A few days ago, I had a short conversation with my dear friend in Google China, who was pushed crazy with a recruitment delivery target for more than 80 open positions in the remaining days of this year. I gave my full understanding and sympathy in terms of his current situation since Google's selection process is very rigorous and time-consuming. I made fun of him: “yeah, getting busy is good, well, it seems the economic recovery." He replied: “Now the situation is different and things getting changed so extremely. We cannot use agencies anymore for sourcing high caliber candidates; instead, we need to do more direct sourcing due to expense control. Meanwhile, the social recruitment through Linkedin and Twitter is such a success for Google US, which majority of candidates coming from those channels. Now they want us to do the same thing in China, but you know, they are piece of shit in China...."
As companies look to constrain spending to cope with the reeling global economy, it’s no surprise that personnel-related costs are in the crosshairs of any cost-cutting program, since these costs represent more than 35% of annual operating expenses. No doubt, recruitment budget cannot escape from the cost-cutting measures. So it's quite easy to justify the changing landscape of recruitment with a shift to direct sourcing, social recruitment since they are value-driven, cost-effective and connection with passive candidates. However, social media does not always translate into a pure recruiting opportunity. Those channels are best approached with caution rather than directly as recruiting channels, especially in China, when people knew little about these tools. In another word, never take granted for one-size-fits-all solution or experience. Please imagine this situation: recruiters desperately search candidates with target skill-sets in a limited talent pool, then establish connections and contacts with them for potential job opportunities, keeping touch for a medium & long term relationship, but recruiters are facing short-term pressure for fulfilling the vacancies. Meanwhile, if the in-house recruiters have to do lots of paper work, personnel documentations as well as offering process, I am just wondering how they could have enough dedicated time and energy for fishing target ones from the social sea.
Reality is such a paradox. The ways we source, connect and attract candidates are getting changed in the web 2.0 or even future 3.0 digital ages, no matter you like it or dislike it. It's not just Google China that has struggled to figure out Twitter…so do lots of companies. Direct sourcing will become increasingly important for adoption and implementation by more and more corporate recruitment team as part of their sourcing strategy. Therefore, the competencies of in-house recruiters will become more like headhunters’ and the sourcing channels are getting changed to more social networks. These will also bring a series of uncertainties. Are we now having those competencies? If not, shall we build or buy people for those competencies? Once we have people with required competencies, do we have framework/process/incentive/system like agencies to sustain their productivity? How we measure their efforts vs. results? Once they leave, personal pipeline gone? Those questions are quite fundamental and barriers for our success. The trend and value are obvious but we still have a long way to go in China.
To me, bringing Social Media Solutions together in a meaningful way for recruiters with an executable strategy that will deliver results. Except for proactively searching for potential candidates on social sites, we also can do another way - simple Integration of a Hyperlink to the Recruiter's Twitter account within a company job posting through your company career portal. Candidates voluntarily connect with the Company Recruiter through the number one resource available to them: The Company job posting. As soon as a new job comes online, the recruiter calls out to the network about the new openings. A meaningful conversation to both recruiter and the network. Also, the recruiter can Invite just five of the best applicants reviewed per day in your company ATS to join the recruiter's network will lead to more than 1200 connections every year alone. More and more solutions those are as yet undiscovered. But lower costs, responsiveness and agility, reduction in future recruiting times, improved candidate experience, happier customers are all those key drivers we will keep looking into it and thinking out of box.
