Tools help agencies boost recruiting via social media
Connecting state and local government leaders
NGA.NET's SocialSmashed and Social Apply helps agencies recruit young workers via platforms they're familiar with.
As government employees who are part of the baby boomer generation begin to retire, agencies are looking toward younger generations of workers. To attract them, though, officials will need to reevaluate the methods they use to recruit and retain talent, moving away from traditional portals and websites that post static job listings and applications to more dynamic and interactive approaches.
Recognizing the trend, officials at NGA.NET U.S. Public Sector have added two features to the company’s eRecruit solution that lets federal agencies more easily post jobs on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Additionally, the tools, SocialSmashed and Social Apply, help agencies generate in-depth analytics that report the effectiveness of government social recruiting initiatives, officials said in a release.
“The methods today’s job seekers use to look for and apply to jobs are evolving, and government agencies are looking for solutions that cater to the nuances of a broader talent pool,” Tim Enright, vice president of sales for NGA.NET, said in a statement.
SocialSmashed lets agency managers quickly post job listings on their established social media platforms, getting the information out to a larger audience, NGA.NET officials said. The tool lets agency recruiters post jobs to a branded job tab on their agency’s page that displays jobs and lets potential candidates apply, share, recommend or like available positions. For Twitter, the available position is converted into a tweet with an associated hashtag, making it more searchable. With LinkedIn, recruiters at federal agencies can automatically synch job opportunities to their own status updates, ensuring that opportunities are shared to the recruiter’s network of followers.
Social Apply lets agencies add an “Apply with LinkedIn” feature into job postings, speeding up the candidate application process. With eRecruit Social Apply, candidates’ relevant information is pre-populated from their LinkedIn profiles into the online job applications, saving time and reducing errors, NGA.NET officials said. In addition, candidates will be prompted to complete any missing data on the employment application that is not available in their LinkedIn profile.
The two social media capabilities are the latest efforts by NGA.NET to enhance how agency managers recruit and hire quality candidates. The company has teamed with Lockheed Martin on StaffAcq360, a cloud-hosted recruiting and hiring system for federal agencies. Developed by Lockheed Martin, StaffAcq360 uses NGA.NET’s eRecruit talent acquisition system and is available as a software-as-service subscription from Lockheed. The solution runs behind a secure firewall in Lockheed Martin’s Federal Information Security Management Act-compliant cloud.
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