TalentMinded

In the past year or so, social recruiting and social sourcing have become the focus of many industry conversations. Unfortunately, webinars and conference sessions tend to focus heavily on what it means to “use social,” rather than providing case studies of successful campaigns.

Luckily, it’s not all smoke and mirrors, and many organizations have taken action to get real social recruiting results – like Forrester. And after being turned on to their Twitter careers account (@ForresterJobs), I had the opportunity to chat with Misty Sutton, Forrester’s Manager of Global Sales Recruiting.

Why Twitter?

According to Sutton, the company began using the @ForresterJobs account to see where recruiting was going because they believed the platform would provide value to both the organization and potential recruits. Over two years later, Twitter has become an integral part of their overall recruiting strategy.

“It’s important to us because candidates are telling us they looked at our social recruiting sites – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – before interviews,” said Sutton. “They’re coming to us more prepared and becoming more invested in our culture after researching us online. Culture is hard to convey with a job posting, but social makes it possible.”

While the company also uses Facebook as part of their strategy and receives good response from photo posts of the office, etc…, Sutton says more time is spent on Twitter because the account is growing faster. Compared to their 3-4 weekly Facebook posts, they try to post 2-3 times per day on Twitter – from Forrester in the news to company events with job postings sprinkled throughout.

Results

In 2011, Forrester saw some great results from their Twitter careers account – including three direct hires. And while the actual source of hire and how it happened are often unclear, Sutton provided some insight as to what it means to hire via Twitter:

• Sales hire – saw the job posted on the Forrester Careers Twitter feed
• Analyst hire – saw the position Retweeted by another analyst on Twitter
• Marketing hire – saw the position on both their Twitter and Facebook accounts

The Future of @ForresterJobs

While 2011 was a big year for the Forrester Careers Twitter account, Sutton says it’s only getting better. In fact, social is so important to the company and their recruiting efforts that a Social Media Coordinator role was developed at the beginning of the year.

“We now hold weekly social team meetings and are investing more in social tools,” she said. “We’re seeing lots of value outside of the U.S. and seeing an uptick in applicants from other markets, so it’s important to keep that going from a branding perspective.”

 

See Them in Action

While the Forrester Careers account is at it every day, today is a special one. The company has asked all Forresterites and Forrester Alum to do a “tweetjam” on Friday, March 2 to talk about why they currently work or have worked at Forrester.

Tweeters will be using the hashtags #whyIworkatForrester and #whyIworkedatForrester so potential candidates and people who might be interested in a new career here can follow the conversation online.