Keying in to mobile trends
With each new wave of mobile devices and the ongoing evolution of social media platforms, employers — and job hunters — are getting more savvy at finding a wider range of job opportunities and they’re much more mobile in how, where and when they work.
Charles Chang is at the front of this trend. As the president and founder of Vancouver-based nutritional supplement company Vega, Chang says the firm’s social media strategy and workplace policies have been a boon to its recruitment.
“It changed the whole role from waiting until you needed someone to already having a bunch (of candidates) to choose from,” says Chang. “It’s been huge. It’s just another way of communicating.”
Today’s Generation Y workers are so ubiquitously tied to social media and the latest generation of mobile devices that he sees it as futile to view digital technologies as a barrier or impediment to productivity.
“You can’t stop this,” Chang says. “Nor should you try.”
Instead, the company is aggressively active on websites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites, along with its own website and blog. It encourages its employees to be active on these sites to promote its brand.
“If you’re a great employer and really transparent about ... how great an employer you are, then you’re passively recruiting all the time,” he says.
Fifty-three per cent of companies surveyed by PwC in its recent Business Insights report stated that mobile computing is the top technological priority, while 47 per cent plan to deploy social media for sales and marketing.
When it comes to recruiting, 34 per cent of respondents plan to use social media platforms, but there’s still some resistance among corporate leaders to deploy it: 28 per cent don’t plan to use social media at all.
“There’s still a little bit of a lack of awareness about some of the benefits of digital and social technologies within the enterprise,” says Aayaz Pira, director of management and technology consulting at PwC.
There has to be a greater understanding among organizations that the behaviours and expectations of the new generation entering the workforce are different, he adds.
At the top executive levels, companies use headhunters. Since that’s not cost effective for lowerlevel or entry-level positions, social media has become integral for many firms hiring new graduates. That trend appears to be intensifying, Pira says.
“Social media can play an amplifying role to other forms of communications,” says Doug Lacombe, president of founder of Communicatto Inc., which consults with large energy companies in Calgary to help them develop comprehensive social media strategies.
It’s about creating a “sharing, convincing ecosystem” to attract job candidates — especially the passive candidates who aren’t actively looking but will consider the right opportunity.
“The whole thing is about putting bums in seats and attracting the exact, right kind of people from other jurisdictions or poaching them from your competitor,” says Lacombe.