I recently wrote about why I believe recruiters should be on Twitter, even if it’s not always going to be useful for sourcing. When it comes to Facebook, you could say the problem is exactly the opposite. While a lot of recruiters have accounts on Facebook, they see that particular medium as a personal space. (Ironic, isn’t it, since putting anything up on the internet means you’re sharing it with the world.)
While I understand the need to protect that last piece of personal space online, the truth is you can easily use Facebook for recruitment without compromising it at all.
Some of the recruiters I talk to are reluctant to use the platform for recruitment because they don’t want to spam their friends and family. That’s great! (Although in the perfect world you probably want to avoid spamming anyone, but it’s a great first step ;)). But if you enter a closed group, your activity isn’t going to be visible to anyone outside of it.
You can join groups such as Recruiters Online, #FightSpam or Sourcers Unleashed, where fellow professionals discuss recruitment, or a group dedicated to professionals from your target group. But again, please give them as much consideration as you would to your friends: avoid spamming and follow their rules.
While graph search is no longer there to help you identify the elusive “top talent”, there’s a tool that kept its functionality alive. It’s created by Shane McCusker and guess what, Facebook use it themselves for sourcing on the platform! Do you really need a better recommendation before you give it a try? Not to mention, Shane has recently updated it to be even more useful for the global sourcing community and is apparently working on new improvements already. If you’re looking for awesome people to follow in our industry, by the way, then you certainly want to add Shane to that list.
Should my recommendation not be enough (although at this point it’s hard not to have heard about the tool from at least a couple of sourcing), maybe this article from eremedia can convince you to check it out 🙂
The truth is that while LinkedIn is still where most recruiters find their candidates, it’s not necessarily the place where they discuss recruitment related matters. I know I wouldn’t post just anything on LinkedIn – anyone is able to comment on those updates and so any sensitive matter I’d rather discuss with people I know. You can’t decide who sees an update on LinkedIn but you certainly can do that on Facebook.
I’m not just talking about updates that can be seen publicly or by your friends only. You can also create custom lists or use one of the smart lists that will update automatically (e.g. people who work at your company). This is the kind of flexibility you won’t find on LinkedIn or Twitter and if you’re not making use of it, you are missing out!
Sure, if you’re only considering to add Facebook to your toolbox so you can broadcast your jobs on yet another social platform, it’s probably not worth your time. You may be able to get away with it on LinkedIn, but Facebook is a truly social platform and you have to respect that.
The good news is, the incredible wealth of options it gives you is guaranteed to support your recruiting efforts, one way or another. So give it a go and see what you can achieve!