For the third year in a row, TalentNet Interactive hosted a social recruiting conference at Iron Cactus on Austin's famous 6th street, to kick off South by Southwest.
But this year’s event was different. And rightly so. As an industry, we’ve gone beyond the mass hysteria of thinking that social media will save us, as the silver bullet to our big, hairy, fanged recruiting problems. We want results (metrics) but are we really prepared for what we’ll discover? Part of that journey of expectations, is learning from the wins as well as the mistakes of others. This is where TalentNet got interesting and it involves 24 Hour Fitness. The San Ramon, CA based fitness company wanted to get their recruiting game into shape and shared intimate details around their talent acquisition efforts for their 400+ clubs. Two main tracks covered what I’ll call different types of learning patterns.
For the Tactile (Interactive) Learners
Case study breakout sessions in groups included key pieces of social recruiting, all focused on 24 Hour Fitness‘ recruiting needs:- Social Media Channels
- Sourcing Techniques
- Content/Messaging
"I found the case study concept both interesting/informative but also a fantastic opportunity for 24 Hour Fitness to get the blue print for a modern sourcing and recruiting program.” ~Bryan WhiteIn theory, using this crowd sourcing model will enable the talent acquisition team to leverage the event attendees’ collective creativity for cost and time sensitive social recruiting solutions.
For the Auditory (Classroom) Learners
The slightly more conventional format included sessions on everything from mobile recruiting to diversity hiring. Some of the highlights around social specifically? Employment Branding Teela Jackson of Talent Connections, spoke on the impact of each employee on a company’s recruiting, or employer brand. Understanding the roles that people are already playing, and leveraging those to elevate the message, is the difference. From the tweet stream:- "All employees have the power of brand ambassadors." Some just don't know it yet. #TalentNet
- "Partner with the mayors of your brand, and team get-it-done. They are not the same people." #TalentNet #DiceUnlimited
- "Use personal content to drive traffic to business content. People want to work with other people!" ~ @Fishdogs #talentnet #DiceUnlimited
- All employees are brand ambassadors with different responsibilities.
- Be more personal, more human, more relate-able.
- Follow the source-of-hire numbers to start influencing recruiters' social behavior.