Recruiting using Social Media

Last couple of years the number of the various Social Media events has exploded. Go back 5 years ago, and people would not even know the meaning of the phrase Social Media. Is it a printed paper from a Socialist Party? Of course as in any especially new industry there is good and wanabe good. So the quality of this Social Media events vary drastically. In general the more niche ones tend to be far more beneficial to the audience than the generalist ones. If you spend the evening hearing that YouTube has gazillion hours of content uploaded every second,... it is sensational, but with absolutely no value to your business. On the other hand if you her the industry expert of the industry you are in, talking how he utilises the Social Media, and where does it help him (and especially where not!) to do his job more effective – well that is something that WILL help you make you do your job better/ quicker, etc. This is where the value is – in learning about your own niche, and how to utilise Social Media web sites in your industry and geographical region.

Recruiting using Social Media held yesterday in the Science Gallery, Trinity College was for several reasons a very unique event in our recruitment industry in Ireland so far. This was the first time a recruiter spoke to recruiters about how exactly is he doing it. The sourcing via the LinkedIn, Google search and Facebook was shown live (well screenshots really – since you know how internet connections are unpredictable!). It was the first time where a real hands on recruitment and sourcing process what shown and explained in detail.
What makes this different from anything else organised in recruitment in Ireland was that it wasn’t a Sales manager from LinkedIn on the stage pushing his product. It wasn’t a recruitment agency pushing their services. It wasn’t a co called Social Media expert selling his consultancy. There was no selling. There was just a showcase from a recruiter (Peter Costgrove)– on how he uses it and how the Social Media sites benefit him in performing his job – recruiting!
You are going to ask yourself – Why having an event like that really? Why revealing all your techniques? Why helping the people who compete for you for the same talent pool in the same market. To see the answer you can look at the slides – one of the closing slides have the question answered.

For those of you who were with us yesterday thanks for coming. For those who are reading this and wondering how could you miss it – well it wasn’t really advertised so do not blame yourself. There was more interest than the room could cater for so the next one will be some time in January 2011. There is still plenty of seats available for that.