Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Sarah Palin vs. CareerBuilder on Facebook
Posted by JasonWith hundreds of investments you can make with online advertising, the CareerBuilder ad deal with Facebook, hasn’t proven to be one on the top of my list. What was touted earlier this year as an innovative way to break into the social media and networking space hiring - and the next big thing for CareerBuilder clients - is proving otherwise on the surface.
From Super Bowl ads to the iPhone application, they deserve some credit for trying. But better placed ads on Facebook haven’t induced a high level of attention from job seekers on this popular social networking site.
When you break down the results, here are 5 reasons this might not make the top of your list:
- 8,613 fans to date. Given the amount of advertising, ads and visibility this was going to bring - 8,613 fans doesn’t cut it. Consider that in a few months, the “I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin” group grew to over 250,000. Even “My Pet Rock is more Qualified than Sarah Palin to be Vice President” has almost twice as many fans.
- According to recent hitwise data for CareerBuilder, Facebook is #14 on the list, accounting for 0.66% of upstream traffic.
- Why would you compete with other employers on the CareerBuilder page - and not just create your own page? This will allow you to engage with job seekers directly, via your own site, vs. sending candidates to CareerBuilder for a broader job search. Check out companies that have done this on their own including E&Y, Microsoft, and Best Buy.
- The average employer viewed today on the CareerBuilder-Facebook page today has 330 fans.
- You just need to check out the posts on the wall of the fan page… The wall, 53 posts in total, say it all.
If you are looking for ways to breaking into cost effective ways to attract and engage with talent online, there are alternatives. Check back next week to explore some other ideas. In the meantime, here are a few resources to jump-start your own career site:
Options:
A Talent Strategy Conversation with Susan Burns - Part 2
Posted by Jason
Part one of my conversation with Susan Burns focused on opportunities and trends within talent management. Part 2, posted here focuses on social media and social networking, metrics, and the candidate experience from a recruiting perspective.
Jason:
There continues to be an emphasis and talk about the use of social media and social networking in recruitment. Keeping in mind some are leading the way, while others are skeptical, what advice do you have for those that are taking the wait-and-see approach?
Susan:
As you know I’m an advocate of social media and quite passionate about the use of it for talent attraction and engagement. In a way it’s good that some recruitment leaders are still skeptical. There are several aspects of social media that should be thoroughly considered before moving forward with a visible online network presence. Diving into social media too quickly can cause a lot of harm to a brand. Recruiting leaders can benefit by taking the time to not only understand the nuances of social media but, more importantly, frame what it means for their brand –
- What are they trying to accomplish?
- What does it take to build, nurture and engage an active community, or communities?
- How will the recruitment function manage active communities to keep content fresh and interact with talent?
- Which communities are a fit for the brand and the type of talent they want to attract?
- How will the social media presence integrate with the employment brand strategy?
This is just a sampling of the questions that should be considered and explored before moving forward with a social media strategy. Taking the time to observe communities, talk to people, and play in the environment will help recruiters get a feel for what works and what doesn’t before exposing the brand. Too often I see recruiters entering social media environments and immediately pushing job listings out before taking the time to build social equity. It’s easy to get caught up in the growing wave of hype but it’s more important to take the time and shape a strategic vision and implementation plan. If you’d like to read more on this topic here’s a link to an article I posted earlier in the year.
Jason:
Another topic that continues to receive a lot of press in human resources – and recruiting is metrics. How do you advise leaders on building a case for ROI in the talent space?
Susan:Starting from a point of alignment with core business strategies is a good place to begin so recruiting strategies and results are linked to the business. Measuring what’s important to the business, identifying data that is accessible and consistently available, and sharing the information on a regular basis will help the recruiting function further its credibility. If you’re measuring something that doesn’t add value by supporting the business objectives its simply additional noise in a crowded space – and potentially dilutes the value of the total story your trying to tell. For example, if you’re in a billable business environment time-to-fill is a very important metric because you can use the data to tell a story from various perspectives. By taking the number of days-to-fill times the average billing revenue the data can tell a compelling story and support building a case for change – like establishing an opportunity cost of talent. Maybe your trying to get additional resources or build a case for a new recruitment structure, whatever the objective you can use the data to tell a compelling story. By measuring data that’s important to the business it’s easier to get attention because your focusing on value-added actions.
