Original source: Inside Out Recruiting, Recruiter.com

The job of the recruiting department today has become somewhat of a business generalist role.  They are measured in terms of typical recruiting metrics, but they really have to be astute in every facet of the business.  Marketing is one of those skill sets that a progressive recruiting department must add to their list of skill sets.  You’re no longer just recruiting for the marketing department, but you are literally doing marketing for your company in order to attract and retain top talent.

Marketing you ask?  Yes, you must become kings and queens of messaging as it relates to conveying your “employer brand”.  This starts on the inside of your organization.  It doesn’t do much good if your recruiters know that your company is an employer of choice but nobody on the inside of the organization knows that.  Once you “market” your key messages inside of your organization, your employees begin speaking with that same vernacular and hopefully recruiting great candidates along the way.

Utilize tools such as an Intranet or Employee Benefit Portal to communicate these key messages about your company.  That’s a start, but from there you should brand some of these key messages on things like trade-show giveaways, posters within your physical building, on your email tags, and certainly on the pages of your career site on your company’s external website. The important thing here is to make it a whole-company effort: every touch point between your company and the outside world is a potential recruiting opportunity.

How can your company be an employer of choice?  Here are 7 ways that you promote your company from the inside out:

1. Go for “best of lists” best company to work for, fastest growing, etc.  Make sure that you use these accreditations on your Intranet, company Facebook page, company LinkedIn page, and as an email signature.  This messaging should be well known to your employees so they can easily throw that little factoid out when they are explaining to their friends what they do and who they work for.
2. At the end of each fiscal year put a short summary together that shows the number of people promoted and what % of your staff that is.  Track that year over year and announce the results and any goals associated with that.   Post this information on your Intranet and your career pages.  People like to know that employee development is important in your company and that they won’t just get stuck in a dead end job.
3. Highlight your employees who have reached milestone anniversaries, post their story on the Intranet for employees to see and have something to look forward to. Consider more public options as well, so long as they are permission based.
4. Have you had employees get recognized for awards in their field, published articles, or patents?  Make a big deal about that with your employees on the Intranet as well as on your career portal; that tells people that they will be recognized for their personal achievements and contributions.  If you can influence HR to offer a bonus for these types of achievements that would be even better.
5. If your company offers salary or other benefits that are better than other companies in your industry, announce that.  Make it known that you research this information every year and that your goal is to stay xx above the average in order to attract and retain the best talent.  If it’s working, say so.  Your employees will remember that when a recruiter comes calling on them or when their friends ask them if your company pays well.
6. Work with your sustainability or energy management department to get some stats on what your company is doing above and beyond to reduce your facilities and overall carbon footprint.  If it’s better than other employers in your industry and area, make sure to announce that to your employees.  A greater number of employees are concerned about sustainability and would prefer to work for a company who promotes sustainable practices.
7. Get quotes from your employees on why they like working for you and use those quotes to form your branding messages. Make your employer-pitch as human and emotive as possible. The best messages from a marketing standpoint are ideally stories, not just quotes.

The bottom line is, if your employees are fed the branding messages consistently, your marketing can stick in their heads like that 5 dollar footlong commercial. If every employee in your company both understands the value of employment branding and knows “the pitch” by heart, your recruiting efforts will be easier. If your overall goal is to land the top talent in your market, it can’t just be you doing all the heavy lifting.  The whole company from the inside out needs to be on point and on message, but of course most importantly, be inspired to help follow your company vision and advance its image.

Original post: Developing a Social Media Strategy, By Ryan Leary, Kenexa

Workforce Magazine’s 2010 Integrated Talent Management Software Providers

As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. For corporate recruiters, the need to attract qualified talent in an effort to build a talent pipeline is the same. But how recruiters build talent communities and connect with both passive and active candidates is changing. There’s no denying that recruiting is experiencing a powerful paradigm shift powered by Web 2.0 technology. Web 2.0 is a new category of Internet tools and technologies that includes blogs; social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; and content communities such as YouTube and Flickr that encourage collaboration and communication. According to a recent McKinsey & Company survey on Internet technologies, two-thirds of respondents view Web 2.0 as an important part of maintaining their company’s market position, either to provide a competitive edge, match the competition or address customer demand.

Web 2.0 encompasses social and professional networking platforms. For recruiters, social networking provides an opportunity to connect with a new generation of people and candidates. You may be asking yourself, “Do I really need to incorporate social networking into my recruiting strategy?” Once you realize that it was only 10 years ago when organizations shifted from sourcing candidates through newspaper classifieds to online job boards, you’ll know the answer is an emphatic “yes.’ Building online talent communities through social and professional networking platforms provides more opportunities to communicate with active and passive candidates, build meaningful relationships, strengthen your employment brand and fill open positions quickly.

