You may well ask yourself why your company ought to have a Facebook or LinkedIn page. But social media is more than just a Facebook account. It’s about a realisation that social media is but one of many digital platforms that form the backbone of what many of the current generation not only use and have been exposed to from young. It’s an all-pervasive and fundamental tool of the current generation for both work and play.

Matt Alder who became involved in online recruitment eleven years ago, has worked on digital recruitment and brand strategy for numerous clients across both the private and public sectors in the UK. While he see that the UK is still very much in recession and therefore harder for one to judge recruiting trends at the moment, he has noticed that there are lots of companies who realise that this is something that they have to start off on relatively soon and it’s with the knowledge that they might not necessarily have the budget at hand. So, some of them have begun planning around how to use social media, the search channels and the various other digital methods to address these issues. The fact remains that for many, there’s huge interest in this area as companies begin to really look at this as a more cost effective way of addressing their problems as they move forward.

We spoke with Matt recently and quizzed him on key trends in this recruitment and social media and what he saw as some of the key forces shaping the industry….

HRM : How do you believe that social media has impacted the nature of recruiting?
Matt : Social recruiting is about the use of social media for recruiting purposes. Advertising is part of it, where you might consider using a traditional ad in Facebook, for example. Reputation management is part of it and so is the use of networking and online discussion boards.
In terms of your question, I think it’s really more to do with the impact that it will have in the future. While there is lots of talk about social recruiting, there aren’t a huge amount of case studies yet. That said, I have seen some good things from American companies in the last six months or so including some great work from the likes of Microsoft and Cisco on a global basis. There are also many UK companies who have spent the last year planning on how to use it. Social media represents a channel that potentially provides a lot of response but companies will need to become more refined in what they do to get a good quality of response. One major impact will be on employer branding as it becomes easier for potential hires to find out from current and past employees what it’s like to work at a particular organisation. A lot of companies don’t currently track what is said online and are therefore monitoring how this sort of thing is having an impact on their brand.

HRM : What do you see as some of the forces responsible for reshaping the recruitment industry now?
Matt : The global recession has meant that companies are looking ever closer at how they can reduce the cost of their recruitment. With skills shortages in key areas, social recruiting has the potential to be a big force in reshaping the industry. Consequently, companies are moving slowly to the use of networks as a way forward. Does this affect recruitment consultants and job boards? Yes, of course. It’s all about transparent data. The thing is that if your selling point is the provision of lots of candidate details, it won’t be compelling enough to employers. They can get this via the likes of LinkedIn, for example. The way forward for this particular industry will be in the craft of recruitment... in these consultants being able to persuade the best of talent to come on board at these companies, in having those conversations. Reliance purely on contact books will definitely need to change.

HRM : Having been in the online recruitment space for the last ten years, what have you seen organisations do, that doesn’t seem to make sense?
Matt : A lot actually and on a daily basis! Really, I would say two things here. Firstly, there are companies out there that don’t use online recruitment at all which is crazy and secondly there are very few that put the candidate first in the process. Online recruitment can be a terribly confusing and horrendous experience for many candidates as between search engines, job boards and corporate sites, they can end up searching for the same job three times during the application process. That, to me, is the biggest thing that makes no sense and these companies then wonder why it is that they struggle to attract candidates in certain areas.

HRM : Do you have any interesting stories to tell us about your experiences in Social Media?
Matt : It’s all to do with the kind of investment of time we take to make it work. There’s a lot of talk about social media being free and it being a low cost channel but to those who explore and use this channel, there are huge investments of time and resources made to get it right. The companies that do get it right can get the right responses almost immediately and then there are those who’ve taken a long time to get on board and understand the whole thing and who find that their response rates are not too good in the long run. I think this will get interesting as more and more of us work to get this right and move forward.