Making sure the desired data is accessible and it can be collected on a consistent basis will ensure that progress can be measured and shared. Think about how you want to tell the initial story but also how you want to build on that story by communicating progress to further engage stakeholders, which builds personal and functional equity.
Jason:
From a candidates point of view, the “black hole” of HR / Recruiting still exists, even though the candidate experience is important for recruiters. What are your thoughts on the gaps that exist today?
Susan:I think this is a very important issue for recruiting functions to address. There are generally a couple of persistent reasons for the “black hole” and gaps between what’s wanted and what actually happens. It usually stems from the talent philosophy, recruiting process, or recruiting technology. It’s easy to say that a good candidate experience is important but what does that actually mean? What does it look like for the candidate? What type of behavior and actions need to be embraced by the recruiting function for the statement to be more than a statement? Taking a look at the company’s talent philosophy is the first place to begin. What does the company value and what is manageable? While I was with Federated Department Stores / Macy’s Inc. we framed our strategy with a “candidate as customer” motto. We knew that there was considerable overlap between our candidate marketplace and our customer base and taking this approach helped make it clear how candidates should be treated and informed the strategy and process. It also helped to ensure that the recruitment function was linked to the business purpose and that by taking good care of our candidates we were adding value to the company’s primary business purpose. Each company can establish a baseline to their desired candidate experience and build from there to further differentiate the brand.
Technology plays a big role as well. If the technology doesn’t support the objectives, is too complex, or isn’t aligned with the process then the strategy can’t be executed. The ATS or candidate management technology must make it easy for recruiters to communicate to applicants individually and in bulk, and many don’t. If recruiters have good technology and have bought into the strategy then the problems of the black hole should diminish over time.
One additional note on the “black hole” challenge. Third-party recruiters face the same challenge and too often take a “stalk and abandon” approach when working a search. They should be expected to deliver the same candidate experience when representing the company’s brand to ensure a positive experience.
Jason:
Closing thoughts?
Susan:
We’re currently in a time of tremendous uncertainty, change and transformation. While this can be unsettling its also an incredible learning opportunity. Where do you have opportunities to reflect, renew and reinvent or reinvigorate your strategy?
Connect with Susan:
Don’t forget you can chat with Susan each week on Talent Talk Cafe - on RecruitingBlogs.com. Just click on the cup for details!
A Talent Strategy Conversation with Susan Burns - Part 1
Posted by Jason
One of the great outcomes of spending time on social networking sites like twitter is the opportunity to engage with and meet people worldwide. Earlier this year I met Susan Burns - first online, and then a few months later in-person at a Conference. Since then, I’ve grown a tremendous amount of respect for her thoughts, views, and strategies around talent. I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Susan to discuss Talent Strategies.
Jason:
Focusing on talent, what do you see as the biggest opportunity (or opportunities) for organizations to consider as we plan for 2009 and beyond?
Susan:
Alignment, structure and clarity of the company’s talent philosophy are three opportunity areas for companies to address that will strengthen the overall talent foundation and support increased agility and speed – which are increasingly important for success, competitiveness and sustainability. At first, it may sound like a lot to address but these opportunity areas are closely related, complimentary, and play off each other to strengthen the talent function and drive overall momentum.
Alignment frames how the talent function intersects with the organization’s business strategy and planning process. Intersection with the strategic planning process should be a high priority for the staffing function since it provides insight into how to plan for the future and informs key decisions. Alignment between staffing and the business strategy process influences where and how recruiting resources are allocated and how growth and investments, or contraction, are prioritized. The information derived also informs workforce planning, which is obviously critical for the recruitment function. Whether it sits in the recruitment function or not there needs to be purposeful overlap and a continuous, two-way open information loop so recruitment can be proactive. I personally believe that workforce planning should sit within recruitment, if not be led by the recruitment function, for simplicity, efficiency and for the greatest value to be delivered to the organization’s business objectives.
While this may all seem straightforward there are still too many indications that active discussions between staffing leaders and business leaders are not happening, leaving staffing in a reactive position. When the staffing function is in a reactive position it is not as well-equipped to contribute strategic value, experiences increased costs, and also results in recruiter stress and burnout – besides a lack of time for recruiters to pursue personal development opportunitites. One more important point about intersecting with the organization’s business strategy and planning process - learn the language of your company’s business! Understand the important components and metrics that guide and measure the business and the related decisions. How do your decisions, actions and metrics tell a compatible and supportive story?
