Partner Article

Why Spam is so Last Century

Part of my role as a Professional Resourcer at Exclusive is to keep my eyes open and my ears pinned to the ground for Professionals looking for a new challenge, as well as Clients we can potentially work with. As part of this role, I spend a considerable amount of time walking the hazy but often interesting and enlightening pathways of various Social Media including Twitter and LinkedIn.

Recruiting for often niche and specialist roles, it becomes even more important to know your Candidates and where they might lurk whilst waiting for the right role to fall into their laps. LinkedIn is a good example of this, as it provides Recruiters an opportunity for (mainly) up to date CVs at a glance, with the potential for references through the recommendations feature of the Social/Business Networking site.

The problem, or rather concern I have with using these different Social Media to attract Candidates, is that it can often work against Recruiters searching for ‘the perfect person’ to join their next big Client. Why? Because nobody likes Spam!

Being a member of a large number of specialist Industry Sector and Role Groups on LinkedIn, means I receive regular updates on ‘new’ discussions, comments and updates from a vast array of Connections and people within my Network. But do you know what I have noticed? They are not new and they are very rarely updated. My ‘updates’ invariably are about 25 ‘new’ discussions, which also appeared yesterday, along the lines of “CALLING ALL PEOPLE WORKING IN XXX SECTOR“ “NEEDED URGENTLY……“ “Metal Wrokers with Experince in…..“ Yes, that is correct – the spelling and typographical errors are often so painful I want to cry and then search for that person and give them a virtual slap.

As Professionals, should we not be priding ourselves on perfection and actively marketing our employer branding? When I was job searching, I rarely looked at a job advert THAT WAS ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS or one that Had slily typos in or were grammatically incorrect. Why? Because I pride myself on attention to detail and would not want to work for a company that apparently did not care about my personal ethics and how these would be used in their workplace. This is even more annoying in today’s world of AutoCorrect and in-built word document dictionaries…

I digress. The spam is what really grates. You know when you are walking around your local town centre and there are people constantly shouting the same thing over and over again. Now remember how annoying you can find that after about 2 – 3 minutes. Let us transfer that on to the Internet, with constant updates and the feeling of annoyance will be multiplied by about 15. It is for me anyway. Sometimes a quieter more direct approach works better, as people will stop seeing you as an annoyance, and you will be more likely to be remembered as the one who “was actually interested in me and my experience” rather than the person who shouted for all and sundry.

To quote a proverb I heard regularly when living in Germany, “Speaking comes by nature, silence by understanding.”

At Exclusive we embrace being different and look to understand the requirements and desires of both Clients and Candidates with equal weighting. For further information on how we have successfully set ourselves apart from other Recruitment Agencies, please visit our website at www.exclusiveltd.co.uk and view our rapdily expanding Engineering Jobs North East.

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By Victoria Colverson

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Daniel Reed .