It’s now common practice for employers and hiring managers to use social media to screen candidates’ Tweets and Facebook posts to see if they would be a good cultural fit within the companyNew York, NY – Big social media networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook have taken over the world of recruiting, but it’s new social network and social search technologies that are driving change in the ways companies source top talent, says Talent Tech Labs, a New York City-based talent technology incubator.
“Social media recruitment is one of the most effective ways for employers to reach active and passive job seekers,” says Jonathan Kestenbaum, Executive Director of Talent Tech Labs. “However, LinkedIn’s user agreement restricts data scraping on user profiles, and niche players catering to industry-specific networks are popping up left and right to meet that need.”
Niche companies are providing talent acquisition leaders with more social networks to utilize, and some are even more effective at bringing in top talent than LinkedIn. For example, companies like Github and Dribbble are amassing a significant volume of data and providing more relevant screening in highly technical job categories than a traditional resume. This new approach to how social networks are modeled gives job seekers and tech recruiters a better way to make contact.
LinkedIn’s limitations have also spawned players like Masterbranch, a web development community that allows users to create a profile with their projects and accomplishments, rank their skills locally and globally, and connect them with recruiters for jobs listed on the site. It’s similar to LinkedIn, except more specific and with more advanced user features.
Another invaluable tool in social recruitment is social search, which aggregates all of an individual’s information that resides in the public domain and provides search access to employers so they can get a more detailed overview of who a candidate is. These technologies leverage innovative algorithms and machine-based learning techniques to produce search results which provide significantly more visibility into the candidate being searched. Social search companies can scrape and capture data around the individual to better understand his/her preferences and goals and create hyper-focused or personalized recruitment campaigns, similar to how advertising technologies are able to target prospects based on individuals’ online behaviors, searches, and posts.
“What makes social search companies so invaluable in social recruitment is in large part thanks to LinkedIn’s user agreement that restricts data scraping,” explains Kestenbaum. “Social search companies give recruiters the ability to explore candidates across many social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Github, Google+, about.me, Xing, etc.
As these unique companies continue to grow, job seekers will have the opportunity to create digital profiles that take the place of the resume as we know it.”
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