Does Social Recruiting Really Matter

Does Social Recruiting Really Matter I’ve seen a number of posts speculating about the importance of social recruiting and to be  honest, I don’t think the critics have managed to convince themselves, let alone their readers. They have said social recruiting doesn’t matter or that “it’s a waste of time”, despite the fact  there are many others saying otherwise and many benefits your company stands to take  advantage of. Having read around the subject, I’m now tempted to agree and thought I’d write  my own post for why there’s absolutely no reason you should use social recruiting. If it works, use it forever. If there’s one thing you learn in the recruiting industry, it’s that once you find a method that  works, you should stick with it forever, because trends don’t change. What worked once, will  always work, right? It’s why scientists never try to repeat the results of experiments and it’s why  you should stick to the recruiting methods of 20 years ago. Ignore the decline of newspapers  classified ads in favor of Ebay. Keep posting all of your jobs for your big company in  newspapers. And whilst you are at it, make sure you’re constantly cold-calling people about  jobs, too. Why would you need something new like social recruiting, when you have the good old  newspapers to keep your hiring efforts bringing elite talent to your door from now until the end of  time? No one else is using it. Let’s face it. “Social recruiting” is a marketing term cooked up by “recruiting departments” in  order to sell “recruiters” on “products.” No one really uses it. Especially not 92% of businesses. It’s just another keyword that won’t sell because it offers no advantage over other recruiting  methods. And if no one’s using it, then clearly it’s not any good, right? We can safely ignore its  rise in usage over the last several years and continue our current method of recruiting: yelling at  people on the street (or in the pub!), asking if they’re looking for a job and have a degree in the  field you’re looking for. That’s what we all do. There are no benefits to social media. For the sake of argument, let’s assume a few things. First, let’s assume walking into people’s  places of work and asking them if they wouldn’t be better off working somewhere else isn’t the  only viable recruitment strategy. Second, let’s assume this whole “social media” thing actually  existed. Even if those two things were true, there’s no way social recruiting could improve any of  the following aspects of recruiting by the respective amounts: Quality of candidates 44% Quantity of candidates 44% Time-to-hire 34% Employee referrals 30% So as you can see, social recruiting doesn’t matter at all. We should continue to use the same  recruiting methods we have been for years, social recruiting will never help you because no  one’s on it when they check their phones all day, and it doesn’t have any noticeable benefits. Okay, let’s drop the charade. Clearly, social recruiting is one of the best ways for recruiting  to fill jobs for the exact opposite reasons as the one’s I’ve outlined here. It totally does matter  and anyone who thinks otherwise is really missing out.