#HireFriday: Starting a Movement

You're out there. You know who you are.

You feel guilty.

Because your recruiting process sucks.

Your company -- you -- treat jobseekers and candidates poorly.

You are a recruiter. An HR Manager. An ATS or job board vendor.

A handful of good folks on Twitter have started a grass roots movement. It's called #HireFriday. The idea is that on Fridays, the recruiting community takes action to help jobseekers.

You (like me) might be tempted to simply post an open job with the hashtag #HireFriday on Twitter. But we're asking more of you.

We're asking that you connect with an individual jobseeker and point that person in the right direction. You can do this on Twitter, or on Facebook or LinkedIn. Maybe there is a candidate languishing in your inbox or ATS. On #HireFriday, take action to help a person with their job search. Deliver the bad news, if you must, but tell your candidates where they stand. Remove expired job postings from your website. Offer resume coaching. Share a helpful article. Find Margo Rose on Twitter or her blog -- she has plenty of ideas. She is the brainchild.

Over the past few weeks, I have talked to jobseekers about using social media. And while they're all very interested in how to pimp out a LinkedIn profile, or connect on Twitter, they're more interested in why they're treated so poorly. Hundreds of resumes submitted and not one response. Silence after interviews. Filled positions still accepting resumes. Job boards that sell their contact info to spammers and marginal third-party services.

They're angry.

It's not all our fault. The interwebs delivered way more candidates than we could handle. One recruiter with 35 reqs and 20 hiring managers isn't unusual. But we own fixing the problem.

Let's start small. #HireFriday