Who participates?

By definition, social media is meant to be consumed by choice, not by force. Therefore, your job candidates may participate in one social networking site or many or not at all, The information they post about themselves may be different based on the type of site. For example, LinkedIn participants tend to focus on business and professional networking, while facebook and myspace communities seem to be more focused around getting back in touch and entertainment topics.

Demographics

So is social media really “just for kids”?

From this data you can discern that if you are seeking employees with less than 5-6 years experience that facebook and myspace are great options to explore. Twitter users tend to be a mixture of tech savvy adults around 30 years old and LinkedIn users are on average about 40 years old. If your job search requires 10+ years experience in the field, LinkedIn is a perfect tool to search out and find veteran candidates.

One thing to note in all Social Media sites is a trend towards older users. facebook actually has seen a 276% growth in the 35-54 year-old demographic this year (2009)

Conclusion

• The best candidate for your job opportunity may not even participate in Social Media sites.
• Not every social networking site is equal. Social Media specialists and Community Managers are able to best provide guidance as to which sites to use to maximize your results.
• Social Networking is gaining acceptance and wider use by job seekers with more than 10 years experience. As such, they as a community are demanding better tools and ways to reach employers and further simplifying the recruitment process.

If you are a recruiting firm looking for further guidance on how to use social networking sites to harvest qualified candidates, give me a call. Don’t waste your time trying to do it yourself.

First off, I promised to elaborate on how to use Twitter to post jobs and recruit talent. My “Tweeps” who know how to use Twitter can move on down to the Bold N below.

For those uninitiated, I continue:

1. First off, create an account at Twitter. It is a pretty simple affair, and it will leave you with a homepage from which to Tweet. (Tweeting is the act of sending messages to people)
My URL is http://twitter.com/delta40

2. Second, build your Twitter Profile. On the Account tab, complete all areas. Areas like your URL and one line Bio are CRUCIAL. Think of using keyword-rich bios like: “Experienced executive headhunter and sourcing specialist. Jobs available in healthcare, technology, business and C-level management” When Tweeps (Twitter-using people) perform searches, your keywords help you gain “eyes to page”… Then your URL tells them where to go.

3. On the Picture Tab, add your photo, no one wants to communicate with a ghost avatar. They want to see you as you are. You can also bail out with the use of a corporate logo.

4. On the Design tab you can pick how your page will look. Leaving a default page is very indicative of someone who is new at this. And no one wants to be a NEWB. You can add a background image and change the color scheme. This is where a Community Manager comes in handy.. To do this sort of social-site branding.

5. OK, now start using Twitter! Pretty easy.

Now on to the fun part. Finding and recruiting talent!

The first thing you can do is start to search for talent who have posted their stuff on Twitter for you to find. Go to the Twitter Search Page and type in some search criteria. This is where you will start to use the unique “code” within Twitter. Community Managers use the jargon all day.

Say you want to look for a Program Manager near Dayton, Ohio within 50 miles?
In the search field type in:    “program manager” near:Dayton within:50mi

You will come up with one hit! Me! Now how fun was that??

While searching for a candidate you can also use “Hashtags” represented by a “#” sign. Adding this to your search criteria narrows results. For example #jobangels provides you only candidates that have posted their availability to JobAngels.

Because you can only type in 140 characters, Twitter-users, also known as Tweeps, use lots of concatenation and substitution. Twitter also has some unique “codes”.

@ delta40  – Starting off a tweet like this will send a general message that others can see, but your intended recipient will be delta40
D delta40 – Starting off a tweet like this will send a private message to delta40, no one can see this but him. You cannot send D or Direct messages unless that person is “following” you.

OTHER RESOURCES

You can also find sites like Twellow that build out more enhanced profiles and work to categorize individuals by their talents. (like a Yellow Pages)
I mentioned #jobangels above. This is a non-profit organization that helps place candidates with jobs. You would be silly to not use Job Angels as a resource.

My feelings about recruiting new talent via Twitter is that it engages a young and vibrant demographic in a way that is meaningful and supportive of them. Twitter as a platform provides a robust 140 character messaging system so that you can say what you need to say, but hold on to what you don’t.
You can also build onto Twitter various tools like TweetDeck that help to enhance your Twitter experience. And if you don’t have the time or the inclination to recruit via Twitter, consider hiring a Community Manager or Social Media Consultant. Keep an eye on this blog for more tips on how to use the other forms of social media (MySpace, Facebook, etc) for advertising your brand and your business.

Have a wonderful day!