The time has come for companies to take a closer look at Recruitment 2.0 and embrace this concept as the future reality of recruitment.

Over the next few years, recruitment will undergo significant change, beginning with a rapid acceptance of virtual sourcing as the norm. Companies will turn to Internet search, online job advertising, and candidate attraction via social media platforms and corporate career sites – and eventually even virtual job interviews – to engage talent who’re increasingly connected. Cheaper and quicker Internet access through smart phones and broadband connecttions will continue to grow rapidly making the Internet more accessible to all global citizens.

Up until a few years ago, the Web was characterised by ‘brochure-ware’ – companies communicating their side of their story through static websites where consumers could only receive information. This has now made way for a second generation of web development and design, called Web 2.0, which enables heightened levels of interactivity and engagement between companies and consumers, where web pages can potentially get changed and updated and commented and added to all the time, by almost anyone.

Companies (and their HR departments) must become more skilled in this new online world. However, very few local companies are actively practicing Recruitment 2.0. Most recruiters have no idea what Web 2.0 means, how the web has evolved to where it is today, or how this will impact recruitment practices into the future. The majority of recruiters still equate online recruitment with standard job boards and basic corporate recruitment websites that are little more than online brochures. Recruitment 2.0 goes far beyond this.

The advent and rapid growth of social media technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks, YouTube videos, RSS and many more further supports information sharing and collaboration by making it easy to create and distribute content. This provides companies with opportunities to increase their visibility, extend their reach, engage with passive job seekers, foster relationships, and thoroughly research candidates (it also gives a whole new meaning to the concept of reference checking). Far beyond the capabilities of traditional job boards, Recruitment 2.0 enables referrals to go viral through a social media push, seeing one job alert reach hundreds of people in hours as it is passed on to the friends of friends of friends.

A recruitment 2.0 campaign may take the form of one or more of the following: rich media microsite, targeted PPC advertising on search engines, streaming video for staff testimonials, chat with candidates on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook, application screening via SMS, multimedia CVs, or interviews via Instant Messaging.
If implemented properly, Recruitment 2.0 can deliver a significant reduction in recruitment spend. Companies with the relevant skills, currently relying on recruitment agencies, can save up to 80% in time, money and admin expenses. This is aside from the millions of Rands they can save on recruitment advertising over time by building their own pool of talent.

The starting point for Recruitment 2.0 is to understand what candidates you’re trying to recruit. Are you dealing with a short, medium, or longer-term talent pipeline? What digital channels do they have access? What is the most effective way is to recruit them?

Once you understand these variables, you can build your strategy accordingly – be the result a corporate careers websites, a social networking strategy, online Internet search or something completely different. This requires a team with a marketing capability, that has an understanding of the web and social media technologies, as well as an understanding of the accompanying recruitment challenges. As this can be a tricky undertaking, best practice advice is to go to a business that has experience in this space.

Recruitment 2.0 is not a fad and will continue to eclipse traditional recruitment practices as the HR space finds itself in an increasingly digital world. To stand the best chance of attracting the top talent, companies need to get in on the game now as the following adage will soon become very real: If you’re not online, you don’t exist.

About graylink
graylink is a cloud recruiting company that provides companies with recruiting solutions for a digital world. It helps companies exploit web and mobile platforms to source the best talent and automate recruitment processes – reducing costs, improving time-to-hire and enhancing compliance.

Founded in 2002, graylink is privately owned and has operations in South Africa and the United Kingdom. graylink’s solutions are used by some of the most successful companies globally. Some of these include: Allan Gray, Bidvest Group, BAT, Coronation, Department of Trade and Industry, Truworths, Discovery, Engen, Mercedes, Medi-Clinic, Pfizer, and Vodacom.

Search, integration, real time engagement & collaboration, viral marketing, location based services – Google Buzz is a serious tool when it comes to the recruitment marketing & sourcing mix…

Interesting article from website www.baitbox.co.za HERE

The world has gotten online (well, most of the world, Africa is getting there more slowly) and social networking has gone from consumer darling to corporate bugbear almost overnight. Does social networking have any redeeming features? Brainstorm decided to find out, posing the following question: Twitter – valuable tool or time-waster deluxe?

