Recruiting With Social Networking

When Best Buy started to search for a pair of marketing managers this spring, recruiter Joshua Kahn, senior pipeline generation expert at Accenture, a firm that provides human resources services for the electronics giant, turned to Twitter.com, a free social networking Web site, to spread the word.

“I’m looking for 2 great brand/consumer/loyalty marketing people for Best Buy,” Kahn typed into Twitter’s 140-character message box. It was received by 800 people who “follow” his posts on the site.

About 10 of those followers then shared, or “retweeted,” Kahn’s message with their followers, bringing the potential audience to more than 10,000 Twitter users.

Within a few days, the posting had generated more than 350 clicks on a Best Buy jobs Web page and more than 15 applications the company might not have otherwise seen.

“And it was free, which is the beauty of it,” Kahn says.

Getting Social

Kahn is part of a small but growing community of Twin Cities recruiters who are experimenting with social networking as a tool for identifying talent, soliciting résumés and referrals, and screening candidates. Even these early adopters don’t believe Facebook, a popular site that allows users to create a personal profile and connect with friends, will ever replace face-to-face interactions. And Twitter won’t take away the need for the telephone.

However, understanding how to use social networks will become increasingly important for recruiters as the services become more ubiquitous among job seekers.

As is the case with most recruiters using social networking, Kahn got started on Twitter as a result of his own initiative, not a company policy. He’s used Twitter to keep in touch with friends and co-workers since the spring of 2008, but he’s only used it as a recruiting tool for less than a year. For him, Twitter has proven a great place to find tech-savvy job candidates.

LinkedIn is by far the most commonly used social network among recruiters because of the sheer volume of professionals who use the service. According to its Web site, LinkedIn.com has more than 40 million members, many of whom join specifically so they can be contacted about new business-related opportunities. Users can also create an online résumé and profile that allows recruiters to learn about past employment and recent accomplishments. Twitter, meanwhile, has just over 6 million users according to a recent report.