Social Media in the Search Business Serving Individuals & Clients

You do not have to be in the search business to get great value out of this article. In fact, if you are an individual, you may want to read this piece and think about how you would brand and market yourself as it applies to your career.

The proper use of media in the search business amplifies the commitment and seriousness of a search firm. It makes great search firms dominant, it makes good search firms great and it is making poor search firms irrelevant.

Companies and individuals are realizing that there are those in the search business who know their markets and demonstrate it on social platforms. Companies are giving those firms their business and individuals are trusting their career moves to those firms that are sharing content that demonstrates that they know the markets.

People who are in the job market spend a majority of their time being influenced on social platforms like LinkedIn. Consuming content on social platforms is where we get our news, engage with our friends, and look for jobs. For some, just because you do not like the fact that social platforms are where nearly all of the influence occurs in society today, does not make it any less true. Why would you not be servicing those individuals at scale on those platforms?

I love the ongoing conversation that is happening in the search business. People are talking about artificial intelligence and how it is going to impact the employment market. The biggest threat today to a majority of those in the search business is not artificial intelligence, it is the lack of use of social media in the search process. A majority of those people debating the artificial intelligence subject will not even likely be in the business in 5 years because they were not even able to take the simple next step of integrating their businesses with the use of media, marketing and ongoing engagement software platforms for their businesses.

Please note that while I said the “simple next step”, I did not say “easy”.

Consuming content on social platforms is where we get our news, engage with our friends, and look for jobs. For some, just because you do not like the fact that social platforms are where nearly all of the influence occurs in society today, does not make it any less true.

Here are my thoughts, experiences and lessons that I have learned over the past three years as we have embraced the use of social media in our search business: 

Branding You

Kristin Gallucci pointed out recently. - “Your brand is what lives in the mind of your customer. What is your customer thinking about you?”

Through media content, articles, videos, podcasts, pictures, and breadcrumbs you are able to demonstrate your understanding of the market that you are asking companies and individuals to trust you with when it comes to their careers and offering an individual valuable guidance or helping build a client’s company. On platforms like LinkedIn, are you able to have thought provoking conversations about where a market has been, where it currently is and where it may be going and why? Hung Lee and his weekly newsletter of Recruiting Brainfood does an incredibly powerful job at this. It comes down to, do you know your stuff? If so, show it. 

Create Awareness

There needs to be an awareness around your market and your client company. If a person is going to even consider working with that organization, they need to know it exists.

What does the organization or person do?

Where are they located?

Why do they exist?

What problem do they solve?

Creating a story that shares a hiring narrative, not a product narrative, with the market is expected today. Creating a signal above the massive amount of white noise in the market is a must.

Grab Attention

Once you have created an awareness around the company’s market and existence, you have to get my attention if you are going to talk about the actual job. How do you present the role? Is it just put out as a “job posting” or do you get an individual’s attention because of a well-presented story about the client? Are you sharing information about that company and the market that it is in, the product it makes, and the leadership that is driving the mission?

Marketing: Not Sales

Your marketing and messaging for yourself as well as for your clients should be on 24/7 in the background. Constantly teaching, informing, inspiring and building. Telling our client’s story and sharing thoughts on why the market that our client does their work in should be of interest to individuals in the market as they passively consider a career change.

Sales: A Shortened Process

This is the search activity itself. This is the hundreds of calls and conversations that take place for a search to be successful. This is the person-to-person relationship that is ever so valuable. For a majority of search organizations, this is where nearly 99% of all of their efforts are deployed. One call, one conversation, one point of influence. This activity does not go away. It does however get greatly enhanced and dramatically shortened with the proper use of social media deployed in marketing and branding activities. When a market knows who you are and has daily evidence that you know their market and are connected to and even influencing the market, you are no longer a stranger making that “cold call”. You are a familiar and trusted bridge to the individuals next career move.

Ongoing Engagement is the Key

Thanks to technology, this is emerging as one of the most promising areas of activities that creates the greatest benefit to search firms as well as the individuals that we are connected with. I have been saying for years, “After the search, the person who gets the job is the least important in the mix”.

In any search, hundreds of people are engaged and only one person gets the job. The person who got the job is already happy, they got something. In fact, that new hire is off the market for a few years, yet all of the others you and your client engaged with are likely still keeping their eyes open for an opportunity.

Why would you spend all that time, money and effort engaging individuals and not have a process that at a minimum, keeps you close to them and constantly bringing them value? Ongoing engagement, in a bespoke fashion with high quality content that is relevant to them is one of the best ways to shorten the timeline on searches. Adam Gordon and his team at Candidate.ID are an example of a talent pipeline platform that keeps the individuals in the market engaged after the search is completed.

Again, this comes back to the use of media. This requires the development of meaningful content that brings information in an entertaining and informative way to individuals and companies.

Finally, the key to providing the greatest value to the individuals as well as the companies in the market that you work is being committed to deploying information to the market that leads to whatever you are trying to achieve on their behalf. The use of social media does not replace the person-to-person conversations and relationships that are the key to our business. What social media does is become an incredible catalyst for those conversations to occur at scale.