How social media can be a secret weapon for your hiring strategy

In Singapore, social media is a powerful tool nowadays and are the HR practitioners using it as part of their hiring strategy? Most HR professionals are social media users.

However, few have attained “listener” grade. Whereas for marketers, social media listening has long become a norm to understand a Brand.

Your candidate is just like any other Brand. Associating yourselves with a good Brand makes half the job done!

Social screening helps HR to understand whether the candidate is well-liked by people or by the community they dwell in.

Say hiring a procurement officer – would you hire someone who greed personal favours or someone who is meticulous in every step of the decision making plus sound, objective opinion.

Unlike in the past, where HR screened through CVs or interviews, little can be found whether if a candidate is as where he claimed to be. With social media, their presences online can be used as a gauge. LinkedIn can be another platform which HR should look into.

Many professional networks are formed in LinkedIn, with Thought Leaders among them. This also gives insights whether the candidate you hired is credible, especially senior hires.

The recent viral video on the masseur uncle also tells us finding a “dream” job is a challenge. Yes, the video creator is trying to tell us this via social means – getting it viral through social sharing. In reality, the job doesn’t court you and you can hardly find one which interests you 100%.

There’s no perfect fit. Before we dwell too much deeper into the virality of this video, let us look closely on the message it’s conveying and why this video was created in the first place.

It’s a two-way communications. If the video is used to tell a “potential” candidate out there, the trend may shift soon. Who knows, the HR agency or headhunters may want to use this opportunity to start “social listening” now.