” Most super-duper technologies for corporates to improve knowledge-sharing and communications made little difference to business culture. People are people; they change very reluctantly. The ideal is a technology that synchs naturally with how real people do things. Chat. Share info. Seek status. Forget Twitter. It’s pretty mindless. But take the “Twitter model” of followers/ following/quick and searchable regular updates, etc, and redevelop it for business. It could be incredibly useful in building intelligence in a multinational sales force (intelligence sharwordsing, highlighting successes, storing knowledge). It’s a technology that fits easily into how people live and work and, therefore, has a chance of actually being adopted in daily work life. Forget Twitter – it’s a fad. But the Twitter model? That could be huge. ” Roger Hislop, Account Director at Sentient Communications

“Many people use Twitter as a simple communication tool, merely creating ‘noise’ that often wastes time and can ruin the experience. Twitter is a great networking tool and invaluable as a means to receive and share information because it is qualified by people you value (you choose to follow them), with an attached, albeit implied, referral. This has another dimension of value as referrals – in this case retweets – are the most powerful form of marketing. Used properly, Twitter can also replace RSS feeds and allow you to opt-out of most e-mail subscriptions, resulting in less ‘noise’ in your inbox.” Justin Spratt, VOIP Mobile GM at Internet Solutions

“While social networking may be viewed by business as a personal, work-distracting, playtime activity, it is important to understand that it is in these online mediums where the future workforce exists. The social network worlds of Facebook, Twitter and the like open up new, unexplored markets of opportunity and target audiences previously untapped by business. It wasn’t long ago when e-mail was considered a playtime activity and banned from usage during normal working hours. The world is connected and virtualised and those who don’t adapt internally faster than the world is changing externally, will obsolete their own model.” Rob Sussman, Joint-CEO, Integr8 Group

“The value of Twitter depends on the purpose it serves each individual user. People and businesses can use Twitter to create a network of relevant people with whom they can share content, engage customers, listen to their peers, filter content from great minds or share with the world what they had for breakfast. The value of each of the roles that Twitter plays depends on how much it serves the user’s purpose for being there. Content filtering and community participation seem to be the top personal gains, while customer engagement and listening to the market are top for businesses.” Craig Rodney, MD, Emerging Media Communications

“Twitter is a valuable tool in recruitment, helping companies directly reach top candidates in a far more cost-effective way than appointing a headhunter. Twitter can also be a tremendous time-waster if it’s unsuited to the profile of candidates targeted. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn are deep platforms where people volunteer a lot of personal information, making it easy to segment and target candidates actively looking for work. Twitter is a shallow platform, better suited to targeting passive candidates. Recruitment marketing is still marketing. Companies need to understand how social media platforms relate to recruitment to develop strategies that work.” Mark Gray, CEO, Graylink

” More and more of our personal relationships include an online element. The social web is changing the way we communicate and collaborate and also how consumers and brands interact. Companies need to embrace this change, understand the expectations and participate respectfully to benefit from the opportunities that these global conversations offer. Twitter is one of the channels that Nokia uses to interact with various niche communities to drive conversation with a local relevance. In South Africa, it is no different and we have a Nokia Music Store community with whom we interact on a daily basis, sharing latest news, service updates and also addressing any issues that the members of the community might be having with the service. Twitter provides immediacy, allowing us to gauge perception on the fly and respond accordingly.” Tania Steenkamp, communications manager, Nokia South Africa

“In a world bordering on information overload, Twitter allows people and organisations to share what is happening and what is planned, in easily digestible chunks of information. If we want to take this one step further, we could combine these seemingly random bits of information with other real-time information to generate unique insights about what is happening in the world. The derived intelligence could assist organisations to anticipate events and proactively make decisions on courses of action, ensuring a competitive advantage. Used this way, Twitter would be an invaluable “sensor” in a smarter planet.” Clifford Foster, Chief Technology Officer for IBM Sub-Saharan Africa

