Social Recruiting
A new way to find great employees by Jennifer J. Salopek
 As frequent employers of young and seasonal employees, amusement parks and attractions could be missing a great opportunity to connect with prospective workers if they don’t include social media in the recruitment mix. A recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows companies can get ahead of the crowd: Although nearly 92 percent of college seniors have a social networking profile, less than 6 percent have been contacted by an employer through that profile. However, 32 percent of those seniors have used social networking in their job searches. Here are a few insights into using social media for recruitment.
You’re probably already using some form of social media to build your attraction’s brand—a Facebook page, a blog, a Twitter feed. Leverage those existing efforts, says Jenny DeVaughn, director of social strategies with Bernard Hodes Group, a talent solutions provider headquartered in New York. “Every way an attraction uses social media would attract both visitors and employees,” she says. However, you’ll get it wrong if you start with the pages, DeVaughn cautions.
“Social recruiting isn’t about the tools you’ll use, but the goals you want to accomplish,” she says. Determine whom you’re trying to reach, in both the short and long term, and then build a strategy to reach those goals.
Just remember: Social media isn’t about advertising; it’s about building relationships through providing of content and connections. Amusement parks and attractions already have two advantages over most employers: They’re fun places to work; and they’re all about the experience. Social media is all about the experience, too, making it a great fit for IAAPA members. “The key is to promote the fun in working at an attraction, and to promote the job as a way for candidates to build their social networks,” DeVaughn says.
A valuable weapon in your arsenal is current employees. Use them to find out what social media channels and tools are hot right now, and engage them as online brand ambassadors. “The younger generation of workers is very oriented toward social media as a way to sift through information,” says Chris Perry, founder of CareerRocketeer.com. “They are far less reliant on traditional job sites” like Monster.com, he says.
That’s how recruiting is handled at Facebook, says recruiting lead Richard Cho, who’s based in Palo Alto, California. Rather than posting job openings and pushing information at fans, Facebook pulls them in through its most valuable asset: current employees. “The underlying premise of our recruiting strategy is to compel employees to share more about their work,” he says. “True social recruiting consists of status updates from engaged employees about their work, which creates a powerful desire in others to work there.”
Use your social media efforts to drive prospective employees to your website, and ensure that the site is complete, robust, and engaging. “Your website is your castle, and social media channels are outposts,” says Perry. Although it’s tempting to build a standalone job site, DeVaughn recommends including career information on your main website for better search engine optimization. Although taking the plunge into social recruiting can seem intimidating, it needn’t be. As Perry reminds, you don’t have to do it all; rather, start small and do well. “Blogs are great recruiting tools that can be fed into other channels,” he says. “The blog generates content for a Facebook page; you can also tweet blog posts and use them to populate other Facebook pages,” such as those for a coaster enthusiast group. “Fuel your social media efforts with what you already do.”
DeVaughn is excited about Foursquare, a growing social network that uses geotagging and rewards users for “checking in” at venues. “This channel allows attractions to know exactly who is checking into venues, their location, and frequency,” she says. “Users would not check in if they were not engaged with your brand.” (Read more about how FECs are using Foursquare in the November 2010 issue of FUNWORLD.)
Whatever channel you choose to begin with, keep it fresh and current. After all, nothing in cyberspace ever dies: “The web is like a cemetery, littered with the tombstones of abandoned corporate efforts,” says Perry; those tombstones are not what you want prospective employees to find during their research.
Jennifer J. Salopek is a freelance writer based in McLean, Virginia; she can be reached at jjsalopek@cox.net.
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