Use networks wisely to make your company name more visible

The resume is dead; at least it should be, given that it is no more than an inconsistently formatted and often exaggerated version of a professional self. Just ask any background screening firm, and they will tell you nearly half of the resumes they verify have some education or experience embellishment. Keeping the modern job-seeker honest is the new professional online profile, such as the one hugely popularised by LinkedIn, where thousands of recruiting professionals are sourced every day. With your educational and professional history available to everyone— clients, colleagues, ex-colleagues and batch mates—to whom you are connected, not to forget recommendations, the online profile is a far more credible representation of yourself. Would you not agree? That’s a fact that is being acknowledged by firms looking for talent as well. What started with every large company and a number of start-ups advertising and posting jobs on LinkedIn, has now moved onto other non-professional social networks— Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant are using Twitter to share vacancies via @infosyscareers, @ wiprocareers and @joinCognizant. Dell lets you search for openings via their DellCareersAPJ Facebook page. And then there are the start-ups looking to make the matching game a lot easier. Take Path.to and Bright for instance. They mine your social presence and find jobs for you based on connections. Or Smarterer, which evaluates your stated skills via assessments, giving employers candidates with validated skills. There is SmartRecruiters, a free, cloud-based applicant tracking and social recruiting system, which lets recruiters post jobs on Facebook with a click. Plus a bunch of talent-based communities like BraveNewTalent, TalentCircles and SelectMinds, which match candidates’ interests and employers’ needs. Let us not forget Branchout, “The #1 Professional Network on Facebook,” which is re-creating LinkedIn within the entire Facebook environment, and their competitor BeKnown, which is a division of Monster. com. Together, social recruiting start-ups are helping firms piece together parts of the puzzle—who you are, what skills you have and what jobs you would be best at. Armed with this data, firms can jump-start their hiring process. With cloud-based recruiting platforms, there is no software to instal or learning curve to deal with. Just get the recruiting team on to the platform, post the jobs and you are set. In fact, platforms also make it easy to store all recruiting-related content and data in one organised place. Combined with external integrations with e-mail and calendaring systems, the platforms can bring enterprise-level recruiting capabilities to companies of all sizes, at a fraction of the cost. But keep in mind, it is easy for firms to get excited about the buzz of social recruiting and see no real results coming in. The investment in effort goes beyond a mere job posting. Firms have to see social HR initiatives as much more than another job board. Recruiting on social media is all about building relationships. This can be achieved only by creating discussions for users to participate in and sharing relevant information. Firms must use social mechanisms to start a two-way communication between the firm and a prospective employee. Otherwise, they run the risk of users becoming disengaged if they do not find a job of interest. And those who do will likely abandon the community since it no longer serves their purpose. But what if you are on the other side? Understanding the rules of social recruitment may be the key to improving your odds of getting noticed. First (the obvious) your profile must be up-to-date even if you are not job hunting. Not only will it not raise eyebrows in your current job if you make a habit of regularly keeping your online resume up-to-date, but firms can chance upon a better profile even if you are not looking. Next, be judicious about your brand. Not only should you connect with thought leaders in your space in LinkedIn forums (as you would in the real world), but you should also be mindful about other social media profiles you link to. Ask yourself this—do my blog posts or twitter account show me in good light? If not, it is best to leave it off your profile. Having said that, always remember that on the web, if it can be known, it will be known. So if your Facebook posts are personal, you may want to restrict profile visibility and certainly keep it off the radar for public search engines. Finally, remember that social recruiting is meant to be social in nature—strike up conversations with potential employers and firms you are interested in, either on LinkedIn or industry or domain-focused communities. (The Social Media Recruitment Survival Guide http://bit.ly/DW-SocRec)