However, not all social networks are created equal and understanding how to use them to build talent communities and connect with top talent can be tricky. With the proliferation of communities such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Ning and Twitter, it is important that recruiters and organizations understand the nuances of these networks to build an effective online strategy.

Why do I need a social media strategy?
Although current economic conditions have forced many organizations to curtail hiring, it’s more important than ever for companies to continue recruiting. Whether you have an open position that needs to be filled now or are planning for future needs, a social media strategy is imperative to reducing costs, recruiting quality talent quickly, increasing recruiter effectiveness and gaining competitive advantages.

One reason organizations need to revamp their recruiting strategy is that people have changed the way they look for jobs. According to the most recent National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS), the number of online job seekers has risen 50 percent over the last 12 months. Yet these job seekers aren’t just looking on Monster.com or Indeed.com; they’re using search engines such as Google and popular social networks to find their next employment opportunity. Even candidates who aren’t actively looking to make a move are using these sources to keep abreast of forward-thinking companies. After all, joining a talent community fosters relationships and builds connections within industries.

For recruiters, job boards are no longer proving to be the Holy Grail for sourcing candidates. While posting an ad on a job board may result in a large volume of applicants, it doesn’t necessarily yield qualified candidates. Using job boards is a very transactional recruitment method—recruiters post a job and wait for responses. Job boards do not allow recruiters to interact and build relationships with candidates, or be targeted in their search. Social networks deliver a better mechanism to connect and engage with both passive and active candidates.

In the past, recruiters spent their days on the phone reaching out to hundreds of people to find qualified candidates. Today, by leveraging LinkedIn or Facebook, recruiters can instantly learn about a candidate’s background and gain access to the people they are connected with through a contact’s extended network. Candidates using social networks tend to be extremely focused and technically advanced. They’re actively seeking to use Web 2.0 tools and technologies to power their job searches and be at the forefront of their industries. As such, they’re not the candidates that are blasting their resumes out to any job posting. They take the time to conduct research, target specific companies and join groups and networks to learn about what’s going on in a specific company and related industry. Social media is about openness, transparency and “findability,” and organizations taking a creative approach to sourcing qualified candidates need to participate in these same communities to ensure recognition from passive and active job seekers.

To participate successfully in the social media revolution, companies need to establish their brand across communities where qualified candidates “hang out,” drive people to their career site and begin leveraging relationships with their contacts and their contact’s extended network. In the social networking arena, it’s no longer about who you know; it’s about who they know and how you utilize those relationships.

Six aspects of a social media recruiting strategy every company should know
The best way to use social media to build communities and utilize relationships is to create your brand, identify the networks used by your target audience and get involved. LinkedIn has become the de facto standard for business users, while networks such as Facebook and Twitter are seen as consumer services. However, both offer opportunities to build the talent pipeline and raise awareness of a company’s employment brand.

The key to success with social networking is to understand that each tool is used for a different demographic and job family. Companies need to ensure they have a consistent brand across the various networks they participate in, yet still ensure their contribution to the community is relevant. With thousands of professionals joining social networks each day, organizations should know the following when thinking about their social media strategy:

1. Social media has a low cost of entry. Organizations that use Web 2.0 technologies can choose from a host of low-cost, high impact options to build their brand and connect with candidates online. Starting a blog or creating a Facebook page is simple, requires minimal resources to startup or maintain, and helps an organization build a talent pipeline by establishing company-specific groups and committees.
2. Building brand equity is driven by social behaviors. Embracing a social media strategy requires a shift in mindset. In the past, recruiters were solely associated with their organization. Today, social networks require organizations to associate themselves with their people. For recruiters, this means demonstrating thought leadership on behalf of the organization, building trust and creating personal connections with members of a targeted community.
3. Web 2.0 is about “The Four C’s”: Communication, Collaboration, Conversation and Community. Social networks foster communities where people tend to gather around a common goal or shared interest and interact regularly. Join the conversation, but remember that as a member of the community, you need to do a fair share of listening. Engage in conversations with community members, share ideas and actively participate. Recruiters should be transparent about their connection to the employment brand because creating an authentic brand is one of the most crucial pieces to online success. Recruiters on LinkedIn should also have a complete profile that includes their photo, career history and recommendations from peers, colleagues and candidates. Candidates want to know that the recruiter can be trusted in guiding their career to the next step, and as the recruiter becomes active in the community, it encourages candidates to accept further recruitment invitations. While joining communities and participating in groups is valuable to connecting with candidates, creating a group can also help recruiters reach a relevant and defined audience. As a group owner, organizations can take advantage of access to group members and their contact information. Perhaps they’re interested in candidates with a certain set of skills or experience at a particular employer—by creating their own group, companies can develop relationships with people who are likely to fit their recruiting needs.
4. Different networks appeal to different demographics. Part of a successful recruiting strategy is utilizing the networks that are relevant to your target audience. For example, organizations looking to hire recent college graduates may want to focus more heavily on Facebook, while organizations seeking a pharmacokinetics scientist may have better results using LinkedIn. You need to know where your target market hangs out, establish a profile and facilitate conversations.
5. Social networking can provide a greater depth of information about candidates and granular insight into target companies. On social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, users create profiles that include their contact information, employment history, hobbies, association memberships and network connections. This enables recruiters to conduct more targeted searches when looking for a candidate. When recruiters utilize the power of LinkedIn and tools like Capital IQ, an innovative data aggregator, they are able to creatively develop a targeted approach that results in a more authentic dialogue. Understanding who the “movers and shakers” are in a target company, who has received recent promotions, and, even more importantly, the inner makeup of the company’s demographics, will undoubtedly result in a robust strategy to attract top talent.
6. Targeted searches reduce cycle time. Once companies have created or joined a collaborative community, they’ll be able to gain rapid access to a community of people with the right skills and qualifications. Traditionally, recruiters don’t start the recruiting process until a requisition opens. With social networking, recruiters utilize scalable relationships to quickly meet business demands—creating transparent and proactive recruiting efforts. There’s no denying the current cultural shift happening in recruiting. Web 2.0 is having a serious impact on the business world, and progressive organizations that admire creativity and forward-thinking top talent need to utilize their recruiting teams wisely.