“It depends on how and why Twitter is being used. As with anything, it has to be used properly. If you target the right audience and send the right information, it can be an extremely valuable tool for building a brand. Companies claim to want to get closer to their customers. Now, for the first time, they can actually open a channel of communication with their customers that is instantaneous. The question is – are they equipped to deal with this? Starbucks and Google use Twitter admirably. However, if Twitter is used for puerile musings and inane comments, it can be a brand-breaker.” Yossi Hasson, CEO, Synaq

“The extraordinary popularity of Facebook in South Africa, for example, has created a revolution in social networking and its use is quickly expanding to supplement business functions such as brand building and recruitment. This new generation networking tool means users can share quality content and information more rapidly and effectively than before.”

She says recruiters are making the most of the interactive social media, which have the potential to discover new talent, can be short or long term, have a focus on the company showcased and career destination, and a closer match between candidate and prospective employer.

“You can also use social networks as sourcing tools to reach passive candidates and for hard to fill positions. It’s not that the current or traditional model does not work and should be discarded.

“Recruiters should use the methods that best suit their business, incorporating all the advantages of available media.”

Facebook has more than 200 million active users globally, and it has caught on in SA very quickly with more than 1.6 million South Africans using it. Singh says about one-third of users are between the ages of 25 and 35 and just over a third are between 18 and 24 years old.

“Based on these statistics, companies need to ensure that Facebook plays a role in their sourcing strategy when it comes to the hiring of Generation Y and even Generation X candidates.

“With the Seacom data cable now online, it will no doubt spur an increased SA online presence.

“Blogs can be another useful recruitment tool for building relationships with potential new candidates and clients. They can provide a source of valuable industry and company specific information, promote working through a recruitment company featuring various divisions and highlighting key vacancies.

“But most important, blogs allow readers to offer opinions and give feedback. This is essential to create that two-way conversation to build customer loyalty and have an accountable and strong brand.”

The new IOL Jobs is free for jobseekers and features include: state-of-the-art search functionality; instant job matches to thousands of print and online ads; job alerts; career and interview advice; and instant profile alerts for recruiters. Jobseekers will be notified if jobs that match their profiles comes up and employers will be notified if jobseekers’ profiles match their requirements, says IOL general manager Peter Rhoda.

Mark Gray, head of online recruitment specialists, Graylink says Twitter is the latest buzz on the hiring scene as employers are turning to social networking platforms to supplement their traditional methods of searching for talent.

“This social networking platform allows people to post quick, short text updates of up to 140 characters on what they are doing right now. People can select other Twitterers to follow, and others can in turn follow them. This ability to quickly learn from and share information enables powerful relationships to be built, providing employers with a great way to connect and network with passive job seekers.”

He says by integrating Twitter with other social media platforms, for example embedding it in a blog or LinkedIn profile, job alerts can be extended to even wider audiences.

“Employers need to get connected and understand how social media platforms relate to recruitment to develop strategies that work.”

Source Article Here

Social networking sites are the new recruitment platform.

Professional recruiters have started using social networking platforms such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Linkedin, to hunt for candidates. These sites are also helping job hunters market themselves online by providing potential employers with access to profiles, work history and specific skills lists.

Social networking platforms are web based services focused on building online communities of people who share interests and activities by giving them various ways to interact with each other such as via e-mail or instant messaging services.

According to a study by Chicago-based job board, CareerBuilder.com, one in five employers in the US use social networks to research information about job candidates.

While South African companies are slower on the uptake, this trend is gathering momentum as people explore the uses of social networks beyond friendship connections. “The more savvy South African recruiters are already getting into social networks as a new way to hunt talent,” says Mark Gray, head of HR recruitment and technology company, Graylink. “When done correctly, recruitment via social networking platforms can be a more effective and inexpensive way to reach and engage relevant talent than traditional methods’.

