Recruiters, Wake Up and Use Social Networking to Hire

October 6, 2011
| 2 Comments

In a recent post, RWW reports that “In a study of 300 hiring managers and recruiters, Palo Alto-based social networking monitoring service Reppler reports that 76% of hiring managers look at applicants’ Facebook profiles. An additional 56% are looking at Twitter, and 48% check out LinkedIn.”
The fact that recruiters should be checking out basic info on social networks makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem true, at least for Indian recruiters. I recently got a call from a recruiter, apparently someone involved in senior level recruitment in a reputed recruitment firm in India. So this guy starts with introducing himself and how he is specifically focused on senior level recruitment and how they carefully handpick the candidates for select senior level jobs. He goes on to say that he got my reference through someone (he wouldn’t reveal his ‘source’).
After the pleasantries, he asks me about my career background. I said my career profile is listed on LinkedIn and asked him if he had checked that before calling me.
Oh we don’t check LinkedIn profiles, we are required identify candidates from independent sources, he says to my surprise.
Sure, that’s okay but having identified me from independent sources, why haven’t you checked my public profile before calling me?
Oh no, we aren’t supposed to do that.

Duh!!!!!!!!

Why don’t the recruiters realize that they are wasting the candidate’s and their own time by not reviewing the profile on social networking sites? Surely they will be able to find a better job-candidate match by reviewing the profile before they approach the candidates.
Categories: HR, India, Jobs, Recruiters, Recruitment, Social Networking