Raytheon has jumped full bore into social media this year with two Twitter accounts @Raytheon_Jobs (experienced hiring) and @RTNCollegeJobs (college hiring).

This innovative initiative was spearheaded by Jeff Goodman, Talent Acquisition Manager at Raytheon. With over 2,000 followers, they are now one of the leading companies using Twitter to drive interested candidates directly to their employment web site. Their goal is to brand Raytheon and to engage candidates in conversations and then leverage those conversations into applications.

Having posted 600+ jobs, they are able to track conversions off of Twitter - over 23,000 people have gone from Twitter to directly to a job. Very impressive!

Raytheon offers this advice to other recruiters looking to jumpstart social media in their organizations:

• Expect that this will take a fair amount of effort and it will take time to see results
• Don’t think about social media in traditional terms - you will need to keep it up and offer new content often
• Try to go for a one company approach to focus your audience building
• Get buy in from all areas of your company so no one is surprised and all areas can benefit from a consolidated approach

If you’re using social media to attract talent, please email me. We’d love to highlight your experiences so we can all keep moving up the learning curve!