Recruitment vs Social Media?

A few weeks ago, I was having drinks with some friends and acquaintances, when a question was put to me


"Why would clients hire you when they can approach people directly over social media?"


The person asking the question had good reason – they been approached directly by an agency MD who had got to know them over twitter. An interview or two down the line and they had a new job. No recruiter involved.


So was this person the living embodiment of recruitment’s downfall?


It certainly is the case that, in many instances, I’m actually competing with my own clients on their own briefs and that well connected, social media savvy clients will always save money. Its much easier now for potential employers to connect with potential new staff members in the virtual world and even find out quite a lot about their personalities over twitter, a tool which often lies somewhere between the corporate face of Linked-In and the nights-out on the town inappropriateness of Facebook. It’s a bit like industry drinks events, taken to the internet.


Except that it doesn’t quite work as well as that most of the time. Many MDs, or other staff members for that matter, are unable to dedicate much time to tracking down new staff when accounts are screaming to be serviced. Twitter is limited in how revealing it is and not everyone uses it to its full potential. In fact, not everyone uses it. Direct approaches can be risky – they can get you a bad reputation for poaching staff – so often the middle man is an important way of distancing yourself from this task. And when the business picks up and everyone is pitching like crazy, agencies really don’t have the time to do their own recruitment.


I think the approach works best for agencies that are at that stage when they are large enough to have an HR person who can spend time searching, but not so large that the HR person has too many other things on their plate, and also when searching for the seasoned account executive through to account manager levels. At the very junior end, PR people are still getting the hang of self-promotion online, the best things to say, and with limited overall knowledge of PR. While as you get more senior than senior account managers, its really less appropriate to be recruiting over twitter, and as the salaries and packages become larger, you really need a broker. You also need a much more targeted approach at this stage, as personality is even more critical.


Then there’s also the key question of how many twitter profiles and Linked-In trawls that you undertake, only to be disappointed at interview when actually the person doesn’t present themselves in reality as well as they do online. People approached directly will automatically have a higher expectation of their chances, as well.


Don’t get me wrong. I’m well aware that there’s a very healthy referral system going on, online, right now as many digital PR people (in particular) move around (usually into each others shoes at different agencies). But rather than competing with social media, it has become a complimentary tool, both in terms of client recruitment strategies, and in terms of the recruitment consultant’s armoury.


Because that’s a recruiters job. Generating leads, meeting the people in the flesh and then submitting to their clients people who are close to the mark of the brief, explaining suitability for the role, guiding the candidate through the process, and handling the final negotiations. The efficiency of this process is the cost saving, and the new online tools available today make the research part of that role easier. But you still need the filters, the networks, the recruiter relationships, not to mention a sales person who knows the business, its personalities, culture and atmosphere and yet is disassociated from it. This advocacy is one of the key ways a recruiter adds value.


If, however, your recruiters are not providing these consultancy services and are still just sending irrelevant CVs to you like the old days, then maybe you should try a bit of online mingling. You’ll have nothing to lose.