The social networking site with the biggest South African audience is Facebook with nearly one million local users across all age groups and demographics. Linkedin, a professional version of the more social Facebook, has a smaller, more targeted community of business executives.

Using keywords to search these sites, recruiters can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that cannot be found elsewhere. These candidates can then be contacted directly about job offers that might interest them. An advertising section on Facebook enables companies to post job advertisements to select candidates. Companies can also set up Facebook groups to create communities around a shared interest, simultaneously using it to find talent.

Job seekers can use social networks for personal branding. “The starting point is to develop an online profile that is authentic to you. The next step is to load this with information, defining you as an individual, that will interest employers and give them a good idea of what you’re about,” says Gray, who emphasises that your personal brand promise has to be true to avoid disconnect between the image you are trying to project and the reality.

The kinds of conversations you are having online can further reinforce the brand you are putting out. For example, Linkedin has a very active community asking and answering questions. As a member of Linkedin you are able to impart knowledge and expertise, positioning yourself as an expert on a certain subject. Linkedin further allows you to list previous employers. By getting them to act as references for you, these endorsements are a great way to confirm your expertise and prove you are who you say you are.”

But, using social networks for recruitment and personal branding is not as easy as just posting a notice somewhere and hoping for the best.

Recruiters need to understand what the business need is, what each social service provides in terms of service to the users and intelligence to the recruiter, and which service their desired candidate audience is actively using.

The right network also depends on the job function, with senior and specialist skills requiring niche networks. Designmind (www.designmind.co.za) is the perfect place to source a candidate from the building industry while Huddlemind (www.huddlemind.net) would be better for sourcing a corporate trainer. In the same way that recruiters turn to niche publications to advertise jobs, not every social media site will work for a particular job requirement.

Moreover, the message must be relevant to candidates and be interesting enough for them to pursue. “Gone are the days where job advertising was all about what the business needed. Its now about what the business can do for the candidate and the good ones don’t want to be bored to death by a job description,” says Gray.

Social networking is a double-edged sword for job seekers. Many job seekers have expressed outrage at companies rejecting them for jobs despite having the right skills after learning about their dubious personal lives online. Personal branding is about presenting and authentic and consistent set of values. If there’s a discrepancy in the view candidates try to present of themselves and what is reflected online, it can work against them.

The next step of the evolution of personal online branding will be to improve the quality of one’s connections and really build relationships, as often, online relationships are flat with people merely adding more online friends.

“People are becoming more connected to a broader network of people through online platforms,” says Gray. “For job seekers and employers to remain competitive, they have to start getting more active around marketing themselves on social networks.”

How to get the most out of Linkedin:

