Tag Archives: recruiting

Managing Social Media while Recruiting – Is it possible?

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Here is a great post I came across this past week by my online friend Bill Vick from his site where he dives into using social media as a tool in recruiting and social networking. He puts out some great content and I’d like to share this video interview he did with Leslie Mason of the recruiting team Intuit. You can find the original post HERE!

The most frequent comment I hear from recruiters when we talk about social media is that it takes too much time… they are super busy finding candidates and filling reqs and don’t have 2 -3 hours a day to spend on social channels, updating their statuses and broadcasting information. While I agree that it takes a bit of time up front, once you have all your social profiles completed you really only need to spend 30 minutes a day monitoring and updating them.  I am a big believer in automating whenever possible and have found some great tools to help me navigate the social media waters.

First get all your profiles “social ready” especially your LinkedIn profile.  Make it easy for candidates to find you, have your LI Profile completely updated.  Make sure you are an open networker and your profile clearly spells out what you are recruiting for, what industries, etc. and how to contact you so candidates can find you.  I also use a one click LinkedIn invitation and post that on my profile so people will connect with me.  A friend of mine, Stacy Zapar, figured out a way to do it.  Here’s her article with instructions: http://www.stacyzapar.com/2010/12/how-to-be-linkedin-pro-create-one-click.html.

My favorite tool and secret weapon is the Bitly Bundle!  Keep all your current job openings in a bitly bundle and post it on your LinkedIn profile at the top of your summary.  You can tweet and post to Facebook directly from the bitly bundle.  I socialize my bundle every Friday so people can review my job openings over the weekend. It’s quick and easy and only takes one click.  Bitly also tracks analytics and creates a QR code for your jobs… very cool.

Some quick ways to automate are to follow blogs and online papers like Mashable, TechCrunch, Fortune, VentureBeat, INC.com, Wired, Engadget, etc.  Then use RSS feeds to Google Reader or Outlook.  You can quickly scan and click on interesting articles and then use a tool like Buffer App to schedule sharing via Twitter, LinkedIn and FB.  This is a free tool that allows you to schedule up to 10 articles at specified times each day.

HootSuite or TweetDeck are great tools to manage social feeds.  I use HootSuite and have linked it with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Feeds.  I have tabs for each stream and can schedule posts to all of these networks, multiple times.  Bullhorn Reach is also a free service to automate job postings; it will send your jobs out to your specified networks at specified times.

People are visual… we find that candidates today want to see what it would be like to work with potential employers.  A great way to show your company’s culture is with Pinterest.  You can create Community Boards with pictures of your campus and candid pictures of employees having fun at work as well as videos from the hiring managers.  This gives candidates a peek behind the curtain, into your organization.

Remember the first rule of social is to build relationships!  We are not out there to be a job board aggregator.  Become a subject matter expert in your area… follow thought leaders, engage with them, comment on and share their articles.  You never know…one day you may get an invitation from Bill Vick to be interviewed.

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Make sure to connect with both of these fine folks online – there’s great learning coming your way when you do.

Using Klout to Screen Job Applicants

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Don’t get me wrong, I love Klout perks. I’ve gotten some good chit over the past few years – anything from wine openers to T-shirts to smartphones worth $700.00.

But lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about social recruiters and companies looking to Klout to determine one’s “influence.” Heck, I’ve even heard rumors that financial institutions are using Klout to determine one’s credit worthiness. That takes the cake for me.

If you have been in a dark room hiding for the past year or so and don’t know what all the Klout is about, here’s a little info.

I’m all about online influence, relationship and community building and I glance at my Klout score from time to time. But I really don’t take it seriously. In fact, I haven’t invited a single person to join Klout (that I know of). See below. I find the picture to be quite funny and don’t think I will ever invite anyone on Facebook to join Klout – ever!

I think the reason that companies should not weigh in on someone’s Klout score for a potential job (accept perhaps in Digital Footprint and Management in Social Media but only in this area and since my Klout is somewhat good :) ) is that it can be manipulated as written in this post “Klout Myth Busters: Thoughts From The Experts.” I like what one dude says in this article:

Klout is a naive measurement that takes a 3 dimensional universe of influence and reduces it to a one dimensional snapshot. Like all other algorithmic people-scoring utilities, it only works as a very general indication of a person’s importance in the social media universe. (BAM!)

It’s funny how we take this whole thing so seriously and any new technology that comes along. There are some great tools out there that can truly assist in online recruiting, sourcing or whatever, don’t get me wrong, and I’ll be writing about those in the weeks to come.

