Sirona Says

Is Your Ego Affecting Your Social Media Recruiting?

 

 

When was the last time you checked yourself out? (I mean on social media not in a mirror!) If you haven’t done so for a while, then you may want to take a look, especially if you are in recruitment or talent/candidate attraction.
The reason is simple - prospective candidates ARE checking YOU out every day. This could be on LinkedIn after you have visited their profile (as long as you are not playing at being a Ninja), with the ‘Looked who’s viewed your Profile’. It could be on Twitter when you RT, Favourite or Follow them, or it might be Google+ when you add someone to a Circle. In fact it could happen on ALL the social networks you are on.
Every time you do an action on a social network, it notifies the recipient of that action of who you are - which means they get to see your profile to make a decision on whether they want to Connect, Follow, Circle you etc
So as I said, you are being checked out every day on social media. Could your own profile be affecting for social recruiting activities? Now do you want to take another look at your profile?

• Have you got a smiling head shot picture of yourself? Have you used that wedding picture, a cartoon, a picture of your dog, a funny picture, a logo, a holiday snap or any other picture that you felt looked good? Remember, if you are using social media for recruiting, this is the first thing that prospective candidates will see of you, AND we know how quick people make decisions based on images, don’t we?  You have a smartphone - get someone to take a good picture of you and upload it - it takes minutes, and will make a huge difference to your social profile.

• Does your headline tell people what you do? If you are a recruiter, do you actually tell people that or do you make them guess and hope you get lucky? Remember when searches are made on social media, people make decisions on you based on what they see on your headline (LinkedIn) or Bio. So why not make it easy and give them a clue - if you a are a recruiter, tell people what you recruit for in your headline or Bio. Just remember you only have between 120 - 160 characters for most of the social networks.

• Have you included any of the keywords for your target audience? What about common synonyms of those keywords? If your target audience are using them why don’t you? They will be searching for these words, because they associate them with their industry, so finding recruiters using them will surely be beneficial for you?

• Please remember, one of the biggest mistakes that people make with their Profiles, Headlines or Bio’s is that they write them for themselves! WRONG. If you are using social media for recruitment, then you need to be thinking about candidate attraction. That means it you need to think about what candidates would search for to find you and use those words, NOT the words you like to describe yourself with. These are two different things.

So park the ego for a moment and use the different social media platforms more effectively for recruiting.
The eagle-eyed of you may say that I could be utilising my Twitter banner image a little better to market myself/what I do. But social media is also about being individuals and having some fun at the same time, isn't it. And anyway, there is nothing wrong with a bit of Star Wars :)

 

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Who Would You Like To Meet In Person From Your Social Networks?

 

 

Who would you like to actually meet in person from your social media networks for a beer, wine or coffee? With social networks being truly global many relationships are just being based on tweets, messages, winky faces, comments and emails. In a such a fast moving world, that is to be expected.

I love it when I get to meet people, that I have already built an online 'social' relationship with, sometimes over several years. Sure I may have spoken to them or Skyped them, but getting the chance to bring online relationships offline is brilliant!

As someone who travels to different countries for work, speaking, attending conferences and working with clients, I am lucky to get the chance to do this. This may be the wrong phrase, but I hope you understand what I mean, when I say it 'makes social media real'. Do you know what I mean?
And what makes it a great thing to do, is that when you do get together with people, you already have that online relationship to build on.

So, back to my original question, who would you like to meet in person from your own social networks? Here are seven people that I have 'known' for ages in the social media world and hope to have a coffee/beer/wine with someday:

 

1. Kelly Dingee. Kelly (@sourcerkelly ) was someone I connected with a few years ago. She got my attention as someone who was sharing great sourcing content via blogs and Twitter. That hasn't changed - she is a respected sourcing genius and continues to provide tips, tricks, hacks and other wisdom on sourcing and recruiting. One day our paths will cross.....
   
   
2. Jay Kuhns. Jay (@jrkuhns) has been in my timeline for a good few years now :) He is the VP HR for a childrens hospital in Tampa, Florida. I first noticed his blog, which is an insightful look at all aspects of HR and the challenges it holds within the workplace. Then as we connected further I learnt about his love of hockey and how a big part it plays in his family and life. A beer in the Florida sun sounds good to me.
   