About the Author
Ryan Leary is an operations recruiter with Kenexa, leveraging knowledge-based recruiting and advanced Web 2.0 technologies. Mr. Leary has been recognized for his expertise in developing priority talent pipelines, strategic/tactical planning, competitive market intelligence and building passive talent relationships. His passion for social networking comes from his identification as a cyber-sleuthing devotee. He has recently been featured as “Ambassador of the Virtual Handshake” from industry thought leader David Mendoza, and has been dubbed as an “Emerging Industry Leader” for his contributions to Recruitment 2.0. Mr. Leary’s work is driven by a passion to overcome the status quo and to become a world class recruiter. In his current role as Kenexa operations recruiter, he also trains recruiters and sourcers on how to utilize Web 2.0 technologies, such as LinkedIn, advanced Google sourcing and Live to build extensive, focused talent pipelines.

Social recruiting gets a kick in the pants with JIBE, a platform that uses the power of your friends to get hired.

I got my invite today to try out the newest platform for job seekers and recruiters alike. Currently in private beta, JIBE is the epitome of leveraging social graphing for finding candidates as well as positions — job listings are ranked by how often they are viewed and employers can “unlock” applicant profiles and then see who that applicant is connected to. The whole premise builds on how we’ve seen social media used for recruiting thus far and takes it to the next level. And it’s pretty freaking exciting if you ask me.

First off, I created my profile and immediately connected it to my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. JIBE is supposed to integrate with your Twitter account as well; however, I haven’t been prompted or seen how this is done yet. Completing your profile builds your bank of credits, which you will need to apply for positions (additional credits can be purchased as well).

Once you have created your profile, you can search for jobs and leverage your social network connections by seeing who you know that is at that company and send a private message those connections for advice or recommendations.

On Jibe, job seekers sign in with Facebook Connect. It pulls in their work and education history from their Facebook profile to pre-populate their Jibe profile. They can link their account to LinkedIn and Twitter as well (the service is targeting the 24-and-under crowd, who tend not to have LinkedIn accounts). Then for every job posting, they can see if they are connected to anyone at that company. Jibe allows members to message those people directly to ask for a recommendation or job advice.

Jibe still charges applicants to apply for jobs, but is now using a credit system. Applicants earn credits by linking their Jibe account to their various social networks, broadcasting their job search, sending private messages through the system, or updating their work history profile. They can also buy 500 credits for $5.

Each job listing is ranked based on how many times it’s been viewed, saved, or applied for. The jobs that rank higher turn up at the top of job searches. Employers can post jobs for free, but pay $15 to unlock an applicant’s profile. By unlocking the profile employers get to see the applicant’s name, who else they are connected to in the company, and they can send them a direct message. Candidates whose profile gets unlocked the most appear on a leaderboard

Jibe turns Facebook’s social graph into an internal recruiting graph for each candidate, showing the HR person or hiring manager who else in the company is connected to the candidate. Anyone who refers more than 10 friends for jobs will get their profile highlighted to their employer. Companies can also turn fans on their Facebook page into “job ambassadors.” A corresponding Facebook app will allow employers to put their job listings in their fan pages, where people can apply directly. Jibe is also making this recruiting graph available to college career centers in the hopes that they will use it as a tool to help students apply for jobs.

