With the increased popularity of social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, people are starting to realize the power of networks in their social and professional lives. Networks enable you to exponentially grow your contacts and connections and increase your reach beyond your immediate contacts. In building your network, more is almost always better with key advantages being seen with a larger network. Just take a look at the social networks:
* For Twitter, the more followers you have the greater the potential is that your great content is shared and sent through the community.
* For Linkedin, the more connections you make the easier it is to get introductions with others for positions and companies that you would like to work for and to get answers to questions you have.
* For Facebook, the more people you are friends with, the more news and events you can share with others.
People understand this power of these networks and work on leveraging them everyday. Even today in recruiting, the next big push is social recruiting. Recruiters are looking to leverage their own social networks and build company profiles to capitalize on the power of connections that these networks bring (and it helps that it has little monetary cost as well).
Now as you look at your current recruiting strategy are you looking to build your Talent Network? Building a talent network is a slight but dramatic shift in your recruiting thought process. Recruiting is no longer a throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks situation when you a filling a job position but a series of connections and conversations between the employer, the applicants and respected observers. So who do you want to be part of your Talent Network? Here are three main groups that you may want to target and how you can add them to your network:
1. Job-Seekers – These are people who are actively looking for a position and more importantly want to engage with you. To capitalize on this group, make sure to provide easy avenues for them to join your networks such as an easy opt-in page for future opportunities and links to add themselves to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Don’t treat this group as a one and done relationship but cultivate the relationship because you aren’t just connecting with them but also connecting with their network as well.
2. Respected Observers – These are people that are interested and keep a close eye on what your company is doing. They may have been a former job seeker, former employee or an industry expert. Creating connections with these folks is all about creating great content. A job blog, Twitter profile or Facebook page are great ways to keep in touch with this group. Great content is key in this regard, as this group will only pass on information and opportunities that they think are relevant and helpful for their network.
3. Employees – Retention is one of the hot topics among companies today. The job market is expected to be flooded with opportunities over the next few months and companies want to keep their best and brightest. Making your employees happy is not only about retention, however, as employees can be the most vital part of your Talent Network and be the main spokesman for bringing in the best talent. I believe it is a given to treat your employees well but also provide them with the tools to broadcast opportunities and company news to their own networks. Provide incentives (i.e. employee referral program) for them to share this information and you won’t regret it.
The key to building your Talent Network is connections. At every step of the recruitment marketing process, you should try to optimize and provide an open forum for discussions to be had. The conversations and connections do not stop, however, after the interview but continue them well beyond by utilizing social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and internal databases to keep in contact with these connections. As you build your Talent Network bigger and bigger, the more and more you can leverage this network to find and attract the most talented employees. And isn’t that the goal?
About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly provides a recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that enables companies to easily launch and more importantly measure all their recruiting efforts on the web. WildFire also helps companies build their Talent Networks through their innovative Recruitment Marketing Database.