   
3. Jennifer McClure. Jennifer (@jennifermcclure) is someone I feel like I know well but have never met! She is a top HR/Recruiting/socialrecruiting seaker and consultant in the US and as such shares great content from her travels. We have been connected for years, but have never been in the same place at the same time to grab that glass of wine! One day Jennifer!
   
   
4. Sarang Brahme. Sarang (@sarangbrahme) and I actually worked together (virtually) many years ago in his early recruitment years, when he was working for an outsourcing company. He now works as the Global Head of Social Recruiting at Cap Gemini. A sourcing genius, he has always been a font of knowledge and it has been great seeing his career develop to where he is now. One day I will get to Pune in India for that cold beer with him!
   
   
5. Mike Owcorz. Mike (@mikeowcarz) is one of those people that you just want to sit there for an evening and sink a whole table full of beers with! His industry knowledge (he works for Avature) is brilliant, his insights are thought provoking and his banter (on anything) is amusing.
   
   
6. Dan Nuroo. Dan (@dannuroo) lives on the opposite side of the world to me, in Australia. As a recruitment manager he shares his wisdom and insights from his experiences down under, and is always part of the online conversations on Twitter. As a true aussie, I know he like a beer or two - maybe one day I will get to Melbourne to share one with him!
   
   
7. Brenda Burch. Brenda (Facebook page) is someone who loves her corgis! Based in Vancouver she runs a social media marketing consultancy  and I got to know her via her recruitment work within the retail sector in Canada. She has always been very helpful and has a great network across businesses within the main canadian provinces. Maybe when I am back in Western Canada in May 2015, it will coincide with Brenda's diary.

So what about you?

Who would you finally like to meet for real from your social networks?
Feel free to share in the comments below.

Next week I am hoping to meet a good 'online' friend and work colleague when Sara and I are in New York, as well as a HR Consultant we met last time we we there. Although I think it might be more chilled than the recruitment conversation we had last time, in the Disney Store in Times Square at 10.30pm on evening. Looking forward to it Victorio :)

 Image credit


I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Why Is Content Marketing Great For Recruiters?

How poor is your response rate to LinkedIn InMails (if you even use them)? How many target candidates refuse your request to connect, and how many emails to target candidates go unanswered?  It probably makes for depressing reading, right?
Ever wondered why people don't respond to your 'advances'?

Maybe it is some of these?

1. Lazy messaging. Not using any personalisation in the communication, and using the standard requests from LinkedIn. (Note on the Apps you have no choice - it is only the standard requests).
2. Poor targeting. Not understanding the job or the skills you are trying to reach people for, therefore producing a complete mismatch.
3. Misreading context. Understanding someone's profile and translating that into why they should be talking to you.
4. Not considering WIIFM. The people you are reaching are busy. Even if you can get them to open your message, they will ask themselves the question 'What Is In It For Me'. Particularly relevant for connecting with people. So many people send bog standard requests on LinkedIn and you look at their profile that seemingly has no relevance for you. Why should they connect with you -  give them a reason.
5. Or in simple terms your approach is crap! Sorry, I can't put this any other way. If you can't be bothered to craft the message correctly then you don't deserve the courtesy of a response!

You know what I mean, you have had them in your inbox as well.......

So how can you start to change the results you are getting and get more people to respond, reply and connect?

One way is to make sure people know about you before you reach out to them. I refer to this method as content marketing for recruitment.

Don't sigh or immediately dismiss this (too late if you are a recruiter, you have probably already done that!), because IT WORKS!

Talking the time and effort to create/find/source interesting and relevant content and then share it regularly with with your target audience (once you have identified them) is a very effective way of improving your candidate engagement success rate.

Regular sharing of great interesting and unique content helps people:

• Know who you are (and what you do when then check your bio - which they will)
• Know that you are an expert in their sector/industry
• Know you already by reputation (of someone that shares great and interesting content in their industry)
• Know that your call/email/message/connection will be worthwhile

You tell me any recruiter that would not like any (if not all) of the above?

