Corporate coping with the Social Age

I was talking yesterday to David, one of my oldest friends. David is a recruitment consultant who now works mainly in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and he’s a genius in his business. Back in my corporate days, David found something like 35 senior staff for me who were all excellent and fitted perfectly – that’s an amazing track record for a headhunter.

Slideshow: Where IT pros do their social networking

Anyway, we got talking about social media and Twitter in particular, and like many people who haven’t got involved (yet) in the social networking world David said he couldn’t see the value. In fact, he said, he thought that it probably wasn’t good for his business as the gap between job seekers and people looking for employees was smaller because of social networking.

David’s recognition of social media as a disruptive force in how people communicate is completely accurate, but that recognition misses a crucial issue: The fact the people can communicate doesn’t mean they will and even if they do, it isn’t guaranteed that they will communicate effectively.

Our conversation got me thinking about the role of people like David in the Social Age. David thinks that social media short circuits his role, but what he and most people have yet to realize is that those who facilitate communication by bringing their insight and expertise into the exchange are actually more valuable than ever.

Take David’s contention that it is easy for job seekers and hiring companies to connect. Sure, instead of seeing a score of applicants hiring companies could well see hundreds but the skill of recognizing which candidates are a good fit for a particular position is still required. In fact, should the hiring organization receive hundreds of applicants the need for an expert becomes far greater.

Now when you look at how most organizations approach how they use public-facing social media what you mostly see is a mess. There’s an inconsistency in how staff present themselves, how timely their responses are, how “engaged” they are, and the extent to which they are “on message”. The problem is that most organizations haven’t grokked the big picture on social media yet and what they aren’t aware of is that:

1. Their employees are already using social media and they are representing the organization whether the organization knows it or not.

2. These social employees are most likely not causing much damage to the corporate messaging … yet. But when they do senior management will wish they had been paying attention.

3. These organizations have no policy about how employees can use all of these new social channels and even if they were to start developing policies, getting them in place, and getting their staff trained as fast as possible will take a minimum of three months if the organization is seriously committed.

What the majority of organizations lack is a strategy for the Social Age and whether the goal is recruitment, public relations, support, marketing, or whatever the key is to bring in the experts. Social media isn’t some kind of fly by night phenomenon or fad, it is real, it is permanent, and it matters. And in the Social Age my friend David is more valuable than he yet knows.