Social media in recruitment - a Twitter virgin's guide...

With the second Social Media in Recruitment Conference booked for April and boasting speakers from both Google and LinkedIn, it is only a matter of time before recruiters who don't become involved with this newfangled idea will start to miss out. Who would have thought that networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook would provide such great opportunities for recruitmenting, whether it is collecting candidates or getting in touch with past and potential clients? LinkedIn has always been the professional face of social networking, as has Ecademy, but now recruiters - both agency-side and internal - are starting to reap the real benefits of getting their backsides in gear and jumping on the more social side of the social media bandwagon.

I bravely volunteered to become the Mobilus social media guru, ignoring the fact that I have only ever used Facebook before to spy on people I went to school with, and make myself feel
a) superior because I have a better life/ job/ pair of children than them, or b) envious because they have a better life/car/ looking partner than me. That's what it's for. But it is also for the serious business of developing candidate pools, and promoting your consultancy to clients. In order to get MY backside into gear, firstly I had to start my blog. What to write about, how to write it, would anyone want to read it? - these kept me awake at night. Then I decided just to jump straight in, see what was going on in the high falutin' world of recruitment. But that would be a bit one-dimensional, so I decided to try and write about the markets that we recruit IN, namely marketing and I.T. Ignoring the fact that I am no expert in either, I realised to my surprise - though not to anyone
else's - that I could manage to find an opinion on anything. So the blog you read now was born.

My next step was to discover Twitter, then work out how to use it. Luckily, I have a 12-year-old, so he showed me. Then I had to figure out how to follow people, and who to follow. I didn't want to follow friends, or bands, or anything that would Tweet unsuitable content to me (marriage problems, binge drinking, swear words etc). Keeping in touch with the industry we work in as well as for is an obvious, as is following publications and professional groups. Amazingly, I have collected some followers, and fingers crossed, will continue to do so. It might be my fascinating Tweets, or my lovely picture, or even this blog, or just that people will follow anyone. I haven't quite got the hang of working it all out yet. Where's my son?

(For more information on social media and recruitment from actual, proper, qualified people, check out Peter Gold at Hire Strategies http://www.hirestrategies.co.uk/ or the training course from Recruitment Matters http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/)