Friday, November 2, 2007

Friend me on LinkedIn!

So the next big thing in recruiting is networking and blogging?

That's not very surprising considering what Fay Hansen wrote about social networking sights (i.e. LinkedIn and Jobster) being a great tool to reach passive audiences. LinkedIn and Jobster both provide great tools to build your network and contacts and it allows recruiters to pro actively search and receive contact details from qualified, potential employees without the expensive third party filter.

Of course, other organizations such as Yahoo! posting their jobs on Craigslist is an interesting counterargument. I don't know why the internet giant isn't using its own free Yahoo! Hotjobs especially considering that only a few days ago, a woman was murderd after she responded to an add posted on Cragislist. If I were in charge of a multibillion dollar company I wouldn't want to associate myself or the company with something like that.

I believe that online networking sights and blogging are good tools for companies to use when looking to recruit new employees. But I also think that more traditional measures like job fairs and referrals (not through networking or blogging sights) are still good channels of communication with potential drones :) .

6 comments:

Sarah said...

Perhaps you're right that the traditional face-to-face recruitment methods are better for the company in terms of understanding the potential employees personality. But the new methods tend to be a lot cheaper and less time consuming.

When recruiters from smaller companies come to job fairs they are usually not really recruiters which means their time should be spent doing their real work. And I would assume that companies pay for a table at job fairs and such.. and referrals.. geez those can get quite expensive for a company.

I do see the benefit to the traditional route, but the new, electronic way seems so much more efficient to me.

Joe Khedouri said...

I agree with Sarah. These new tools are advancing the way we recruit. It is not the ONLY way, I believe will become more popular in the near future.

It is important to remember that you still need to go through a personal interview to get hired. This is merely the first step in the process and makes finding potential candidates that much easier.

Mike said...

No it is not the only way to recruit, but let's be honest...in the near future it could be the only way. For the time being it is becoming the first step in the door.

I'm just confused about one of the responses: "When recruiters from smaller companies come to job fairs they are usually not really recruiters which means their time should be spent doing their real work."

First off, they are recruiters if they are there in the first place, or even if one reads the above passage. Just because they are working for a smaller company does not mean that they be discounted. But yes, job fairs can be expensive, unless a school or community puts one on for free, which i'm sure occurs more frequently than not. If, for instance, a school puts on a fair, they have the opportunity to make connections and play 6 degrees of separation...

Sarah said...

Mike.. in regards to you confusion. Here's an example:

When I went to a job fair a few years ago both of the people from the non-profit that eventually hired me were not recruiters; their job titles had nothing to do with recruiting. Sure they played recruiter for the day but that doesn't make them pros at it. My point was just that in smaller companies where people are playing the role of a recruiter instead of being hired as one their time could often be better spent doing their real work-- not trying to find interns at an all day job fair.

Colleen said...

I understand your point Sarah. Perhaps the better distinction is HR, whose sole job title is recruiter. At these job fairs, I've noticed a mix of HR people and actual employees. To distinguish from actual employees, they have other responsibilities other than hiring.

Alexandra said...

Even though I still think that the traditional measures of recruiting people is a better choice for companies, these sites are a great way of bypassing expensive recruiting companies. They make the process less expensive and less time consuming. As technology continues to improve I do think that in the future this will probably be the only way to find new job opportunities.