Archive for the ‘Talent Sourcing’ 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!
5 EASY Ways to Optimize your 2009 Recruiting Budget
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
Amidst rising unemployment, and what some call a recession - or even financial crisis, it’s that time of year to finalize your plans for 2009 recruiting budgets. This post contains ideas on things you can do to cut (if needed) - or optimize your spending.
Once you know anticipated volumes and skills you will be responsible for finding, here are 5 EASY ways to optimize your recruiting budget:
- Job Boards. Take a good, in-depth look at your job board spend, and overall results. Besides the crappy candidate experience, it should come as no surprise job board traffic continues on a multi-year decline. Use this to your advantage - and negotiate. You should be paying a substantially less amount per posting than in previous years. Most of the big boards continue to add new services to offset posting and resume database access. For more ideas on job boards, you can read an earlier post, “What Would Happen if Job Boards Became Obsolete“?
- Campus Recruiting. Most students I’ve talked to this fall have noticed a big decline in on-campus spending, presence, and the number of jobs available. Most recruiters have been talking about a decrease in full-time opportunities, but a significant increase in interns for 2009. Be thoughtful about your approach to campus recruiting, advertising, events, and sponsorships. You can also reference “Approach to College Recruiting Planning and Strategy” and “Tips on Better Preparing Yourself for the Upcoming College Recruiting Season“.
- Use SEO, SEM, Social Media, and Blogs. As the traffic declines with the boards, use search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media tools to recruit. These have been a hot topic for a couple of years already, and there is enough proof, case studies, and white papers highlighting success - especially with SEO. No, I’m not talking about a .jobs domain that re-directs to your careers site… On the Social Media front, focus on networking and hiring from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others.
- Recruiting Events. Carefully assess your attendance at recruiting events. When you make one-off decisions throughout the year you can typically justify attendance. There are some industries and jobs where an event (such as a career fair) might make sense. The truth (for most) is events have never made the top of the list for sourcing effectiveness. There may be reasons to attend (branding as an example). If that’s the case, your Marketing group can fund the event. Be clear about why you want to be there, and what results you are striving to achieve.
- Get aggressive with sourcing. Reduce your reliance on external providers where it makes sense. Don’t wait for the talent to find you. Sounds easy - it starts with equipping recruiters with the right tools and training.
While there is no “one size fits all” approach, take a leadership approach and maximize recruiting and the value it brings to your organization while not jeopardizing quality.
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.
Get into social network recruiting.
By 2010, US business will be short 10 million workers. In the European Union, there will be a shortage of at least 300,000 IT employees. And in Japan, prospects for skilled labor are so dim that some companies are even encouraging fertility treatments. The global war for talent is a reality. What are you doing to gain an advantage?
It’s time to tap into a brave new world of sourcing. Learn how you can use social networking and online career sites to build your talent pipeline by reading:
Sourcing in a Time of Scarcity: The Evolution of Social Networking as an Aid to Hiring
Learn more about these advantages:
- Social networks are big recruiting opportunities
- Career sites are required–not optional
- Passive candidates are available
- Online filters ensure compliance
Download Sourcing in a Time of Scarcity now and receive a Complimentary 30 Day Trial of Taleo Business Edition!
I Disagree with Donato Diorio
Posted by JasonI wanted to share something with you…do you search the web for contact and background info (potential candidates or business development leads)? Have you tried Donato Diorio’s Broadlook Capture and/or Diver? I have recently started using them and I believe they are superior to all else in this category. I am a pretty advanced Google search user and have been good at finding contacts before - but both of these have increased my web searches productivity a whole lot. Diver is a relatively new product.
I’d like to introduce these tools to The Talent Buzz readers. Here is a free license to the Capture tool (normally worth around $200 I think) and a free trial of the Diver tool.
Now, it’s time to explain what I meant by my blog’s title. The tutorial for Diver starts with: “If you know how to use a search engine… you already know how do use Diver”. I disagree! With Diver you can do things that you could never do before. The tool seems to have no competition either.
What Diver does is it aggregates contact info (or resumes) from a search engine results as fast as you get those results. You obtain the contact and skill information for everybody in the result pages as an organized table. Well, it may be hard to explain. It is better to try it yourself.
Download the Diver at the link above and try this search on Google within Diver:
-intitle:directory -intitle:answers site:linkedin.com
(Please don’t forget to go through all the pages and “show all omitted results”.
Show only results that have person’s name, title and the company name, a Diver option.)
Export the results and you instantly get a list of people to look at closely!
Here’s a concrete example. Search for
symantec (C# OR C++) -intitle:directory -intitle:answers site:linkedin.com
à get the following people who work at Symantec.
- Steve Hand Advisory Engineer
- Amey Samant Application Developer
- Sharad Srivastava Application Developer/Software Engineer
- Steve Hand Change Agent
- Steve Hand CTO Office
- Nate Brogan Dean
- Pawel Dyda Developer
- Jinghui Chen Executive
- Arthur Hsu Principal Software Engineer
- Jinghui Chen Principal Software Engineer
- Nate Brogan Principal Software Engineer
- Mark Pinson Scout
- Erica Byrd Senior Principal Software Engineer
- Arindam Mukherjee Senior Software Engineer
- Mark Pinson Software Development Manager
- Mark Pinson Software Development Manager
- Amit Sharma Software Engineer
- Amey Samant Software Engineer
- Pawel Dyda Software Engineer
- Conner Peripherals Software Engineer
- Sharad Srivastava Software Engineer
- Nate Brogan Software Leader and Technical Expert
- Giuseppe Di Salvo Technical Support Analyst
Just imagine, would you be able to do this simply with a search engine in any reasonable amount of time?
Out of many Diver usages, it is great at grabbing results from social networks and sites that have profiles.
