C#5 of Social Recruiting: Conversation — Live video screening and discussions

This post is part of a series describing the nine "Cs" that drive a successful social recruiting strategy and started with You do social sourcing. Now start your social recruiting strategy!

We have already discussed "C#1" Continuity, C#2 Consistency or the art of following-through your branding, C#3 Culture — your core values and credibility, and C#4 Courtesy and Candidate Centricity.

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

For very good reasons, video interviews and video interactions now have a place on the corporate agenda. You can make the most of video interviews because TalentCircles is not just a digital interviewing tool, but a complete platform to fully manage relationships with candidates.

Our white paper TalentCircles: The Ultimate Screening and Interviewing Solution describes the extensive and state-of-the-art capabilities of TalentCircles for video screening and interviewing. Our purpose here is to tie the natural power of video interviewing and conversation with the specific purpose of social recruiting, i.e.:

• To fill jobs expeditiously.
• To build up a relevant pipeline to serve your company's workforce plan.  

The TalentCircles' live interviewing environment is similar to what candidates have become accustomed to on social networks — an environment that is fully Web-based, requires no download, is accessible via a click, and provides information effortlessly. During the conversation, participants can view and discuss documents together, or review a featured job in real time, as well as chat and send files in any language. Recruiters can view the profile of each participant and take notes.

TalentCircles supports as many interactions with the same candidate(s) of whatever length. These interactions can be recorded, be part of profile of the candidate (s) and can be shared equally effortlessly with hiring managers.

A powerful way to get to know several candidates at once is to organize live group meetings. A joint research study by the Harvard Business School & Harvard Kennedy School has established the benefits of group evaluation/discussions:  "New research suggests that organizations wishing to avoid gender stereotyping in the hiring or promotion process--and employ the most productive person instead—should evaluate job candidates as a group, rather than one at a time."

You may be able to identify a great person, somebody who may have a "jagged resume" that you would never found via the traditional acquisition process, but is what George Anders calls the "rare find," the candidate that will not only get the job done, but also advance your company.

A proactive social recruiting methodology enables you to identify not only people with the right skills, but those who also show some sort of personal leadership and adaptability — and then you can recommend that they apply. In fact, in many cases, the ideal approach is to interact with candidates before they apply.