Sirona Says

LinkedIn tool called Newin shows new members joining in real-time [video]

 

Ever wondered what the growth of a social network actually looks like? Well, the video below shows in real-time LinkedIn growing at a new member every few seconds around the world.

You can see it for yourselves by visiting newin.linkedin.com , although you will need to have downloaded the Goole Earth browser plugin to use it.

To show you what it looks like, I created this video to show you this very nice visual tool from LinkedIn.

 

Thanks to Glen Cathey for the heads-up on this LinkedIn product.

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Three brilliant under used LinkedIn social recruiting tools

 

Everyone is now talking about social recruiting, using social media in recruitment, but still many people are missing a few tricks with the 'recruiting default social network', LinkedIn. Just because you have a LinkedIn profile, does not mean you are using it properly. I know - I have seen hundreds of examples of recruiters (agency and corporate) LinkedIn profiles that make me wince! It is a recruiters dream product and yet still so many of them pay it lip-service. 

Anyway for the ones that want to get even more out of it, here are three brilliant LinkedIn tools to help you do your job - find and engage with more new candidates and clients. 

Here are three superb tips that will help you use LinkedIn more effectively every day. 

1. Who Works At. A simple but really good application that tells you (via a visual popup on your screen) who in your LinkedIn network works at a particular company. Not only does the app (a Chrome browser extension)prioritise the results with the most relevant people, but it also allows you to look at all the new hires and any (people) promotions or changes in the company. There, I told you it was superb, didn't I? So here is a simple example:
   
   I went to the Accenture website in my browser and then clicked the application link(top right in the red square). This then popped up the information box:
   
   
   No.1 shows the people in my network that I am connected to that work at Accenture - 4951; No.2 shows where the links are to see new hires etc and No.3 is a really quick way for you to Follow Accenture on LinkedIn.
   I don't have to explain the massive benefits of this tool now, do I? You are recruiters after all!
   Aside from using this tool to connect with people via LinkedIn, take it a stage further and then find these people (now you have their names) on Twitter or Google+ (maybe even Facebook), and engage with them on a more social level.
   This is a great strategy - talk to them about subjects they are talking about - and it probably won't even be work stuff. Listen, show an interest and engage with them. It is a very powerful way of developing relationships, with people that would normally wouldn't give recruiters the time of day!
2. LinkedIn Signal. You may not know what this is by name, but you will see it every day. This is the status update 'box' that appears in the middle of your screen when you have logged into LinkedIn. It is the updates from the people in your network No.1 in the image below:
   
   
   Now, click on No.2 (red circle) and you open up a goldmine of information - the Signal search functionality.
   
   
   
   You can now search ALL the status updates of your LinkedIn connections, using the normal LinkedIn search functionality (No.1). Then here comes the kicker - you can save the searches! Then every time you return to a search it will do a real-time search within the status updates.
   
   So get creating searches for your competitors, influencers, industry keywords etc ! I have created a string (as you can see above) that will show anyone posting in their updates words around job seeking. Useful if you want to get active candidates.
   
   this tool is brilliant, yet not many people are using it. Give it a try and you really won't be disappointed!
3. Company Updates. On your LinkedIn Company page, you will have a box on the right hand side that says Followers - carrying on with the Accenture example:
   These are all the people that are following them to get updates and information from them. There will be analysts, industry people, journalists etc but there will also be loads of people that are interested in working for them. Bingo!
   LinkedIn now allow you to segment these Followers of your company and engage with them accordingly (it is being rolled out - larger companies are getting it first). You can create specific and targeted follower lists based on different criteria: Industry, Seniority, Job Function, Company Size, Non-company Employees, and Geography.
   
   
   Then using a reporting part of the page - Who Followed Your Post - you will then be able to track some excellent engagement information on your company page.
   So, make sure that you give people the opportunity to Follow your company on LinkedIn. This will be gold dust from a future engagement perspective. Go to https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins and add the Follow Our Company button to your website, blog etc.
   Don't be bashful about this, these are FREE and focused potential candidates for your company, so get them on board and build your Follower count.

These really are 3 brilliant FREE TOOLS that you should be using with LinkedIn. I cannot see any reason why you wouldn't use them.

And of course if there are any other 3rd party tools LinkedIn you want to make me and my readers aware of, please share away in the comments below.

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5 Things that have caused me to remove people from my social networks recently

There are no rules in social media land, but there are some social media activities that are entering a new category - the 'if you do that anymore, I will I unfriend / unfollow / unlike / unconnect you' category. This is gathering momentum with people, who are becoming more comfortable with knowing what they actually want out of their individual social streams. Too much selling, too much information, too many tweets - ultimately too much 'noise' is the usual reason to banish people to their own social media wilderness.

