To reflect on the impact of social media on employer brand and recruitment practices. To consider the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of using social media in recruitment. To share the warning signs of ‘toxic assessment’ and some tips to prevent them

1. Make the right impact #SocialRecruiting
James Bywater

3. Objectives
• To reflect on the impact of social media on employer brand and recruitment
practices.
• To consider the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of using social media in recruitment.
• To share the warning signs of ‘toxic assessment’ and some tips to prevent them.

4. Some perspectives on social media

5. It’s a mess…
Hard to fill
Jobs Candidates
Easy to fill
Smaller number of
potential employers
Lots of potential
employers
Purposes:
Informing
Attracting
Hunting
Reinforcing
Selling…
Social media
Locations
Twitter
Facebook
Industry sites
Websites
etc…

6. Which markets are you in?
Lots of potential employees Few potential employees
Lots of
potential
employers
Perfect open ‘market’
Targeted hunting of candidates e.g.
IT, accountants
Search
Few potential
employers
Volume recruitment and industrial
applicant management
‘Job stalkers’
Rarefied talent
‘Virtual campus’

7. Analogies for social media

8. Plenty of vehicles out there…
• 1.28 billion users of Facebook, up
from 1.1 billion a year ago.
• Twitter has added more than 500
million registered users over the last
year.
• Google+ has added more than 200
million active users over the last year.
• Instagram – favourite for 23% of
teens – has added 50 million users
over the last six months.
• 172,800 new users join LinkedIn
every day, 2.5 times the number who
attended the World Cup opening
ceremony in Brazil.

9. Social media is not just used to find candidates…
According to a recent study by Career Builder:
• 43% of employers research candidates on social media.
• 51% of employers have refused to hire candidates due to content found online; up
from 34% in 2012.
• Additionally, 12% of employers who don’t currently screen this way plan to start
doing so this year.
• Practical message to job seekers – clean up your social profile!

10. What judgements do you make if you find that:
Your candidate is:
• A part time model?
• A part time stripper?
• BNP member?
• Regularly posting mildly offensive ‘banter’?
• Regularly posting clearly offensive comments?
• Regularly pictured drunk?

11. Some context

12. Context
Social Media is important because
• Recruitment is difficult.
• Getting harder.
• Going to get harder still.

13. 2013 Talent Q research highlighted
Across all industries, volume recruiters are finding life difficult.
In a recent survey of some of the biggest volume recruiters in the UK:
said that their biggest challenge is finding the
right candidates.
are knowingly recruiting the wrong people in a
desperate attempt to fill their frontline roles.
62%
37%
(Talent Q, 2013)

14. And the right candidates are rare…
Talent Q assessment data tells us that...
40%
of the population
are customer
focused
37%
of the population
are comfortable
up-selling
but crucially, only 12% are both
Sony inundated with applicants couldn’t find people who could
explain a product to the customer in plain language.
(BBC, 2014)

15. Whatever you do… gets out
74% share
a poor
recruitment
experience
70% research
the
recruitment
experience of
others
11% will be put
off by a bad
experience of
others
Affects:
• Employer brand
• Consumer brand

16. Some questions
• What are the trends you are seeing in candidate behaviour?
• Why does social media appeal to you as an organisation?

17. History of social media

18. Social media
Stage 1: Employer lead broadcast
Employer
(brochures)

19. Social media
Stage 2: Narrow, transient, separate communities emerge
Employer
Employee
Candidate

20. Social media
Stage 3: Candidate discussion grows
Employer
Employee
Candidate

21. Social media
Stage 4: Groups flourish and multiply
Ex-
Employee
Employer
Candidate
Candidate
Candidate
Employee
Candidate
Candidate

22. Social media
Stage 5: The future?
Customer etc.
How will these Align,
Merge or Proliferate?
Who will
“own” these
access points?
How to make
best use of
Employees as
Advocates?
Ex-
Employee
Employer
Candidate
Candidate
Candidate
Employee
Candidate
Candidate

23. Some more questions
• What examples have you seen of the positive influence of social media in
recruiting?
• What examples have you seen of the negative influence of social media in
recruiting?
• Any horror stories you want to share? (‘toxic’)

24. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

25. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Who comments? Good Bad Ugly
‘Breaches’ can lead
to toxic behaviour
Candidate Positive
Aligned
Gets retweeted
Negative
esp. about
operational aspects
of the process
Negative about how
organisation failed to
deliver in practice
Employee (including
ex employees)
Positive
Interesting
Regular
Aligned
Irregular
Random
Not thought through
Negative/unaligned
or reality with the
corporate brand
Corporate Aligned
Intelligent
Brand building
comments
Irregular
Random
Too salesy