Periodically looking at the design and structure of the recruitment function ensures it’s agile, efficient, aligned with the company’s talent philosophy, and producing results that deliver a competitive and sustainable strategy. We continue to see an increasing number of channels, tools and technologies emerging that can benefit talent attraction and acquisition strategies. However, unless you can smartly organize around these to improve the value-add of recruiters, process efficiency and results, they potentially become more problematic, add complexity and dilute the existing strategy. As you breakdown the drivers for your overarching strategy do you assess whether what you want to get done can be supported by the existing structure? Here’s an example - Social Media! Not only is it increasingly important for the organization to have a presence on social networking sites and incorporate social media into their attraction strategy but to derive value from these channels there needs to be a dedicated resource to make the strategy sustainable. It is simply not possible for a full-cycle recruiter to allocate sufficient time to build and nurture an online community presence. Revisiting the structure to see where budget and/or roles could be reallocated to support a community manager role would support a successful strategy.
Alignment and structure work together to address one of the biggest challenges for a talent function – increased complexity. The amount of complexity is significant, primarily because of the disparate number of tools and technology used within the talent function, but that problem isn’t going to be solved any time soon and it’s much more difficult to address. But, complexity can be addressed by looking at those things that are controllable, and should be, if the function evolves, keeps pace with business and becomes a value-added partner. The more that can be done to reduce complexity the more time there is to invest in truly value-added activities like candidate attraction, engagement and selection.
Clarity around the company’s talent philosophy is often taken for granted, and the absence of clarity is a significant contributor to inefficiency and turnover. Being intentional and purposeful in communicating what the company is trying to accomplish streamlines efforts, increases momentum and strengthens the employment brand and value proposition. Are candidates receiving the same message from recruiters? From hiring managers? Is a new hires experience consistent with what they learned on your website and through the interview process? What happens when they want to take advantage of development programs? When their ready to pursue another opportunity in the company are they supported? These are just a few areas for Recruiting to assess, clarify and develop in partnership with their HR peers and design a persistent communication plan to cascade through the organization.
Jason:
As you have had the opportunity to consult, network, and meet with hundreds of recruiting and talent management professionals what are 2 or 3 common trends you notice in today’s climate?
Susan:
The most common trends are incorporating social media and networks to attract and engage talent and expanding their company’s view of “right fit” talent and to broaden their talent reach and candidate pool.
The majority of recruiting leaders realize that social media is an important component to integrate into their talent strategy, although there are still some that question the viability for recruitment. Of those that do want to incorporate social media the most common challenges are developing an understanding of the nuances of community to design an approach and establish a sustainable strategy. Allocating time to invest in learning about social media and then implementing a strategy to engage and manage communities is often daunting. Sustainability requires considerable care for nurturing community, which is an important component of a social media strategy, in addition to learning about the various platforms and supporting technologies. I’m a firm believer in establishing a foundation for understanding the tenets of community and then building an approach to recruitment. In most cases it may even require rethinking the current recruitment team function and processes, as mentioned above, with inclusion of a community manager role.
The real value of social networks comes when you can transform transactional actions to relationship interactions. Developing and nurturing communities takes time and if recruiters have full-cycle responsibility they don’t have the bandwidth to learn the numerous technologies and platforms and effectively engage in community relationship building and interaction. The role of a community manager, which is borrowed from the consumer space, is a position that should be established when developing a social media strategy to ensure it’s a sustainable and successful investment. Depending on the size and complexity of the organization this role could be a hybrid of a sourcing strategist role. The community manager / sourcing strategist should be tightly integrated into the recruitment team so the focus and purpose of the role is intentional and information flows openly and is shared efficiently. I’d also recommend developing an incremental approach that allows the company to define success milestones by moving slowly into the social media space, focus on building a strong foundation, and address specific talent needs that will be recognized as a big win for the talent function and company.
Expanding the company’s talent view to broaden reach and attract a more skillfully diverse candidate pool has many benefits. Hiring managers often apply a narrow view to “right fit” talent because that is what they know and there is not always supporting learning and development programs to acclimate new talent. Additionally, the way talent is brought onboard doesn’t support a planned learning curve. Companies could expand their talent pool by expanding their view and focusing on individual potential and talent adjacencies - a concentric approach that looks expands the skills and experiences to be considered. This type of strategy does require a mindshift and supporting programs to on-board talent. Additionally, taking an approach that aligns with succession planning targets and places new talent prior to the incumbent vacating their position could help hiring managers become more comfortable with the approach. The benefits – a broader talent pool from which to recruit, increased diversity of the company’s talent, reduced time-to-hire, and the ability to anticipate the future and focus on progressive needs as the company’s business evolves over time.