Corporates make the mistake of leaving this to their marketing and/or their communications departments. Recruitment agencies just don't do it because their focus is on the next placement, the next requirement they get or achieving that weeks targets.

But, in my opinion, with the challenging times ahead in the recruitment marketplace, and the scarcity of talent we are already seeing (and will only get worse), ALL recruiters need to think about how they are positioning themselves in THEIR marketplace.

There is a simple analogy that explains this very well.

Imagine a lake.

                                                                                       Image credit

Now think of this lake as the huge talent pool that is the social web and it is full of people.

You as the recruiters are going fishing.

The successful fishermen are the ones that catch the best fish. To catch the best fish they first use ground bait (extra food). They place this ground bait into the part of the lake they have identified as the area where the fish they want to catch are. They regularly do this before they start fishing there. They carry on doing it during their fishing. The fish are attracted to where the extra food is.
Then the fisherman puts the appropriate bait on the end of the hook and casts out to where he has been putting the ground bait. Guess what! He catches the fish he is after.

The unsuccessful fisherman turns up to the lake, picks a random place, puts whatever bait he has on his hook, casts out and sits there. He might catch a random fish of course, but at the end of the day, he doesn't catch nearly as many fish.

 

Content marketing for recruitment is similar. Identify the best place to find the right candidates and then sharing the right content consistently will yield results.

                                                                                           image credit

If you would like to understand more about getting started with a content marketing strategy for recruitment, you might want to start with looking at this slide deck from a presentation I delivered for the Social Media Talent Acquisition Conference yesterday

How To Build A Social Media Content Strategy For Talent Acquisition from Sirona Consulting Ltd

Alternatively you could of course give me a call and I will be pleased to help :)

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to improve their recruitment strategies, recruitment processes, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. Click here >> get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

How are the 76% of employers who plan to hire more staff in 2014 actually going to do it?

 

What is happening in the job marketplace at the moment?  We are seeing business growth, business confidence and importantly for the recruitment industry, an increased demand for both permanent and temporary recruits. This is fantastic news for everyone on a whole number of levels.

But, before the whole recruitment industry get's carried away with this news, and starts hiring as many new recruitment consultants as they can get their hands on to satisfy this new demand (have you seen the millions of job board adverts for recruiters, sourcers and researchers?), just ask yourself one question ........ 'HOW?

1. How are these 76% of employers actually going to meet these new hiring needs? 

• Will the trend towards direct sourcing continue?
• Are there enough good in-house recruiters to go around?
• Can their recruitment technology cope with changing candidate behaviours such as social and mobile?
• Will there be enough budget to use recruitment agencies?
• Will recruitment agencies be able to deliver the required talent?
• Will they turn to RPO companies for help?
• Will we see PSL's enforced or relaxed as talent availability dries up?

2. How many companies are looking for the same (limited) industry talent?

• Why should the sought after talent join their company?
• What are they doing different to source, attract and hire these in-demand people?
• Are they changing their processes to be flexible?
• Are they acting quickly in the market, or still making candidates wait long periods for interviews?
• Are they building talent pipelines or mapping the industry talent they need to hire?

3. How good is their attraction strategy, employer brand and recruitment process?

• How good does their career site look?
• Can the jobs be found easily?
• How long (and by default painful) is the online recruiting process?
• When was the last time they updated all their employer brand content to keep it fresh?
• Do they know where their target candidate audience actually is?
• If advertising, where? Job boards, LinkedIn, social networks?
• How good are the HR team / in-house recruiters at sourcing or headhunting?

4. What about changing technologies?

• How is the changing face of the recruiters favourite, LinkedIn, going to effect who actually finds the candidates? Fees or no fees?(Favouring license fee paying corporates as with their recruiter licenses, as opposed to 'free' agency users)
• What about the speed of change of adoption of (relatively) new technologies?
• How agile flexible are companies to change recruitment systems and processes, if needed?
• What are these companies doing about all the candidates on mobiles? Are they even thinking about them in the recruitment process?
• Social media ins't new, but how many companies are still not utilising it's potential for sourcing and engagement?

