subject: Recruiting Trends - Social Media as a Business Building and Recruitment Tool for Headhunters [print this page] Recruiting Trends - Social Media as a Business Building and Recruitment Tool for Headhunters
Last month's Social Recruiting Summit, #socialrecruiting, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, provided an abundance of insight into the use of social media in recruiting, both for attracting candidates and for business development.
In one session, headhunter Paul DeBettignies spoke about his use of social media for marketing himself. DeBettignies, a Minnesota-based IT recruiter, says he thinks he survived this recession better than the previous one because of his social media presence, which includes his blog, http://mnheadhunter.com, and Twitter.
DeBettignies said he doesn't make cold calls anymore. Instead, he e-mails corporate HR representatives and includes links to his social media. Later, he checks his blog statistics to see if anyone from the target company has looked at it, and if they have, he knows it won't be a cold call when he contacts the company again.
In another session, a panel of social media enthusiasts from Best Buy shared an inside perspective on the company's widespread use of social media.
Brian Kohlbeck, who leads the company's Finance MBA Recruiting Program, spoke about how his program has been using blogging, webinars, web events and live chats to provide information to prospective job candidates about what it's like to work for Best Buy.
The Best Buy Finance Blog is a key component of the program's social media push. Kohlbeck says the efforts have brought in new hires, although the company doesn't have trouble attracting enough candidates anyway. Instead, the intent seems to be to provide a better candidate experience.
The May 17, 2010 summit provided plenty to think about regarding the use of social media as a marketing and business development tool for headhunters, and also provided insight into the resources corporate HR departments can provide to make job searches better for candidates.
Note: We couldn't make it to Minnesota for this event, so thanks to the folks at www.ERE.net, who organized this conference, for streaming the event live on the web.
