Prior to joining Vivid Image, I spent 13 years of my life as a professional Recruiter (a.k.a. ‘Headhunter’) in both metro and rural areas in MN. WAAAY back in 1997, the company who hired me decided to give the green recruiter the role of ‘on-line sourcer’. They must have had some great insight into the power of recruiting through the world wide web back then because today, 13 years later, I cannot begin to imagine how a company could ignore the power of today’s web 2.0 and social media tools or worse yet, think Facebook is a taboo place to find talent. I’m already so passionate about this subject and that is why I jumped at the chance to plant the seeds to a rural Willmar, MN area HR/Recruiting networking group a few weeks ago.
I have to be completely honest; I have only been active on Facebook and LinkedIn for a couple of years and only in the past few months spending more time dabbling in the Twitter World. Originally I joined Facebook for strictly professional reasons (insert LOL) because l knew FB was brilliant at collecting lots of information, both personal and professional, about people to include: location, education, current and past employment information, and personal interests. Not to mention I could see a real life photo of the person and ‘check them out’ so to speak; before I made the recruiting call. (I’m not going to go into legal matters in this post but will admit that I believe people have a life outside of work. Period.) I’ll admit ‘cold’ calling isn’t the ideal way to spend my time; nor does it thrill me. I want a ‘warmer’ lead and a reason to connect with someone I’ve never met before. The information you can get about someone on their Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn page is priceless! And this is where the people you are trying to find are spending their time! So take the opportunity to connect with them, sell your company and the opportunity you have and don’t look back! You don’t have to be a huge corporation like Best Buy (mentioned in my PowerPoint) to be successful utilizing social media tools to attract talent to your organization. That’s the cool thing. You can act and look like the ‘big dogs’ in today’s world!
Now to my real life success stories. I’ll try to keep them simple. I recruited an Occupational Therapist to a rural hospital in Western MN after several failed attempts to post recruitment ads online in addition to college recruiting. I just decided to one night start searching on Facebook for this talent through keyword, location, and education search. I literally started to click on the people who came up, see what I could see about them, and start sending direct messages with my introduction. One of them responded and after a few months of courtship, she and her husband made the move and the hospital found their new OT.
A second success story has to do with Physician Recruitment. After several failed attempts to email message a highly recruited Resident Physician with rural MN ties, I tried to send the message through his Facebook account. Guess what? He responded within 24 hours and we made the connection. And last but not least; I found my new role here at Vivid Image through Facebook. I was a ‘fan’ of the company. Vivid Image posted a note about their current openings and it’s history from there!
Please, feel free to share the attached Power Point with stakeholders in your company or organization if you are intrigued by this post. Or better yet; come to a training session on Tuesday, August 31st over your lunch hour! Stay tuned…
Great inspirational stories about using Facebook. It is quite a brilliant way to connect with others, both professionally and personally. Keep the blog coming, its interesting to hear you talk about your profession and gain insight for myself on the subject.