These questions could easily apply to companies and recruitment agencies alike - they are both trying to recruit the same talent, after all!

So how many of these questions are you asking your recruiters, your recruitment leaders and your HR teams then? I am guessing not as many as you should be!

It is great news that companies are hiring again, but how many of them are looking seriously at the whole talent question. The direct sourcing trend is in full flow, but for how long? Will businesses become impatient with their recruitment and HR teams to deliver the numbers they need? (I am already seeing this happening as in-house teams are struggling with more and more new requirements for new hires)

The recruitment agencies are already ramping up their numbers in anticipation of increasing people requirements from their clients. RPO companies have been getting busier over the last few months. Contractor rates and salaries are rising due to simple supply and demand.

And yet still there are plenty of HR and Recruiting departments and recruitment agencies still doing the same things they have always done. Remember what happened to Kodak?

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to improve their recruitment strategies, recruitment processes, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. Click here >> get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

You Can Now Officially Search For Twitter Lists on Twitter. Here's How.

 

*Great news* You can search for Twitter Lists again. Now this may get all of you excited but if you are in recruitment, sourcing, business development or research it should! Twitter lists are one of the best parts of using Twitter, as they save you so much time, and are brilliant at focusing on what and who you want to see on Twitter.

It seems ages ago that some once awesome Twitter list search tools departed the social media landscape never to be seen again. But now it seems Twitter themselves have decided to bring the functionality back.

Here is how you can search Twitter for the Twitter Lists of all those great people in your sectors, industries and niches. This works on Twitter.com and the official mobile and tablet apps

First do a search on Twitter.com In this case I did one for Digital Influencers.

By default the search on Twitter is defaulted to Everything (left hand toolbar). But you will notice Timelines at the bottom, click on it. Not only does it reveal Timelines but more importantly Lists. Here you will see all the Digital Influencer lists. *Bingo*
It is worth noting that I did an 'open search' for the phrase Digital Influencers, which yielded the exact phrase and results with both digital and influencer in the List Title or the List Bio (the sentence underneath).
An exact "Digital Influncer" search will just return Lists with that in either the List Title or Bio.

So when you find the list(s) you like, explore a little further. On the example below I clicked on the Digital Influencer List by Cap Gemini.
It has 44 members and by clicking on the List Members on the left, I can now view all the digital influencers on the list.

I can now add them to a new list, by clicking on the cog and selecting 'Add or remove from lists'. You can also subscribe to the list and see all the tweets from the particular list.

 

So all of you that keep asking me how I can find enough relevant people on Twitter, this is how. Go find all the Twitter Lists for the audience you want to follow, reach out to, engage with, add to a future talent pipeline list or whatever your objective is.

And remember when creating your own lists of the people you make them Public or Private. Most of the lists recruiters I know that create them keep them Private .... for some reason they don't trust other recruiters! ;-)

If you are interested in social recruiting, then I have compiled a list of 694 social recruiting folk from around the world that is worth subscribing to called Super Social Recruiting.

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

How To Find The Best LinkedIn Groups To Join

 

What is still one of the best ways to actually connect with people on LinkedIn? You got it, LinkedIn Groups. But which ones should you join, and more importantly how do you find the best ones to join?

Before I get down to showing you, I want you just to consider why you want to join these Groups in the first place. If you think that it is just a place to dump all your jobs (recruitment tactic 101), then make sure that the Groups allow you to just post jobs (see the Group rules), otherwise you will be S.W.A.M.'ed pretty damn quick.

