How to use Twitter to find candidates

Monday

Sep132010

Tim Yandel |

Sep 13, 2010 |

LinkedIN,

culture,

online Image,

social networking,

twitter |

13 Comments

With the emergence of social media in today's business world, there are so many questions about how to get the most out of micro-blogging, namely Twitter. For the most part people "get" the value of LinkedIn a lot more than they "get" the value of using Twitter to find candidates. After all, LinkedIn has profiles and they are essentially online resumes for people. But how in the world are you supposed to use Twitter to find candidates when it primarily seems like the status updates LinkedIn allows you to do?

Tweet early, Tweet often

Not sure what to tweet? Hint: be yourself! First you have to understand yourself as a new Twitterer / Tweeter. When you're new at Twitter, it's common to get frustrated early because you don't get instant results. In fact the average Twitter user fizzles out within a few weeks and never logs on again. Having a Twitter account is just like getting a puppy, you have to continually feed it for it to grow and live.

Referencing a guest post Robert J Moore in TechCrunch last year, CEO and Co-Founder of RJMetrics (@rjmetrics) said that:

"About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers."

Hardly inspiring numbers that make you jump on Twitter today and start tweeting to find candidates. Yet if you read further on you find that the people who contribute to the Twitter universe (twitterverse?) are more likely to stay and be engaged. Robert J Moore goes on to say that:

"Once a user has tweeted once, there is a 65% chance that they will tweet again. After that second tweet, however, the chance of a third tweet goes up to 81%."

A little more inspiring, huh? The simplicity of Twitter, oddly enough, takes a little time to get used to. The Web 2.0 world we're all a part of these days is shoving more and more data at you that pleases the ADD generation enough that something as simple as Twitter seems pointless and people lose focus very quickly. It's similar to any skill, like guitar - you might want to be a rockstar but when you first start playing - it's really boring! Why? Because you're really bad at it!

The funny part about Twitter is that once you get it rolling it's exactly what your ADD senses crave: TONS OF INFO!

Engage with people

Photo of Workbridge Boston after we won a national contest - look fun?One of the advantages of Twitter as a sourcing tool for talent is the speed in which you can communicate with someone. It's a casual, virtual water cooler type, conversation that you can really utilize a good strategy for engaging people about you and your company. If you're only sending out a tweet a week or less, you're really making it very challenging for yourself to be found by someone. Get yourself into conversations by reading other's tweets and offering your two cents or retweeting a good idea to your followers. The more you engage with people the more people engage with you. This sets up a very natural conversation about their career or your corporate culture and current needs, etc.

Talking about your corporate culture on Twitter is free marketing to an already engaged follower base.

Follow your competitors

Following people in your industry will only attract the same followers back to you. The open source community is incredibly rich with developers and technologist trying to share their ideas with one another to help the open source community grow and become more relevant. Even in the Microsoft world, there are developers abound sharing ideas on how to do things more efficiently. Not only will this make you better as a technical manager, it will also be a beehive for developers seeking new ways to do things and they stumble on to your contributions to the community in the meantime.

Be aware of hashtags and their relevancy

Hashtags are ways to easily follow trends in your field and can grow your following very quickly to become more relevant than just subscribing to random lists (like the Top 10 Techies to follow lists that are everywhere). For example, if you commonly use Sharepoint and hire for Sharepoint Developers then do a search on posts that index #sharepoint. It's a very easy way to start becoming relevant in your community once you start - here's the magic word - engaging with your new captive audience that is talking about Sharepoint.

Control your online image

There are countless articles and blogs out there about companies researching their candidates online "image" using social networks, well the shoe also fits on the other foot here. Candidates are resourceful and will use everything they can to find out more information about you, about the company, about former employees that worked for you - all very easily accessible using simple online tools. The more bad press out there, the harder it is for you to attract people to work for you, let alone interview with you.

The simple truth is that people will write about you and your company whether you like it or not. So put yourself out there! Control your online image by making it a point to talk about how it is and will be for people to work for you.

Believe me, if you google my company, the third link is "Workbridge Scam" which is posted by people who have worked for Workbridge long ago or who didn't have a successful encounter with us. It's real work to control your image and the more you don't pay attention to your online image the more it seems like you're running away from it.

Anyone who's ever worked at a restaurant will tell you that one person that has a negative experience will tell 20 others, but positive experiences don't spread as easily. Bad news spreads much faster than good news - just turn on the TV if you don't believe me. So work on spreading good news and insightful information about who you really are.

What have we done to help spread positive vibes about Workbridge? We're spreading good news through our videos (see below) and by spending time to inform rather just post jobs on twitter.

You can take it with you

The best news about having a solid following on Twitter is that you can take it with you! One of the more inspiring stories I've heard this year is when I saw John Caplan, CEO of the OpenSkyProject (@openskyproject) talk at an MIT event centered around innovation. He talked about how San Diego Chargers Linebacker Shaun Phillips started using his popularity to gain an audience on Twitter. Once Phillips had a proper audience he started thinking like a businessman and life after football, so he's been spinning off projects like his own online store. However long Phillips' career in football lasts he has an audience of people that he will take with him and engage with long after football. It's really a very clever way to retain a fan base, in this instance we'll call them followers.

While you may not be sacking quarterbacks as your full time job, but you can easily attract relevant people to follow you in your community that will be your "followers" where ever you go. And just like the leader you are - where ever you go, you won't be alone, people will be following you.

Have you used Twitter to find talent? I'd like to know if you're using similar or completely different techniques to attract candidates. And what about your online image? What are you doing about it to influence a positive vibe?

Reader Comments (13)

Great Post Tim! We just missed the #socialrecruiting Summit in Seattle http://socialrecruitingsummit.com/sea2010/

September 14 |

Justin Miller

Wow Tim, just discovered your posts and really appreciate that you are sharing your lessons and insight on developers. I work for Microsoft Developer User Research, and I recruit devs for research studies on specific tools and initiatives.

Thanks again for being such a great resource!
Christine

September 14 |

Christine Alluise

Thanks for reading Christine! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic, do you use Twitter to recruit devs at Microsoft? If so, are you doing anything differently?

The recruiting landscape (like a lot of industries) is rapidly changing. Sometimes it feels like the wild wild west - which is really exciting. The way people communicate is changing every day and if you don't evolve with it you're dead in the water.

Thanks again for reading,
Tim
@tyandel

September 14 |

Tim Yandel

Hey Christine,

Thanks for the comment. Tim and I always appreciate the feedback and certainly look forward to posting more useful tips and tricks for folks in our industry.

Sounds like a cool gig up at Microsoft. You may also want to check out my post from a few weeks back about sourcing candidates from LinkedIN.

http://www.hiringjuice.com/blog/2010/8/19/5-steps-to-successful-sourcing-on-linkedin.html

Thanks again and let us know if there is anything else you would like us to blog about!~

-sb

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