Many people tell me that social media is a waste of time. Not you lot of course, you probably found the link to this blog post on Twitter! I’m talking about technophobe friends, the chap who mended my boiler, my mate’s boss who runs a recruitment company….
This real life example is a superb case study in which you just can’t ignore the effectiveness of social media.
a) On Monday I saw Gary has posted as his status update on Facebook that our friend Lisa had tickets to Chelsea Flower show that she didn’t need anymore.
b) On Wednesday Ruth posted on Twitter that she was annoyed with herself for not managing to sort Chelsea Flower show tickets for her mum
c) I replied to Ruth to say I understood that Lisa has some tickets available
d) With a bit of help from Neil (who actually had read Gary’s status update better than me) Ruth and Lisa connected
e) Ruth’s mum was off to Chelsea Flower Show
Now, you tell me how that would have happened so simply without social media!
NB, maybe next week I’ll actually come up with an example relating to the recruitment industry 🙂
Yes Louise,
Likewise i could recount a story about how a friend lost her cat and discussed it on facebook and someone else found a cat and was told about it and they were reunited. Happy days
However, you fail to miss the point. Social media is about just that…SOCIAL
Apart from Linked-in which is perhaps usefull for headhunters the rest faceboook, twitter etc are full of white noise. Any recruitment message is quickly drowning against a tide of posts about flower show tickets and lost cats if you follow.. placements made from anything other than headhunting are limited.
That being said, Recruiters should be seen on social media and its another box to tick off, but as to social media being a great tool for recruitment its still evolving and im of the camp that believes facebook, twitter etc will be replaced with something better in the near future.
In the meantime, yes use it IF you have time on your hands but i completely get why many discount it as a total waste of time
Joe
I probably should have collected my recruitment examples before I posted the blog.
However, here is one which Mike Taylor at WebBasedRecruitment has on his site.
It’s a video from a chap called Max from RedFox Executive. He spoke at Mike’s conference this year having been a delegate in 2009.
http://www.socialmediainrecruitment.com/2011/02/08/max-macgillivray-founder-redfox-executive-selection-%E2%80%93-speaker-preview-interview-%E2%80%93-2011-social-media-in-recruitment-conference/