PepsiCo in the US has shifted its recruiting focus to social media after a detailed analysis showed that while 75% of its recruitment marketing spend was going into job boards, they were delivering only 1% of its hires.

PepsiCo's global talent engagement and marketing leader, Chris Hoyt, told the ATC Social Media conference in Melbourne yesterday that this "alarming" data meant it was "time to change direction".

But Hoyt warned that internal recruiting teams should not just "jump in" to social media for the reason that "everyone else is doing it", or because experts at a conference said so.

He said among the likely consequences of stepping up social media recruitment activity are an increase in web traffic, communication and applications that an existing team might not be able to manage.

"And what happens when you have recruiters that think they're helping, but start spouting things off that maybe aren't ideal, and that your comms team has to deal with, or your CEO?

"Just like anything else, you need a plan. This is vital. I'm all for trying new things, but let's not get crazy."

He advised employers just starting out with social recruiting to ensure they master "the basic of the basics", which include:

• Listen and monitor. First, find out what people are saying about your company on social networking sites, and work to understand why it's being said. Listen to your recruiters as well, and their thoughts about social recruiting. "It's important to get recruiters to talk candidly about their opinions." It wouldn't work to just instruct recruiters to post good things about the company, Hoyt said. "Forcing them to do that would be an epic failure".
• Set goals. Do you want more traffic? Or more awareness? Or more "buzz"?
• Define your strategy. Talk realistically about resources. "If you can't get additional headcount to help with workload, you won't get it to chat on Facebook."
• Define your guidelines around engaging. "Can you just chat to anybody? If somebody sends a tweet that says 'Your company sucks', is it OK for your recruiter to reply, 'No man, you suck'." Giving the team the right tools would also help them to engage with and influence talent, Hoyt said.
• Engage and direct traffic. "Knowing where and how to direct traffic will be key in tracking results." Conversations were important, he said, and there were multiple ways to facilitate them including co-tweets, email, threaded conversations, multiple users, multiple accounts, notes and scheduling. "Twitter is not about vomiting jobs up out of your ATS. Interact."
• Optimise your performance and results. Hoyt explained that over a specific (but undisclosed) period of time, PepsiCo attracted 3,109 "visitors" via Twitter, but this resulted in only 99 people requesting further information (becoming "subscribers"), and ultimately 161 applications. Job postings on LinkedIn, however, brought 1,500 visitors, 488 subscribers and 610 applications, demonstrating that: "Twitter is driving a lot of traffic, but how's my return? A pile of bullshit, is what it is." He added that, "tracking the data is not as difficult as you think".

Finally, Hoyt said, employers should look at social recruiting as an enhancement, not a replacement for their recruiting efforts.

"Good recruiting has always been social."