But perhaps we should go back to “oldschool” methods of honing in on those skills that help us in determining the best fit, the best candidate and skills set or pull a dang credit check to determine if you should give someone a loan instead of looking to something like Klout!

What’s your whole thought of Klout and online influence? You’re the expert, you tell me?

Photo Credit: DeonDesigns

#FollowFriday – ChicagoHRCoach – Barb Buckner (Make the Connection)

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Aloha! I hope you all had a fantastic week. I’ve been on a much needed vacation and am still trying to adjust to the time difference. No, I didn’t go to some fancy place like Italy or Paris, just southern California. And just when you get used to being on the West Coast with their time difference and fast pace, it’s time to return to the Midwest and try to recover.

It was so much fun. No dogs to tend to, no responsibilities, someone to cook for me and mainly staying poolside. Oh, and eating! We can’t leave that out.

Back to Reality

Anywho, today I want to mention a fellow Chicagoan, Blogger and HR Practictioner, Barb Buckner.

Somewhere along The Twitter Barb and I connected some time ago and have tried to remain engaged. I wanted to highlight her over here on the Cafe on my Follow Friday series and perhaps one day we’ll be able to get her in on a video interview, but this will have to suffice for now.

About Barb

Sometimes, in our journey we start at point A and wind up at point B without it ever being in our original plan. I know several of my HR friends who never meant to wind up in this field but through some sort of craziness, wound up there nevertheless. It’s called evolving. Hopefully, we all are continuing to evolve.

That’s Barb’s story. When she started her career in sales she never thought she would end up focusing on human resources.  She always had a knack for listening and motivating even the most stubborn of people but it wasn’t until she helped start a company after a layoff that she felt she finally found her way.

Barb is a seasoned HR professional with over 13 years of experience across a wide variety of industries including: banking, retail, pharmaceuticals, professional services and real estate.  Her main strengths and focus have been on recruiting and employee relations with a specialized approach to both. Her in-depth experience recruiting as a HR Manager and as an Agency Recruiter have provided her with a unique insight into how sourcing occurs on both sides of the table.

She’s worked with start-ups, family-owned businesses, small businesses and nationwide corporations which have all been a part journey in providing her with the experience and expertise in which to help her share ideas and strategies with colleagues and job seekers looking to break into the HR arena.

Where to Find Her

She is currently HR Manager for Crowley’s Yacht Yard Lakeside, Chicago’s second largest marine retailer and writes on a majority of HR subjects over at ChicaogHRCoach. She is @barbbuckner over on The Twitter and you can find her over on LinkedIn as well.

Off the HR subject, she is passionate about PAWS Chicago.

Do yourself a favor, and connect with Barb. She’s sure to keep you fully engaged.

Hey, and have a super fun Memorial Day Weekend!

Engagement – it’s not just a buzz word

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Employee disengagement is stealing from your company. Each disengaged employee can cost you thousands of dollars a year due to employee turnover, lack of productivity, and absenteeism - or worse, presenteeism. How does disengagement lead to all these things? Let’s take a look.

According to the What’s Working survey from the consulting company Mercer, 50% of employees are not happy at their jobs. 32% of workers are considering leaving their jobs. And if they do leave, that means significant costs to your organization.

First, there are the costs of exit interviews, administrative functions related to termination, and separation/severance pay. Then there are vacancy costs. Finally, there are the costs involved in searching for a new employee and the additional costs of training said new employee.

In an article in the Financial Edge, Annie Mueller explains that even an $8/hour employee can cost a company up to $3,500 in turnover expenses. And the more employee turnover you have, the more these costs will add up.

Another cost that comes from turnover? Lack of productivity. Research has shown that even after a new employee has been hired and trained, it takes time for them to reach the productivity level that their predecessor had. And that means that you might be paying them more than they are earning.

Business advisor William G. Bliss describes that in the first month, productivity is only at 25% – meaning a loss of 75% of the employee’s salary. Within one to three months, productivity will reach 50%. Not until three to five months will an employee reach 100% productivity, finally earning 100% of their salary.

Earlier we talked about the What’s Working survey which found that 50% of employees are unhappy, but only 32% are considering leaving. So what about the other 18%? Those employees are costing you money too, through absenteeism and presenteeism. The health research firm Oxygen Plan Corporation found that stress costs employers $4,888 per employee per year due to absenteeism and health costs. That adds up to a total US economic impact of $400 billion. But not all disengaged employees call out sick a lot. Presenteeism, when an employee is at work but isn’t productive, can cost you even more – and is much more difficult to track.