1. Max your profile – Make your profile as detailed as possible with relevant information. This includes providing an overview of your work expertise and core areas of specialisation. If you’d like to be approached about job offers, the contact settings at the bottom of the profile section enable you to tick whether you’re interested in job enquiries and career opportunities.
2. Box clever – Make the position descriptions as interesting as possible and ensure relevant information is provided in your profile to sell yourself to prospective employers. By using the same keywords which recruiters may use in their searches, you have a greater chance of being found. For example, IT workers with Java mobile development skills might want to specify this in their profiles, allowing recruiters looking for this particular skill to find them through basic keyword searches.
3. Get recommendations – Add some recommendations to your profile by sending a message to the contacts in your network asking them to vouch for your expertise in a certain area. This is very useful on a job-by-job basis to prove key capabilities. These endorsements give you a good online presence as people have personally recommended you. The more endorsements the better.
4. Connect – The greater the number of connections, the better your network, as this increases the chances that you will share a connection with someone. A big network also exponentially increases you second and third level networks based on introductions to new people by a shared contact. This is especially important to employers, as many people do not make their profiles public.
5. Ask & answer questions – This section, broken down into different categories, enables you to establish yourself as a go-to person on a certain topic. For example, someone can ask a question about business development which anyone can answer. The more you answer questions, the more this adds to your profile, eliciting invitations from others to join their networks. This is ideal place for recruiters who are looking for subject matter experts to find them.
6. Join a group – Become a member of different groups or start your own, based on your expertise in a specific area. For example, “Green” is a group for anyone who would like to share their ideas on the environment, climate change and renewable energy. The more exposure you achieve, the bigger your profile and chance of joining other networks, and the more possible employers there are for you to speak to.
7. Become a LION - Build a network quickly by becoming a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION). This describes that you’re open to accept invites from anyone (even those you don’t know). Those with 500+ friends are often people who work in this way. By joining this group, you will be able to interact with 4000+ other LION participants.  By being introduced to someone through a connection, this vote of confidence makes people more receptive to advances.
8. Create your own page – Companies can create their own page to stimulate interest in the organisation. This also allows companies to identify top candidates working at other companies. Job seekers can perform an advanced search on a specific company for a wealth of information such as size, location, and rate of turnover. Connecting with former employees will enable more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than from someone who’s still on board.
9. Research people – Perform a name search or an advanced people search with specific keywords to find a number of people to add to your network or approach with job opportunities. For example, a search for accountants in South Africa yields 442 results. You can also see their connections. If you know a mutual person, you could find out what they are like, or look up their number and call them personally. Do a lot of research very quickly and find people of value to me.
10. Paid access – A number of paid-for corporate solutions are also available to recruiters to increase database access and visibility. For example, you can add job adverts to LinkedIn, which are served to candidates with matching profiles. Inmail allows you to directly contact up to 50 people in the network, which is much faster than working through their networks. Superior access search further allows companies to get deeper database access, without any personal network restrictions.

To download the PDF printed article from The Star Workplace [download#3#image]

Every man and his dog, or cats (I kid you not) has a blog, or a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or all of the above and then some. Quite frankly, if you’re not online, you don’t exist, dahling… Or so some commentators would have us believe. Living life online in real-time has its benefits, for consumers and corporates alike. But let’s not get carried away here. Like everything in life, social networking is not for everyone.

First stop – business case

And like everything in IT, the first step is establishing the business case. Before that, however, you have to get a handle on what, exactly, this social networking stuff is. Says Puruma Communications MD Ingrid Lotze: “It’s the same old stuff, just with different names. Seeding, hives, activators – it’s old-fashioned segmentation and CRM. We believe it is just about business, and just another tool business can use to get closer to its customers.” Hello World Agency group media director Pedro van Gaalen agrees: “Never before have corporates had such a direct line to their customers. The one on one aspect is key. Companies can build relationships with their customers, find out what they are saying about them and react in real-time, which means monitoring social networking is going to be a 24×7 job.

“Customers are out there shaping perceptions of the company in their networks. It is important for corporates to be there to ensure they deliver the right information and how they want to be perceived in the market.”

“A quantum shift has taken place in the way brands have to deal with customers. Companies can no longer keep them at arms’ length,” Lotze’s business partner, Puruma Communications director of common sense, Gavin Moffat, adds. “Companies have to be involved and they’re realising this at board level. They’re looking at how they engage customers and how they can use this as a competitive advantage. That’s pertinent in the middle of a recession.”

In and out

Social networking is relevant as more than just a tool to interact with customers, however. Says Graylink head Mark Gray: “Social networking offers faster, cheaper and more effective communication, networking and collaboration, especially when it comes to recruitment. Compared with the cost of newspaper recruitment classifieds, social networking sites are much cheaper to push out information about a company.

Easily segmentable groups of very active audiences on these sites make it easier to reach the right people than the untargeted approach of newspaper advertising. Additionally, the neutral environment social networks provide to share information makes it much easier for companies to start conversations with top candidates, as they don’t feel they’re being sold to.”

And then there’s the cost benefit. “The cost is significantly less than what a recruitment agency charges, typically 15 to 25 percent of a candidate’s first annual package,” he states. Integr8 IT joint-MD Robert Sussman concurs. “The future workforce exists in the world of social networking. That is where the talent lies and where people are meeting, networking and trading, not just in terms of transactions but in terms of their personal lives, family business and so on.”

