In business, we love playing with terms and terminologies. Every now and then , every year some new terminologies evolve and catch the fancy of businesses and professionals. These words and terminologies subsequently become a routine buzzword. However, for at least some time these terms have a mystical value for a good chunk of people.
One such words that is being pre-fixed with almost every thing in last few years is “Social”. The term “ Social” has attached itself to every other thing around us. So now business is social, media is social, hiring is social, marketing is social, and networking is social etc. Some terms floating around - Social Media, Social Recruitments, Social Marketing, Social Network etc.
With some of the above terms and more related terms floating around, you have even the experienced and well exposed professionals asking:
“What is social media marketing ?” ,
“I have been hearing a lot about social recruiting …”
“ some one from a social recruiting company came for a meeting …. do you think it makes sense … what is it ?”
Well, for those of you who have similar questions, a piece of gyan – these terms actually don’t make much of a difference to a common man or even a normal business professional. Just get the understanding right, and don’t get awed by the terms. If my understanding is right, and most of you may agree – business was always social, media has mostly been social, hiring always had some thing to do with social, we always had social networks, and we always had social networking. Most of these are concepts and had been happening mostly offline and selectively on online platforms.
What has changed in recent times, is possibly the speed and coverage that the word – “social” now conveys, thanks to wider reach and better connectivity of Internet. We have a decent number of established and upcoming social & network platforms that enable people to connect, share and communicate. Some of the most commonly used platforms being LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.
Social Recruiting.
So , if you are wondering what is social recruiting – you can just interpret the term as recruiting by leveraging the available social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.. Not much of a rocket science for understanding purposes.
In fact some of you – started leveraging these networks to support hiring even before many started talking about social recruiting. I know a good number of business guys, and recruiters who had been leveraging LinkedIn for recruiting and identifying candidates even before LinkedIn started promoting itself as a hiring platform. Lot of recruiters, had been using Orkut to connect with talent long time back, in the early days of social networks through posts on their timelines and groups.
Why so much of interest in social recruiting ?
It’s easier to reach untapped potential job applicants, it’s easier to work on employer branding considering the reach and speed of social networks. You can get your message across to more and more people in a smaller time frame, thereby enhancing the possibility of better response to your hiring campaigns. Also, it helps you get smart and more aware talent who are technology friendly, since they are the once who are more aggressive on the social networks.
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Praveen is the Founder & Principal Consultant of KHEdge, a boutique HR & Business Process Advisory firm. Over last 15 years he has advised & worked with promoters, founders, business leaders, HR leaders in areas of - Business Strategy, HR Strategy, Organisation Design etc.