You can currently be a member of fifty (yes fifty!) LinkedIn Groups at any time. I always get asked by people why they should join so many groups, as they will have no chance managing them. It is a fair question, as I would be exactly the same. Here are six reasons why you need to be in so many:

1. Great way of growing your network quicker with your target audience. There are millions of LinkedIn Groups, and different people will be in different groups. Allowing for slight Group name variances, you need to ensure you get access to all the people you want to reach. Think of LinkedIn Groups as one big Venn Diagram - you need to make sure you cover off all the overlaps.
2. Establish your brand and reputation. When you are a member of group you can quickly get recognised as a specialist and an influencer within the group. To do this you have to post relevant and interesting content AND be responsive to questions. The more great content you share and the more discussions that you participate in, the more your brand and reputation will grow. When this happens, more people want to connect with you and (maybe) engage you for work conversations. This has happened to me on numerous occasions.
3. Uncover new opportunities (recruiter) and new jobs (candidates). It is common for companies and third party recruiters to discuss new opportunities and challenges they are having within industry Groups. Often these are posted before they reach the normal external challenges, in the hope that people in the Group will be interested.
   If the LinkedIn Group is particularly niche, and the members are closely aligned, then this can be a brilliant way to find people who are interested AND those magic referrals everyone talks about!
4. Great way to share your content to a targeted audience. As LinkedIn Groups are (should be) focused on particular sectors, interests, industries, skills etc the members will be closely aligned. Sharing relevant content and participating in discussions is a superb way of establishing your specialist knowledge and credibility.
5. Build and foster relationships with hiring managers and company executives. It is common place for Hiring Managers and Senior Executives to frequent LinkedIn Groups (for many different reasons!)By doing all the above points consistently, you will quickly get their attention. At the very least you can add these people to your networks, because they 'know you' from the Group participation. You would not necessarily have got the same response from just connecting with them as normal.
6. Free two-way contact and communication with anyone that you are in the same Group as. You can currently message anyone for free that is in the same LinkedIn Group as you. Importantly people can also message you for free. I get a lot of LinkedIn connections this way. If you are looking to grow your connections in a certain sector this a brilliant way to go about it. When searching for people, this therefore greatly expands the number of people you can message for free - the more groups you are in, the bigger the free contact pool. (Just be sensible when reaching out for the connections and make those invites personal, to maximise your chances of them saying 'yes' to your invite.)

So how do you deal with fifty groups then, on a day-to-day practical level?

There will be a core number of Groups you join that you will want to post and participate in on a daily/weekly basis but for all the others, my advice would be go into the Group settings and limit your discussion update to once a week (or even off). This allows you to get some of the benefits of being in many LinkedIn Groups without getting inundated with emails every day.
To do this, go to your LinkedIn Account Settings (top right of page) >> Groups, Companies & Applications (bottom of page) >> Set the frequency of group digest emails

Right now the Group basics are covered, how do you find all those different LinkedIn Groups to join? Here goes:

1. Searching for them in the search bar on LinkedIn. Obvious I know, but surprisingly many people don't ever do this! Search for keywords, industries, sectors, associations, alumni (companies and education) and anything else you can think of.
   
   
   Then when you have the search results to choose from, look left on the filters and you will see that LinkedIn tell you which groups are open (anyone can join in theory) and which ones are members only. This can be a short cut to finding Groups to join quickly.
   
   
2. Use the Group Directory here. This way you can filter the search by country language - not all the LinkedIn Groups are in English.
   
   
   
   
3. Find Groups on People Profiles. Everyone on LinkedIn has the option to show or hide the gGroups they are a member of. The majority of people just leave then showing. So every time you find a the good potential people that could be good for networking or for recruiting, always scroll down to the bottom of their profile, and see what Groups they are in. I guarantee you will find some new, different and relevant Groups here.
4. Use one Group to find other similar LinkedIn Groups. When you have successfully joined a Group, then click on the i at the top of the welcome page (below)
   
   
   
   Then click on Group Profile. This will show you all the people you are connected with in the Group AND (if you scroll down) other similar Groups you should also consider joining. Very useful as these are other Groups members of this Group have joined.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Use LinkedIn's own Talent Pool Reports. This is a really good way to find the best Groups in different countries and industries. Go to the LinkedIn Talent Solutions Page on Slideshare
   Here you will be presented with many different slide presentations for different talent pool analysis LinkedIn have done around the world.
   LinkedIn tell you the five most popular Groups for the subject they are covering in the document. This could be useful if you are looking for some international Groups to join.

Now you have no excuse. You should be able you find all the Groups you need to further take advantage of using LinkedIn for recruiting and growing your networks full of great people.

