But atimes, one may have to fail (probably a few times) to get things right. And the same goes with introducing social recruiting into your hiring strategy. One of the reasons that deter some UK companies from social recruiting, is the thought of failure.

It is possible that you have ticked all the right boxes and eventually created a social recruiting strategy, but somehow along the way, the integration into your existing hiring process and the implementation of the so-called social recruiting ‘to-do lists’ goes awry.

Don’t despair. You may not be alone. Many companies will have to redefine their recruitment processes and refine how they manage their social recruiting strategies until they get things right. You’d be surprised to know that several brands with successful social media campaigns and social recruiting strategies could have tried different approaches and formats, before they start getting some ROI of intrinsic value.

A recent article on Techcrunch suggests some reasons on why social media projects fail (an European perspective). For me, quite a lot of these researches and surveys are another set of stats, numbers and percentages that may not be a perfect representation of the situation. However, we can surely relate to some of the reasons they presented. One of which being, just doing ’social’ because of the sake of it, will not deliver any meaningful returns.

If you are seriously considering reducing recruitment costs, engaging more with candidates, improving employer branding, then social media may be a strategic sourcing channel for many companies. But before you decide to design a social recruiting strategy, I’d recommend you ask yourself so many hard questions on all aspects of the process you intend to implement, as well as how to manage the feedback and results (either negative or positive). This post on how to create a social recruiting strategy may help.

And to get more insights into how several European based organizations have successfully implemented a company / group-wide social media recruiting strategy, why not come and join us at the Social Recruiting Conference with case studies on 30th November 2010.

The presentations will feature why and how they embarked on their social media recruiting journey and the challenges they have faced. Of course, they will also share the rewards and benefits to their organizations. Interestingly, discounted tickets for the conference ends on 31st August 2010.

Hopefully, we’d see you in London!

So many commentators have written blogs on why Google Wave wasn’t attractive for ’surfers’, with lots of valid reasons why the product failed from a usability point of view, as well as Google’s own poor marketing strategy. The list is exhausive, and I will not dwell on them here.

But how can a product that seems to be way ahead of technology, interactivity and connectivity die so prematurely? How does one explain the case of Google Wave, a service hailed by Mashable’s Social Media hippies and Techcrunch’s Web 2.0 aficionados; a product promoted by the pundits and touted by Technology Top dogs, as the next big thing.

From the comments expressed by the average web users, Google Wave just wasn’t really needed. When you create a great tool, that looks shiny and smart, but which doesn’t really fill a dire need or make life any more exciting nor easier, then who will bother to use it?

Try and contrast people’s emotional connections with social media tools. Twitter and Facebook are growing exponentially, because people – kinda need them. Millions of people log into Facebook daily, before they check their email, and the same can be said of Twitter. Some people just follow streams of tweets every hour of the day (to see if they have missed something) and you can guess what they will check on their phone, should they wake up in the middle of the night?

The point is, that regardless of how something new is heralded or ‘hyped’, it will only grow to mainstream acceptability, if it is relevant and will surely add value to the lives of its users.

The last 2-3 years, and pointedly 2010, has seen rise of conversations about social media as a channel to hire and engage with candidates. Social recruiting tools have also been established as a platform to manage a company’s employer brand and improve employee engagements.

However, some recruiting industry veteran’s are still very skeptical about the subject itself. Some person’s are very passionate about their arguments e.g. that you should not use Facebook as a recruiting tool; that you will not find candidates on twitter; that social media recruiting is a waste of time. And that Facebook is for family and friends only. Fair enough! Doubters and naysayers will rather see the death of social recruiting, either for their own business or idealogical interests.

The concept of Social Recruiting is nowhere near Google Wave’s groundbreaking technology. However, they both seem to have one thing in common: Hype. Like every other services, products, systems or concepts that are seemingly hyped, its success will depend on its usefulness.

While individual company’s social recruiting strategy may suffer before they get it right, the actual concept of social recruiting, will not die. It is simple. It is engaging. It is where the world is going!

This post will look at very basic SEO analysis of these phrases (I am no expert on this), and how the searches on related keywords will affect results generated by major search engines. For this particular post, we will consider Google. Sorry Bing etc.

A search of ‘Social Recruiting’ in Google UK generates over 18 Million results, with the first hundreds (probably 500) directly related to social recruiting or social media in recruiting. Nice to see that Social Recruiter takes the numero uno spot, at least in the UK on this very day.

