During Digital Recruiting 2011 gave senior internet consultant Maurice Beerthuyzen a presentation on the possibilities and sense of using social media in the recruiting profession. In this article, a report of this well-received presentation, its slides and the opportunity to download them.

“What you want to achieve is a dialogue between the (potential) applicant and the recruiter. Try to translate this to the site. Get to know your customer and have a dialogue with them.”

During the conference, the following question had to be answered: what can recruitement learn from marketing? Isn't recruitment marketing? Yes it is! That became clear during this day. Maurice advocated: translate the organization of social media to a good recruitment department. But is social media already so well organized within companies? Unfortunately not... Use social media to reach and approach people or make them approach you. Start the dialogue!

5 Learnings about dialogues

1. Everyone in your company is having dialogues. So there is already communication from all layers within the organization. Even outside of that, people are talking and writing about you, even without your control.
2. Conduct dialogues from the person. Make it human and personal. Pretend someone is sitting face-to-face across from you. Talk as a person, not a company. Make a good first impression and recruiting texts.
3. Customers determine the place of dialogue. Realize that people also get information to them through cell phones, laptops and mobile devices such as the iPad.
4. Customers determine the course of the dialogue. Give multiple opportunities to approach your organization. So not only by mail but also through various online channels (mail, linkedin or facebook).
5. Think carefully about the dialogue but, above all, don't let the customer think. Provide as few barriers as possible and good and quick access to information. Think from the visitor's point of view. What is he or she looking for?

After these insights, Maurice gave 6 steps to successfully implement social media step by step:

Roadmap social dialogues implementation

1. Monitors
   The first and most important step is monitoring. Start with a good analysis of customer behavior. Adjust goals accordingly, not the other way around. By monitoring, you will find out how your brand is being talked about.
2. Plans
   Social media is not self-contained and can be controlled, so plan your social media activities. If you know what is going on within your target audience, you can respond and react to it. Or better yet, the organization and customers can really share and solve their knowledge and experiences through dialogue.
3. Organization
   Consider the prevailing culture within the organization and the organizational form. What is the approach: centralized, decentralized, coordinated, centrally coordinated or holistic (as a whole)? Start small, for example, start with the webcare department a make sure it is in place. Get a team behind the objective and advise and enthuse.
4. Enter the dialogue
   The number of visitors or according says nothing about the quality of the dialogue you are having. So quality is more important than quantity. Strengthen your network because that's where the key to finding the right candidate lies. Posting tweets with #vacancy makes little sense. This is too general. Think about and implement more specific terms that interested parties are searching for.
5. Measure
   If monitoring shows that there are many questions and many dissatisfied customers, take action. For example, steer for the decrease in the number of #fails and for the reduction of queries. After a month, see if differences are visible and take action. Involve the IT department in this process as well. If they see the importance, they are more willing to address it. Put the analysis of the figures in the hands of people who can. Look jointly at the possible solutions and make sure there is a part objective. That way it is in everyone's interest that it succeeds.
6. Adjust
   Make customer dialogues become a mirror for you. Follow the dialogues and anticipate. Then the dialogues will only improve.

Final Conclusion

Integrating social media within your organization takes time and you cannot do this alone. Make sure to work closely with (external) internet and social media specialists. Let the approach depend on the type of organization and the prevailing culture, but don't let these deter and woo you from making social media a part of your organization.

The Slides

View the slides of Maurice's presentation by using the slideshare application below or download the PDF directly (15 MB).