doing it.” Despite its venerable brand, Harvard Business School’s Melissa Kaplan exhibited a willingness to push the envelope, along with Boorman and Social Talent’s Johnny Campbell (whom Boorman called “the best recruiter in the world”). But even those on the opposite end of the spectrum, like Vangel, Sodexo’s Kerry Noone and Bullhorn CEO Art Papas, agreed that ongoing trial and error was an important step in finding what works best for engaging their specific audiences. Later on, Google’s Jeff Moore said that the internet giant’s recruiting wing for engineers in Boston is always trying new tools and tactics.
The happy hunting ground for sourcers and recruiters is a moving target. Master sourcer Geoff Webb’s session on sourcing tips and tricks evoked oohs and aahs from listeners, including me. Both Webb and Levy admitted that the tips and tricks for sourcers are always changing, as search engine paradigms shift and organizations become more or less secure with members’ contact information. Separately, one favorite story among Boorman’s recollections of his work with Oracle was his unconventional use of FarmVille as a recruiting source. Knowing that developers often frequent FarmVille, Oracle (with Boorman’s guidance) offered users a free virtual cow on the popular Facebook app, if they applied to a job on Oracle’s job page. More recently, Boorman has used social game Empire Avenue as a communication medium for getting messages opened by hard-to-reach (but connected) individuals. How long this will last, Boorman admitted, was unknowable, given the fleeting levels of engagement on social platforms. Throughout the conference, many lamented the decreasing engagement levels on job boards and, more recently, LinkedIn InMail.

Follow Bill Boorman, Mike Vangel, Steve Levy, Max Heywood, Johnny Campbell, Melissa Kaplan, Kerry Noone, Jeff Moore, Geoff Webb, Bullhorn Reach, Art Papas and Steven Duque on Twitter.

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