If, of course you know some other good ways to identify good LinkedIn Groups to join, please share them below in the comments.

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Will It Be Innovation Or Tradition At #HRTechEurope this week?

 

When I attend the big HR Tech Europe  conference this week in London, will I be seeing evolution, innovation or the same products as last year just wrapped up differently?

At their event in Amsterdam last year, I thought there was a good balance of new(ish) products finally gaining traction in the traditional HR technology space. Six months on and I am hoping that this will continue.

When working with companies I always get asked about technologies - recruitment tools/platforms, HR systems and industry aligned products. I attend a number of technology events each year, in the hope that I come away with new ideas, products and innovative approaches to solving some of the problems our industry suffer from. I can then happily share them with these enquiring clients.

Big tech events are not dead just yet. Even in this digital and social age, conferences still play an important part in letting us get 'up close and personal' with many technology vendors at the same time. Do you still  take the effort to go to them?

There were three interesting products that grabbed my attention at the last HRTech conference over in Amsterdam last year, that I wanted to remind you about:

1. HireVue. I had seen their demo's several months earlier, and I had 'put them in the box' with every other video interviewing provider (at that time). Then at the conference they blew me away with their (then) new interactive aspect of the video recruiting platform. A fantastic innovation to what was becoming a replicated marketplace. They launch in the UK and Europe this week, and it will be interesting to see if their innovative approach is accepted in our regions.
2. Hunite. The theme of many of the speakers last year was 'mobile, mobile, mobile', and yet there were few vendors that were demonstrating their mobile effectiveness (in fact quite the opposite!). Hunite however was hugely different. Their product provides one personalised point of access to information, people and messaging from all your existing HR systems, and puts this on a mobile platform.
3. HRMarketer. There is so much content, data and information everywhere, making sense of it is becoming increasingly more difficult. As content marketing and social media are playing a bigger part in marketing, the HRMarketer provides brilliant and immediate market insight and intelligence across all the platforms, sectors and industries you could want. They cover all the industry news and social conversations that matter to your company/brand, helping you to better target your marketing efforts.

I am hoping to find three more (and hopefully others as well of course), innovators this week at HR Tech Europe in London.

Six months ago the flavour of the speakers was the need to recognise the mobile user uptake, but I wonder how many vendors will be reflecting this in their products this week? I so hope I am wrong, but but my expectation is low!

Are there any companies that you know will be there on Thursday that I should specifically check out? Let me know below in the comments.

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Are You Breaking Walter's Rule With Your Social Media Marketing?

 

Are you guilty of breaking Walter's Rule, when sharing your content on social media? I think we have all been guilty of it sometimes - especially if we have not done our homework correctly and shared irrelevant content with the wrong audience.

Walter's Rule: Don't share the same boring crap with me that everyone else does.

I came up with Walter's Rule to illustrate a point I was making on a webinar for Entelo this afternoon. I was discussing recruitment content marketing, and how it is important to make sure that any content you are going to share ( either your own or curated content) meets three essential criteria:

1. It is RELEVANT to the audience you are sharing it with
2. It is INTERESTING to the individuals
3. It is APPEALING will make you want to read it/open it

This of course takes some work, because you first need to understand where your target audience is (click on the link for an in depth explanation of how you do this).

Too many people share the 'easy content' like Mashable, LinkedIn, Buzzfeed etc The problem is that the content isn't bad, it really isn't. My problem with it is that every other person is sharing the same content. By the time you have posted it, 100's if not 1000's of people have already seen it and they won't be interested in reading (or re-sharing or retweeting) what you have posted.
This is what I refer to as the 'same boring crap'.

The answer is to spend time finding great blogs, websites, news, videos, presentations that other people can't be bothered to find or simply don't know how. This is the great content that will make you stand out as a trusted source of unique and interesting content specific to your sector/industry, AND IT WILL BE relevant, interesting and appealing!

The point of Walter's Rule is a simple one.

Walter White is the main character from the series Breaking Bad. A complex character, he can be completely vindictive and particularly nasty if you upset him.
Just don't upset him.
Simple.