Here is another search string to play with, when you download Diver:
intitle: site:center.spoke.com/info -intitle:people profile
You’ll see what the results will look like.
Here is an example of getting contact info for all people who posted resumes anywhere on craigslist, in one click:
site:craigslist.org inurl:res
I am having fun with Diver, and (for a limited time) am open to running sample searches for those who would contact me, or reply to this post. Download the tool at www.broadlook.com/braingain. And get in touch with me– tell me the skills, target companies, locations etc. I’ll run a sample search for you and will share how.
There are many more tricks and hints I could share but I have to stop here for now…
Submitted by Irina Shamaeva for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest. Irina is a Partner with Brain Gain Recruiting.
Google launches Insights for Search. There are many possibilities with this tool - although it provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior - think of the possibilities for research and intelligence.
Social Media Tools You Can Use to Recruit.
Willie’s Woes in Perspective: Some Thoughts from Readers, by Kevin Wheeler.
Recruiting Top Talent - The Scopings Way
Posted by JasonIt would be great if attracting top talent to your company was a simple process - get prospective applicants excited about the benefits of working for your company, then offer them a private and effortless way to figure out whether the position is the right one for them to pursue.
In reality, however, attracting talent to your company or, on the opposite side, landing a new career opportunity, is quite frequently a very time consuming and frustrating experience.
Scopings, an innovative online recruiting service, has introduced a radical new way for professionals to find and explore career opportunities, using an intuitive “matching” technology. Professionals can find positions in a very private and targeted way without revealing their identities and without a resume, and for the first time can safely remain active in the job market on an ongoing basis.
Finding a position that one might want to pursue marks only the beginning of this exciting new service. Professionals using Scopings can anonymously request additional information from hiring managers before deciding to pursue a position further, and consequently, they only go after the few best-fit positions. Employers, on the other hand, can learn more about what excites these professionals and can effectively entice them to take the first step and apply.
Scopings’ innovation extends to its hiring process as well. Applicants start the hiring process anonymously and without a resume, and employers use an innovative online interviewing process to ask and collect the very specific information they need from applicants. This information is automatically analyzed, and employers are presented with only the few best-fit applicants to interview, all without reviewing one resume or conducting one interview.
It is quite challenging to reach out and recruit top talent, but the Scopings approach goes a long way to transform the way employers and professionals find one another and interact, resulting in a service that is applicant and employer-friendly, private, and extremely effective in meeting the hiring needs of employers and professionals alike.
What is Scopings all about?
Hiring top talent is difficult at best. They are busy with other things, serious about their privacy, and don’t want to devote time and effort just for the slim chance of landing the right opportunity. Scopings is all about changing that.
By treating each candidate like a future colleague, Scopings helps you engage more candidates with your current recruiting sources and reach out beyond just the most active job seekers. And that’s just the start.
How do we help?
Scopings offers professionals, working professionals in particular, a simpler way to explore new opportunities, and allows them to start the application process without revealing their identity and without submitting a résumé. By making your company more accessible and your positions truly applicant-friendly you’ll entice more candidates to take the first step who ordinarily wouldn’t.
The last thing you and your candidates need is to spend time interviewing just to find out that a candidate is not interested, not qualified, or over-qualified for the position you are looking to fill. Scopings helps you scope down your pool of candidates so that you can identify the candidates who are best fit for the role.
Scopings works with all of your existing recruiting sources helping you to engage more candidates and measure the quality of each source (not just the quantity). Our growing pool of passive candidates are automatically notified and our team helps to market your position. We’re driven to do everything we can to help you find your next colleague- our success is tied to yours.
Visit Scopings.com for more information.
5 Strategies to Use LinkedIn for Recruiting Talent
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
LinkedIn continues to grow substantially, with record users and site visitors month over month. With over 21 million professionals worldwide representing 150 countries, LinkedIn received 9.5 million unique visitors in June. Year to date, traffic is up 77%.
While using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool is not new, I recently spent some time with a group of recruiters discussing the sites advantages, highlighting :
- Competitive intelligence, and research. LinkedIn is a great tool for researching companies. Uncheck the “current companies only, see who has left the organization, the average length of tenure, and possible trends. Think and search creatively, you may be surprised at the amount of information you can find. Since a majority of users set their profiles to public, you can also build a search string to search LinkedIn profiles using Google. It can take some creative searching, but there is a tremendous amount of information just waiting to be mined.
- Build your network with candidates. Connect with strong candidates immediately after you speak with them. There are several advantages to this, including: building a candidate community with top talent, following changes when they move or get promoted via network updates (stay connected, send a congratulatory note), you’ll see all of the names and titles in their networks.
- Pick up the phone! Your competitors and search firms are. You are wasting your time if you solely rely on the e-mail functionality. Sounds simple, but quite likely an under-utilized tactic in corporate recruiting.
- Network with Recommendations. Top performers know and network with top performers. Use recommendations on an individual’s profile to network and build leads.
- Use the “download as a PDF” tool. If you don’t have a Resume for a lead, download their profile with the PDF tool on LinkedIn. Share their profile with a Manager - are you on track? What’s missing from the profile they might be looking for in an ideal candidate? Is this lead with pursuing.
In addition to these 5, there are many other possibilities in using LinkedIn for recruiting talent. While many sites in the recruiting space have declining traffic, LinkedIn is just one tool, with many advantages including it’s growth and momentum.
Most recruiters are using it - and all have access to it. Get creative and get more out of the site than your competitors are.
Interested in building and growing your network? Connect with me, and add (bussjj (at) gmail (dot) com) as the e-mail address. And, click here to join 2,000+ HR and Recruiting Professionals on The Talent Buzz LinkedIn group.