by Chris Hoyt
I’m on a two week trip that covers a considerable portion of the globe (given the span of time) and where the focus is recruiting technology and marketing. The first part of my trip kicked off here in Australia where I was asked to be the keynote at the Social Media 101 event.
My presentation delivered some interesting (if not alarming) statistics around why social media is rapidly becoming a vital part of many recruiting strategies. Touching on topics like crowdsourcing, social networks, mobile recruiting and the ever elusive, “talent networks” that we’re all seeing so much about. I also led a breakout session and some roundtable workshop conversations with a focus on talent networks.
This was the second ATC event and I’d venture to mark it as a success. Not only did they seem to double the size of attendance but they also pulled in other great speakers like Jared Woods (OneSteel), Michael Specht (Inspecht), Victoria Redman (Deloitte) and more.
Of course, as is usual for me when I attend or speak at an event – most of what I learned came from conversations rather than presentations – what follows is a bit of a shotgun summary…Of particular interest to me was the consistent message I was hearing from recruiters at large companies in Australia where their counterparts or leaders were based in North America. The overall feeling was that recruiting teams in NA typically run a bit faster than their Australasian and European counterparts – sometimes even making financial decisions where the effect ripples to the other teams to manage.
The majority of examples given were around quickly created Facebook career pages or Twitter accounts. In these instances, the lack of inclusion from these local teams sometimes gave the company’s page or stream a tone that lacked the diversity you’d expect from a global organization. In other examples, some of the efforts created additional work for recruiters and teams that weren’t originally consulted or allowed to weigh in on the creation or rollout of the social tools.
Frustrated recruiters? Yeah – but can you blame them?
The remarks around gaining buy-in from leadership when talking about social tools within recruiting was incredibly similar to conversations I’ve had with recruiters from around the world. Tracking return on investment, gaining buy-in from leadership and planning for sustainability – all items that were top of mind during the event. And while several recruiters I spoke with were pushing forward, no one seemed to have a consistent plan or magical solution to getting their bosses to sign-off on new strategies when talking about social media.
Talent communities were certainly a hot topic – and worthy of mentioning were the various impressions of how a talent community would be used by recruiters and companies. While some felt these were an evolutionary step in the recruiting process others seemed to feel very strongly that only agencies (not the companies) should build communities with two-way interaction.
The one item that really stuck with me was the lack of mobile adoption for recruitment in Australia. There seemed to be a considerable lack of knowledge (and in some cases a lack of interest) around how mobile marketing can be used as an effective recruiting strategy. While Australia is currently the ‘most social’ country in the world (Neilson) their primary use of social consists of Facebook with minimal investment in other channels that are popular within North America, like Twitter and Foursquare.
Are they behind? Nope – and I’d caution you from making that assumption. The recruiting is different in the Australasian market, but it’s not behind. Adoption of different tools comes at different speeds. And just like anywhere else, recruiters are working hard to find something that works for their niche markets.
Will I be back? I certainly hope so. Either way, I’d encourage everyone to keep an eye on the Australasian Talent Conference team. I suspect they’re on to something in their local market and that we’ll be hearing more from them going forward.