Connect with Susan:
You can also chat with Susan each week on Talent Talk Cafe - on RecruitingBlogs.com. Just click on the cup for details!
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50 Ways to Take your Blog to the Next Level
Blogging is as varied in its applications as using the telephone or taking a picture. The tool doesn’t predict the output. You might be using your blog to post recipes, or to inform the local community about information you find elsewhere on the web. Maybe you’re just trying your hand at writing, and the web is as good a place as any.
iWidgets to Bring CBS Fall Season to a Social Network Near You
iWidgets has now become a Social Syndication Platform thanks to its first major customer, CBS Interactive, one of the world’s top broadcasting companies. iWidgets allows website owners to socially syndicate their content and increase user activity in order to drive traffic and improve brand awareness. Apparently, CBS finds this model attractive enough to give it a shot.
With sites like Facebook and Flickr, a generation documents itself like never before.
Over the past five years, the meteoric rise of social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has reflected a public explosion in self-documentation, scholars say.
Five Ways to Use Social Media to Reach People Who Don’t Use Social Media
Are you the only person at work who likes to read blogs? Is it your job to sell things to people who would probably throw you out of their offices if you said the word “twitter?” Are you trying to reach audiences who’ve never visited a social networking website because they’ve heard those sites are used by no one but virus peddlers, sex fiends and 14 year old losers? Sometimes it feels like social media is just not relevant to the people you’re trying to reach. That’s a common dilemma, but we believe it doesn’t have to be that way. In this post we discuss five strategies for using social media to reach people who don’t use social media, and we’ve listed specific tools you can use to do it.
Top 5 Reasons Social Media Requires Commitment
Commitment Social Media is a commitment. It’s not something individuals or businesses can dabble in and expect to be successful. Here are some top ways that I’ve found Social Media to require commitment. Chalk this one up to both lessons learned personally and bordering on the obvious to folks who have been leveraging social media for awhile.
FriendFeed’s Real Opportunity: Reassembling the Internet.
FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.
uBoast Brings Job Seekers, Providers, and Matchmakers Together (The Startup Review). Create video resumes, build long-lasting relationships, and utilize a streamlined recruiting process increasing the ease of communication. uBoast is a professional networking site that specializes in enhanced virtual resumes, video profiles, real-time video interviewing, contains a job board pooling openings from throughout the entire Web, and hosts numerous cutting-edge recruiting tools to optimize the hiring process. We also have coached, edited, and filmed thousands of video resumes at several east coast college career centers and recruiting offices for job candidates. A private link is provided for students/job candidates that is easy, yet impressive for employers to review when hiring new talent.
Turn Social Networks into Your Recruiter. If corporate recruiters can mine Facebook and LinkedIn for job candidates, small businesses can too. Social networks can level the playing field, and can be used to try lots of different recruiting initiatives.
One in five employers uses social networks in hiring process. More than one in five employers search social networking sites to screen job candidates, according to a survey of more than 31,000 employers released by CareerBuilder.com this week. Of the hiring managers who use social networks, one-third said they found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job, the survey said.
Recruiting Poll: Company Adoption of Social Media for Recruiting
Posted by JasonThe weekly recruiting blog poll results are in from last week.
The question: How would you rate your organization’s adoption of social media in branding overall, and for recruiting?
The results:
- It’s a struggle (64%)
- Slowly but surely (28%)
- Ahead of the curve (8%)
From several conversations I’ve had, this continues to be a slow moving process for a variety of reasons. As you can see from the results, 92% of respondents state between “it’s a struggle” and “slowly but surely”. The 8% clearly continue to have an advantage.
Here are several resources related to using social media in recruiting:
- Social Recruiting: Corporate Adoption of Social Media for Recruiting and Retention
- Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Results
- Companies Start Recruiting Through Social Media Websites
- Recruiting through Social Media
- 10 Social Media Tactics for Finding Talent
Vote now for this week’s poll: How much will you or your company pay for your attendance at an industry conference in 2009?
Facebook Ads for Candidates
Posted by JasonWilly Franzen, founder of One Day, One Job posted: Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down and reveals results from an experience on using Facebook for job searching.
