Aug 3, 2011

Anti-Social Recruiting

Posted by Wendy Weber

Just came across a piece which struck a chord with me. It’s about Anti-Social Recruiting.

“Social,” as defined by Merriam Webster, is “…the interaction of the individual and the group,” and “tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships.”

To be antisocial is to not be interactive, and to not form relationships.

Here are a few examples of anti-social recruiting:

* When a company fails to respond to someone posting a question or comment on their Facebook page, LinkedIn group, or Twitter stream, they are performing anti-social recruiting. Oh the irony!
* Any time an individual or organization fails to respond to or even recognize any response to one of their job postings, they are performing anti-social recruiting. Automated emails may technically be “responses,” but I don’t know of a single job seeker that would consider automated email confirmations “social.”
* Any time a person submits their resume and fills out an online application and never receives a response, the company is performing anti-social recruiting.
* When a company using Twitter has 1000′s of followers and is only following a handful of people, they are performing anti-social recruiting.
* Any time someone interviews for a position and never receives any real feedback from the recruiter or company, they are experiencing anti-social recruiting.
* Whenever someone’s resume or social networking profile is automatically captured and added to a company’s database and they are never contacted, they are experiencing anti-social recruiting.
* Any recruiter who speaks to a candidate only once, submits the candidate’s resume to their hiring manager/client and never contacts the candidate again (the #1 complaint about recruiters, BTW) is performing anti-social recruiting.

In all of the above cases, there is a lack of interaction and an absence of forming cooperative and interdependent relationships with potential candidates.

That’s anti-social.

We at Crandall Associates pride ourselves on being “social”…but I would like to know if you think so. There are certainly times that we are unable to provide feedback after an interview (if that client doesn’t provide any) or we are in infrequent contact with a candidate (especially if they live in a remote location and are unwilling to relocate). In any case, we do our best. Does that come through?

To read the article in its entirety, click here.


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