As you know we here in Microsoft do our humble best to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to trying to recruit quality staff. The latest concept we have been toying with in the US has been how we use Facebook to try recruit. As most of you know by now recruitment isn't all about clever tools, tricks, and marketing experiments it's more about a good old fashion dolp of well written, informative and catchy job descriptions, an efficient and focused sourcing campaign and roll up your sleeve tenacity. But that aside, it is important to try new techniques to market in. LinkedIn being a very good example of why. Every so often you can find a tool that hits your bottom line with some direct hires as we've experienced here and you can learn invaluable market information about your targeted hires.
But what about ubiquitous Facebook as a recruitment tool? For me the jury is still very much out! So far it hasn't won me over and I haven't heard too many companies making hires from it yet. But that said there is a lot of experimenting going on. Check out some of the work Ernest & Young has been doing on the graduate front. Also CareerBuilder.uk and GulfTalent.com are now offering a jobs matching service on Facebook. GulfTalent going as far to build, as far as I know, the first recruitment application geared to recruit from the social platform. We haven't invested heavily in marketing on it yet but we are paying it attention. To not pay attention would be haphazard. The numbers are simply too hard to ignore. With its magnanimous rise to power Facebook is clearly becoming the front running global social platform. What we've decided to do it create out own group to do some of our own testing. You can check it out here. The real interesting part for me is the advanced search facilities in facebook and the new apps that are beginning to appear. Not so much the group sections. If they begin to develop and the meteor rise of users keeps growing then the people you are searching for may have a profile and you may be able to find them. To do this as it stand will be hard because of the prevailing attitude on it that it is more a social tool to interact with friends and family and look up old class mates you went on the J1 to Montauk but have since dropped off the radar. The simple truth of the natter is not many people are putting up their professional profiles and until that happens its effectiveness will be circumscibed from a recrutitnt point of view. Time will tell. I'll keep an eye on it and report back to you all.
