If your aim is to be a master of social utilities, you should strive to mimic Accenture.  If your goal is to be an expert in campus marketing and talent acquisition, you have no better model than Carrie Dacey, where she leads the US Recruitment Marketing team.

Accenture has implemented some really courageous and innovative social networking methods.  And here’s a hint:  it isn’t all just about LinkedIn.  (No offense to LinkedIn, of course.)

• Video Blogs from real employees about real work.  Nothing says “realistic job preview” from hearing it directly from the source.  Our newest generation is not amused or tricked by actors reading scripts or corporate schills.
• Reading more your style?  Then surf on over to the at least one dozen different active blogs, again from real employees about their actual work and what it’s like to do it.
• Accenture has a virtual presence in Second Life.  Now, I never managed to even get out of the tutorial in SL, but that doesn’t mean others don’t play there.  (Apparently the top online user has spent a total of 726 hours online in SecondLife.  That’s over 30 NON-STOP days.  Or over 90 working days.)  Talk about a captive audience.  Enough has been said about the trials and tribulations of recruitment marketing by minds far more powerful than mine, so I won’t digress too much further.  But I must raise this final point:  if you aren’t there, who is?
• Yup, Accenture has a corporate Facebook page, too.  Actually, it has more than one.

Get the point yet?  These sites- and I am guessing their strategy- is about much more than “Apply Here for Job Now”.  Sure, that’s one of the overall aims, but it isn’t the end-all be-all.

Their social networking strategy also isn’t an endgame- rather, they already have a terrific talent mindset and want others that share in that vision, and this is how they figured out to find them.  Oh, and by the way, those blogs aren’t edited. 

In a previous post, I offered the opinion that passionate recruiters are crucial to a successful company. Dan Black is one of these rockstars. I spent the beginning of June this year traveling coast to coast for an HCI Innovation Tour on campus recruiting, and Dan was part of our panel in NYC. It was superb event, and I’ll share more about it in posts to come.

Dan is the Director of Campus Recruiting at Ernst & Young, and like many great recruiters, he didn’t set out from college with a career in talent acquisition in mind. In fact, he’s an accountant! But now he leads the college recruiting efforts for a global organization and is a shining example of a corporation that “gets it right.” I’ll use their gigantic Facebook profile to demonstrate how this is true.

Aside from the obvious typical recruitment pitches you’ll see here, (read: brand, logo, career website link, recruiting collateral) the surfer will also find an extensive network of alums, interns, and interested candidates, a mechanism to share UNEDITED thoughts on EY, great resources on real career opportunities, and info about EY’s view on social responsibility, among others.

Anyone that says young people don’t want employers to be on FB- the proof is in the pudding. Check out how many fans they have. So, does your org have a Facebook profile?