How Big Brands are Leveraging the Power of Twitter in Social Recruiting

By Synthia Salas on Aug 29, 2012 12:05:57 PM

60 million customers visit Starbucks stores on a weekly basis. Yeah, that means they’re selling a lot of coffee. But it also means they need to hire a lot of baristas and shift supervisors.
Those potential baristas may not be hanging out on Starbucks’ career website, but they are hanging out on Twitter, and especially on their mobile phones. So innovative companies like Starbucks are leveraging the power of social media to distribute their jobs directly from their applicant tracking systems to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Instead of making the barista come to the mountain, these companies are bringing the mountain to the barista. Brilliant.
And why is Twitter so valuable in the process? Well, there are about 2 billion searches conducted every day on Twitter. That makes the site one of the biggest search engines in the world, much less social media platforms.
But the power of Twitter goes far beyond job distribution and search. Marketers, HR directors, and recruiters are using the platform to engage with job seekers, have conversations, and build their employment brand.
Take a look at this recent tweet from Farmer’s Insurance on Twitter:

Farmers Insurance is showing their human side – they’re more than just a vanilla, plain corporate careers presence. They’re inspiring with a daily quote – and provoking a response: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”  That’s attractive to potential employees and followers of the business alike. It’s smart, it’s clean, and it searches for engagement.
The power of social media as a whole is obvious, and as a platform for recruiting, Twitter is supremely useful not only as a distribution mechanism to the millions of job seekers utilizing the service but also as a superb branding and engagement tool.
What are your favorite examples of big brands leveraging Twitter in social recruiting?