The Recruiting Reel Episode 9: Top Qualities of Social Recruiters

In this episode of The Recruiting Reel, special guest, Katrina Collier of Winning Impression offers her top 3 qualities of a great social recruiter! Our number one tip? Listen to Katrina’s advice — she seriously knows her stuff! Oh, and she’s hilarious.

Here’s the transcript of the episode:

Josh Tolan: My name is Josh Tolan and I’m the CEO of Spark Hire, the leading video interviewing platform used by thousands of organizations around the world.

And this is The Recruiting Reel, a video series where we discuss real recruiting challenges with prominent recruiting experts to provide you with actionable tips you can apply to your own recruiting.

Today’s show features Katrina Collier, founder of Winning Impression, and an expert in social media recruiting.

So for all of you looking to step up your hashtag game, you’re in luck.

Katrina has been recognized by many as one of the most influential recruiting experts to follow on social media.

• Moodvise: No. 22 in The Top 100 Most Influential People In HR & Recruiting On Twitter
• Bond US: Top 15 Recruiting Experts To Follow On Twitter
• Career Sherpa: 40 Must Follow Accounts for Job Search 2015
• Work4: 4 Thought Leaders That Are Changing The Recruiting Industry
• UK Recruiter: 10 Recruitment Gurus To Follow On Twitter

Today’s episode focuses on the Top Qualities of Social Recruiters and Katrina has some pretty awesome insight on this topic.

The stage is yours, Katrina!

Katrina Collier: Hi, I’m Katrina Collier, and I’m a social recruiting specialist, keynote speaker, and trainer. Here are my 3 top qualities that make up a brilliant social recruiter.

First off, go and find people where they actually are. The best way to find that out is to go in and speak to your business and ask them where they interact on social media. It could be that your designers are hanging out in Behance, your techies are over on GitHub and Stack Overflow, or some other technical site. It could be your accountants are hanging out somewhere else — where are they? Is it Facebook? Is it Twitter? Go and ask your business, and find out where they’re playing. And then go and interact appropriately on those platforms to become known, liked, and trusted.

So my first tip — my first top quality is: find people where they are. The second top quality of a great social recruiter is to be curious. Use the plethora of free tools that are available to you to map across social networks, so that you can get more of a rounded view of what somebody’s about.

So you can find out on LinkedIn that they’ve got those formal qualifications, but you can see what they chat about on the weekends over on Twitter and Facebook, and you can delve in a little bit further and find out their hobbies and their interests. Would that be a good fit for your firm? Go and find out — you find out much more about them if you get off the mainstream and get curious. Also, there could be a plethora of other sites they’re hanging out at. Are they blogging? Are they writing stuff on Tumblr — where are they? Get curious. That will really help you in your recruitment.

The final top quality of a social recruiter is to lose the laziness. There is nothing worse than receiving a really bland email from a recruiter — it’s just an auto delete. So, take the information that you found by engaging on the appropriate platform, where they’re actually playing, and being curious and delving deeper, and put it in your communication. “I saw that you have these skills, therefore you’ll be a great fit for this role. I also saw you have an interest in this — oh, by the way we have this going on in our office as well.”

Use that information, delve that little bit deeper, and use it in your communications, and don’t be lazy. So there are my top 3 qualities for brilliance in social recruiting. Find people where they’re actually interacting, be curious, and don’t be lazy.

Josh Tolan: And that’s how you pack some brilliant nuggets of information into a 2 minute segment.

Always be engaging. Always be curious. Never be lazy. And if I can throw a quality into the mix, always be reppin’. When you start to engage candidates through multiple social channels, it’s important that you have a strong and consistent presence on those channels.

Remember, candidates will be looking up your profiles as well so make sure you’re representing yourself and the organization you’re recruiting in a positive light.

Also, when a candidate looks at your profiles, they’ll notice how many followers, connections, or some indication of your activity on that channel. By consistently engaging on different social channels, you won’t look “out of place” in the digital spaces you’re interacting in.

I want to thank Katrina Collier for being the featured expert on today’s show. For more information on Katrina’s company, head over to winningimpression.com. And of course, you need to follow her on social media – especially on Twitter @winningimpress and also on YouTube where you can catch some episodes of The Social Recruiting Show.

Thanks for watching The Recruiting Reel and stay tuned for more episodes. For additional HR and recruiting content, head over to hr.sparkhire.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Also, follow us on Twitter, @sparkhire. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to know about the newest episodes of The Recruiting Reel.

See you in a couple weeks! Happy recruiting everyone!