9.1. SOCIAL NETWORKING

More recruiters are seeing great potential in the Internet's social networks because they provide access to the places where thousands of millennials congregate virtually and communicate with their friends. Like KPMG, a small but growing number of companies already are experimenting with such sites as Facebook and YouTube in hopes of reeling in top talent. Others, however, are waiting to see if it's effective and if there's any backlash from millennials.

Making recruiting overtures on social sites is a touchy matter. Major recruiters, such as General Electric Co., are treading lightly because they fear they will offend millennials who want to keep their favorite networking sites purely social. Indeed, some young people may resent and ultimately reject companies that intrude with a recruiting pitch into what they consider their personal meeting places. That's why KPMG took a cautious approach with its YouTube channel and tried not to be overly promotional. "You don't want the same kind of videos that you show on your careers Web site," Quill says. "We wanted a lot of unedited, user-generated videos that our interns and young hires can relate to. You need to be authentic with this new generation."

Verizon Communications Inc. also decided to take a very soft sell approach when it started recruiting employees on Facebook. "Our goal is to target people we'd like to entice to join Verizon, but we certainly don't want to annoy anyone," says Odesa Stapleton, director of talent management. "We're not saying go buy our phones; we're just saying if you are interested in a career with us, then here's some information and a link to ourWeb site." Verizon can target people on Facebook who attended a particular college or majored in a certain field, such as engineering or finance. In addition, Verizon enlists its own employees with Facebook pages to invite their friends on the social network to apply for jobs at the telecommunications company.

Ernst & Young, the big accounting firm, realized Facebook's potential early on and established a recruiting page on the site in 2006. The firm tries to allay any fears that it is on Facebook to snoop around people's profiles. It states on its Facebook page, "We are not interested in seeing your profiles. It's not that we're not interested in you, but we respect your privacy and understand that you use Facebook to socialize with your friends. Joining the EY Careers group does not allow anyone to see your profile who didn't already have access to it." (Of course, many other employers are checking out the Facebook and MySpace profiles of prospective hires and nixing those with salacious content. Sage advice to millennials: clean up your social networking pages before applying for jobs.)

To keep people coming back, Ernst & Young updates its Facebook page weekly with new content and pictures. Much of the page is promotional, of course, with photos of happy workers and gushy comments from summer interns. The most provocative part of the page is the Wall, a message board for visitors. Most of the posts are requests for information about internships and replies from the firm's recruiters. Some people make fawning comments about E&Y to try to ingratiate themselves with the firm. Others remark about random things such as a lunar eclipse or send flippant messages like this one: "Dear Ernst and Young, I just did my tax return for the first time. Can I please have a job?"

But most visitors to the recruiting page are quite serious about landing a position at E&Y. Some anxious applicants go to the Wall, fearful that they didn't get hired. "I am starting to get very nervous," a young woman wrote. "I already had a first round interview and thought it went fantastic. However I have not heard back yet about a second round interview. My classmates are already discussing the date for their second round interview. So I was wondering since I haven't heard anything yet and other students have, does that mean that I am not being offered a second round interview?"

Certainly, recruiting on social networking sites carries some risks. TheWall, for instance, attracts the occasional skeptic or critic. One visitor questioned whether companies are sincere in their claims that they don't overwork their employees. He wondered how E&Y can honestly promise work-life balance, especially during the busy tax season. Dan Black, director of Americas campus recruiting for E&Y, replied: "I can't speak for the other firms, but we do the best we can to help with work/life balance. This means different things for different people, so E&Y does not offer a one-size-fits-all environment. Are there going to be busy times? Absolutely—plenty of them. Any company that tells you that it's all going to be fun and games and 9-to-5 is probably not giving you an accurate picture."

Then there was this tirade on the Wall: "Personally, I'm sick and tired of putting on a fake smile and constantly trying to prove myself. I've got the grades, I've got the experience, I have exactly what you need. What more do you want? Next time I'm thinking about wearing a clown costume and performing some tricks. Heck, even the interviewers gotta be sick and tired of the same personality they're always gonna see. Maybe that way I'll really stick in their mind. So I think I might give it a shot, or I'm just gonna reverse the question, 'Why do you wanna work for us?' and say 'Why do you want me to work for you?'"

E&Y seems comfortable with such comments and doesn't remove them from the Wall. It has censored a few posts that included vulgarity, but otherwise says it isn't acting like Big Brother. There was some initial resistance, however, to the Facebook site at E&Y. "It was quite a struggle to sell the Facebook idea to the company," says Black. "You give up some control because it's a free forum driven by users of the site. It isn't like a corporate Web site or brochure."

As of early 2008, E&Y had attracted more than 13,000 members to its Facebook site. The firm has hired a few people through Facebook, but considers it primarily a branding tool. "It's incumbent on us to change the image of accounting as a dull, conservative profession," Black says. "We're trying to show the Facebook generation that we're willing to speak in their language and that we're not their father's accounting firm."

The growing recruiting activity on social networking sites isn't entirely corporate. With the war in Iraq posing a major recruiting challenge, the U.S. Army is reaching out to potential enlistees on MySpace. Visitors to the Army page can chat with "Sgt. Star," their virtual guide, about joining up; listen to podcasts; view Army photos; or download an action video game about the Army Special Forces. There are also links to theMySpace pages of "the Army's friends," mostly soldiers, and a message board. Sample postings: "I hope everyone has a safe month. Take care troops. God bless" and "I have some really cool pictures of the 0.50 caliber machine gun being fired! Check them out! My company also leaves really soon to Afghanistan! Hoo-ah!"

The Army chose MySpace because of its broad reach and the ability to customize and add branding elements to its page. It planned to join Facebook as well to tap into a network of ROTC cadets. The Army's strategy is to be as ubiquitous as possible with the millennial generation. Although it still does plenty of face-to-face recruiting, the Army hopes its Web site and social networking pages will encourage young men and women to start making their decision about enlisting before they ever meet a recruiter. The Army finds that millennials like to investigate what it has to offer online with anonymity and without a recruiter breathing down their necks trying to influence them.

Clearly, the Army has its work cut out for it in trying to persuade millennials to consider a military career. Its research found that young people today have a very low propensity to sign up for military service and that the Army is viewed as "ordinary" and less elite than the Marines and Air Force. "The key is to get young people talking about the Army on their social networks and visiting our Web site," says Lt. Col. Shawn Buck, chief of the market research and analysis division of the U.S. Army Accessions Command. "We need to be in a lot of spaces to make an impression and get the Army into this generation's decision set."