Many companies are still pushing back on social recruiting. As I posted last week, for many companies social media for recruitment has become a distress purchase (IMO), with adoption of new changes slow. What if I told you that the biggest employer in the UK, and 5th largest in the world - the NHS, has finally accepted that they need to embrace social media for their recruiting. The NHS is embracing social recruiting (see later in this post for the approach they are taking).
So if an impossibly complex organisation like the NHS is going down the social recruiting route, is there any excuse for other companies not doing it? 

They have taken the step because they recognise that the need to recruit the best staff possible, to enable them to be able to provide the best patient care. [I am not sure whether that is an acceptance of poor recruitment previously, but that is a conversation for another day!]  While they get 250,000 people to their career site each month, they recognise that the number of quality of applicants they need isn't always there.
They want to raise the quality of the applicants visiting the career site. They need to make sure that they are not missing out on the potential of passive candidates and they believe social media can potentially offer them this source.

A recent survey from LinkedIn adds weight to the decision of the NHS to take this approach. While recruitment agencies still produce the highest volume of hires of high quality hires, the fastest growing one is social media:

Then if we consider the trends that we are seeing in the recruitment and HR industry, there is further 'evidence' that social media as a channel for quality hires is one that will continue to grow.

For a full copy of the LinkedIn Talent Acquisition Survey for the UK click here

Are you still now going to say that social recruiting is a fad? 

So lets go back to the NHS, and the approcah they have taken. It must be said that they had already embraced social media as a communication and engagement channe, as can be seen by their Twitter , LinkedIn and YouTube channels.

However to use social media for recruiting purposes they needed to start by briefing the NHS HR Directors and Managers as well as CEO's and Directors. They have done this with the production of a guide on how to use social media in the recruitment process in the NHS. It looks at:

• How NHS organisations can use social media platforms to increase the number of relevant job applications
• How a permissive approach to staff using social media can improve an organisation's recruitment success

Obviously this is a huge task and one that will take a while to work through the whole organisation, when you consider the scale of they have to deal with:

Overall I think that NHS have produced a good briefing document for the HR and Recruitment heriarchy in the NHS - as always it is now the execution of the social recruiting strategy, training and communication throughout the organisations that will be the deciding factor of whether it works over time. I wish them luck!

To get a copy of the NHS Guide to using social media click here >>  Download Using-social-media-recruitment-guide

 It is definitely worth reading. 

Well done to Alex Talbott from attdigital on a well written document.

I work with companies to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

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