This guest post comes from our Search Marketing Manager Gary Elliott, and he looks at how Google’s social network can give you a competitive advantage in the recruitment market…

“As a recruiter in today’s connected world, you’ll already appreciate the need to be active on social media. But are you giving Google+ the time and attention it deserves?

Speaking from a personal perspective, I’m a fan of Google+. It is easy to use, integrated with all my online activity and it allows me to enjoy content about the things I’m interested in. But this isn’t about me.

This is about why I believe Google+ is a valuable part of any recruiter’s or HR Manager’s toolkit.

Reason #1 – A Large, More Engaged, Audience Of Real People

There are two main factors that I think make the Google+ audience appealing for a recruiter or HR Manager.

1. There are 170million people. And 60% use their account every day.
2. Google+ won’t allow fake or nonsense accounts, so the people you connect with are real.

For me, there’s a lot of value knowing that any one I connect with on Google+ isn’t a spam-bot or someone pretending to be Homer Simpson. As a recruiter, with limited time and resources, knowing you’re able to focus your effort on real people is almost worth the switch to Google+ alone.

Reason #2 – Real People, Who Also Happen To Be Educated And Tech-Savvy

In addition to the staggering numbers, Google+ users are seen to be generally a specific type of person. And you can tell this from the topics that trend.

Here’s a selection of the current trending topics:

#smartphones
#mountainlion
#nexus7
#google
#apple

These topics give a strong indication that the people using Google+ are interested in tech and mobility. And so it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to assume Google+ users are relatively well educated and affluent.

As a recruiter or HR manager, who may be finding it tough to find quality IT or engineering candidates, Google+ presents a way to seek out and connect with them.

One of the criticisms pointed at Google+ is that it hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream. It is typically being used by early-adopters, the technically-savvy and business professionals.

Again, as an HR Manager, surely this is a blessing?

Reason #3 – Being On Google+ Can Benefit Your Search Marketing Efforts

Google have been pretty transparent about the fact that your Google+ activity will affect your performance in search.

As a modern HR professional, you’ll be well aware that Google Search is an important source of candidate traffic. I’m sure you’ll agree, this isn’t going to change any time soon. Again, almost reason alone to create your Google+ business account.

On Google+, the content you share, what you say, and who you connect with all play a part in the amount of Google Search traffic you receive.

In other words, the people who connect with, and like your Google+ content, are more likely to see your other content in their search results. For the recruiter, this ‘other content’ means the jobs you advertise on your website.

Reason #4 – Google+ Is Growing Fast. Really Fast

If you weren’t convinced already, the next reason should seal the deal.

When it launched in July 2011, Google+ hit 10million users in two weeks. Since then its growth has been exponential.

For the digital recruiter or HR manager, Google+ already offers an engaged, authentic, qualified audience, and now it’s starting to add sheer numbers to the mix.

How Do You Get You (And Your Business) On Google+?

It’s a relatively straightforward process. And there are some very good how-to articles out there to assist.

A good place to start would be Google’s own help documentation: Getting started with Google+ and there’s also a useful getting started guide available as a PDF.

Social Media Examiner also offers a very thorough how-to-guide on setting up a Google+ page for your business. Their advice looks at each of the steps in the sign-up process and then finishes with some good examples of existing Google+ pages.

Once You’re Set-up There’s Lots Of Great Tools For the Digital Recruiter

It’s easy to be interesting.
No doubt, you’ll already appreciate a large part in recruiting the best talent is positioning your business as one that’s exciting to work with.

Google+ makes it easy for you to share photos, video, events and links to news. So you’ll have plenty of freedom to showcase how fresh and dynamic your business is in all sorts of creative and interesting ways.

Google Hangouts: The future of telephone interviews?
One of the standout features of Google+ is Hangouts. A Hangout is a video chat service for up to 10 people at a time. Easy to use, and compatible with smart phones and tablet devices, I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest in the not-so-distant future, telephone interviews will be replaced by Hangouts.

And for the modern HR manager, is there a cooler way to introduce yourself to a potential colleague than through a video conference with you and your team?

Circles Allow You To Control Who Sees What
As you’ll know, hiring sales people is a very different process to hiring technical people. They have different mind-sets, have different questions, and care about different things.

Google+ allows you to group like-minded people in Circles. And then you can tailor the content you produce and share for each Circle. So your future Java Developers can be offered content around the development environment and the hardware they’ll be using, whereas you’ll want to share content around business development and company growth with your prospective Sales managers.

Convinced Yet?

As you can see, the reasons for using Google+ are pretty compelling. Click here to start creating your Google+ account and business page.

Managing an effective Google+ page need only take half an hour a day. As long as you’re connecting with the right people and providing content that’s both relevant and useful for your Circles, the time will be well worth it.

And should you want to see what we at Jobsite find interesting, you can connect with our Google+ page here”

 

 

 

 

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