NAS Talent Talk

Facebook à la LinkedIn

December 20, 2011 at 4:07 pm sarahwering Leave a comment

by Kristine Rhodes

This year, 18.4 million American job seekers claimed they found their job through Facebook. 10.2 American job seekers claim they found their job through LinkedIn (Source: SelectMinds survey 2011). With those sorts of statistics, it’s no wonder organizations are scrambling to find ways to capture their audiences through these channels. More and more, we are hearing success stories around the LinkedIn model of companies and their recruiters connecting with candidates and building relationships to ultimately make hires. But are organizations creating connections using Facebook? Obviously, companies are creating Facebook pages with job feeds to their ATS. And of course, we can buy targeted advertising on Facebook. But the biggest challenge with Facebook has been how to expand the organization’s network. How do we gain more fans for our company Facebook pages and make it worth the investment of time and money? After all, what’s the destination worth if a Fortune 1000 company only has 1,400 fans? How do you build that to be a viable recruiting destination? Our job with our client-partners is to help build the strategies around these social media destinations so they can make more meaningful connections and hire the necessary talent.

In our quest to help our clients build successful strategies around Facebook, I ran into a tool that I believe has huge potential. What if Facebook – clearly the largest social network in the world – could operate in many ways like LinkedIn? What if there was a tool that would provide a safe and secure environment for professional networking on Facebook? What if recruiters and hiring managers had the ability to search professional Facebook profiles just like LinkedIn? Source and match candidates and build private talent networks? Well now you can! BranchOut , founded in July 2010, is the largest professional network on Facebook with millions of users in more than 60 countries and growing.

BranchOut certainly has potential for recruiting talent, but in order for this tool to work, it has to appeal to the audience – the job seeker and professional audiences we seek to hire. After all, we know they have plenty of networking tools to choose from. Why invest the time to create a BranchOut profile? From a user perspective, people know organizations are recruiting from Facebook. They also know the way to find a job is to make an “inside connection” at a “desired” company. Yes, they can find the company’s Facebook page and become a fan and apply for a job through their integrated job posting – but likely, they’re right back in the company’s ATS – the big, black hole and certainly not a connection. I believe that’s why LinkedIn has become so successful.  The inside-connection component. So now the second part of the equation – the bigger issue – “My Facebook page is way too personal and not appropriate for organizations to view.”  That’s where the BranchOut profile comes in. Companies can only see work history, education and endorsements, so no need to worry about risqué pictures.

Bottom line, the appeal to organizations and to users is there. The average user has an established network and spends an estimated 12 minutes per day; 8.5 hours a week on Facebook. Companies know Facebook’s potential as a recruiting tool to find talent and are often struggling to figure out how to make meaningful connections within the network.  I believe BranchOut will prove to be much more than a growing fad or shiny widget. I believe it will have the ability to harness the power of Facebook and its users and connect talent to organizations in meaningful ways. And I’m not alone – Human Resources Executive magazine awarded BranchOut the prestigious “Top HR Product of 2011”. So check them out at www.branchout.com and please share your thoughts.

Kristine Rhodes brings more than 20 years of marketing and recruitment communications experience to her leadership role at NAS, where she directs strategic talent engagements, planning and consultation for global and enterprise-wide clients. Kristine has helped a wide array of Fortune 1000 companies develop and implement highly successful talent acquisition and communications programs.

 Kristine is also a nationally recognized speaker on employment branding, talent acquisition and emerging issues of interest to human resource executives.

Entry filed under: Digital Strategies, Kristine Rhodes, LinkedIN, Recruitment Processes, Social Media. Tags: .