Brenda Burch Dumont's Blog

I have been collecting data for a blog on the new Privacy issues that have been brought to the forefront with the latest developments at Facebook.

I had read many varying opinions, but to provide the best and clearest overview of the how Facebook’s ‘like’ button is going to impact the marketing industry and your privacy, please read Retail Prophet’s Doug Stephens excellent blog ‘Privacy is dead…..and it could be great’! –

Privacy is dead….

As always with the Retail Prophet, the blog is straightforward, explains some fairly advanced concepts clearly, and is right on in terms of the pros and the cons.  I agree with Doug’s comments.  We seem to worry dramatically about our ‘privacy’, but have we really had it since the inception of the internet, or even the inception of credit cards?  Do I care if Facebook (and its partners) know that I love country music?  If I murdered my neighbour, chances are I don’t have that recorded on my Facebook profile nor would I be clicking to the cemetery where he is buried.  And are there companies or marketing agencies that want to target murderers?  Maybe that takes it a little far, but you get the picture.

In my social media consulting, I encounter resistance from clients when we start to discuss the ‘social’ part of social media, particularly as it pertains to recruiting.  We’ve come from an environment where all the focus when hiring for a position is on the position, its requirements, the candidate qualifications, aptitude, etc. etc.  There is no focus on the recruiter.  Social media asks for a shift away from ‘no focus’ to some focus and that means sharing information to gain trust and community that would not have been shared previously.  Good recruiters will create ‘talent hubs’ (the new juicy buzzword, eh?)  on behalf of their employers or themselves and these hubs will be created, managed, and nutured by the recruiter who has gained a trust factor through social media.

And therein lies the ‘aha’ moment!  Recruiters who embrace and utilize social media gaining trust and community will succeed by building ‘talent hubs’ who trust them with their privacy.  These ‘talent hubs’ will provide a community from which high quality placements can be continually made.

So, recruiters should start to ‘share’ a bit about themselves through social media just as company executives are beginning to share about themselves to create trust in their companies and their products.

More to come on privacy and recruiting……………….  P.S. I do like country music, but I didn’t murder my neighbour.

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Filed under:
Retail, recruitment, social media, social media recruiting by Brenda