Where does turnover come from? Simple, it stems from having disengaged employees who are not happy with their jobs. The first step to reducing disengagement in your organization recognizing the problem. What does disengagement look like in your organization? Who is disengaged? Once you start having these discussions you can start investigating the various tools to improve this between rewards, hiring practices and technology, or altering management practices.

Reducing disengagement is not impossible, you just need to start!

Photo Credit: HRHandbook

Author of today’s guest post:

Sean Glass is the co-founder of EmployInsight, a HR technology company that helps enterprise customers use emotional and cognitive resources in their hiring. Before EmployInsight, he was a co-founder of HigherOne which went public in 2010. In addition, he is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Masters in Applied Positive Psychology Program (MAPP) and attended Yale University as an undergraduate. Follow Employ Insight on Twitter.

Linked In Recommendations; What are they good for?

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In the past week or so I received another Linked In email from a “connection” to endorse them and recommend them for their Linked In profile.

The problem with that? I don’t really know them. Yeah, I’m connected with them but only on Linked In. We are not connected on any other SM platform, we never engage one another, until now, I’ve never received an email or DM from this person. EVER!

Here is the email:

Dear Susan,

I’m sending this to ask you for a brief recommendation of my work that I can include in my LinkedIn profile. If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks in advance for helping me out.

Ms. X (not her real name)

I was tempted to respond with, “My only question is, ‘What would you like me to write?’”

Instead, I responded with:

Dear Ms. X,

While I appreciate the connection with you and the request to recommend you, I am going to have to decline. I cannot, with a clear conscience, do that. Not without knowing you or your work to the degree where I would feel comfortable doing so.

I do wish you well.

You may be thinking “That is totally rude of you, Susan.” But I say, NAY!

How could I pull something out of the air and recommend someone that I hardly know. That’s like recommending a doctor, dentist, lawyer or whatever, to one of your friends without first-hand knowledge or experience of them or their services. It just doesn’t make sense.

Social Media is about engagement. Engaging and staying connected throughout our platforms. We are hanging out on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. We hear about each others businesses, what’s going on with each other, in our worlds, (children, family, pets) and we know, trust and hopefully like our community. Our trusted network. THEN, we can in good conscience, recommend them to our other friends.

This is the only way these things work.

Check out Laurie Ruettimann’s post on Linked In Recommendations. I love it. And, I totally agree.

By the way, do Linked In recommendations really make a difference? I’d love to hear from you, especially from you Recruiters and HR practitioners……

(stay tuned for “5 Reasons Why I Hate Linked In” coming soon)

Photo Credit: The Anti-Social Media

Follow Friday: Social Media “Rock Star” – Margo Rose

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It’s Friday…….Hey, hey, hey! Today’s spotlight guest is MARGO ROSE. Don’t you just love the sound of that name. It’s so “Hollywood”…… I wish I had a name like Margo Rose. My name is totally boring.

I connected with Margo about two years ago on Twitter throughout the HR / Recruiting space, then as most of us have done, migrated to Linked In and Facebook. If you haven’t already connected with Margo, make sure you do it! Let’s dive in and find out more about her, shall we?

Who is Margo Rose?

Throughout her career, people have told her that she is a born ‘connector’ and community builder. She has an innate ability to connect people to resources. Having had 5 years of experience in social media and in building interactive digital communities she is a master of  social media community engagement. She knows her stuff when it comes to making interactive digital communities succeed.

She has been instrumental in launching, building, managing, and maintaining social media movements that have grown viral around the web. She has exceeded the goal of  1 million followers for The HireFriday Twitter Community and likens using social media to that of an exciting, challenging puzzle and says it’s “Stimulating to first figure out the missing pieces, determine opportunities and threats, and then define how to leverage social networks to improve personal and professional brands.”‘

In The Market

It just so happens Margo is currently in the market for a new position and would be a tremendous asset to your organization or someone you know who is looking for someone with her unique skills and amazing ability.

Her Specialties

Margo has an amazing way and know-how to develop messages, strategies and tactics to engage and energize all audiences. She takes a proactive, and strategic approach that really works. She says “No two social networks are alike. I can show you how to disseminate your message appropriately on each social media channel so that it makes an impact, drives traffic, and increases sales.” And I guarantee you, she can pull that off!

