I've been a twitter user for the better part of a year now and have found it to be a helpful ally in my work as a recruiter. Everywhere I look in the recruiting world, it seems, someone is running a webinar on how twitter can be used for recruiting, but when I look in the Milwaukee and Chicago markets where I live and work, where the rubber meets the information highway, I find that while many people in talent acquisition have a social media profile or twitter handle, those who actually use them are few and far between.
I think that part of the resistance or reticence about these tools arises from three misperceptions.
Social media tools are a fad. I'm not sure whether we've been conditioned to think about anything web-based as faddish or if we automatically dismiss anything new that way whether web-based or not, but I run into many hiring professionals who view even well-established professional tools liked LinkedIn as little more than a passing fancy. I believe that the fad perception arises from a fundamental misunderstanding about how the web is evolving toward richer social interactions.
Social media tools are playthings. We seem to suspect anything that has a fun factor as something suspicious and unfitting for work. I'm no therapist, but the very notion that anything that has to do with work or our professional lives ought to be dull drudgery seems to be a cry for emotional help. Many recruiters I speak with readily acknowledge that they like and use LinkedIn, but that they keep themselves very separate from Facebook--either not using it at all, or just using it for their personal friendships. Despite the fact that the number of potential hires on Facebook is 200 million users vs. 35 million on LinkedIn, recruiters and other hiring professionals still cling to the tool that defines itself as professionally oriented. Congratulations to the marketing department at LinkedIn, but that's bad news for hiring professionals.
Social media tools are confusing. All right, maybe this one isn't a misperception, but it is a factor explaining why the tools aren't being practically adopted. At many events I've attended over the past few months, I keep hearing that my fellow hiring professionals are signing up for or have social media profiles but generally feel that they could be using the tools more effectively. They may connect to friends on LinkedIn, but they definitely do not feel like they understand how InMail, Introductions, Answers, and Groups can be leveraged creatively to hire talented people to their companies.
The fault here, as I see it, is shared between the platform creators who have bloated their social media tool with so many bells and whistles that it's confusing for new users and the users themselves who do not take the time to play and figure out ways to use (and sometimes misuse) the functionality. Twitter is one of those odd cases, though, where even an extraordinairily elementary tool has mystified users. Recruiters tell me all the time that they "don't get it." What's not to get? It's like walking into a room full of people with technical or marketing or design backgrounds (whatever you're hiring for) and telling them what's on your mind or what sort of help you need. And, unlike Facebook or Myspace that still tend to skew toward a younger demographic, there's evidence that twitter's user base includes a broad cross section of users cutting across the age groups you'd stereotypically expect.
Of course, these factors aren't limited to the world of talent acquistion. Last night, I attended the first Milwaukee TweetUp event at the beautiful Iron Horse Hotel. As one of the volunteers, I spent most of the evening speaking to new users who were struggling to understand how the tool might be used for personal and business purposes.
I believe we're at a juncture where these misperception or fear factors are going to evaporate. A strong motivating factor--namely, the lousy economy and joblessness--will incline those who see hope in social networking tools as a means of landing the next job or shoring up their personal networks to learn. That's good news for recruiters whose viability and success will be directly dependent upon maintaining social ties with a large pool of talent. The more people who sign on and use tools like twitter will make it easier to move more quickly for them to hire the best and brightest when the economy turns around.
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