Fish where they are son!

I'm sitting at home now digesting the conference I just attended Inspecht and ATC's Recruitment Revolution, and while I will blog about this amazing day later on when I have fully disseminated all the information and translate my notes and scribbles, there is something bubbling to the top I just need to write about now.

This conference was all about Social Media Recruiting. A great topic and I could have spoken, listened and learned for much longer than the one day I got, I am a sucker for this stuff.

The final "debate" however became the straw which broke this camels back as far as blogging or not.

It was all about the relevance of job boards with social media gaining so much of a foothold in all our minds. We were lucky enough to have to strong/passionate speakers in the area. Stephen Collins from Acid Media and Jake Andrews from Seek.com.au (I"ll let you figure out who was arguing which point) Call it a "naughties" version of "video kills the radio star". An argument as old as Social media I believe, why? because there is no firm answer, just view points.

However, my thought, isn't overly intertwined with this. Let me put my cynic hat on. AND let me preface this by I am a HUGE Social Media fan/junkie call it what you will and I believe in the concept and business benefits. But.....

Is it for everybody?

There was a "flyer" inside the great little compendium they gave delegates which had the slogan "The hook may have changed but you still need the right bait" (with a picture of a laptop on a jetty) Pretty cool I thought. Whilst reading that, my Dad's voice appeared in my head (yes, it's been happening a lot of late, not sure what that means). I heard his voice telling me "you can have all the best equipment son, but you still won't catch anything if the fish aren't there. You have to know your spots, read the tide, read the signs, and signals and be prepared to move if you got all that wrong!" Let's face it, some days they just weren't there.

So, will Social Media spell the end of job boards.. NO! Did job boards spell the end of newspapers, no, did video actually kill the radio star (well not the DJ's and shock jocks)

Not everyone is findable online. Not even all Gen Y's (insert gasp here). I'm lucky, my talent pool is in IT world, so I have an expectation that my candidates would have some kind of online footprint to track down.

But what if I was looking for Forklift drivers? Landscape gardeners? Mechanics? Builders? Taxi drivers (OK bad example) etc.. Would I be confident I could locate talent in these areas online, utilising all the social media secrets I've just learned. No, not at all. I'd think I would have to go where they are (and Stephen got to this point). You have to move to where the fish are! He spoke about going to the local footy clubs, finding out where their wives hang out, using unions etc. Getting your message to where you audience can read it.

You can have the best Social media Recruitment strategy, have a great Facebook fan page, a twitter site and capability, LinkedIn presence, or even Myspace page (etc etc etc), the best value proposition, the best landing site.... but, if your fish aren't there, what's the point?

Keep the Social media concepts in your head though. Find your audience (where ever they hang out), listen to your audience, engage your audience, and add value to your audience. You don't need to rely on technology for that.