So before you post any content from now on anywhere on social media, ask yourself the simple question...... 'would Walter get upset with me because this is boring crap I am sharing?'

If the answer is 'yes' don't post it.

Find something more relevant, interesting and appealing. Or alternatively, just don't share it in the first place!

If you are interested I will be posting the webinar recording on this blog at some stage next week, so make sure to click on the orange icon below subcribe to it, so you don't miss it.

Original Image credit.
 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

What is the biggest mistake many companies involved in recruitment make?

 

What is the biggest mistake that I see every time (ok, nearly every time), I work with clients involved in the recruitment industry? The image above will give you a slightly big clue!

There are many companies involved in recruitment - recruitment agencies, vendors and corporates - who are in the belief that social media is not relevant to them, In short they don't value it, or they haven't got the foresight to realise that it is now embedded in our society, technologies and people's everyday activities. [I am not debating that point by the way, just stating the obvious!]

When I get asked to go and help companies with their recruitment strategies, technologies and processes, I inevitably ask questions around social media use, adoption and integration into their workdays. The answers range from (many) positive responses through to the (too many) "we don't allow our recruiters to use social media" types of responses.
[Side note: I still cannot believe how many recruitment companies STILL block all their employees using social media full stop! Yet they give them smartphone - DOH!]

My answer is always the same.

"What do the good prospective candidates do when they are contacted by one of your recruiters?"

Cue the 'what sort of stupid question is that' look........

'Google them' I answer.

Still a look of bemusement, "And?......"

Let me just rewind this a little.

There are three points that are probably obvious to (nearly) everyone:

1. No one can escape social media, and (dare I say it), everyone has a profile of some description on some type of social network - it might be LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, MeetUp, Slideshare, YouTube, Pinterest etc etc.
2. So by default it is very likely that every employee has at least one social media profile of their creation. The create their own bios, post their own content and share what they like.
3. As many of the social networks attract huge amounts of traffic, and have tons of fresh content, search engines like Google LOVE Them and reward them with high search rankings. This means that a simple name search of someone will inevitably return most (if not all) of their social network profiles and some content.

So back to the questions...

"You of course have a website, and maybe a LinkedIn Company Page and you are obviously precious about your brand and how it is perceived by prospective candidates?" (No one ever answers no to that)

.....'So?'

"You don't embrace social media, but your employees do. The moment a candidate does a search on one of your employees, they, by default, become an 'extension of your brand', whether you like it for not. Candidates could make a decision on your company/brand/recruiter on what they find in that Google search. Good candidates want to work with good recruiters - and in tight markets, they have that option to do so."

 I let that sink in....... it usually does!

So let me take you back to the question I first asked - 'what is the biggest mistake many companies involved in recruitment make? '

My answer: Ignoring the depth and power of Google (and other search engines).

Is every candidate going to Google recruiters before they talk to them? Of course not. But they will likely click on their LinkedIn profile at the very least. What do they look like - have you checked them recently? And remember, if you have some good recruiters and sourcers who do use social media to find and engage with candidates, their personal profiles and bios will get looked at. Do they represent the image you would want to present to future candidates/employees?

Whether you like it or not, Google gives you no choice at all - they value social media, so by default you have to as well!

 

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

How Santander Improved Their ATS Candidate Recruitment Experience

 

Picture credit

What is one of the biggest and hottest topics in recruitment at the moment? No, it isn't mobile or social media (although they are a part of it), it is the 'candidate experience'. (I would argue that the recruiter experience is also a very important (and under-considered) subject, but I shall leave that for another blog!)

We have seen the Candee's - The Candidate Experience Awards - gain momentum over the last few years, giving much more attention and focus, on the actual experiences candidates have when applying for jobs with companies. While technology is moving ahead at great pace, one of the areas that is lagging behind in terms of technology, is the corporate recruitment marketplace. I am of course referring to applicant tracking systems, more commonly referred to as ATS's.

