InMobi's guide to Social Hiring and Referrals

This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Kevin Freitas as InMobi’s guide to Social Hiring and Referrals via our new talent branding buddy - RippleHire. I am reposting the article here for the benefit of our readers.

 

Kevin Freitas is one of India's leading thought leaders in Talent acquisition. In his role as the Global Head of Recruitment and Rewards at InMobi, he has built the organisation into a world class employer brand and swept numerous awards along the way. Here are his thoughts.

 

To learn more about how we’re moving the needle on referrals, please see our article on LinkedIn or get in touch with our talent branding buddy, Sudarsan Ravi from www.ripplehire.com

InMobi’s guide to Social Hiring and Referrals via our new talent branding buddy - RippleHire

 

I was having a conversation with Namita Vyas (recognised by LinkedIn as a Top 5 social recruiter in India in 2015) yesterday and out of the many things that stuck, this one got home –

“Great talent is always passive, therefore you need to tap into the most engaging and active channels to hire the best.”

With social hiring gaining tremendous focus in recruitment, companies are on the lookout for the best tools to optimize their social hiring techniques. Now potential candidates and job seekers look for the best jobs on social media platforms and job sites, rather than on company websites and in newspapers.

LinkedIn is obviously one of the top used social networks where job seekers actively follow recruiters (and vice versa) and make sure they are the first to like or comment on an open position or “looking for” update. So LinkedIn is great for reaching a wide audience for jobs, but the user engagement on LinkedIn has been dropping over time. The amount of time people have been spending on LinkedIn has dramatically reduced. If one looks at Mary Meeker’s report, one can clearly see that Facebook has the widest reach and also the highest usage per day.

 

Source: Mary Meeker (KPCB- Internet Trends 2016- Code Conference slide 73), June 1 2016

Additional research from JobCast, puts forward some interesting numbers. It shows us that 83% of job seekers are highly active on Facebook followed by 40% in Twitter and with only a mere 36% on LinkedIn. 83% of job seekers which includes an entire pool of talent is on a platform that recruiters still need to make the best use of. This does not mean that recruiters should start concentrating less on LinkedIn, but it means that social hiring has just got a lot harder to master.

Many companies now have their very own careers page on Facebook and Twitter. Having a career page on facebook is one thing, using it to its highest potential is quite another. Currently employees go through a tedious process of checking out the post and then going on to the company’s website to apply for a job.

How easy would it be if applicants could directly apply for jobs from Facebook?

So this problem statement got us thinking.

 

Wouldn’t it be great if the candidate could experience our culture and apply for a job within facebook itself? Being a start-up company, social hiring comprises of 45% of our hiring. With a platform like Facebook we are not only able to narrow down to the best talent but at the same time we are able to reach optimal functioning of our social media platforms. People are more enticed to apply for jobs if it’s right in front of their eyes rather than visiting another site and putting it up there.

Diversity is yet another factor that plays a vital role when it comes to hiring. What we ourselves witnessed was that more number of men applied to our open positions posted on LinkedIn. Research shows that 67% of the user base in LinkedIn is male therefore its more male dominated. Facebook on the other hand achieves more of a balance with 58% of its user base belonging to women. Diverse hiring is therefore yet another perk we hope to achieve

We searched high and low and finally found what we were looking for – a perfect talent branding buddy in RippleHire.

RippleHire is a gamified employee referral and social sourcing solution. It helps companies leverage Facebook which is one of the best channels for reaching out to passive candidates by building a career presence there. With tailor made solutions for both, employer brands that are ahead of the curve as well as a great effortless first step for employer brands starting their journey, Ripple Hire acts as the perfect talent branding buddy.

To tap into the best potential, career tab option on our Facebook career pages gives us the ability to directly target our loyal following. It gives job seekers the opportunity to find open positions and apply right away. Sharing jobs across the network to find the ideal fit became less of a hassle. We now have the ability to propagate and control our branding by effortlessly distributing and measuring the reach of our employer to attract untapped talent.

Previously our recruitment team generally found it a hassle to share positions on various networks at once. Today it is a breeze and the resume and candidate information goes directly to our applicant tracking system.

InMobi through RippleHire aims to empower our lean hiring team. Referrals for us at InMobi is an important contributor of our hiring, accounting for 50% of hiring. The thought of leveraging RippleHire to make recruiting fun and inclusive with gamified leaderboards is supremely exciting.

With social, you need to use the right tools at the right time. Thankfully we’ve found the right buddy.

To learn more about how we’re moving the needle on referrals, please see our article on LinkedIn or get in touch with our talent branding buddy, Sudarsan Ravi from www.ripplehire.com