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Why You Can’t Get Top Talent to Commit to You: What I Learned from @FishDogs and @ImJeremyR

Employers-Social-MediaLast week Emily Jasper — our most recent addition to the content team here at The Starr Conspiracy — and I attended Talent Net Live in Dallas. If you haven’t been, I recommend you catch one of their next shows.

We sat in on a session about candidate closing with Craig Fisher and Jeremy Roberts. They talked about how to get great candidates to commit in the home stretch of hiring and recruiting.

Craig mentioned a staggering statistic — which will henceforth be known as a StagStat — that 54% of candidates in a recent survey responded they would not work somewhere without access to social media.

Meanwhile, the most recent data says 42% of companies are actively blocking social media or forbidding its use at work.

There’s a huge chasm there for companies to lose good people in, don’t you think? And I don’t want to fall into a chasm. Do you?

When it comes down to it, people are wising up to the choices they have in a catalog of work perks. And for the top performers or innovators in any given field, you might be losing candidates because you’re not aware of what they want.

You might be losing top talent because you don’t have:

  • Competitive pay
  • Killer benefits
  • Stability — perceived or real
  • Access to social media
  • Flexible work schedules
  • The ability to work virtually
  • The intangibles — culture, authenticity, margarita machines

I don’t know. I don’t know anything about hiring. I’m talking from the candidate-side. From the person-side, really.

And I can say as long as you’re treating people like people, giving your employees and candidates great healthcare and letting them tweet shouldn’t be a big deal.

It’s when you’re treating them like “resources,” “assets” and “talent” (lions, tigers, and bears) that you’re in trouble.