The current economic outlook encourages companies to do three things:

#1. Getting used to chaos and push for change.

#2. Going LILO (A Little In, A Lot Out i.e. Businesses with low initial investment and  a lot of hard work)

#3. Building relationships with candidates, ahead of any recruitment needs.

Regarding these three points, intuition is at the center. Social media channels are great opportunities for recruiting talent; however, there’s no instruction. Each company has its own specificity and history. Logic alone couldn’t do much, and it’s risky to duplicate old school tactics on new media channels. ROI questions are important for planning viable actions, but still difficult to integrate for relationship-building initiatives. This highlights the power of more intuitive decisions and actions, not only during the recruitment process but also before advertised jobs.

Here are six reasons (and points of differentiation) to use a more intuition based talent and recruitment strategy:

1. Human behavior is hardly predictable.

2. Some of the most relevant candidates may have atypical profiles and great soft skills, but unfortunately may still be overlooked.

3. There is no “universal” instruction book for using social media channels, but a series of test-and-learn moves.

4. “Black swans” are not likely to be anticipated.

5. Other employers are targeting the same talent profiles.

6. An inspiring workplace is still priority number one (and this brings us to a more intense internal collaboration).

We’re talking about building relationships and recruiting at the same time and the idea may be the same when employees play their advocacy role through referrals. However, excessive control, rigid processes and generic external messages can turn your employees into an army of robots, which won’t sound human to your potential employees and will underline micromanagement practices. Managers should strive to create an open, intuitive talent management culture.

Your employees may act upon their intuition to introduce you candidates. And there’s a need to trust and serve them after clarifying the specific goals of the advocacy programs.

Lilian Mahoukou is a France-based marketing professional interested in leveraging social media to spread the word about people-centric initiatives. He also blogs at Doppelganger.name on the use of social media for employment and talent marketing. Photo Credit Articlesounders.

Asking the right questions to the interviewee will address your concerns and needs to make the right hire. The right interview questions will create good knowledge for the issues that you need to answer yourself: Can this candidate do the job? And if so, how will the candidate do the job? Is that how what my team needs?

From my years of experience, here are some effective interview questions that can be used for most any position:

• Tell me about a time when you worked with little supervision.

• How do you structure your work week and daily tasks?  How do you determine what is important?

• Tell me about a recent failure. How did you handle it and what did you learn?

• Is technology a part of your everyday life?  How are you using these tools to make your life and your co-worker’s lives easier?

• What do you like least about your last boss?  How did he challenge you?

• Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond in your work.

Avoid interview questions like, “Tell me where you see yourself in 5 years?” According to a 2010 the Department of Labor study, the average employee has a company tenure of 4.1 years. If a candidate answered honestly, they’d tell you, “I don’t know.” General questions like, “Why are manhole covers round?” aren’t effective and don’t get to the heart of the matter, which is for candidates to verbally demonstrate their areas of expertise, and ability to be a good fit within the company culture.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a HR consultant, new media strategist, and author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. Jessica is the host of Job Search Secrets, an internet television show for job seekers.

Photo Credit Marvin Delavega

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