There are many ATS's on the market, and all have their place within recruitment, from the free ones like Qandidate and SmartRecruiters, to the (relatively) 'new' entrants like HarbourATS and Tribepad, to the socially innovative ones like Jobvite, to the 'big boys' of the industry (I call them the ATS Supertankers -you will see why in a minute) like Taleo (Oracle), Kenexa (IBM), Lumesse and SuccessFactors (SAP). I haven't included the 'ATS wannabees' LinkedIn and Monster, as they are on a different path in my opinion. There are of course many more examples, but I am just highlighting a few here.

Let me be clear - I am not definitely not anti-ATS, and this post is not about that - different companies need different types and sizes of ATS to meet the requirements and objectives of their business at that specific time.

The issue I have, is that ATS size (company) often dictates the level of innovation and speed of reaction to changing markets. The best example is social and mobile. When social media hit the world, and particularly the recruitment industry, it caught all many of the ATS providers with their pants down. They simply could not react quick enough to companies asking for their recruitment systems to include some social elements. And let's not even go there with mobile!

This is the ATS supertanker effect I refer to. The big enterprise products in the ATS space are big systems for big companies, with complex systems, long lead times, committed (long) client development release life cycles and are typically slow innovators. It isn't because they don't want to change quicker (I do actually believe that!), it is simply because they just can't do it, without affecting too many other aspects of their products. They move the same speed a supertanker does when changing direction - very slowly!

So, let me return to where I started - candidate experience.

The people that are usually responsible for ATS provider final selection are not the people that are using it most - the recruitment teams. I had an example recently where the IT Director was making the decision on which ATS system to purchase, based solely whether it would integrate easily with their IS system. Do you think he even considered the recruitment experience for his company? Not a chance!

So within big companies, recruitment systems may not be the ones the recruiters would choose, to provide a good (and short) recruitment experience for their potential future employees.

Have you ever applied for a job online with a company that uses one of the enterprise level ATS's? How many screens did you go through? 15, 20, 25?  At what point did you give up? 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins? Did you even find the jobs that you wanted?

To use a hashtag analogy ....... #candidateexperienceFAIL!

So what can you do if you have one of these super tanker ATS's in place, to help you improve your candidate attraction and recruitment ratio's, giving you the best candidates, not just the ones that lasted the longest in the process?

Santander had this problem - they were using Lumesse (Talentlink) and it was proving a challenge for them to get the best people to apply for jobs and start the recruitment process.

Do these types of drop down boxes look familiar?

They were a little confusing for previous applicants to the Santander career site as well!

Santander needed to improve their Lumesse candidate recruitment experience and make it easy for candidates to both find their jobs AND apply for them. They used an innovative young company called TalentBond to make this happen.

Talentbond identified that things were broken at the front end of the recruitment process for many companies...

 

...so went ahead and developed a clever user friendly product that 'sits on top' of these enterprise level ATS systems. This top layer allows the company to reap the benefits of innovative technology without the expensive cost of having to replace their incumbent ATS 'super tanker'. These benefits include:

• Easy job search navigation
• Content marketing
• Organic SEO
• Geo-location searching
• Mobile and tablet compatible
• Mobile search
• Social media friendly
• Real-time management information
• Easy to use recruiter dashboard

Santander recently went live with the Talentbond product on their jobs page, and they have made a big difference to the look and feel of their site. While it is too early to get any true metrics, I am sure Talentbond will be too happy to share some of the results in the near future (client permitting of course!).

What Talentbond have done isn't earth-shattering in terms of technologies, but what they have done is identify a real business need at the enterprise recruiting level. Their product is well designed and executed, and delivered with one thing in mind - giving the candidate the best experience they can at the start of the recruiting process online.

So if you are sitting there with an enterprise level recruitment system, or in my language, an ATS supertanker, then I suggest you get hold of TalentBond today.

Of course there are other products appearing on the market, but I just like the practical simplicity of their solution.

Before you ask, there is no disclaimer to add here. As always it is my own insight and opinion into a product that I feel could benefit many companies struggling with the ATS supertankers.

 

I work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them understand and leverage the different social media networks to improve their recruitment strategy, recruitment process, candidate attraction, employer branding and content marketing strategy. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.