Social Media for Recruiters

Mike Ramer, CPC, CSP, is a highly-rated recruiting industry trainer, known for his innovative techniques and interactive, hands-on style. He has 20+ years in recruiting and managing his firm, Ramer Search Consultants (www.RamerGroup.com), in the New York/New Jersey area. He has trained 2,500+ recruiting professionals at 60+ industry events and conferences including NAPS, ASA, Fordyce and IPA. Mike will be a featured speaker at NPA’s Global Conference in New Orleans, March 6-8, 2014.

In Part I and Part II of this post, I wrote about the risks of contingency recruiting and gaining exclusivity from clients and candidates.

Successful recruiters know that gaining exclusivity and making placements starts with building credibility and trust with companies and candidates. After a first contact/conversation, people might look you up online. If a prospective client or candidate googles your name, what are they going to find out? Here’s the good news: You can manage what people see about you online. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s installment is courtesy of guest blogger Mariah Gillespie. Mariah is the founder of Social Media Superstar and worked for 2 years as Social Media Manager of JXT Consulting, an agency specializing in online marketing strategies for recruiters (Sydney, Australia). Mariah has helped some of the largest recruitment companies in Australia utilize social media platforms in the recruitment space (Chandler Macleod, Adecco, Drake) and has spoken at dozens of conferences on social media recruitment. Contact her at mariah@socialmediasuperstar.net.  

I’m back with the next installment of my 6 Steps to Social Media Recruitment Success, Parts 3 and 4. Click here to catch up if you missed Steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: Identify Your Objectives and Tactics for Achieving Your Objectives Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s installment is courtesy of guest blogger Mariah Gillespie. Mariah is the founder of Social Media Superstar and worked for 2 years as Social Media Manager of JXT Consulting, an agency specializing in online marketing strategies for recruiters (Sydney, Australia). Mariah has helped some of the largest recruitment companies in Australia utilize social media platforms in the recruitment space (Chandler Macleod, Adecco, Drake) and has spoken at dozens of conferences on social media recruitment. Contact her at mariah@socialmediasuperstar.net.  

Hashtags, check-ins, tagging and tweeting. Social media recruitment can be daunting for those unfamiliar with the dozens of social media platforms, industry jargon, and digital trends – not to mention the ever-changing rules and regulations of networks such as Facebook. It’s 2013, and by now most recruiters have established or at least poked their head inside the world of social media.

Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge a particular word I used in that last sentence. Most recruiters have begun to use social media. Yes, I’m onto you, recruiter who has been avoiding eye contact with hashtags and quickly scrolling through Facebook page updates in your newsfeed. Have no fear; your secret is safe with me, and I’m here to help! Read the rest of this entry »

“Never build on rented land.” I don’t know where I first heard this phrase, but I love it because it perfectly describes what global recruiters are confronting in today’s digital landscape. It refers to the practice of creating content or other business assets that you don’t directly own. You may also hear it called “digital sharecropping,” a nod to old farming practices where a land owner allowed another farmer to work his land, but kept most of the profits for himself. It’s a bad practice for both farmers and recruiting firms.

Here are some examples of building on rented land: Read the rest of this entry »

In order to remain relevant with clients and job seekers alike, every international recruitment agency should do these three things right now:

1. Review your website on a mobile device. Google has recently announced that it will begin penalizing websites that offer a poor experience for mobile users. Since 57% of all job searches are being done from a mobile device, no international recruitment agency can afford a penalty from Google. What is meant by a ‘poor experience’? Lots of things, but particularly broken navigation or interior pages, as well as redirects from a mobile site to a ‘regular’ site. What’s the best way to tell if your site is as risk? Check it out on a mobile device or two. What to look for:

• Does your site automatically resize and/or re-orient depending on the device?
• Does the navigation still work on a mobile device? I have encountered many sites where the home page looks great on my Android phone, but when I try to use the menu to go to a different page, nothing happens.
• If you have a mobile site, (one with an “m” in the URL, like m.domain.com or domain.com/m), are all of the pages included in your mobile version? Or do some pages link back to your main site?

If you notice that your site doesn’t perform as expected on a mobile device, fix it NOW.

2. Get a social media dashboard (especially if you are using Twitter). It’s hard to imagine an international recruitment agency that is not using some form of social media these days. Invest in a good dashboard to help manage the activity, especially if you are using Twitter. A social media dashboard is simply an organizational tool (software) to help you manage your social media activity. It can include features such as the ability to monitor one or more social networks, automate posting to multiple channels, schedule posts, and reporting/analytics to help you measure results. If you are using Twitter, a good dashboard is even more essential because the volume of Tweets can be overwhelming to follow. There are lots of great dashboards available. Here is a good blog on what to look for in a dashboard.

3. Switch your browser to Google Chrome. Google Chrome offers some powerful plug-ins that can be really useful for an international recruitment agency. A  few to consider:

• Falcon.io – Falcon is an extension that offers rich social profiles from across the web. It’s a great way to get a lot of data, fast, on what a particular candidate is doing/saying across the web. In other words, you can use ONE social media profile to find OTHER social profiles belonging to that same person.
• WhoWorks.at – Let’s say you are looking at the website of a potential client. Click the WhoWorks.at icon and you will immediately see a list of all your first-degree LinkedIn connections who work at that company. Pretty nifty, right?
• TalentBin – Similar to Falcon, but for recruiting in the IT/tech space. TalentBin drills down into sites like Stackoverflow and Quora, where techies are known to hang out. The downside is that you may need to pay for a premium account to access all the functionality.
• PageMonitor – PageMonitor allows you to set up an alert that will notify you anytime a particular webpage you are interested in gets updated. How would you like to be notified whenever your clients updated their career pages?

What’s the best tip you can share from YOUR international recruitment agency? Add a comment below!

Social recruiting is a hot topic for recruiters. Yet mastery seems impossible and success is a challenge. Those that have dedicated effort to the process are starting to see benefit.

In Jobvite’s Annual Social Recruiting Survey, the most popular social recruiting networks are ranked as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter in that order.

TOP SOCIAL RECRUITING NETWORKS

No surprises there for me, but it is interesting to see the adoption rate for LinkedIn growing even faster than Facebook and Twitter. You would think that Twitter has more room to grow than LinkedIn. It is obvious that LinkedIn is pervasive in the industry and that it continues to grow even faster than the other services.

I urge you to view the full survey results at the Jobvite Download Page.

Here are some facts that got me thinking…

92% of recruiters reported using social recruiting networks as a part of their strategy. That’s all, really? I am trying to figure out what the other 8% are doing…not using LinkedIn, really? I’m guessing that the remaining 8% don’t have a strategy which is why they didn’t answer favorably?

50% reported increased candidate QUANTITY. This makes perfect sense, but the other fact that is impressive is — 43% reported an increase in candidate QUALITY! That is shocker for me, but an impressive result.

31% reported increased employee referrals and the result was reported as 21% experienced a decrease in time to hire!

Finally, results were documented by this survey that 73% of respondents successfully hired through social recruiting networks in 2012. That means that if you are not part of the 92% using social media, you are going to miss out on results that others are experiencing.

Do your results track with Jobvite’s survey? Please share your thoughts.

Image courtesy of sscreations / FreeDigitalPhotos.net