Social Media & HR - Why is it Important?

Here’s an example of a recent hiring video from Pizza Hut which went viral through both social media and traditional media:

This is the “new age” of recruitment. Though you may not adopt such measures in your recruitment strategy for your business, know that this is what other companies are doing to attract their next generation of employees.

So why should you as a small business owner care about developing social media HR strategies? Let’s look at some statistics that the BC government recently released in its labour market outlook report for 2010 – 2020:

It is expected that there will be over 1 million job openings in BC;
2/3 will be due to worker replacement, 1/3 will be due to new jobs;
We’ll need over 430,000 technical or skilled workers with a college or trade certificate;
150,000 openings are expected in the trades sector alone;
By 2016, it is predicted that the number of workers needed in BC will exceed the number of workers available;
By 2020, there is an expected labour shortage of over 61,000 workers, many of whom will be in the trades.

What does this mean for you, as an employer?

It means that you need to develop strategies to not only keep the good employees you’ve got (for as long as you can), but also to attract new people into your companies.

Some clients have said that they lie awake at night wondering how they’re going to survive – they will not be able to meet customer demands if they don’t hire trained people NOW.

We have one client in a construction-related sector who says that they could double in size today, but they don’t have the workers to do the job. Even though they are THE expert in their field, they’re concerned that if they delay growth too long, someone else will come along and beat them to the punch.

As the majority of new workers entering the workforce will be younger workers, sometimes known as millenials or Gen Y, how you attract these employees is very different than days gone by.

Though some of the more traditional strategies may still work (e.g. posting an ad, getting referrals, hiring apprentices, etc.), the specific tactics to use have changed. And social media is at the forefront of this change. Posting an ad on your website may be a good start, but posting on LinkedIn may tap into your ideal audience more. Getting referrals is always great, but a tweet to get referrals may be more effective.

In the next two posts, we’ll review the primary purposes of using social media in your HR function:

To build your employer brand
To source prospective candidates
To develop pride in working for your company

The landscape for finding and keeping employees is changing, and it’s changing quickly. Employers need to be smart about developing social media HR strategies or else you’ll get left behind.