Social and mobile media: the next frontier of recruitment

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The fax machine. That was the ground-breaking technology I used as a newly graduated job seeker in the 1990s. I'd call potential employers or agencies, fax them my CV and follow up with another call.

Flash forward 20 years and new Millennials have swapped my trusty telephone for a smartphone and my fax machine for email and the internet, which they're accessing on their smartphones. They're also using their phones to browse, locate and respond to potential jobs online, all the while tweeting their skills to their 500 followers and asking their Facebook friends to inbox them details of possible posts.

Hardly surprising then that recruiters have turned their attention to social and mobile media.

Social media recruitment has been increasing for the past three years, with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter being the key platforms. Although LinkedIn is used most often in e-recruitment, Facebook is expected to feature more prominently in future recruitment strategies alongside newer social networks like Google Plus and Pinterest. A recent US poll reflects this, where 98% of recruiters said they used social media to search and interact with candidates. Locally, this trend has also increased, as recruiters tap into South Africans' desire to find their place in social communities.

But just as the 30- and 40-something-aged employers adjust to working this way, another wave of change is fast approaching: mobile technology.

Technology, the next frontier in recruiting

According to the Mobile Marketing Association of South Africa (MMA), there are 29.56 million cellphone users in the country. MMA further suggests 86% of internet users in SA access the net via their mobile phones. There's no doubt that includes job hunters. The most recent US statistics show as many as 68% of all job seekers use their mobile devices to search for jobs once a week or more.

In a highly competitive, skills-short environment where wars are waged over talent, these trends have serious implications. Recruiters not geared towards engaging job seekers through social and mobile media will become disconnected from the emerging workforce and lose out on good talent. While one employer is still searching for a candidate's CV in their inbox, their future forward competitor has already located the candidate on LinkedIn and done a video interview via Skype.

Does technology present the next frontier in recruiting? Yes. Does that mean there's no longer a role for recruitment agencies? No. Although technology redefines the recruitment landscape, it doesn't replace that one constant that successful recruitment still cannot do without: the human interface.

Because as much as technology brings people together, it is only people - trained professionals - that can physically pair the right candidate to the right company culture - the long-time cornerstone of successful recruitment.