Sussman says his company encourages staff to use Facebook, and that executives make a point of connecting to staff, sending birthday wishes and taking advantage of all of the benefits social networking brings.

There is a downside to Facebook, as Sussman notes. “One of the big concerns is that companies set up company groups, which anyone can join and use to see who works where, how long they’ve been there, what they do, what their culture is and how they interact with colleagues. It’s a hunting ground for recruiters.”

Sussman admits that his company uses it to headhunt staff. And Graylink’s Gray offers a case in point – his company has been using digital means, now including social media, to recruit on behalf of its clients for years. This is one of the reasons why many companies don’t want to give staff access to sites like LinkedIn, a business networking site, for example.

Pros and cons

“There’s no right or wrong answer here because each corporate is unique,” notes Cosmedia founder and head Gino Cosme. “The traditional viewpoint is that employees don’t need access to these tools and platforms unless they can demonstrate that said access helps them carry out their jobs. This, of course, is particularly relevant for employees involved in the communications vertical (being aware of what is out there and how it applies to one’s own business, for example). On the other side there are those who believe that because social networking is a large part of what society has become, banning it would be like banning e-mail. The big question is more around identifying the corporate and employee culture.”

Many commentators, including Sussman and Van Galen (quoted above), feel banning access to social networking sites is akin to banning access to e-mail. States Media24.com Social Media manager Alistair Fairweather: “People use the telephone for personal reasons at least ten percent of the time.

Does that mean we should take the phone away? No. Obviously companies need to put a system in place to monitor usage, and accept that there will be some wastage. But this is outweighed by the fact that telephone costs drop annually, while staff satisfaction and morale goes up because they have access. Not letting staff use sites like Facebook forces them to use the phone or SMS, both of which are less efficient and waste more time. And then there are other aspects – juniors, for example, who live in the social media space, pick up on trends, feedback from customers and information on how people feel about the brand they work for all the time. You go into meetings and they say stuff you’ve never heard of because they are scanning the ether every day, which older staff are not. And it’s not just marketing staff either.”

As Cosme notes, though, it’s a question of culture. “There’s a trend towards offering limited access to social networking, which meets employees and business viewpoints halfway. So, for example, making it available after work hours, within limited bandwidth restrictions, etc. This allows employees to take accountability for their time while at the same time being able to have access to these tools. Banning it completely because of pre-conceived decisions that there is no value or benefit is not, in my view, the answer. The truth of the matter is that if your employees are not able to manage their time and deliver on their KPIs, then it’s not necessarily a social networking issue but rather an employee’s work ethic or HR issue.

“The important thing here is to identify the risks involved in whichever option,” he states. “The obvious one is that using a work computer with a corporate IP address immediately puts the corporate in the public space and anything employees do and say on social networking sites can be associated and linked to the company. Furthermore, employees who engage with each other in a public setting can unintentionally make private, internal issues public. These are just two examples, of course. Companies must just be aware of these and put things in place to best protect not only corporate identity but also employees themselves.”

Adding up

Short version of a long story? What you decide to do about social networking depends on what you, as a corporate, can derive business benefit from. Don’t get left behind, however. Online is where it’s at, for future talent and future business. The longer you wait, the further behind you risk falling, and in the current real-time economy, you can fall pretty far, pretty fast.

Excerpt from a feature article on ITWeb, asking the question “Has the corporate world hopped onto the social networking bandwagon? And more importantly, why should it?”

“Social networking is relevant as more than just a tool to interact with customers, however. Says Graylink head Mark Gray: “Social networking offers faster, cheaper and more effective communication, networking and collaboration, especially when it comes to recruitment. Compared with the cost of newspaper recruitment classifieds, social networking sites are much cheaper to push out information about a company.

Easily segmentable groups of very active audiences on these sites make it easier to reach the right people than the untargeted approach of newspaper advertising. Additionally, the neutral environment social networks provide to share information makes it much easier for companies to start conversations with top candidates, as they don’t feel they’re being sold to.”

