Three Heads ARE Better Than One:

When Department Heads, HR and Your Recruiter Work Together, Amazing Things Happen

Is the job of finding and securing top social media talent for your organization the job of human resources, the department leaders or your recruiting partner? It’s actually the job of all three.

There. Blog over.

Even though we gave away the punch line, we can’t help but elaborate on the idea of all of the stakeholders involved with a hire working together to find top talent. Currently, there appears to be a gap among the players who need to be involved in the hiring process. And it’s never more apparent than in the current situation of who owns social media and social media recruiting.

In Jodi Ordioni’s article, “Advice and How-Tos: Marketing v. Recruiting: Who Owns Social Talent Acquisition? You Be the Judge” on the ere.net website, she illustrates the all-too-common adversarial relationship between the recruiting and marketing departments.

Dedicated Social Media

Using social media to find a social media person is irony at its best. Since this area is often the responsibility of the marketing department, the debate is on. Who should post, tweet and blog about an open position? The HR department, which typically owns the recruiting process; or the marketing team, which typically manages the company’s social media strategy? Many companies, like Google (@LifeatGoogle) and The Walt Disney Company (Disney Jobs (@TWDCJobs), have dedicated Twitter accounts just for recruiting.

Recruiting Firms Can Bring It All Together

Now that social media is a permanent addition to the recruiting tool belt, it’s more important than ever for the department seeking talent to work closely with HR to find and qualify candidates. Even better, a recruiting partner can bring both departments together to form the social media strategy around talent acquisition. It can also tap into profiles of qualified candidates within their networks to create a screened short list of candidates.

Whether the open position is in marketing, social media, communications or anywhere else, the process should be very similar. It should also be inclusive of both HR and the department with the opening to leverage their strengths toward finding people who are a perfect-fit addition to the team.