Check it out, and join the dialogue on his site. Willy’s post “How I Used Twitter to Get Meetings with 3 CEOs and a VP of Recruiting in 2 Weeks” is also still in the number 1 spot for The Talent Buzz blog post contest. Check out all of the posts submitted, and the current standings.
5 (free) tools to cure your Social Network Fatigue and get your life back!
Are you… Busy? Someone who finds value in Social web stuff? Overwhelmed with the myriad of social networks and web 2.0 doodads? Not wanting to be left out, but want a life too? Feel slightly guilty even taking time to read this?
Fear not gentle traveler, SNF (social network fatigue) is not incurable. You can have your cake and eat it too. Here are 5 (free) tools to soothe the conflict between your work and your social (net)works.
WARNING: setting up these tools requires a small time investment initially. If you do it, you will have time returned to you by tenfold. If you enjoy complaining about not having enough time, then don’t do it, you won’t have anything to complain about.
Flock - a ‘social browser’ built on the Firefox platform.
Aside from the easy download and transition from IE, tabbed browsing, intuitive interface and better protection against spyware/malware, with Flock you’ll wield webnipotence as with one or two clicks you can:
- E-mail the page you’re on to a friend
- Search Yahoo, Live, Google, Amazon (or any search engine you add to flock) from the upper corner of the screen
- Drag and drop sites to your favorites toolbar
- Drag and drop RSS feeds to Flock’s integrated RSS reader
- Share content to your social bookmarking sites, or favorite media sites
- Create a blog post using anything you’re viewing
- There’s a lot more, but I only get 850 words for this thing
When treating SNF one of the things you should strive for is a ‘write once, post everywhere’ capability. Ping.fm does exactly this. I can put a message into either IM or email that will reach my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Plaxo, Plurk, Friendfeed, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, and Pownce accounts all in one stroke. It’s also reaching every other place I have connected to Twitter.
I can broadcast jobs, news about my company or me to all my people in less than 30 seconds. Ahh, feel that? Its your shoulders relaxing because now you know that with Ping.fm you’ll never have to actually go to Plaxo.
Ping.fm is in beta right now, so if you don’t want to wait for a beta code, email me, and I’ll get you one.
Xobni: pronounced ‘Zobnee’, its inbox backwards. Xobni is a free download that plugs in to your outlook. Ever search for anything in your email folders like a person, a phone number, a document, a conversation or thread? Watch this video (3:45 mins) then do all that in a fraction of the time with Xobni.
Gonzo ain’t it? The video doesn’t show the integration with LinkedIN which helps uncover the LinkedIN connections of the people with whom you exchange messages.
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
If you’re a complete newbie to RSS and techie acronyms scare you, take a quick look at this and feel better. (Old way – boo! New way – yay!).
So now you know that RSS brings your commonly visited sites to you in your RSS reader (in Flock if you follow tip #1.) With your reader you can browse, look deeper or ignore completely all your desired content at once in a fraction of the time.
Once you’ve got your reader set with a few feeds you can start down the road toward becoming an RSS ninja. Here are two things to set your mind on fire with the possibilities.
- Use feedmysearch.com to turn your Google search strings into an RSS feed. Have a great string that you use regularly to find candidates or maybe information on competitors? Take the string to feedmysearch.com, create a feed then pull it into your Flock RSS reader.
- Use Twitterfeed.com to push content to your Twitter people. Recruiting? Go find or create an RSS feed for your jobs, then automatically broadcast them to your network. Automatically. That means you spend zero time doing it. Zero.
Diigo: (Dee-go) your web-based brain.
Like Video > words? Here’s a short video on how Diigo works.
If you watched the video you’re probably already blown away. In case not, read on…
You ever see stuff while browsing at work that you want to…
- Access later?
- Add to a list of things to access later?
- Share with someone or a group to access later?
- Quickly create a slide presentation from your bookmarks?
Diigo does all that and quite a bit more. Watch the video.
Like gardening, getting value from social tools takes time. If you do it right, the most significant time is spent on the front. The time thereafter is spent harvesting the rewards.
If you can’t figure it out, or get stuck, let me know and I’ll help you out.
So now, go do it, get your time back, be productive again, re-introduce yourself to your kids, your wife, your pets, your bridge club and your sanity.
Submitted by Josh Kahn for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.