Original post: Developing a Social Media Strategy, By Ryan Leary, Kenexa
As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. For corporate recruiters, the need to attract qualified talent in an effort to build a talent pipeline is the same. But how recruiters build talent communities and connect with both passive and active candidates is changing. There’s no denying that recruiting is experiencing a powerful paradigm shift powered by Web 2.0 technology. Web 2.0 is a new category of Internet tools and technologies that includes blogs; social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; and content communities such as YouTube and Flickr that encourage collaboration and communication. According to a recent McKinsey & Company survey on Internet technologies, two-thirds of respondents view Web 2.0 as an important part of maintaining their company’s market position, either to provide a competitive edge, match the competition or address customer demand.
Web 2.0 encompasses social and professional networking platforms. For recruiters, social networking provides an opportunity to connect with a new generation of people and candidates. You may be asking yourself, “Do I really need to incorporate social networking into my recruiting strategy?” Once you realize that it was only 10 years ago when organizations shifted from sourcing candidates through newspaper classifieds to online job boards, you’ll know the answer is an emphatic “yes.’ Building online talent communities through social and professional networking platforms provides more opportunities to communicate with active and passive candidates, build meaningful relationships, strengthen your employment brand and fill open positions quickly.
Tagged as:
kenexa,
recruiters,
recruiting,
social networks,
social recruiting,
talent communities
I love how social media has made our world just a little smaller — bringing people together across the globe who might not have met otherwise. For business, one of the biggest and most under-realized advantages to integrating social networking tools is its ability to humanize a corporate workforce beyond just the typical four walls of a cubicle or office, and brings global colleagues and peers together to collaborate and communicate with each other who might not have otherwise known to use each other as resources. Without social networking tools, companies risk problems not being resolved, ideas becoming stagnant and employees feeling underutilized or underappreciated. So, if you’re a company wondering how you can unify your global workforce, social technologies are an excellent step to building a more collaborative, productive and HUMAN workforce.
A “networked company”: everything working everywhere. everyone working together.
Questions You Should be Asking
- How networked are your employees?
- How engaged are your employees?
- How do you bring them together?
- How do you bring down the silos and walls?
- How do you tap into and foster employee ideas and collaboration to propel business results?
Where Companies Can See the Benefit of Social Networking
- Cross-functional projects
- HR matters
- Standardized forms used daily by sales/service employees
- Collaboration among geographically dispersed employees
- To get all employees up to speed on new information quickly
- Providing employees with common answers to their questions
Tagged as:
corporate social media,
social networking,
social networks
Internal Social Networks are starting to appear inside some organizations. Early adopters are finding positive business results by helping employees connect through “internal Facebooks.” By effectively harnessing these new networks, organizations are seeing positive impacts on internal brand building, as well as employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation — which leads to higher levels of productivity, revenue, and profit.
But the world of the internal social network is the opposite of command & control. That said, reasonable guidelines, a group of informal influencers, and a posse of community managers who help keep the dialog lively and the network on track.
It’s clear that no matter where your company is on the social media ladder, social networks and Web 2.0 skills are becoming a part of today’s work landscape. All businesses need to be aware of how to deploy networks for higher ROI, collaboration, innovation and customer service.
Oracle’s Connect: An Internal Social Networking Case Study
IdeaFactory
Connect began in July 2007 as the IdeaFactory. We were collecting ideas from teams in Applications Strategy, and none of the usual ways (email, spreasheets, wiki) worked for a team whose sole purpose was to (ahem) innovate.
So Rich built the IdeaFactory in 24 hours using Rails and LDAP. You can see the legacy of the original IdeaFactory in Connect today by paging through Ideas.
Here’s a taste of what it looked like:
Tagged as:
connect,
oracle,
social networks
