Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker
There is no reason why internal recruitment shouldn’t fit into the same mould as external recruitment. And in the “external world” recruitment is done through a mixture of channels. Some are specific to job types or positions. Others are default fall back channels. And no successful HR department ignores any of them.
In the external recruitment model, HR departments are increasingly using social media channels to find and mould talent. And to give that talent time to prepare for a move into the company.
The drive may be candidate led or company led. With HR representatives and key department figures utilising social media groups to find candidates; and with candidates joining the groups that are most closely aligned with their perception of how their career might evolve.
The international social media consultant will advise the use of social media in the same way internally. Here’s how it works. By setting up social media networks for departments within the company, the HR department can encourage existing company employees to start defining their internal career paths.
Rather than internal recruitment being largely a matter of chance, social media allows candidates to get to know what goes on in other areas of the company – and to align themselves with the right people to move across at the right time (i.e. when a position becomes available). The international social media marketing consultant sees that this leads to a higher degree of job satisfaction, a higher retention of talented staff members – and most importantly, a natural gravitation over time into the positions within the company that are best suited to the candidates in question.
The international social media consultant knows that the company attitude to internal social media recruitment is still sceptical – or rather, it’s still in a phase of being uncertain how to manage the idea that internal candidates may be working in one department but actively grooming another to take them on.
You have to think in big picture terms here. Internal recruitment has a self-selecting component to it, which your international social media marketing consultant will urge you not to ignore. That is to say, everyone in the company can see how a candidate works in his or her current department. If he or she wanes in enthusiasm and application, he or she clearly isn’t suited to any role in the company and so isn’t going to get the job he or she is grooming for.
The international social media consultant will also point out that the candidate in question won’t ultimately be leaving the company (assuming he or she is successful in his or her move) – and so a valuable espouser of company and brand values is retained.