As a talent acquisition professional, you know the best recruiters have always been those that can quickly find candidates by using multiple sources.  

Not sure what skills and proficiencies in social recruiting are most effective today?  We caught up with SVP of CareerArc, Gary Zukowski to ask him just that!  

 Gary Zukowski CareerArc

#SRSC: How did you get into this line of work?

GZ:  I ran an IT consulting firm in the 90’s and 2000’s, and in 2008 started using Twitter to tweet out job openings for my company. As jobseekers started responding and applying to our job tweets, it occurred to me that social media could fundamentally shift how companies attract talent, promote employment brand, and target job seekers. I worked on developing a way that could automate and optimize the distribution of job posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and mobile. That technology was shortly after acquired by CareerArc, and the rest is history.

#SRSC:  How have you seen the recruiting industry shift over the last 5-10 years?

GZ: Social Media has brought Employer and Jobseeker Branding to the forefront as a critical tool for making smart hires. Recruiters can engage with jobseekers in many different ways today, and leverage these activities to have a much better grasp of the candidates they are recruiting. In addition, data analytics has allowed talent acquisition teams to have much better clarity on the effectiveness of the many different recruitment channels they use.

#SRSC:  What are your thoughts on “recruiter spam”?

GZ:  Prior to the last five years or so, recruiters didn’t have the tools available to effectively perform segmented email campaigns for their openings.  Recruiters had to blindly blast emails to databases of candidates, hoping for a hit.  However, the “hit” actually was on their Employer Brand, as jobseekers got frustrated with non-relevant jobs taking up space in their inbox. As intelligent email marketing solutions mature and evolve, recruiter spam should diminish.  

#SRSC:  When did recruiters become marketers? Do you have any tips for recruiters on the critical marketing skills that will be necessary to support their company’s social recruiting campaigns?

GZ:  I would argue that the moment self-publishing and social media were born, all professionals--not just recruiters--became marketers. The way we can instantly share our interests and showcase expertise online was just not possible 10 years ago. Thanks to social, we now have more open and vocal communities of talent--communities wherein recruiters can instantly find and source amazing, qualified candidates.

Just like the best marketers today, recruiters who move away from post-and-pray methods, who know how to showcase their distinct employer brand on social, and can track and replicate success with data-driven campaigns will continue to find the shortest route to the best talent. 

#SRSC:  What social recruiting trends do you predict for 2016?

GZ:  Last year, the US economy added about 200k jobs every month. Coming off a record year in hiring, the competition for talent is only expected to rise, and that competition will be visible on the social web.

Expect more employer brand videos, photos, and hashtags in your stream, and look out for companies adding new social networking platforms to their mix of social recruiting channels. With hiring and retention now one of the top business priorities, HR leaders will have more budget and bandwidth to invest and expand their social recruiting programs.

For recruiting software and tech, the busy hiring year ahead will urge recruiters to demand social marketing and social recruiting tools to mature and be tuned for efficiency. This could mean deeper reporting, more collaborative tools, ease of content creation and publishing, and better integrations with existing HR systems--the very elements we’ve focused on developing within our CareerArc Social Recruiting Platform.

Gary Zukowski has led a diverse career in software engineering, enterprise architecture, and IT staffing and consulting. He has over a decade’s worth of experience in helping companies leverage enterprise technology to optimize operations and gain access to top talent. Gary currently serves as the SVP of CareerArc.  

Gary will be speaking at #SRSC San Francisco on: Master the Recruiting Skills of Tomorrow, Today: Social Media, HR Tech, & Digital Brand Intelligence, on January 27th.  We hope to see you there!