So what are some of the things people are doing to (sometimes inadvertently) p*** people off? Here are 5 things that have caused me to remove people from my social networks recently:

1. LinkedIn sales abuse. You will all have suffered with this - a new contact connects with you, under the auspices of a genuine reason, only to then send you multiple sales 'messages' via LinkedIn. And what is even more annoying is they don't even then personalise the message! Total dumb asses. Unconnect.
2. Twitter and LinkedIn diarrhoea. Why do people still feel the need to post all their tweets through their LinkedIn status updates? A few a day is totally acceptable, but filling my update stream up every five minutes with tweets (many irrelevant to the workplace) will just get your updates hidden, or get you unconnected. Personally, I let someone know this first, as many times they are not even aware of what they are doing.
3. Devious mis-direction. You are on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn and see something that really interests you, so you click on the link. You then arrive on a web page that is a sign-up page or a 'register for your copy' page. All it does is really hack people off. Nothing wrong with marketing techniques, but be upfront with them, please don't hide them and be a sneaky snake!
4. No engagement whatsoever. For me social is all about engagement. If you want to broadcast information or jobs, then great but don't then encourage people to follow your account for anything other than that. A jobs feed? Great but make it damn obvious thats what the Twitter feed is and have a separate channel to talk to people on. And if you are going to engage make sure you do - social media is completely transparent, so paying lip service to it will just make you look like a muppet! The simple check is take a look at your profile and your own tweets, and if you don't see any @usernames featuring first in the tweets, you probably need to up the conversations.
5. Facebook is not a job board. A personal hate of mine - don't don't don't feed only jobs through your Facebook page wall. Last time I looked Facebook wasn't promoting itself as a job board! It is a fantastic engagement channel - even think of it as your perfect customer services channel. If you want to post jobs, then set up a Work4Us, BeKnown or Broadbean jobs tab to feed jobs through. They work really well. Use the wall to share information, links, photos and videos - if a job seeker wants to look at jobs, they will find the tab easily enough!

I am sure you have many more examples of things that have caused you to unfriend / unfollow / unlike / unconnect with people in your social media streams. I would love you to share them in the comments. The more people see and share these types of 'issues' then the better it will be for everyone.

So please share away :-)

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This is why social media cold turkey will be easy for me!

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am more than a little active on many of the social media channels. Well, by the time you read this I will be several days into my holiday to this fantastic island in the indian ocean. Social media cold turkey for me then, but I don't reckon it will too hard to do, do you? 

They call this island paradise and I intend to make the most of the escape.  So no blogging, tweeting, posting, checking or pinning for me for the next two weeks. 

See you on the other side, rested and refreshed (and hopefully) sun tanned! 

Crossing the social media streams at CIETT 2012

 

Later in May I am going to be participating in the CIETT World Employment Conference. This year we are lucky enough for it to be in London, and Bill Boorman has convinced REC to take some structure out of the event and have a couple of hours 'unconferencing'! I have the pleasure of taking one of those sessions.

Now for those of you that have been to some of my tracks as unconferences, you will know I like the film analogies! Well, true to form I will be continuing the theme with a reference to the awesome film Ghostbusters.

I will be looking at all the different social channels that can be used for social recruiting - some you will know, and some you wont! It will be all about the why, where, who and most importantly how you use them. But of course it is an unconference, so who knows where it will end up! :)

So why Ghostbusters?

For all you aficionados out there you will know the famous line...

"There's something very important I forgot to tell you! Don't cross the streams… It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

            Egon Spengler/Harold Ramis on crossing proton streams

Think of social media channels being those streams.

Many people are still using the social media stream in isolation (not sure if social media channels carry the same warning as a proton pack mind you!). I will be exploring all the options of daring to cross the streams, and bring the different social channels together and integrate them into your existing recruitment strategy.

Egon might tell you not to cross them, but I will be telling how to cross them and not cause a proton explosion with your social recruiting strategies!

We are there on the 24th (it is a three day conference) and we plan to have some fun. It would be great if you could come along and I hope to see you there.

 

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Brilliant! How Foursquare and Twitter were used to make random people happy

Just imagine for a moment that you are at a recruitment conference or exhibition and wanted to do something different to engage with people in the audience. Wouldn't it be great to 'randomly' give people in the room gifts, make them feel good and at the same time create tremendous good will and interest around your brand?

Well that is exactly what KLM - the Royal Dutch Airline, did at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. I am not going to say anymore - but while you are watching this fantastic idea unfold, think how your company could do something like this, internally within your company or externally at an event or conference.

 

Thanks to Steven Ehrlich for originally sharing this video.

Last week at the CIPD event in London, a good friend, Martin Couzins won a brand new iPad for playing a discovery game around the show using SCVNGR. A great idea.

I think the message here is, don't be afraid to do something different - remember there are no rules in the whole social media space - it is just down to your imagination.

Have you got any examples of things you have done or seen done at an event, that is as innovative as this?

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Should there be a Recruitment Vomit Hall of Shame?

Is it any wonder why recruiters get a bad rep? I get REALLY fed up with the lazy way that recruiters and the companies they work for send emails like the one I have just received below, from a recruitment agency I have never spoken to.

At a recent conference someone referred to the overload of useless information in social media as 'vomit'. Spot on! This isn't social media but it is a perfect example of recruitment vomit.