Full Article at http://www.itweb.co.za

The Labour Relations Act requires employers to give retrenched staff members the first option to apply for new positions opening up at the company. And the same software used for recruitment can also help companies simplify staff’s re-employment and redeployment as part of the retrenchment process, it was announced earlier this week.

South African companies are finding the dreaded possibility of retrenchments becoming a reality as the implications of the global economic meltdown start to hit home.

Higher interest rates and commodity prices, a weaker rand, and slower inflows of foreign capital, which are expected to slow down local economic growth to 1.2% in 2009 from 3.8% in 2008, are forcing many companies to make lay-offs to survive.

Job for life a distant memory

While the concept of a job for life is already a distant memory, retrenchment is no less of a shock to either company owners or their employees. For employers it can be a double-whammy as they find their angst split between trying to keep the ship afloat, worrying about complying with South Africa’s labour regulations, and responsibility for employees’ welfare.

Technology can support

“Technology can provide companies with much-needed support during the retrenchment process by simplifying their communication to retrenched staff about opportunities for re-employment, in line with the labour regulation requirements,” says Mark Gray, head of online recruitment specialists, Graylink.

The Labour Relations Act requires employers to give retrenched staff members the first option to apply for new positions opening up at the company.

Matching CVs

By using the same applicant-tracking systems used to recruit outside candidates, companies can easily collect the CVs of staff re-applying for positions, match each against job openings, issue notifications of new positions relevant to the qualifications of each applicant, and keep applicants updated on the status of their applications.

The data collected in the process makes it easy to generate any number of reports for internal record keeping or reports required by the Department of Labour. For example, providing details on how many staff members have been re-employed, how many regretted, and how many of these were employment equity appointments.

In cases where staff cannot be absorbed, companies can further create a separate page in the career section of their websites, populated with the details of all these staff members, with an invitation to recruiters to mine these databases for placements.

“Losing good staff due to a tough economic climate is devastating. By staying close to them and making the retrenchment process as stress-free as possible with the help of technology, this preserves the goodwill that could see them return in better times,” concludes Gray.

Original article – bizcommunity.co.za

A new survey from Jobvite, a provider of next-generation recruitment solutions, shows what many experts may have already predicted: that companies are choosing to invest more money and time in social networks and employee referrals over job boards and search firms.

Jobvite conducted their second annual Social Recruitment Survey by polling approximately 440 human resources and recruitment professionals, the majority of which, 65 percent, have between 101 and 5,000 employees at their company. Responses came from a variety of industries, with a concentration of technology companies making up 33% of respondents.

The majority of those surveyed said they are planning to increase their financial commitment to social recruiting. Seventy-two percent of companies plan to invest more in recruiting through social networks, while a majority say they will invest less in more costly sources, including job boards, third-party recruitment and campus recruiting. In the same survey conducted last year, 68 percent of recruiters said they would increase their use of referrals and employees’ networks.

In addition, 80 percent of companies surveyed said they use or are planning to use social networking to find and attract candidates this year. LinkedIn use grew from 80 percent in 2008 to 95 percent of respondents in 2009, while Facebook use grew from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009.

A new addition, Twitter, ranked third with 42 percent of recruiters using the tool to source candidates.

It looks like their social networking efforts are paying off. Sixty-six percent of respondents using social networks for recruiting reported that they had successfully hired a candidate who was identified or introduced through an online social network, showing that the channel is not only being used, but also producing quality results.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they use social networks to reach passive candidates who are not actively seeking employment.

While many background check companies have cautioned against using social networks to check up on their candidates, survey results show that companies simply aren’t listening. Recruitment and human resource professionals are using a variety of online sites to research candidates: LinkedIn (76 percent), search engines (67 percent), Facebook (44 percent) and Twitter (21 percent). Respondents reported that 24% of candidates disclose their social networking presence when applying for a job.

The full results of the survey, including employee referral stats and what percentage of companies plan on hiring or laying off this year, click here.