Staffing Management 101: Social Media Recruiting Hits Monster

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If you manage a staffing business or follow staffing industry trends it may be no surprise to you that Monster is no longer producing their monthly Monster Employment Index reports. Here’s an extract from their official announcement released on January 9, 2013 :

As Monster has grown, so too has our media-agnostic approach to sourcing and recruiting…An index which measures only online job posting activity is no longer an accurate measure of our business, nor the market at large.

This final sentence is key in looking towards the future of staffing management and demonstrating the shift from job boards towards increasingly popular social media methods. Just as companies like Monster drew customers away from the old guard of newspapers and magazines, now a swing from job boards into social media has occurred. Not that social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook offer unlimited opportunities; you are more likely to see people posting drunken photos of themselves rather than glean any useful information or make a meaningful contact! But the social media world is bigger than Twitter and Faceook. So where does the staffing industry now look?

The Shortfalls of Job Boards

In the brave new world of recruiting, the job boards we once depended on have some major issues:

  1. COST. There are more and more free sites that offer similar services. Those of us in staffing management would prefer to use free services rather than use websites which demand a premium.

  2. Jobs boards don’t necessarily fill jobs; rather they are in the business of serving job ads, making their money this way.

  3. Job boards no longer present something new. Many social sites and other digital products (see the list below) are offering services beyond those that job boards do.

The Upsides of Social Media

  1. In a July 2011 Jobvite survey, 64% of companies indicated they had successfully hired via social media. 80.2% used social media to recruit. And these figures have more than likely grown since then. On the face of this, social media does appear to be the marketplace for staffing management to recruit talent.

  2. Even though recruiting through Twitter and Facebook has numerous downsides, sites such as LinkedIn, almost a glorified job board in itself, have had great success. The qualities of the job board system have been taken and reworked with the new media.

  3. For staffing management, social networks offer powerful channels through which potential candidates can be reached and engaged.

So how is staffing management best served by social recruiting?

Here are a few ways you can use social media effectively, as well as a few useful sites that offer these services.

  1. Search Social Networks Effectively It isn’t the tools but how you use them. Social Media can throw up a whole lot of useless information. You may need some help sorting it all out. LinkedIn Recruiter is a great way to search LinkedIn postings. Pivotlogix, and Boston Decision are powerful tools that aggregate and search profiles across many social networks.

  2. Collate the Data in a Useful Format So many results can be generated by searches that you need a data tool to organize your findings. You may want to test out products like Broadlook and eGrabber for this. 

  3. Engage With and Nuture Connections After finding suitable candidates it is important to develop a relationship with them. Again LinkedIn works well for this, as does Brave New Talent.

Now, we’re not suggesting that there is no longer any merit in job boards. They still hold potential for staffing management. Nor do we think all social media serves staffing management efficiently. None of the above mentioned tools are a complete solution. Success in staffing management and hiring requires a lot of work. But there are a host of up-and-coming services which pose to supply the market and yourselves beneficially. They are just a different means aiming for the same end. RIP Monster?