3 Pronged Attack!
Welcome back one and all, this week we are once again talking about Airservices Australia. However this time out, probably much to most of your utter surprise and potential horror I will not mention Confluence… oops. Okay, I won’t do it twice… promise…
No this week I’m gonna talk about how can utilise social networks in an effort to build and help regenerate their workforce. As Airservices Australia is, according to their workforce plan, expecting 30% of their workforce to retire in the next 5 years. This is obviously something that they need to address and this week we are going to look at how this can be done via arguably 3 of the major social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They all have their advantages and no doubt some disadvantages and below we’ll highlight a few of these.
With its constant growth of unique users Facebook is probably the largest network of potential candidates that any company could possibly ever want or need. However it’s probably not commonly known as a recruiting tool, but by utilising things such as the Facebook Directory, Facebook Pages, Facebook Ads and the Facebook Marketplace provides a wealth of resources for an organisation such as Airservices Australia to exploit. Whilst the positives that advertising job openings on Facebook has the potential threats are just as real. And I say this specifically in reference to what Tiffany Black calls its “laser targeting ability”, as being able to choose certain factors such as age, religion and gender when targeting potential candidates can be a bit of a legal grey area.
Well LinkedIn is the probably the obvious choice for many companies looking to start a recruitment drive via web2.0, as it is the world’s largest professional network and one of its key functions is to act as a recruitment device. And to do so LinkedIn provide a range of specifically designed recruiting solutions such as:
Which all include some of the following features:
- Access to LinkedIn’s entire network
- Ability to contact candidates directly via “InMail”
- Company branding
A recruiter can list job openings and target specific groups by utilising Twitter’s hash tagging as well as follow conversations and trends via the same technique. However, whilst Richard S. Levick poses that “Twitter’s speed, capacity, and influence outsize any other social media channel at the moment” in his article on the 4 Strategic Requirements For Corporate Tweeting, which is quite likely true. There are implicit risks involved when any organisation decides to launch its corporate brand into the Twittersphere, regardless of whether or not the original motive was simply as an employment drive. But with the right planning and preparation, which falls outside the scope of this article, Airservices Australia could make some real headway and by the looks of it, already are.
Airservices Australia’s current LinkedIn profile is incomplete, lacking any real information about the company and its purpose, as is its Facebook page. Yet their twitter page has at the time of writing almost 900 followers, over 500 tweets and a complete profile including logos and background images. So by utilising some of the ideas above I think Airservices Australia and by putting the same amount of effort into their LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, and most importantly connecting all three (prongs), the potential for tangible recruitment results is very real. As I mentioned in a previous post, social media is a conversation, and to garner any sort of positive outcome you need to stay active, engaged and connected.
4 responses to “3 Pronged Attack!”
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- - October 12, 2012
Andrew Cook 
Hi Andrew,
Whether it are posts or comments you can not stay away from the word confluence can you 😀
Great post with lots of insight, might finally going to have to sign up for linkedin seems if you are looking for a job in IT you have to have it.
– Shaun
Hey Andrew,
I’ve always found the idea of employers using Facebook to recruit or ‘screen’ (for lack of a better word) potential employees a bit shady. Unlike LinkedIn, which is essentially a social networking site for professionals, Facebook is not and I don’t think that it is acceptable for employers to use it as such, especially without the knowledge of the candidates. Sure businesses have professional pages to market their goods, but that is because they are expecting heaps of people to look, but the average person is just using Facebook as a way of communicating socially with friends. Having said that, on the other side of the coin, we all know that what we put up on our Facebook page isn’t private, so if you wouldn’t want your boss (or potential future boss) seeing something, should you be publishing it for all the world to see??? Not sure where I stand on that one….I’m also not quite sure I like the idea of filtering people based on gender, age or religion (I honestly didn’t know you could do that), your right about it being a big of a legal great area.
Love the idea of Airservices sprucing up its LinkedIn account though, it is pretty dismal at the moment isn’t it? I think the quality of staff they could attract would be so much better if they could get the attention of applicants via social media. A lot of the jobs that go in Airservices are very technical, and what do most technical people use? Social networking sites. I think that they are really limiting themselves in this day and age by only advertising via their own web site, and recruitment agencies. To get in touch with the younger generation (to replace the 30% of their staff from the older generation) they need to reach out using a platform that the younger generation uses.
Well researched, well written, all-in-all, great post.
Cheers,
Candice.
PS. I miss confluence. 😦
I agree a linked in page would be a great way for the company to build up thier brand as an employer of choice in order to reduce their recruiting costs. It would be interesting to see if they could get more referrals through current employees with a stong linked in strategy: if they trained staff on how to use linkedin so that if many employees posted job vacancies through their linkedin profilesthey could reach a network of people who are likely to be qualified for the job (by geography, technical degree, etc). What do you think, would a more decentralised strategy work for them?