Whether it’s a business hoping to track down more qualified job candidates or job seekers wanting to get on the inside track with a coveted position, employer branding and recruitment consultant Jacco Valkenburg recommends harnessing the power of social media.
“Instead of relying on selecting from the best possible applicants, organizations can use social media to proactively search for the best candidates,” the Recruitment Architect at Recruit2 says. ” For that reason, more and more organizations are embracing direct sourcing and stop advertising for jobs.”
For that reason, Jacco says it’s critical that online job boards integrate social media into their sites.
Jacco and his team of bloggers and guest bloggers focus on news, case studies, practical how-tos, trends and much more in the field of online recruitment on the site Global Recruiting Roundtable – one of the most popular recruitment blogs on the web today.
We recently checked in with Jacco to get his insight on what online job boards are doing right, what they could be doing better and his predictions for the future of online recruiting. Here’s what he had to say.
What are the biggest trends your noticing in online job searching and recruiting?
The biggest trends are all related to “social,” i.e., to leverage high-quality candidate sources as employee referrals and direct sourcing by making better use of (online) social networks.
Leveraging online social networks requires a technology upgrade too, such as upgrading Applicant Tracking Systems to Candidate Relationship Management systems to track candidates that recruiters proactively approached. A must is to make your career site friendly for mobile website visitors, as more than 50 percent of all traffic on social media is on mobile devices.
Last but not least, organizations need also to rethink their traditional recruiting processes and move from “Apply,” which requires candidates to enter lengthy online application forms, mandatory uploading of a resume and motivation letter and using a desktop PC, to one-click “Tell Me More” options that are mobile-friendly.
Read the whole expert interview with Jacco Valkenburg on Realmatch.com.