With all the “buzz” with Web 2.0, social networking, blogs and all those other “words” that are tossed around, why aren’t more recruiters jumping on the band wagon?
Recently I ran across an article Web 2.0 revolution has not yet hit recruiters. The article states that, “10 per cent of recruiters use social networking sites and only a small minority use blogs, videos or other web 2.0 technology for recruitment”. I would like to say that I am shocked, however I have been running into this more and more. Now granted this is only one source that is stating these stats, but I do not feel they are far off.
I think the bigger issue is that large organization are still in the mode or “reactive recruitment”. A position/req opens up and comes across a recruiters desk, the recruiter immediately starts to search for that warm body. There is no pipeline built or talent pool. More times than not ,the ATS is overlooked because it has become a central repository for unwanted candidates, rather than those key people recruiters would like to tap back into.
In order to truly leverage Web 2.0 and all its wonder, companies have to be in a proactive mode to recruit talent. They must start investing and educating their team in order to get a head of this learning curve. Start with baby steps and train your team on one aspect that may be implemented, blogs for that matter. The recruiters can start to listen to what others are saying about their particular industry in the blogs. Then once they are comfortable they can start leaving comments or asking questions.
Organization that do not take the time to invest now will certainly be left in the dark sooner than later. Start to think outside the BOX, Mr. Recruiter. Take the initiative and push this up the ladder. Think of who you are trying to attract into you corporate culture and where they may be on the Internet. The upcoming generations are growing up with Web 2.0 and will expect their employer to be up with the times or be left in the dust.
It’s only a few months since you were away not a few years. Recruiters will take a little longer to change :>)
I am a recruiter, and I believe you may be painting all of us with a a broad brush. External recruiters, like my colleagues at Management Recruiters, see the value in social media. Look at the most connected people in LinkedIn, and you will see many recruiters. For external recruiters, we specialize (my specialties include HR, Training, Instructional Design, Compensation and Benefits. I spend more time using social networking sites every day.
You may be thinking of the internal recruiters at major employers. I think many of them are reactive, and need to be experts at many fields (e.g. engineering, marketing, operations, supply chain, IT, Finance.) I believe it would be impossible to be an effective networker so many professions.