Indian IT Companies Yet To Use Twitter as a Recruitment Tool

Every now and then we read in media about how Indian companies are adopting social media for various purposes like  branding and PR, sales and service etc.
It intrigued me to check how they are using Twitter for a very important function: Recruitment.

I searched for Job/Career channels of Indian software companies in Twitter and here is what I found :


1) Copmany name:            TCS
    Official Twitter account: @followtcs
    Job/Career channel:       NA

2) Company Name:            WIPRO
    Official Twitter account: @Wipro 
    Job/Career Channel:      @WiproCareers  (381/1494)

    My observation:          Few walk ins are posted.Average 4-5 tweets per month.In  the current upswing in market I am sure  they have hundreds of open jobs.

3) Company Name:           Infosys
    Official Twitter Account:@Infosys
    Job/Career Channel:      NA

4)  Company Name:           Mahindra-Satyam  
     Official Twitter Account:@mahindra_satyam 
     Job/career Channel:      NA

5) Company Name:            HCL Infotech
    Official Twitter Account: @hcltech
    Job/Career Channel:       @HCLTechJobs (0/494)
    My observation:             Not much active recently. Last tweet on Jan 7th.

 6)Company Name:            Patni Computers
    Official Twitter Account: @Patni
    Job/career Channel:       NA

 7) Company Name:           Oracle Financial Services(Previously I-Flex):
     Official Twitter Account:@OracleFS 
     Job/Career channel:      NA

 8) Company Name:           Mphasis
     Official Twitter Account: Could not find one

 9) Company Name:            L&T Infotech
    Official Twitter Account: @LnT_Infotech 
    Job/Career Chanel:        @Infoknights (7/122) [added later]
    My observation:             Not much activity.



 10) Company Name:         Capgemini
      Official Twitter account:@Capgemini
      Job Channel:               @capgeminijobs  (14/194)

         My observation:            Few jobs have been posted but still not much activity.

As you can see, most of the big IT companies in India dont have a job channel in Twitter. Even if some have , they are not using it actively and effectively.Whoever is using it, they are not forming the job tweets properly - either location or some other keyword is missing or no hash tags(#) etc.

This pushes me to think:
Do Indian IT companies feel twitter has not grown in India sufficiently to be used as a recruitment tool effectively?
Or They are yet to feel the potential of Twitter fully?
Or Indian recruiters are not very Tech Savvy ??

Or Few companies which have Twitter job channel are not getting desired results?

I agree that traditional methods like job posting and resume sourcing from job boards, job posting on newspapers, taking help from recruitment agencies are still pretty effective. However looking at the phenomenal growth rate of new social media and the additional advantage they bring, I feel companies should start using these tools as an additional source to find candidates. I know many recruiters who use linked-in as a sourcing tool .But Twitter is yet to catch their fancy.

New Job Share Option For Recruiters in Naukri

Naukri has recently added a new feature for recruiters - when you are about to finish a job posting a window appears which allows you to share the job in different social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Brijj.I have earlier mentioned that Naukri has already started many twitter channels where they share job links for specific skill sets.

So,I feel this too is a timely and welcome step.

When there is a huge discussion going on whether social media will take over job portals as the major source of recruitment for organizations,job portals  have to find new ways to reach more audience.What they can do is, use social media to share their job links.This way they can spread the reach of their jobs significantly.Now social media will complement job portals instead of posing competition.Naukri has realized this and already working on this line.

This new feature by Naukri will encourage organizations to open their official accounts in different networking sites(if not done till now) and use them to share their jobs.This is the beginning of changing recruitment scene  in India and it will lead other job portals to follow the steps.

In fact I think Job Portals should give a "share" button with every job post(like we use in blog posts) , which can be used by both organizations and candidates to share jobs in their networking sites.[Update]Apparently both Naukri and Monster have share option in their job pages.My mistake.[Update]

Twitter, Recruitment and Future

Recruitment through twitter is still in experimental stage. Recruiters around the world are trying it in their own ways and results have been varying. Once in a while we come across nice insightful articles where recruiters explain their learning and also give their view on future of twitter-recruitment.

Recently I came across an interesting article by Matt Alder of Recruiting Futurology .

 First let me explain the basic plot of his article and then I will express my views on the matter.

Here he means to say that - with so many people posting their jobs in twitter , in future all the available jobs from different organizations will be open in twitter world. This will create a huge open access job database(he calls it :Job Cloud) as compared to close access databases of current job boards.The candidate will only have to search with keywords in twitter search or customized job search tools like Twitjobsearch  and find his choice job easily.He is envisioning that some websites will come up which will put the jobs available in twitter in a more systematic way and provide tools to candidates where they can filter and find their required jobs.

Well,Mostly I agree with his opinion.

We all talk about how organizations should start their job channel on Twitter,attract candidates to follow them, keep them engaged through interaction and keep posting jobs time to time.Free job posting.Why to pay job boards for each job posting when we can do it for free? Well, in this whole issue we are ignoring convenience of one very important party here-Candidates. Just imagine with every organization starting their own job channel in twitter, how many channels should a candidate follow to keep himself updated about new suitable jobs? Ain't we expecting too much from candidates? So is organizations posting their jobs in their twitter channel a bad idea? Will their job postings get desired exposure and response?Can they make big follower base?

What can be a suitable soultion for both parties involved - candidates and organisations?

Well ,One solution I can think of  is Twitter job sites like Tweetmyjobs, Tweetajob. These sites post job tweets for lots of clients and they have separate channels dedidated to different skillsets.So a candidate can follow his skillset based channel and get all suitable jobs in his stream.No doubt organisation has to pay to these sites per job tweet, but I believe the charges are pretty less and organisations can get large number of readymade followers for their jobs!

Second Point: Is organizations  posting jobs in their twitter channel still a good idea? 

My answer would be YES. Whenever you post a job in Twitter , it comes into open world for all to see and find out. In future candidates will use Twitter search more and more to find suitble jobs(as Matt Alder says and I agree) , and if you have given proper keywords while posting the job, you will find some customers.Any good response is useful, so no harm in posting. My only suggestion is not to depend entirely on your job channel.

Again, one more issue is regarding threat to job boards from Twitter and other social medias-In my opinion job boards will never die. They provide highly targetted customer-base(who are looking for job) and have got loads of feature that makes process easier for both the parties. And for the recruiters who hate boards because of too many irrelevant responses- what is the guarantee that you will get less or no irrelevant responses from twitter job post? In fact odds are same in both the cases. In my opinion in future job boards should integrate with twitter and start their own skill based channels. While posting a job in board, they should cross post it in twitter with the link. This way twitter can compliment job boards by driving more traffic and maximising the responses.

I would be eager to know your responses. Please share your opinion in comment section.