Good Morning,

I just wanted to drop you a quick line to check whether any new IT vacancies have emerged since we last spoke?

We are offering a reduced fee arrangement on all permanent vacancies registered before the end of the month - if you would like details of the reduced fee structure drop me a quick reply or feel free to call. As always there is no obligation to interview candidates submitted by XXX and no fees apply unless a candidate Introduced by us is offered and accepts a role with you. Should you be seeking temporary IT contractors please contact me and I will be pleased to discuss ways in which we can make the exercise as cost effective and hassle free as possible.

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

No wonder they have to offer reduced rates if this is how they get their business?

I haven't outed the recruitment agency concerned, but maybe I should? Maybe there should be a recruitment vomit hall of shame?

 

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Can you spot the big error with this good recruitment video?

 

How many recruitment video's have you seen that - shall we say - could be a lot better? I would take a bet that the figure is well north of 50%. Many are too long, not focused on the target audience or they have got confused with branding, marketing and recruitment messages.

Therefore when you see one that hits the spot in less than one minute, it has to be worth sharing doesn't it? So here goes. It is from a company called OpenPages and is 3 years old AND still is better than most recruitment videos today. Now it may be a great video but can you spot the HUGE mistake?

 

Did you figure the mistake out?

How the hell do I apply? Where is the website URL? Where do I find out more information? DOH!!!

IT still doesn't quite match my all time favourite recruiting video featuring on our Facebook page though, but it is an excellent video.

Have you got a favourite recruitment video you can share in the comments below?  

A big H/T to Talentminded.com for this post..

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When is a visible tattoo too visible for a hiring manager?

A while ago I wrote a post titled 'Would you hire someone with a visible tattoo?' - and (unsurprisingly I guess) it still gets a load of traffic every single week. This is a question that comes up regularly with companies as they try to deal with the more and more people that now have tattoos.

Now I am a fan of good ink, and while I do have a couple myself, you would never know it. And for me I guess that is the point for an employer. Tattoos hidden under normal clothing are one thing, but tattoos visible to their customers and clients take a little more acceptance.

Yesterday I was doing some work on career sites and came across this disclaimer/question on the Center Parcs application form:

Now the magic question is this: what happens if someone ticks one or all of the boxes? Do they fail to get the job? What do you think?

The problem here of course is context. Obviously a big facial tattoo is probably not going to get you the job! But they don't ask what the tattoo is, how big it is or even ask for a photo (ok, probably not easy to manage!), but even if a candidate has a tiny wrist tattoo, they have to admit it, for fear of not getting a job (don't they?) Is there a difference below for you? They are both wrist tattoos, but is one more acceptable for companies than the other? Or are they both treated the same way?

What do you think? Would these be acceptable for your company? Alternatively as a recruiter, would you even bat an eyelid with these types of tattoos?

It is the first time I have seen this type of question, posed in this way on an application process. I am just wondering now if this will become more normal over the years to come?

Image links here and here.

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Is your social media content being read? No? Check the context first.

In the new world - no, not the one Christopher Columbus found - the one called social media land, there is one common denominator for absolutely everyone, and that is content. Without it there would be nothing to read, share, like and pass comment on - in fact without it you could argue that social media would come to a standstill!

The question I get asked EVERY single time I am working with clients is, 'where do I get all the content from for our social media sites - we haven't got time to produce THAT much content'. 
Well, there are so many great sources of content to use ranging from all the brilliant sources you have at your disposal - your employees - through to the millions of great blogs out there on the web. Think RSS and Google Reader. But that is for another day.

Just having content though is not enough. You have to have content that your audience - your fans, followers, readers, subscribers etc actually want to read and watch. It needs to have some resonance to what you are trying to achieve on that particular platform. It absolutely needs to be in context for your audience AND the platform. For example, posting details of your company's benefits package etc on your career site is correct, but posting the same content on your Facebook Page or LinkedIn Group would be wrong in the context of what people on those platforms expect to see. 
(H/T to Steve Ehrlich for that example)

Here is a superb video shared by Adam Templeman at the Social Media In Recruitment conference yesterday, that is a brilliant example of context. Make sure you watch the whole video to see why it is so apt.

 

So just think a little BEFORE YOU POST your next article, blog or video.

Some simple questions for you:

• Do you even know what your audience likes watching or reading on your social platforms?
• When was the last time you checked your social media sites - Twitter, Facebook, your blog, LinkedIn, Google +, YouTube - to see what has been the most popular posts, videos etc? 
• Have you even bothered to find out?
• Do you even care? [If you even think the answer 'no', pack up now and take up gardening!]

You will be surprised (or maybe you won't) that many companies just post content 'because they think they have to', without any real thought of what their audience is, and what they would want to read/watch. A Twitter phrase sums them up nicely........ #FAIL !

Take the time to understand your audience, try different content, on different social platforms and make sure you understand the context of what you are trying to achieve with each platform.

You can always ask your audience what they would like to see more of - it is social media after all!

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