If you are in the market for a Social Media Strategist, Digital Media Manager for your organization or know of someone who is looking to hire for this position, please take a look at her outstanding resume over on LinkedIn. She is the host of Compassionate HR on Blog Talk Radio and you can find her digital footprint below.

Make sure you connect with Margo.

Online Footprint

LinkedIn, Blog Talk Radio, Twitter,  www.HRMargo.com, HireFriday.com, Google+, Email

#FF Photo Credit: TheWildHoneyPie

Can Social Media hinder you from getting that new job?

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Ten years ago, the mere thought of using social media to hire or fire someone was completely unheard of. Today employees wonder if their next update on Facebook will also mean the unemployment line for them. How can social media play such an important role in employment today?

It’s a proven fact, that more than half of employers today will use some form of social media to network and screen potential employees before offering them a position with their company. While there are very popular social media sites to choose from, almost 50% choose to use  LinkedIn, just a little over half choose Twitter, and almost 80% decide to use Facebook.

Even bosses sometimes try to avoid any type of confrontation if they can when using social media services, they do not have to depend on meeting the prospective candidate up front. Using social media allows them to feel more comfortable and help them to focus more on the real situation at hand.

Employers will most normally consider and interview a potential candidate for the job shortly after receiving their application. Most employers will have a special group of personnel in human resources to handle this daunting task for them so they can continue to work. There are several ways that HR can handle hiring an individual. Some may choose to use certain HR software, however if the business is run online they may choose to use an online software. This special software for HR professionals is not cheap but once you purchase it you may never go back to hiring people the old fashioned way.

Even positions that are available at a local location are sometimes found online first in order to find someone to fit the description of the ideal candidate and essentially take up less time of employer’s who already have a jammed pack schedule.

Today potential employees must worry about their presentation which all starts with a piece of paper listing who you are.

At the same time, employees who already have a job need to worry about what their bosses may say or do if you start venting on the social media sites about something that is not going right at work. Whether you mean to or not, what you say online can affect your entire future.

Be careful and think it through; you may only get one chance to make the right impression. (Liam Condit)

Susan’s Two-Cents

Here’s a little video I captured from one of Charlie Judy’s posts on Recruitment and HR that scared the padooky out of me!

While I’m at it, what’s your take on the subject?

About the Author:

Liam Condit, an HR Professional, has been writing industry related news and comment since 2006. Other interests include jobs, marketing, politics and sport. He works with Computers In Personnel specializing in recruitment and HR system hostings.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Embrace your weirdness

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Yesterday several of us in the HR / Recruiting space (How’d I get here? That’s for another time) attended Craig Fisher’s TNL in Aurora, IL where we discussed all kinds of issues from Jason Seiden’s profersional to a panel about influence, today’s candidates and how to stand out in the current job market. That last one reminded me of Joe Gerstandt’s “Fly your freak flag.” Embrace diversity!

As Jason and Craig were discussing “Pimping your LinkedIn Profile” I was thinking of my own profiles throughout the myriad of platforms and taking mental notes on how I could do a little improvement in that area. I’m all about being different, standing out, freak flag flying – if you will. Just ask those who attended the conference what I wore.

How boring would it be if we were all the same? (Okay, maybe if we were all like Jason or Joe that might be cool).

I’ve always been one to stand out among the crowd, not because I’m so gorgeous but because I like wearing vintage (hats, coats, and clothing). I haven’t adhered to those fabulous standards of mine the past couple of years for trying to “fit in.” In fact, this past summer in Vegas as SHRM I felt like I was wearing someone else’s skin. I took suits and frumpy outfits so I wouldn’t stand out. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

I suppose in all my madness of trying to conform and act like “HR” in my plan of attack I blended in quite nicely. But I felt uncomfortable and ready to shed my skin (so to speak). Looking back, I would do things differently – as far as being true to me in my weirdness and said “F, you – if you don’t like it.” Because, that’s always been my motto!

This is something we don’t think about when writing our online profiles, especially on Linked In. I’m guilty as charged. It’s almost as if we are back in high school – trying to fit in.  The point the fellas were trying to get across in their session was to stand out. Not only incorporating keywords that would increase your page rank but in mixing a little “something-something” about you personally and your style to get you noticed by the right people (your target client / audience). The ones that you are trying to reach, and as Jason said “who is going to write the check” not your peers.

Here’s a recap of the session over at HR Fishbowl.

What’s making you stand out in the crowd? Are you being true to yourself? Are you reaching your target audience? Who are you influencing online and offline?

Some great questions to ask yourself, indeed.

Photo Credit: Brooke Moss