The current job boards are broken and dying. Injecting social elements into the job search makes much more sense. The best jobs always come through people you know.

TechCrunch: Social Recruiting: Localbacon Relaunches As Jibe

Research commissioned by Microsoft in December 2009 found that 79 percent of United States hiring managers and job recruiters surveyed reviewed online information about job applicants.

Most of those surveyed consider what they find online to impact their selection criteria. In fact, 70 percent of United States hiring managers in the study say they have rejected candidates based on what they found.

Review the results of the survey to see how online reputations impact people’s lives. The research comes from interviews with over 1,200 hiring and recruitment managers and 1,200 consumers in the United States, the U.K., Germany and France.

The results of the research reveal what you post on the Internet and what people post about you can affect your professional life.

Monitor your online reputation

Protect your online reputation

Learn what action you can take to manage your online reputation.

Original Post: The Many Benefits of Social Network Recruiting: Making a Compelling Business Case

How do you convince cynical executives to fund a social network recruiting effort?

It’s hard to argue against the statement that social networking (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) is an extremely hot topic in business. But I have yet to find a single CFO or senior executive willing to fully fund a comprehensive social network recruiting strategy based merely on the fact that it’s a hot concept.

Even when budget is made available, most organizations need to develop measures to help direct spending into the right efforts that will provide them with the highest recruiting impact and ROI. There is no escaping it: making a compelling business case must become a priority for social network recruiting champions.

In this article, I’ll provide an outline of the four basic business case steps covering how to secure funding during these tight economic times.

Business Case Step #1: Identify the Potential Benefits of Social Network Recruiting

Provide targeted executives with a list of potential benefits and then simply have them select the ones that (if proven) would be compelling enough to positively influence their decision. Have them eliminate benefits that, whether true or not, wouldn’t influence their decision.

With that guidance in hand, design a process that focuses on proving only those benefits that were selected as highly compelling.

The following is a list of 20 potential benefits and business impacts that can result from effective social network recruiting. They are grouped based on their general level of impact on cynical executives:

Highly Compelling Benefits

• Hire quality — the program may result in hires who perform better on the job and have higher retention rates.
• Candidate quality — those who frequently use social networks may be the highly desirable early adopter; this source may identify higher-quality candidates who can then be presented to hiring managers (including those who are more technically savvy and more innovative). Note: even the simple act of listing the primary source (that generated the resume) on the top corner of every resume will, over time, educate hiring managers and eventually lead them to demand that recruiting shift their emphasis toward the sources that appear most frequently on top of the resumes that end up on a hiring manager’s short list.
• ROI — the dollar value of the program’s benefits may far exceed its cost, and the resulting ROI may be significantly higher than other recruiting programs.
• Vacancy days — because of the high usage rates and the short response times on some social network communications channels, revenue-generating, and key positions may be filled faster, resulting in fewer costly vacancy days in key positions.
• Higher offer acceptance rates — using social networks to attract and communicate with candidates may result in higher offer acceptance rates among finalists.
• Hidden candidates — it may identify qualified candidates who cannot be found or successfully messaged using other sources.

Often compelling benefits

• Employer brand — using social networks may increase your visibility and may significantly improve your “we get it” leading-edge employer brand image among targeted prospects (even if the image-building it doesn’t result in immediate applications).
• College impact — because of the high social network usage rates among college students, it may directly impact the number and the quality of college hire and entry-level candidates.
• Communications responsiveness — because there is less spam and in most cases you must be invited before you can send a message, using social networks to communicate may result in higher response rates and/or in more immediate responses when you send messages to prospects and candidates.
• Message impact — messages sent over social media channels may be perceived by the receiver as being more authentic or have a higher level of credibility and believability than traditional corporate mechanisms. The relatively low cost of sending messages over social networks may also allow your firm to increase the number of messages that it can afford to send. Together, these two factors may result in more effective messages that directly increase applications.
• Job visibility — using social networking sources may ensure that your job openings will be seen and read by a larger number of qualified candidates.
• Candidate diversity — it may provide your firm with a higher percentage of qualified diverse candidates in managerial and professional jobs.
• Global candidates — it may provide your firm with a high number of qualified candidates who reside outside of your headquarter’s country.
• Cross-fertilization — the methods, tools, and approaches that are developed using social networks for recruiting may be directly transferred to other business functions like marketing, customer service, product development, etc. So these functions may find that their social networking results will be directly and measurably improved as a result of the collaboration.

