Don't Be a Creep! Avoid These Social Recruiting Mistakes

October 15, 2014 at 11:13 AM by Rob Stevenson

We've all been on the receiving end of severe social media creepery. Someone 'likes' a Facebook photo from 2910110808_c636ebb8982009. A double tap on a 21 week old Instagram post. Friend requests from people you've never met. It's unnerving and uncomfortable, and if you ever come off this way to a candidate, you can forget about getting them in for an interview. Social recruiting affords a great opportunity, but also bears the ever-present possibility of a tragic misstep in the form of over-research. As a wise old comic book Uncle once said, 'with great power comes great responsibility.' Read on to make sure you're not guilty of any glaring social recruiting mistakes.

Don't Quit Their Day Job

When bringing up information you've seen on a candidate's social profile, you're far better off sticking to the commentary they make on something industry related. Truthfully, it's the only reason you're contacting them to begin with, so lead with their Github commits rather than their vacation to Puerto Vallarta. Try and demonstrate you want to paint a picture of someone as a professional, rather than cheekily rope them in to conversation by referencing any picture they posted. Also, showing that you're primarily interested in their work and aren't as focused with what they do in their free time can help to suggest a work-life balance at your organization. If a recruiter made reference to my awesome pun tweets and fun-sock related instagram posts, I'd be concerned that the overlapping area in my work-life venn diagram was beginning to swell.

Stick to Commonalities

If you're going to go ahead and reference someone's personal life, stick to common ground. A shared favorite sports team, bar, or cute pet are safe areas that make sense to get the ball rolling. Don't ask about a candidate's kids or anything else terribly specific or personal. Likewise, it's one thing to reference a post in an email or conversation, and quite another to directly interact with each single update.

Pick Your Poison

Some social channels lean decidedly towards professional material (GitHub, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Quora), while others are almost entirely personal (Instagram, Facebook). In the case of the latter, tread extremely lightly. If a candidate is posting material relevant to their work, they ought to expect to be engaged by networkers. Pictures of their cat on instagram? Not so much.

What are your preferred channels to reach out to candidates? Got any horror stories of severe over-research? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!

social recruiting

comments