We’ve all heard it from our senior executives: if you can tell me how many hires we got from that Tweet, I’ll be happy to invest more in social media for recruitment.  Many talent acquisition leaders hear this statement, mumble something about it not being easy to tie social media to specific hires, and then leave the room.

My friends, this is not the way to go about convincing executives about the value of social media.  You are the expert, you should tell them how to measure the impact of social media on your recruitment process.

Social Recruitment Compass from The Undercover Recruiter: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/infographic-the-golden-compass-of-social-recruiting/

Don’t know how to start?  Follow these steps:

1. Ensure your social media strategy supports and aligns with your overall recruitment strategy.  Social media usage in recruitment is not a stand-alone item.  It doesn’t work by itself.  It needs to support your overall strategy.  Need to gain brand recognition with individuals in health care IT? Align your social media strategy to support gaining that recognition.  Show the connection between your overall recruitment strategy and how the use of social media will help reach those goals.
2. Select the social media properties that best support your strategy.  This step assumes you understand your overall recruitment strategy and what social media properties can offer / accomplish.  If you are overwhelmed by the number and types of social media options, start by researching the big 3 – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  There are dozens of other options to consider, but start there.
3. Set goals for each social media property you select to use in your strategy.  Ensure the goals tie to your overall recruitment strategy.  My experience has shown that goals related to awareness/brand, engagement, quality and speed and the 4 main areas to focus on.
4. Determine measurements for each of your goals.  If you are trying to increase awareness, you may measure the number of and increase in Twitter followers or your LinkedIn career page.  Check out my recent webcast for the Human Capital Institute on Measuring Social Media for more specific examples of effective measurements: http://bit.ly/YV2ZYK
5. Determine the resources needed to execute your plan.  Many companies have overlooked the resources required to effectively manage a social media recruitment plan and strategy and end up creating a negative impression of their company by not properly responding to candidates, updating content or leveraging existing channels.  For every social media property you decided to use, you’ll need to have content creators, content approvers, account managers and data managers.  Depending on your strategy and goals, you may need just a few people to handle these duties, or you may need a large team.  Don’t underestimate the resources required.
6. Finally, you have to evaluate your results and adjust your strategy or tactics.  You gather data based on the measurements and goals that you set and then determine if you are meeting your goals.  You may need to adjust goals, tactics or resourcing as you move forward.

If you complete these steps and share your plan with executives, you’ll be able to move beyond their questions about how many hires your achieved through social media to a meaningful dialogue around the goals and measurements of these tools.  Please let me know how it goes.

Related articles

• The Social Media Horse Race – Infographic (tiselmilanvukovic.wordpress.com)
• CEOs Avoiding Social Media Are Missing Out | Domo | Blog (domo.com)