Consulting, Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, Human Resources
About social recruiting with Christie Cordes
Christie Cordes is a CEO | Director of Global Talent Acquisition and an Employer Brand Consultant @Ad Recruiter with over a decade of digital and social media recruitment branding experience. Today we are going to talk about the evolution of Human Resources and Christie’s social recruiting best practices in bringing a talent pool to her clients companies.
Christie, can you explain the meaning behind your company’s name?
I recruit executives in the ad (advertising | branding) industry. Being in the digital media industry I knew SEO and Google results would have an impact on my company’s visibility, so I looked at the major industry news sites such as Ad Week and Ad Age – and there you have it: Ad Recruiter. I think the name really helped clarify to industry executives what disciplines I focus on. I think it was a simple yet powerful naming strategy as a sole proprietor.
Social media conquered the world and it shows no sign of slowing down. What do you see as the most effective social media channel to recruit at?
Social platforms shift in popularity much like fashion does. Different platforms ‘trend’ and then new ones emerge – it’s very fluent and always shifting. Being ‘visible’ where the cutting edge, curious people are in social is important for recruiting and attracting the very best talent. Social media is composed of people and people are talent. It’s important to have a handle on how all the platforms operate. If I’m looking to attract college grads and interns – they absolutely love SnapChat. It’s such a fun platform, it’s a great place to attract them, because that’s where they are spending time! Instagram and Pinterest is a visual creative network for many aesthetic minded designers and creatives. It’s a great place to ‘discover’ talent and see how different people curate their boards and also see projects they are working on. LinkedIn is fantastic – for referencing and seeing peoples experience, it’s an invaluable tool. I’m not sure if it’s incredibly ‘social’ but they keep trying to improve that to some extent.
The best network (as of now) for Ad Recruiter is actually Twitter (w/LinkedIn) together. There are a few solid reasons why it’s great for communicating to talent and identifying talent. Twitter has low barrier to connecting to top executives and forming relationships. We’ve all experienced top executives ‘not accepting LinkedIn invites from strangers’ yet a follow is typically met with ‘how nice’ as a positive compliment! That makes it an ideal place to identify and build trust based on relationships with executives all over the world. I consider my social followers across all platforms – my candidate pipeline (not an automated database of pdf CV attachments).
I use LinkedIn with Twitter at all times, in other words a new follower who’s bio on Twitter is vague, I’ll locate their LinkedIn profile to understand who they are and what they do. I advise all executives, to have a transparent / informative Twitter bio with a link to LinkedIn on Twitter – especially for career advancement, business networking and ‘being discovered’. The other platforms can be more personal and so people don’t share their real names, or where they work often times, especially Snapchat! So that’s makes it difficult to identify ‘targeted talent’ but attracting them there is always important!
You’re not only a seasoned recruiter, but also an employer brand specialist. Can you share how you engage candidates on social media?
Engaging candidates begins with knowing who it is as an employer you want to hire and attract. Once you’ve identified the ‘type of candidates’ you want to attract and hire, you must then figure what the majority of them are passionate and care about. Engaging candidates flourishes when you share content {they} care about. So many companies are about themselves in social, when in reality they should be about adding value to their followers in what they are interested in. If you’re just posting job ads on Twitter – that’s not attracting passionate candidates. If you’re just talking about recruiting as a recruiter, again that’s not attracting candidates or adding value to talented executives you may be wishing to recruit. If you look at social media as a way to help others become better or more informed – you’re on the right foot.
When you follow talent back – you’re listening to talent, and as we all know listening is the number one way to build trust. Listening is also the number one way, to identify the innovators. I was once talking to a top three employer in technology and the hiring directors were not impressed with the software database applicants the in-house recruiters where presenting them. I asked them, if your recruiters aren’t on Twitter then how are they identifying the innovators – paper print magazines? I mean, employers should want recruiters to be engaged with top executives in social. If a finance search firm only shares social about recruitment – that’s typically not on the list of passions the people they want to recruit care about! Focusing on them not ‘us’ is what wins hearts and minds.
What do you think about branding of service-based companies and how this is different from the companies that have psychical products like Starbucks coffee?
There is no difference. A brand is who you are, what you stand for. For service-based companies the deliverer of the service must live the brand purpose for the company to deliver branded atmosphere. They deliver the brand, much like how Starbucks delivers its coffee with store/retail brand atmosphere. People – not place, become critical for ‘brand experience’ vs. physical atmosphere. It’s all the same in the end – experience.
Marketing and Human Resources have more in common in the recent years. What changed in the last decade in the HR industry?
Technology changed ‘reach’. A decade ago HR was dependent on post and pray job boards, not because they thought it efficient, but because it was all they had available to reach people on a mass scale. Collecting mass CV’s in databases was their only power. Before databases there were filing cabinets! What many HR departments struggle with is a fluid / tangible / constantly shifting line of candidates in their social followers. They have a hard time believing they are real without the PDF! Today, HR can develop a mass reach without solely relying on a public job board ‘service’ provider. That’s a pretty incredible shift! Now that HR has ‘reach’ available to them in social communications many intelligently understand that marketing to candidates is an essential component of employer brand and recruitment success.
The part HR needs to get comfortable with is ‘transparency’ with communications to their fans/followers on a socially acceptable level. Successful social media in HR is treating candidates as fans/customers and that means – delivering to them a trust based transparency communication style. In order for the very best executives to take a vulnerable position in applying to a new opportunity it requires a degree of trust and good will. When HR takes a social communication style that elicits respect, kindness, transparency and trust – they see the best recruitment results in terms of high quality applicants.
Candidate pipelines use to be the database PDF attachments, now the real-time candidate pipelines are the followers in social. This is a tremendous paradigm shift from paper filing cabinets. It’s not who you ‘have’ anymore, it’s who you attract and the strategy you use to implement that successfully. A PDF isn’t a representation of a living human being. You can communicate to mass PDF’s by generated software email notes but it’s not as effective as talking to them respectfully in mass via Social. People don’t like being talked to by software.
What do you think HR can learn from Marketing and vice versa?
Attracting targeted people, and getting them to buy-in is Marketing and it is Recruitment.
It is incredible how many marketers become recruiters and how many recruiters shift into marketing… you were a Fine Art Consultant and then a Director of Promotions before shifting to the HR department. How did it happen?
I followed my passion of people, culture, art and innovation. All of my jobs have focused on those 4 characteristics – including HR. Recruitment is the art of attraction …. as is selling a painting … or leading a promotional campaign, it’s about targeted ‘people attraction’.
What is the best social recruiting case study you have seen recently in media?
L’Oreal does a very good job: http://linkhumans.com/case-study/how-loreal-use-social-media-for-recruitment
And what is the newest EB trend you would like to explore?
I’ve been waiting for this for a while now – but with LIVE streams now accessible to anyone I’d like to see HR create and produce Live Job Description (events) instead of just only typed stagnate job descriptions: a meet the team, see the place – live tour if you will, that can be replayed and shared across social.
Can you recommend to our readers the best 3 books on EB, HR or Marketing?
Sure! “Blue Ocean Strategy” – INSEAD, “Radical Openness” – Don Tapscott + Anthony D. Willams, “Who Cares Wins” – David Jones
Thank you for the interview!
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