Branding, Culture and the Age of Social
I have been meeting and addressing HR teams in Bangalore on how they can leverage social media and tools in various HR functions (if you’d like me to address your organization’s team on it, mail me). Last week I was addressing a large technology firm’s HR team and one of the recruiters asked: “You know we reached out to about 100 people we wanted to target and attract to join our company on Facebook, but only about 10 of them responded. Do you think social recruiting is suitable only for hiring freshers?”
Well, here’s the thing. Nilofer Merchant said it in her HBS blog post: “Why social marketing is so hard”
The way goods and services are sold and consumed have changed. The earlier era was of advertising to build awareness, be considered for purchase and then actual purchase. The funnel was the way marketers and recruiters are made to think.
However, in the social era, people expect to consume and try first – and then if that excites them they purchase. If that experience is great then they become “superfans”. Yes, a company cannot really scale social reach. However, what it can do is empower these “superfans” (also referred to as brand evangelists, brand advocates, etc) to scale it on its behalf.
So the first question in social recruiting should not be “How do I attract the best people to apply to my jobs?” but instead “What can I give away for free that would spread amongst people that in turn would attract them to my firm?”
So what can you give away to attract professionals to your firm?
One answer springs to my mind: knowledge and expertise. Not the knowledge and expertise that is Intellectual Property and trade secret, but rather expertise in skills and learning in subject matter communities like marketing, leadership, entrepreneurship, PHP, Java, Recruiting and others.
People join online skills communities to connect with and learn from experts. Unleashing your organizational experts would help them to build their own skills and mark you out as a “social employer”.
In fact, in a recent article Prof. Gary Hamel describes the “12 realities employees will use to determine if your company is “with it” or “past it””.
One of them is that power comes from sharing, not hoarding. Quoting from the article:
“To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch and garner the credit that might have been yours.”
So are you ready to be a “social employer”? Contact me at Gautam@BraveNewTalent.com to know more.