Accenture using social networking sites to recruit human resources in the company.

1. Analysis & Outlook
Social Media Recruitment Strategy: Accenture Plc. Case Study
Social media has become an essential and powerful recruiting tool available for HR managers
and also changed the recruitment process by bringing relationships to the forefront. There is
great value in leveraging this tool just because of its natural potential to multiply connections,
build viral networks and reach talent faster. The use of social media as a recruitment tool has
taken off in recent years with a number of high-profile companies like Accenture, Infosys,
Burger King, Reckitt Benckiser, SABMiller, etc. using it to recruit talent for their
companies.According to Suzy Style, Accenture's UK recruitment director, the professional
services company turned to social media including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to adopt a
more aggressive recruitment strategy to find talent. "There is a global war for talent and we
believe that to [gain an advantage companies need to] develop long-term relationships with
candidates. Social networking sites are one of the key enablers in achieving this," Style says.The
popularity of social networks among graduates is one of the reasons the company started to test
social media in the recruitment process.
"We're advertising all our roles through social networking and particularly in experienced-hire
recruiting on sites such as LinkedIn and what we're finding is [LinkedIn] particularly plays to the
strengths of some groups," Accenture's Style says. "We're actively involved with some groups SAP professionals for example - and we're seeing an increasing number of people using it as part
of their strategy to find jobs." This highlights the fact that Social Media also plays a crucial role
in recruiting experienced hires too. But it's not just the big names using social sites to access a
new talent pool. According to LinkedIn, smaller companies are using the professional
networking site's tools to recruit new talent, along with more than 25 per cent of the FTSE 100 in
the UK and 50 per cent of the Fortune 100 in the US. "In terms of company size, we have
everything from companies with £100bn valuations to agencies and clients that have two or three
people," says Ariel Eckstein, LinkedIn's MD of hiring solutions Europe.
According to John Campagnino, senior director of recruiting at Accenture, they are saving over
$100,000 for a senior hire by using social media. He estimates that Accenture will make 40% of
its hires in the next few years using social media. When recruiting through Social Media
platforms HR managers have to know what tools to use for recruiting what type of talent. Social
Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs are all separate tools that may warrant
different approaches. Accenture's Style says: "You might find that a graduate is more likely to be
using Facebook for example and an experienced hire might be more likely to be using LinkedIn,
so it's ensuring that you look at the channels for the best way to reach the people that you need."
Accenture has an employee referral program that is the management consulting company's
primary source for talent. "[The] program allows employees to search for open jobs around the
world and share them with their network through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter," says
Accenture's global head of sourcing, SjoerdGehring."Employees can track the status of their
Rajesh Prabhakar
Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/

2. Analysis & Outlook
referral through their personalized employee referral site. Through integrated communication
campaigns we've been able to significantly drive up the volume and quality of employee
referrals."Accenture people play an important role in our recruitment efforts because our
employees know Accenture well and can . . . help find the right person for the right role.
Employee referrals are also a cost-effective way to fuel growth."
In the past 3-4 years, Social Media recruiting has gained prominence and HR Managers are using
social media sites for both checking the prospective employee backgrounds and also using the
data provided on sites like LinkedIn in their recruitment process. The second aspect of social
media recruitment is the distribution of information relating to job openings and requirements
through 2nd degree network referral effect like Facebook’s “Like” and “Share” buttons,
Twitter’s “ReTweets” and LinkedIn’s that allow rapid spreading of content (i.e. jobs and
candidate referrals) to second and third degree networks, that also pushes message out to a much
larger and more qualified audience. Another big advantage is the low cost factor as most of the
social media sites are free to sign up and also charge lesser amounts of sign up fees which will
definitely help the companies to save money on recruitment processes. But the fact remains that
social media recruitment is a good option but companies still have to rely on traditional sources
of recruitment for majority of their recruitment and for best results they should maintain a best
mix of both the types of recruitment.
Rajesh Prabhakar
Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/