Occasionally compelling benefits

• Candidate volume — social networking sources may provide your firm with a high volume of qualified candidates.
• Lower dropout rates — you must build relationships with your “friends” in order to maintain them as part of your social network. Fortunately, social networks make it easy to build relationships quickly. Once built, it’s not surprising that this relationship may result in more applications, but it may also lower the candidate dropout rate throughout the hiring process.
• Competitive advantage — using social networks may provide your firm with a significant competitive advantage over other talent competitors. The net result may be that you can win more head-to-head battles with competitors over top talent.
• Benchmarking and learning — the time that your employees spend building relationships that may lead to recruiting successful candidates may also help gather benchmark information and improve employee learning.
• Increase sales — because using social networks directly improves your visibility and your firm’s “we get it” image, it may also influence the sales of your consumer products among those that equate product quality and being a desirable employer.
• Cost per hire — the recruiting-related transactional costs may be lower compared to other sources.

Business Case Step # 2: Identify And Counter Additional Resistance Issues

Merely convincing decision-makers that the program has significant benefits isn’t enough on its own to get funding. Unfortunately, almost all executives have some often-powerful preconceived issues that must be successfully countered. In the case of using social networks, these roadblocks almost always include issues related to:

• Employees “wasting” numerous work hours on social networks.
• Protecting the release of company information and secrets.
• Maintaining a single corporate message when you can’t control what your employees say on the Internet.
• Privacy-related issues.

At the very least, demonstrate to the COO, CFO, CIO, PR, and the corporate counsel that their potential concerns are overblown.

Start by showing that other benchmark firms that are allowing their employees and recruiters to use social networks are realizing benefits far greater than the potential costs. Next, present external research data that shows how employees use social networks for professional purposes. While studies that determine what percentage of social network traffic is professionally versus personally relevant are rare, informal studies among organizations piloting looser controls on social network activity found between 40%-65% of activity posted during work hours was professional in nature; the majority either requesting or sharing information from/with peers.

Additionally, show skeptical managers that you have developed a formal process for identifying, countering, and burying undesirable information on the Internet. Educate them that, in a connected world, they have already lost complete control of what is said about their firm, and that strategies that involve doing nothing are tantamount to giving up entirely.

Show the naysayers examples of what’s already out there. Show them how having numerous active employees on social network sites, talking positively, will directly counter the existing negative information and actually increase the number of positive messages that people can easily access.

Business Case Step # 3: Use Logical Arguments to Gain Agreement on Some of the Remaining Benefits

After narrowing the list of potential benefits to the most impactful ones, make every attempt to get executives to accept the likelihood of some of the benefits based exclusively on logical arguments. Whether you write a report or provide a PowerPoint presentation, minimize the number of benefits you have to prove with hard data.

With social network recruiting, executives might accept your professional judgment on benefits like its effectiveness on college recruiting; the value of cross-fertilization; the availability of global candidates; and the employer branding impacts.

Business Case Step # 4 – Prove the Remaining Benefits with Data

Out of the 20 possible benefits that you started with, you are likely to have to prove the actual impact of at least five of them with data. I will outline each of the five data collection methods in the remaining bullet points. Please note that the methods are listed from the least convincing to the most convincing data collection method.

Using existing data

• Provide benchmark data — in some cases, executives will agree that a program will likely provide the level of expected benefits based on external research data. The data might come from consulting firms or industry associations. However, the most convincing research data generally comes from either direct competitors or from firms that your executives admire. The goal is to convince executives that if, for example, using social networks at IBM reduced time to fill by 38%, a similar result could be expected at your firm.
• Look for existing internal efforts — on occasion, especially in large firms, you will find that some group, facility, or region has already tried your new approach without corporate approval or knowledge. In the case of social networks, you would attempt to identify and then use the results produced by any “rogue” group as an indication of the benefits or results that a company-wide effort might obtain. Because the data is internal, it is more likely to be accepted than external benchmarking data.

Limited data collection required

• Use your own employees as a baseline — assume you are trying to prove that social networks provide the capability of identifying “hidden candidates” who could be found in other sources. Start with a list of your own top performers in a particular job and then search traditional sources like job boards, attendees at professional conferences, and Google searchers to see what percentage can be located. You then do a search of their names on social network sites. By comparing the two results, you can find out whether your best employees who are “hidden” or not available on traditional sources can in fact be found on social network sites. You can use a similar approach to identify whether social networks contain more diverse candidates. You can use a third-party to see if messages to your own employees have a better response rate if they are sent via social network channels (compared to traditional voice or email).