However, when you search for ‘Social Recruitment’ (again in Google UK), you get over 29 Million returns. What is interesting is that, most of the results in the first few pages and beyond, point you to Social Care Recruitment and Social Work Recruitment websites, most of which are agencies and job boards that offer Social Care/Work recruiting services.

Recently, I have been managing a UK Adwords campaign for our Social Recruiting Conference, and obviously testing different keywords and phrases and daily budgets, and monitoring the impressions, clicks and CTRs.

For some days when there is a news item on Social Care or Social Work in the UK, I noticed a surge in searches for the phrase ’social recruitment’ and higher clicks to the conference website. You don’t know who is clicking, but one wonder’s if its people looking for a social care related event or job. If that is the case, that is not good for us, as its obviously not our target audience.

But overall, the searches for social recruitment is far more higher than social recruiting in Google UK. And we probably know why.

What is now a question for the recruiting industry and SEO experts is: what is the most suitable phrase for the use of Social Media in recruiting? Should it be: social recruiting or social recruitment? Your thoughts and experiences in this will be great.

On a final note, I’d like to acknowledge whoever it is that coined the phrase “social recruiting“. I don’t know who you are – but we appreciate!

Usually, some companies post jobs on their Facebook fan page stream, but this app makes things tidier by moving the jobs to a tab on the fan page.

The cool things about Work for Us is that the User interface is very simple, but also has the feel and look of Facebook itself, which rather blends in nicely. People can Like the job and share them with friends / contacts in their network, thus making the app a very powerful referral tool.

Also, it allows job seekers to stay on Facebook, while applying for the jobs – without neccessarily taking them away. Although Stéphane pointed out that a few companies add an external url when you click on Apply, to their careers site or an ATS. Obviously, what we will be an interesting feature is integrating ATS within the app, and within Facebook itself.

Stéphane also mentioned that some clients are interested in some more innovations with the app, including a way to have a clean Tab name, with neat urls.

Over 2000 companies are now using the App, from big brands to SMEs, and more than 10,000 jobs have been posted in the last 3 months. Current clients include Accenture, Cisco, Sodexo to mention a few. The application is free for 30-days and then you can subscribe to one of these plans: (or keep using it for free). Techcrunch also profiled it recently.

We will continue to see apps like this on Facebook, and innovation will be key in ensuring that users on Facebook get to do all what they intend, within the communities.

More candidates will probably start showing interest in working with specific brands and companies (based on research about them from social media and search), and not just sending in generic applications to any business.

I will assume that Job boards and recruitment suppliers will start paying more attention to social recruiting tools like Work for Us, and others too  (eg TwitJobSearch, TweetJobs, TweetMyJobs, Jobvite, JobMagic etc).

Both of these set of surveys or whitepapers are pushed into the media, with multiple retweets by their respective faithfuls, in order to prove some points or reassure themselves that the industry is (or is not) warming to social recruiting. You may find similar instances from the US and UK.

Don’t be surprised if you read this week, that 85% of employers are ready to fully use social media to recruit and a week later, hear from somewhere else that ONLY 23% of companies consider social media as a relevant sourcing tool.

These surveys usually conducted by the actual companies or in some instances outsourced to independent polling companies tend to get their results from a set of respondents likely connected with the companies that commissioned the surveys. Respondents in these cases are most probably their existing and potential clients. Hence the results gathered and reports presented highlights who they have been polling, potentially on different ends of the pro/anti extremes.

Don’t let these confuse you. We will continue to see these sort of surveys in the years to come. Are they 100% accurate? Probably not! Are they intended to mislead? I don’t think so. But social recruiting is now a HR and recruiting subject (talked about in all HR events) that some companies are hoping to cash in on, while some other set of businesses are ready to kill off.

Has this happened before? Yes. Print Advertising and Online Recruitment. Print Advertising and Online advertising. Will this continue to happen? Yes. Today, it is social media, mobile and social graph. It may be something else in the next 10-20 years.

In conclusion, new technologies and tools will continue to emerge. And they tend to take some time before they eventually become ‘traditional’. While many recruiters right now are filling roles via job boards, third party suppliers etc; several companies are also engaging with candidates, having real life conversations within community platforms and hiring people. Social recruiting case studies like this and that cannot be ignored. These evidences are more valuable than surveys or reports.

We will continue to advice companies on social recruiting without the hype. It is also a great pleasure to be organising a social recruiting conference, with case studies from leading brands. You are welcomed to be a part of the it, learn from others and share experiences. Register here.