HRM : How do you believe organisations should use recruitment processes or channels as a way to further develop employer branding?
Matt : It really goes back to my earlier point about the candidate experience. These candidates experience the employer brand when they apply for a job. But this starts a long time before they get to the corporate site. They look at what’s being said in social channels as well, for example. If employers consider the applicant journey and the entire candidate process, it really forms a good opportunity to consider and build their brand. Likewise, the reverse applies too. If the brand and the experience are not good, it makes it harder for employers to hide this in the future.

HRM : Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter was quoted as saying of people, that the ‘persona they create for themselves on the web is part of their resume in many ways’. This blurring of the lines between your professional and personal presence no doubt, has the capacity to create problems for applicants and perhaps be judged in areas they shouldn’t be. Should they? What aspects should an employer consider? Should they draw a distinction and can they even separate the two?
Matt : That is the big question. In some ways, some things are personal and private and some employers do appreciate it. But there are some who don’t. The thing is what may be a personal channel for someone may be a professional channel for another. And this is further affected by differences across geographies and cultures. In the UK for example, the tendency is to regard Facebook for social purposes and LinkedIn for more professional purposes. However, more and more people are engaging in business on Facebook so it is very difficult to create rules and make generalisations. Perhaps, in time, we could come to a compromise on this, perhaps even be a little more flexible about it. I also think how privacy controls develop will have an impact as well. The truth is that many people do not realise just how much information they have online and out there. Many will also be more and more careful about what aspects they are willing to portray online as, some employers may use whatever information they find.

HRM : The interesting thing about this though is that if we are judged however, most times, it will go unnoticed. You wont know the impact of your actions or your personal brand out there. You will just see the end result whether it be being declined that position or not being given the chance to have an interview with a company.
Matt : Absolutely, that’s right. And I’ve seen an explosion in the personal branding industry. I think we’re going to see all kinds of best practice emerge in time.

HRM : A common complaint I hear is ‘I need to get the right people on board. I receive loads of applications but the calibre is low and I need to know how to deal with this. How do I get the right people interested in these positions?’ Matt, do you see this as a case of finding the impossible?
Matt : It’s about sourcing, no doubt. It may also be that the best people are happy in their job and they are going to be absolutely sure about what they are moving to, before they make the move. HR is under tremendous pressure - they get applicants but not the right one. So there needs to be a focus on sourcing. I see social sourcing as a key growth area where people are looking at conversations and connections to identify these candidates and perhaps approach them in a different, much more tailored way. So, it’s about using the technology to identify the right people and find out what they are interested in and then using human intervention to create the engagement needed to get them to move jobs.

HRM : What does a comprehensive strategy for eRecruitment look like?
Matt : You’ve got to have the basics covered. The basic processes like a good website and good content and a great application process. But you’ve also got to take a look at the other channels out there and see what’s relevant to plug into your methodology. How would social channels work as part of your plan as an example. Companies need to be more savvy about what forms part of their career site content. You cannot afford to just look at pulling people in; you also need to put yourself out there by making your content portable.

HRM : And do you believe that for those companies out there that have not gone down the way of using the internet effectively, of having a web presence or using search engines or eRecruitment – they’re dead?
Matt : Yes, but there’s lots of those companies out there. I really can’t see how they could be competitive in the future. I think that by ignoring these issues and channels completely, they are putting their business at great risk.

HRM : What would you name as your top technique for recruiting talent?
Matt : It depends on the individual circumstances. But the biggest trend for 2010 will be employers developing and tapping into Talent Communities.

HRM : What do you think represents some of the changing wants and demands of candidates right now?
Matt : Again, I would say that a lot of this is masked by the current recession. But if you look at this over the last couple of years, I would say that people nowadays are increasingly more savvy. Candidates will google an organisation, they will see who has worked there, they will tap into their network and they will discover more and more about what it’s like to work at a company.

Matt Alder is the founder of strategic consultancy, MetaShift. He got involved in online recruitment eleven years ago. He recently became the first person outside of North America to be named by John Sumser and Recruitingblogs.com as one of their global top 100 recruitment and HR influencers.