HRviews

ANDREA BARTOLO is a University of Toronto graduate with 5 years working in the Recruitment field, with a focus on Information Technology.  Andrea started out her career working in an agency environment at TEKsystems, where she had a focus on Telecommunications and Infrastructure recruiting.  She then moved to CIBC, where she gained experience in the recruitment side of Wholesale Banking as well as Finance and Administration while still keeping an IT portfolio.  Andrea currently works at Loblaw Companies Ltd as an IT recruiter, focusing on staffing for the SAP COE national rollout.  She has had the opportunity to participate on several Diversity initiatives during her time with CIBC and she looks forward to making that a priority for her at Loblaw as well.

Last year, Microsoft saved $88,000 in recruitment fees by using LinkedIn, while brewer SAB Miller saved $1.7 million employing 120 people directly from the site. KPMG found recruits through Second Life by holding a 48-hour virtual world job fair in September 2008, with more than 10,000 applicants registering for the event through KPMGs global website. So what are the advantages of utilizing social media in terms of recruitment?

Understanding that in this day and age, social media is a primary focus for a lot of the up and coming professionals that many companies are seeking to employ, using social media such as LinkedIn allow employers access to professionals who may be passively looking for career opportunities but would not be likely to apply directly to roles.  For recruiters, social media allows us the opportunity to network with potential candidates in a way that was never possible before.  Tools such as LinkedIn, enable a recruiter to obtain somewhat of an initial reference on a candidate, helping to validate for the role in which they are being considered.  The use of social media by corporate recruiters has also proven to be a successful way of being able to more effectively recruit without the aid of external agencies, saving large corporations thousands and in the case of larger corporations, sometimes millions of dollars agency costs over the course of a year.

How do we pass the social media recruitment test? The problem of today completely flipped from the one of yesterday. In the past, searching for candidates took more time and the recruiter had limited information on them initially. Nowadays, there is an overabundance of candidates and even more information available on each one.

This requires more effort on the part of the Recruiter to sort through the abundance of information and determine what is significant and what is not.  The rise in popularity of social media as a tool for recruiting professionals further validates the need for internal recruitment departments to focus on sorting through the mass of information that is available on each candidate the organization is considering and to sift through it and compile a strong argument either way as to whether or not each candidate is a viable one for the role in which they are being considered.

How do you evaluate a candidate’s social media footprint to determine which candidates you would contact?

In focusing specifically on LinkedIn, an easy way is to view a person’s “Recommendations” and cross-reference them with the places in which they stated they have worked.  A recruiter can then work through his/her network and back check the validity of these recommendations to determine whether they are genuine or contrived.  Using this tool also allows recruiters to make their search as accurate as they need it to be, allowing them for example, to focus on candidates from specific industry or in some cases even in a specific company.

What benefits does social media/networking add to the job seekers?

Social media gives the job seeker a link to accessing the individuals and making connections which can significantly increase their ability to be considered for their desired role.  It is no secret that in this day and age competition is fierce and everyone is looking for a way to potentially increase their exposure and access to the decision-makers when it comes to being hired.  Social media gives the job seeker the opportunity to more aggressively seek out the people they need to get in front of in order to get the job, but more importantly, it gives them the opportunity to leverage existing relationships in order to get in front of the people who can get that person the job.  If used correctly and to its full capacity, it can contribute significantly to the job seeker obtaining the career opportunity that he or she desires.

Would a recruiter be able to identify if the job seeker would fit the company’s culture based on the overall image they have spread across the social media sites?

I believe that social media should only be used for an initial screen of the individual and not as an overall judgment of his/her ability to perform a given role.  Thankfully for the recruiter, I feel that their role will be justified for years to come as the assessment of the right candidate is still heavily dependent on human interaction and in this sense, social media should only be used as a screening tool when sourcing for candidates, but a traditional interview approach should be taken when looking to further screen a candidate for competency.