26. The Good

27. The Good - candidate

28. The Good – employee (current)
Proactive
Tone

29. The Good – employee (ex)
Would you want to
work there?

30. The Good - corporate
Responsiveness
Tone
Delivering on
promises

31. The Good - corporate
Responsiveness
Tone

32. The Bad

33. The Bad - candidate
High
expectations!

34. The Bad - candidate
High
expectations!

35. The Bad - employee
What is your disciplinary policy
on social media?
Quantity? Quality?

36. The Bad – employee (ex)
Frequency?
Similarity to me?
Relevance?

37. The Bad - corporate
Social media training?
“Years ago, we did a study to determine whether
anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring.
We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and
everyone who had done the interviews and what
they scored the candidate, and how that person
ultimately performed in their job. We found zero
relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except
for one guy who was highly predictive because
he only interviewed people for a very specialized
area, where he happened to be the world’s
leading expert”.
Google’s Senior VP of People Operations
Laszlo Bock

38. The Ugly

39. The Ugly - employer
Delivery?

40. How will you know?

41. Getting it wrong
Level 1: ‘the individual complaint’
(a direct letter/e-mail of complaint to you or your CEO)
• Are almost invariably from unsuccessful candidates (‘procedural justice’).
• Are usually one-sided.
• Are frequently ‘quasi legal’ in their language.

42. Getting it wrong
Level 2: ‘the wider complaint’
• Unhappy customers used to tell an average of, say, eight people.
• An unhappy candidate may now post it onto a blog, wiki or other venue and tell a
potential audience of thousands or even millions.
• These discussions are happening all the time whether you like it or not.
• You may as well choose to host/contribute to this site so you can see what is
being said, rather than drive it underground.

43. Getting it wrong
Level 3: ‘the assassin’
(taking active, covert, hostile steps to get back at you)
• Stalking your jobs, organisation web and ‘bricks and mortar’ sites.
• Multiple legal actions (e.g. HM Attorney General v Groves – Restriction of
Proceedings Order on legal suits that are ‘habitual, obsessed and vexatious’ and
become, in effect, victimisation.
• Leakage of your assessment content/answers and other IP.
• Leaking advice and intelligence on your selection process (do you check
candidate passports, references, qualifications?)
• Hacking, web denial, virus propagation and other illegal activity.

44. The psychology

45. The psychology of candidate-oriented assessment
Social Validity Theory (Schuler)
1) Informativeness: the degree to which candidates perceive the information is
useful.
2) Participation: the extent to which candidates feel that they can be involved.
3) Transparency: the extent to which candidates feel that the selection methods are
unambiguous.
4) Feedback: the amount of information provided to candidates regardless of
whether or not they secured the job.

46. The psychology of candidate-oriented assessment
Candidate perspective (Gilliand)
1) Ensure the system is job-related
2) Give candidates the opportunity to perform
3) Give candidates the opportunity to challenge their results
4) Ensure that procedures are consistent across all candidates
5) Provide candidates with informative and timely feedback
6) Provide explanations and justification for procedures or decisions
7) Ensure that administrators are honest when communicating with candidates
8) Ensure that administrators treat candidates with warmth and respect
9) Support a two-way communication process
10) Ensure that questions are legal and not discriminatory in nature

47. Candidates want practice and insight into jobs
Free practice site Realistic job preview

48. Candidates want feedback
• About two-thirds of job seekers
expect more personalised
communication from a recruiter,
according to a 2014 survey by
CareerBuilder.
• “If (candidates) hear nothing or get
auto-generated responses, they’re
disappointed,” said Rosemary
Haefner, vice president.

49. Conclusion

50. Some tips
1. Finding: you need to ask the question ‘where does your audience hang out?’
2. Attracting: you need to be part of the community – ‘trusted adviser’, ’respected’.
• Many of these sites are ‘digital cocktail parties’.
• Specialist blog, targeted social networks, industry communities.
3. Reinforcing: candidates seek ‘social proof’ of your employer brand.
• Employee advocates are increasingly critical.
• Passive viewers seek content that is useful, engaging and validated of a ‘visibly great
culture’.
4. Adapt!: new sites proliferate so this is the start of a journey - Slideshare, Vine,
Tumblr, Triberr, Manetch, Hootsuite, etc etc.
5. Candidate orientation: design your selection process with the candidate in mind
• Explanation, practice, realistic preview, relevant, feedback
6. Investigate: watch out for and investigate examples of ‘toxic selection’.

51. info@talentqgroup.+44(0)1844 218980 com www.talentqgroup.com