Change is a big word, and for some it is represents pain and discomfort - especially in recruitment. But why change when you can take the easy route every time, knowing that you won't get questioned too often - even if that the chosen route doesn't deliver? This is also call the path of least resistance, and it is a common direction for way too many recruiters!

Well for 2014 change is going to be necessary if you are involved in recruitment. [And that includes me as well - watch this space for my changes for 2014!] The staple social diet of recruiters (both corporates and agencies) - LinkedIn - is the primary professional network that we all utilise for sourcing, networking and business development. However, there are many, many more prospective candidates in other social networks, as demonstrated in the graphic I have put together above. (These latest stats are directly from each of the networks at the end of last year)

The change I refer to is the need to change your mindset. You as a recruiter need to accept that your precious candidates ARE DEFINITELY NOT all just on LinkedIn, and that they will be elsewhere online. They might well be on one of the other huge social networks (like the ones above), or they might be on some niche networks like Stackoverflow, Github, MeetUp etc. So what are you going to do about it?

LinkedIn is a fantastic network, there is no question in that. But you have to change your thinking this year and start to consider other options as to where your prospective candidates are going to be. This is of course going to take a little brain power and some detective work to find this out. There are plenty of tools that can help you do this - Google and Bing would be a good place to start!

Let's take the biggest social network - Facebook. How many of you have tried the truly awesome Facebook Graph search yet? Most recruiters don't even know it exists, and yet this is a tool that searches the whole Facebook Graph - well…….. it only has a billion+ people on there, so it probably wouldn't be worth it now, would it!!!
If you still need convincing check out how it works courtesy of Johnny Cambell from Social Talent:

Then we have YouTube - again over a billion monthly users. We all watch videos on there every day, but have you ever used it for sourcing candidates? Why not? It is owned by Google and is in fact the 2nd biggest search engine in the world (behind Google), and it is FULL of searchable data.
Why not sit down with a coffee and do some searching on YouTube - you may just be surprised. The bonus is that YouTube have integrated Google Plus into their comment engine, so it makes getting hold of people easier (via G+ of course!)

Google Plus is the social network that for many seems to have immediate negative vibes the moment it's name gets mentioned. Crazy stuff, because it is a fantastic tool for recruiters. My next post is going to cover Google Plus in more detail so for now, if you haven't looked into G+ yet here is a slide deck on G+ I did last year (some of the graphics have now changed on G+ since then):

The point of the post is not to tell you which social networks to use, but to encourage you to change your recruiting mindset and approach to how and where you find candidates from. Just think - your competitors could well be reading this and make the decision to make changes for 2014, use new networks and channels and find the candidates you can only dream of finding! The question is, will you make changes and get there first?

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates 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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