Providing new data

• Run a small pilot sample — in order to gather performance data to prove that a program produces certain benefits or results, it’s sometimes necessary to run a small pilot project. Pilot projects are widely used in other business areas and they have a high rate of credibility. In the case of social networks, you could suddenly allow a single recruiter to begin using social network tools and you would then attempt to identify any improvement in their performance (comparing their baseline performance to their performance after using social networking tools). You can also run a pilot on a single job to see if the baseline performance on key metrics improves. If you have the resources, you can run a pilot in a complete business unit or facility and then compare the before and after results. Unfortunately running pilot projects may require some level of approval and it will cost some money (but much less than a full-scale rollout).
• Use a split sample — the most convincing form of proof that doesn’t require a companywide implementation is to use a split sample. It’s the same approach that is used by drug companies to convince regulators that their product is effective. For example, say you wanted to prove that social network recruiting produced higher-performing hires than traditional recruiting methods. You could start by identifying a team of recruiters who recruited exclusively for a single job family. You would randomly separate this small team of recruiters into two groups. Nothing would change for the control group, while the second group from the team would be trained how to use social network recruiting tools. They would be required to use social network recruiting as a major segment of their recruiting for all of their jobs over a six-month period. The initial on-the-job performance of their new hires after three and six months would be compared to the performance of the new hires from the recruiters in the control group. If the performance of the social network recruiter group was significantly better, you could say with a high level of credibility that using social networks improves the quality of hire. Continuing to measure the performance differential over time would provide additional data to support the program’s ability to improve the quality of hire.

I’m currently in the process of working with our Talent Acquisition team to improve my company’s external Careers site, the front end “static” pages as well as the applicant tracking system (ATS) itself. Some of the challenges that I am currently facing are:

1. Effectively communicating what we do as a business in a fun and interactive manner.
2. Streamlining the user experience so that it is easy for applicants to find and apply for positions.
3. Conveying the company as a great place to work with excellent benefits and programs (and it is!).
4. Aligning the recruiting brand to the corporate enterprise, while also maintaining one that is unique to our business.

We recently deployed a refreshed home page that incorporates social media (links to our newly created Facebook fan page and Twitter pages), and are working to include more interactive features such as employee videos and possibly even a blog. Additionally, we are improving our current ATS to simplify the application process.

In my research for best practices, I came across an article on ERE.net which is contains some great ideas for improving a company career’s site. Check the six ways to create a positive candidate experience below:

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Original source: Using Career Sites to Create a Positive Candidate Experience, by Kevin Wheeler

A positive candidate experience translates directly into more referrals, more hires, and better quality candidates. The experience most candidates have with an organization usually starts in one of two ways: they either receive a call from a recruiter or a friend who tells them about the organization, or they go to the career site for information and to look for open positions.

The recruiter’s opening remarks, telephone or face-to-face style, and assumptions about the candidate forge the initial impression a candidate gets of the organization. And as they say, you can only make a first impression once! If it is a poor one, you will most likely lose the candidates, and perhaps the referrals they could have made.

Rather than relying on a recruiter to create the candidate experience, smart organizations will strive to provide a consistent and constant experience that is independent of any individual, and that experience will be centered on the career site.

Over the next decades it will become a requirement that every organization have an interactive career site that will be the portal for candidates at any stage of the hiring process to provide feedback, information, and to develop and grow their relationship with your organization. Some organizations have started on this journey, including Deloitte, Microsoft, and KPMG. They have put together websites and online events that are targeted at their most desired candidates and create positive impressions. But, most career sites are weak at creating any impression at all and are just fluff.

For most organizations the candidate experience process is weak, broken, and badly in need of being rethought. As more and more candidates are from Gen Y, they expect to see dynamic, interesting, and authentic career sites that provide specific information. They are much less focused on talking directly with a recruiter or with developing a face-to-face relationship. Yet, recruiters are notorious for believing that the only possible way to know people is by “pressing the flesh”: meeting them in person, calling them on the phone, or having lunch or dinner with them. While these are all useful and time-tested, it is also possible to get to know people and build relationships using the Internet. By using technology to extend out from the small number of people it is possible to meet and know face-to-face, a recruiter can become vastly more effective.

Building electronic relationships with no personal contact is not only possible, it may even be desirous. Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, has said that human relationships are declining in the selling of goods and services. What he means is that telephone and face-to-face connections between corporate buyers and their suppliers is rapidly being supplanted by Internet and email conversations. The same is also true of relationships with customers. Amazon, Dell, Lands’ End, and other retailers have developed sophisticated tools to build and maintain long-term relationships with their customers.

Here are six ways to build a more positive candidate experience into your career site.

