What are the recruitment possibilities of Tumblr?

There’s been some debate in recent years about how online recruitment has largely switched its focus from the ‘old school’ job boards and recruitment sites to social media sites, where it is so often the actual users that call the shots in terms of the creation and sharing of content. But whereas you might have heard plenty from webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) and elsewhere about Twitter and Facebook recruitment, you might still be wondering what Tumblr has to offer for candidate sourcing.

For those who are unaware, Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking site that was first established in 2007. It’s stylised as “tumblr.”, but whichever way you describe it, there’s little doubt of its widespread appeal as a means of posting multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. A “dashboard” interface allows for easy access to the posts of followed blogs, and is also a starting point for users to post their own content, with the option even there to ‘reblog’ other people’s content. 

With Tumblr’s monthly views of some 20 billion, not to mention more than 77 million blogs, it’s obvious that there’s the potential for plenty of exposure for your company. It’s also a fine place to see what content your prospective candidates and/or customers are interested in, which brings us to the first question as far as staff recruitment is concerned... is Tumblr the right match for your brand? It is a site, after all, that attracts many creative people such as visual artists, writers and musicians, which may or may not overlap with the kind of people that you would most like to attract.

It’s also worth considering that on Tumblr, users principally interact by responding directly to each other’s blogs, which is slightly different to the Pages system of Facebook. Many users also opt to make their blogs private, which may lead to them being slightly more candid than would often be the case on social media sites. Potential candidates may not, therefore, be as appreciative of your approach as they would be on a social media site that is better established as a place to recruit staff.

Those firms interested in recruiting staff on Tumblr may also want to consider how easy it will be for them to use the platform to share content and job details in a way that brings the right response. You should also consider the relationship between your Tumblr page and your more conventional company blog, as they may inadvertently compete with each other. You may want to reserve your company blog for sharing industry and company news and views, while using a separate Tumblr blog to combine content from various networks, including news articles and Instagram images.

But of course, if you’re still unsure as to the value of Tumblr for recruitment advertising, you could always just experiment with it! Keep reading the webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) blog for more advice about using a wide range of social media platforms for successful candidate sourcing.

Editor’s Note: Webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) is represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Please direct all press queries to Louise Byrne. Email: louise@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.