Just as a bit of an introduction, I do get a lot off companies asking for an opportunity to right a guest post on Recruitment Views, for a number of reasons but generally they are nearly always aimed at candidates, which is not suitable for this blog. So when I get something that recruiters can benefit from then I am more than happy to pass on.

Although their pitch was for candidates, I could see how recruiters could benefit in that it can aid you in checking out your clients.

Anyway their post follows below:

As many recruiters know, companies that hire candidates without due diligence are often missing out on hiring the best in the industry. Those who are the right fit for a job are often working for someone else or at least visible in social networks, and in many cases they’re not actively looking for a new job.

It’s not always easy to recruit high-quality candidates, particularly if they’re not open to recruitment. More and more recruiters have turned to social media to screen top talent, but they’re also using them to understand the job market that they’re targeting.

A word to the wise here, while a large proportion of recruiters have hired candidates on the basis of social media profiles, an equal proportion has rejected candidates based on their presence on those networks (according to a recent LinkedIn survey).

In some cases, social media are not enough to know the market and industry and successfully screen a wide selection of job candidates. For many recruiters, it means getting an understanding of the business, role and the type of person required to do the job, whether in terms of qualification, demographic or personality.

Do a company webcheck at Duedil.com, a useful, free database that users can integrate with their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to see employee and director lists as well as corporate structures. It’s a quick and easy way to aggregate and cross-check information across any industry.

Using Duedil, it’s possible to dig a little deeper and uncover trends and relationships between the talent and companies. Tracking employees’ progress in an organisation and researching why certain high-performing employees were successful while others were not can provide useful insight into attracting and placing talent in the future.

This can help recruiters take a focused approach to recruiting candidates, which may cut down on recruiters’ candidate pools, but it can also yield top results and require less back-and-forth. With access to company information at their fingertips, recruiters have the opportunity to fully research a candidate’s current role and help them take a meaningful step towards something new.