BSCs Tap Into Social Media to Attract Talent

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When Jani-King of Baltimore found itself in the market for a new sales representative, the company turned to a less traditional approach to hunt for job applicants: social media. 

 

Already active on Facebook and Twitter, the company also accessed some of LinkedIn’s more premium features, including advertising on the site’s exclusive job board and taking advantage of its advanced e-mail function — known as InMail — to personally reach out to hundreds of contacts within their network. 

 

The company still posted the job announcement to various online employment boards, such as Career Builder and Monster.com, but it was their experimental method that yielded the best results. After just a few weeks, Jani-King identified three solid candidates and made an eventual hire. 

 

“I would definitely use this process again,” says David Kelly, the Baltimore regional director, who spearheaded the search. “In fact, we’re continuing a recruiting process using LinkedIn connections to maintain a future steady flow of interest in the event positions are created or opened.”

Building service contractors, such as Jani-King, are joining a growing movement among employers who are using social media to tap into a trove of millions of professionals who maintain social profiles online. 

 

A 2012 study by California-based recruiting software firm JobVite reported 93 percent of American employers plan to use social media for recruiting in the next year. Of the employers surveyed, 73 percent said they had successfully hired candidates using the technique in the past. 

 

According to the study, social recruiting “just works better;” it not only increases the number of applicants in the hiring pipeline, but also the quality. 

 

A 2012 Contracting Profits survey showed more than 60 percent of BSCs were active on Facebook, about 70 percent were regulars on LinkedIn, and about one-third maintained pages on Google+ and Twitter. 

 

About 50 percent of respondents said they were members of MyCleanLink, a social network created specifically for cleaning industry professionals and operated by CP’s parent company.