1. Move your thinking from a career site to something more like a social network. Turn your career site into a social network by using tools such as Ning to create one, or engaging the services of an organization such as Standout Jobs that specializes in recruiting networks. This will automatically give you many of the features I describe.
2. Have recruiters write blogs. Blogs have become the voice of authenticity and provide the most credible information. Candidates become attached to specific bloggers and keep coming back, which results in them having a relationship and deeper understanding of your organization than they could have gotten in any other way. Even though we have been blogging for years, only a handful of recruiting sites have a blog aimed at candidates. The most well known is Heather Hamilton’s at Microsoft. Most of us have let legal issues and the difficulty to overcome internal bureaucratic processes stifle the use of this potentially excellent communication and relationship-building tool.
3. Make the site adapt to the candidate’s needs. Build in choices so that candidates who are analytical can get data, facts, and charts while those candidates who are more verbal get similar information in text or pictures. Creating various forms of the same content is a clever and effective way of adding what seems to the candidates a personal touch to the website.
4. Hold webinars. Periodic online seminars, or webinars, can be used to build traffic and create some opportunities for people to learn what your organization does and how they might fit into it. There are a number of webinar firms that offer inexpensive software that you could harness for this purpose. These can be recorded and offered later as podcasts.
5. Hold a contest. Promoting contests and games can also be a useful way to generate excitement and build relationships. People respond to trivia games, contests, and online minisurveys. They like the instant feedback and the ability to do something rather than just read. These contests are also a way to get people to come back over and over again to your site. Each time they return is another opportunity to recruit them — or at least to have a conversation with them and keep them excited about your organization.

The point of all this is to give candidates authentic information when they need it in a way they respond to. A good career site is not just a listing of open positions but also a carefully thought out and targeted marketing tool. By spending your budget dollars to develop a dynamic career site, you can lower your overall sourcing costs, increase candidate volume and quality, and build your organization’s reputation.

Original source: Social Networks and Talent Strategies, by Alice Snell

All the chatter around social networking seems apropos considering it is—at its core—a communications media. However, examinations of the demographics, trends, and impact send some mixed messages. For example:

Facebook users get lower grades in college features an Ohio State University study where the 85% of students who are Facebook users get lower grades. Yet Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study highlights an Australian study where workers who use the Internet at work are 9% more productive. And opportunities abound as Social Networking jobs are steadily rising.

Meanwhile, the intersection of social networking and recruiting continues to be controversial. Jobseekers are counseled on How to Turn Social Networking Into a Job Offer while Bosses and Workers Disagree on Social Network Privacy.

The Consumer Internet Barometer found 43% of the online community now use social networking sites, up from 27% a year ago. But College Students’ Facebook Use Easing Up Over the Summer, While Parents Logging On in Record Numbers.

The social networking demographic has surely broadened beyond Gen Y along with the applications of the technologies.

Successful organizations are using social technologies to complement their talent strategies. Find out more in the presentation below:

Original source: Social Networks and Talent Strategies, by Alice Snell

Source: Phonecasting, a rising trend in mobile communications? | CloudRecruiting.net

Ok, so I know what you’re thinking… another buzzword.  So, what in the world is Phonecasting?

Phonecasting, also known as phlogging or phone-blogging, involves the ability to use your phone to broadcast directly to the internet, live. Phonecasting combines the popularity of podcasting with the ubiquity and ease of use of mobile devices.

How does Phonecasting differ from Podcasting?

Well, for starters, podcasters typically use a microphone and recording software to create their programming. In contrast, phonecasters use the phone as the microphone. In addition, unlike traditional podcasting, phonecasting does not require recording software but simply phonecasting service (or application) that allows users to dial a number and record.

Don’t like blogging? Try phonecasting to attract your target audience.

You have often heard me speak about the topic of mobile marketing as a recruitment channel. Mobile recruiting offers the ability to market specifically to a target audience anytime, anywhere, on their mobile device. Since mobile is the most widely used of all mass media channels, phonecasting offers yet another dimension to the idea of mobile recruiting. With phonecasting, recruiters/employers have the ability to share job opportunities in the form of audio podcasts or jobcasts.  Chris Russell over at JobsinPods has built a formidable business providing jobcasting solutions for employers.  Consumers (candidates) can easily subscribe to a phonecasts/jobcasts and listen while on-the-go, at the gym, during idle time in traffic, etc.  You can follow Chris Russell on Twitter to get more on this topic.

In addition to jobcasting, industry voices such as Michael Kelemen from the Recruiting Animal Show, Asia-Pacific’s Most-Connected Recruiter Stan Relihan, and my good friend Jim Stroud at The Recruiter’s Lounge have helped to popularize the general use of podcasting as a form of infotainment in the recruiting industry.

Phonecasting’s self-service model…

In the true nature of Web 2.0, there are many self-services applications today that offer users the ability to begin phone-blogging, or phonecasting with minimal to no costs. To get started, all you need is a phone, a phonecasting service provider, and a message you wish to deliver. If you want to dive right into podcasting, then you will be pleased to know there are many available options to get you up and running in no time.

The following are 10 services that offer either phonecasting, podcasting, or voice broadcasting solutions:

1. www.phonecasting.com – Phonecasting.com is an online social network that brings you the best in podcasting, phonecasting, mobile and video content, plus simple tools for you to publish your own content to the nets podcasting community.

2. www.ipadio.com – ipadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the internet, live.  Phone blog, commentate, collect audio data, record and update the world or simply let your mates know what you’re doing – ipadio is integrated with Twitter & Facebook.

3. www.gcast.com – Gcast’s goal is to make personal broadcasting (podcasting) simple. Their focus is to allow users to create audio broadcasts, easily record voice messages, mix in your favorite music, and share it all for the world to hear.

4. www.jobsinpods.com - Jobs in Pods, the internet’s first ever audio recruitment platform built with social media. Unlike the traditional job boards you are used to visiting, Jobs in Pods is a place to actually hear from the employers themselves through audio interviews with their HR managers/employees.

5. www.yodio.com – Yodio offers an integrated, one-stop digital publishing service where anyone can go to self-record, produce, and share audio recordings (podcasts) and personal broadcasts (audio synchronized with digital photos).

6. www.gabcast.com – Gabcast.com is a podcasting and audioblogging platform that offers virtual communities, individuals and organizations an easy way to create and distribute audio content.

7. www.earfl.com – earfl was created to give your voice a voice. We’ve made it easy to tell your stories: just call 415.223.3802 from your mobile phone and start talking. Hang up, log on and start listening. It’s really that easy.

8. www.xmvoice.com – XMVoice offers voice broadcasting that allows you to instantly send hundreds or even thousands of interactive phone calls with ease while managing the entire process right from the Web.

9. labs.jaduka.com/dukaBuzz – dukaBUZZ enables site visitors to leave audio messages and testimonials that can be shared with others. Instead of typing and posting written comments, site visitors record audio comments using the dukaBUZZ widget and their standard phone (no software downloads or headsets required).

10. www.tweetmic.com – TweetMic is a Twitter fan’s must have iPhone app. It’s simple, intuitive, and allows you to make high-quality audio recordings or “Tweetcasts” then publish them directly to Twitter. There is no limit to how much you can record and you don’t need to sign up for any additional service to start using TweetMic. For more, check out the TweetMic review from goodBetaBest.com..

While the list above was not intended to be all-inclusive of the services available, if you feel I have left out any particularly useful sites, please be sure to leave a response and let us know. As always, thanks for stopping by!

Source:  Phonecasting, a rising trend in mobile communications? | CloudRecruiting.net

via Six tips for using Twitter as a recruitment tool | View from the Cubicle | TechRepublic.com, by Toni Bowers

According to Nielsen NetView, in February 2009, Twitter had nearly 7.1 million users, with a growth rate of 1,382 percent from the year before. Some companies are finding this growth rate a great opportunity to recruit people for jobs.

In a recent issue of Workforce Management, two representatives from digital advertising agency Organic said they have made Twitter the anchor of their job posting strategy. Here are some of the benefits, according to Organic:

“Once we have an opening that might be a fit for a Twitter friend, rather than making a cold call to a stranger, we can make a “warm tweet.” We can talk to someone with whom we’ve already interacted, who already understands a bit about Organic based on tweets that cover Organic’s culture, work and news items. It’s less like a blind date and more like a first date with someone you’ve already met.

Another benefit: There are no time or space constraints to tweeting with a candidate. We don’t have to interrupt potential candidates during their busy workdays; they can engage with us when it’s convenient for them. And candidates who aren’t ready to make a move can easily retweet, or forward, our opening to peers who may also be a fit.”

Also, it’s free, unlike many traditional job boards.

If you decide to take the plunge and make Twitter part of your staff recruitment plan, here are six tips the Workforce article offers for using it to top advantage:

1. Create a branded company Twitter profile. Assign a key person — or automate tweets — to post jobs as they become available. This person should also be responsible for following professionals that could be potential candidates.

2. Don’t be a Twitter wallflower. Engage in conversation with the people you are following — and your followers — whether you have job openings for them or not. Then, when you need to speak with someone about an opportunity, you’ve already established rapport.

3. Create a protocol for your job tweets. Consider searchability by using hash marks (#) around key words. Include a trackable URL to your job posting so you can monitor the number of click-throughs a job posting receives.

4. Help your search by using a third-party tool such as TweetBeep, which alerts you to tweets relevant to your search.

5. Encourage your staff to retweet job openings by providing an incentive such as a referral bonus for candidates sourced through tweeting.

6. Don’t be a one-track tweeter. Be varied and creative in your approach. To keep it real and not boring or spamlike, tweet on a variety of topics including industry-related items of interest, some personal tweets and, of course, your job postings.

via Six tips for using Twitter as a recruitment tool | View from the Cubicle | TechRepublic.com.