Hire Strategies Blog

A real life community case study - hashtag underscore #socreccamp

From humble beginnings, lots of tweets and a last minute girly weekend gatecrash #socreccamp was upon us.The online community were coming together to as one.

But how would they manage to communicate without a signal?

Would they all fit into one tent?

Would Devon survive such a technophone incoming?

Would anyone die?

B2B Marketing vs. Recruitment Marketing

I wrote a post earlier this week Corporate Recruiters help Agencies thrive and survive. Well, in the business world of marketing it seems life is not much different when it comes to automation and tracking!

Graduate Recruiters take note: Students attend class through screening technology

According to a recent survey by Intercall students in the US are attending their courses "virtually" rather than in person. This may not be that new i.e. students lie in bed rather than attend lectures (not true of course!) but now, they can lie in bed and watch the lecture online or a recorded version etc. You can read more about this www.intercall.com.

What is interesting though is how this could impact graduate recruitment. We are about to enter the graduate recruiting season and let's be honest, it is must be a full time activity applying for graduate vacancies with every major employer having their own online process. This does not of course stop our eager beavers putting in those job applications leaving the recruiters with thousands upon thousands of applications to trawl through. Then there are all those assessment centres to attend and whatever else is in play. I just wonder if webinars could play a part in the process to:

• Better inform candidates.
• Filter out the time wasters.
• Grab the best early on.

Or does one just accept the deluge and consider it "business as usual"? Just a thought.

Will Facebook Places screw social recruiting?

 

It seems everything social wants to add your location these days.Some people seem to be fine with this whereas others don't. But, I think it could have quite a significant impact on recruitment. Or will it?

Corporate Recruiters help Agencies thrive and survive

An interesting post on Stephen O'Donnell's blog Aye Right called The end of the CV database started me thinking about how the whole issue of "who owns the candidate". The person who really "owns" the candidate is of course the candidate but they go where they choose to get a job; be it direct or indirect. But don't for one second think that direct is always the best route. Retailers continually fight off the manufacturers in the same way that Agencies will continually fight off corporate recruiters.

ATS Vendors: Do your customers love you?

I have been running my Corporate Recruiters Survey for the last few weeks and one particular question was around their ATS and how well their Vendor looked after them. This amongst many of the other questions has thrown up some interesting data as you will see below just on the beloved ATS.

For anyone who would like a copy of the final report please take the survey.

Starbucks UK Career site - what do you know!

As you may know I am a BIG fan of Starbucks and have been waiting with anticipation to see their new UK career site. It is now of course as to be expected - in my opinion very nice aesthetically and engaging. But, already there have been comments on the ATS (Taleo) integration and how "ugly" it is. But, does it actually matter?

Hey you with the flashy career site.....

I am still asked "Who has the best career site?" There are many great looking sites but that means nothing if the owner has no idea about measurement and performance. Using a swimming analogy, the training needs to be specific for the race. Times show performance and levels of improvement. Training is tweaked accordingly based on results. And on it goes. Clear goals in mind, specific activities to improve performance, measures to show improvements/losses.

Employer Brand + Facebook = Great Referral Model

I blogged about the concept of integrating a career site with a Facebook Page in February but this takes it a step further.

Converting passive candidates to join your talent pool

The Talent Pool. The holy grail of recruiting. Many recruiters claim to have one yet in reality very few do. But the technology has been out there a long time and the concept is not new. So what should you be doing?

The Corporate Recruiter Survey 2010: How effective is your direct resourcing?

Pretty much every employer wants to recruit people direct yet so many are failing to make any real impact instead forever fire fighting the deluge of urgent vacancies. So what's going wrong and what can you do to fix it? Take our 5 minute survey and in 4-6 weeks we'll share the overall results with you in a FREE report.

• Compare your activities against others by company size and industry sector.
• Find out what volume of vacancies you should be managing.
• See if others have the same attraction challenges.
• Find out if technology is helping or hindering.
• Get access to idea's to help improve your recruitment performance.

ATS vendors - where next?

Following on from the Stepstone acquisition of Mr Ted what else may be on Mr Parkers shopping list? Is it just acquisition for growth or acquisition to expand the depth of their product offering. The likes of Amazon and Tesco have expanded way beyond their roots and Stepstone appear to be following suit. But the focus for most of the ATS vendors has been downstream of the application process into the talent management space whilst the likes of Success Factors are trying to push upstream. But I think their is a massive gap upstream for the ATS vendors.

Stepstone acquires Mr Ted: Another one bites the dust

Have to admit this was a big surprise seeing as how Mr Ted has been hiring like crazy; maybe it was done to make them a lot more of a player to prospective buyers? That aside I think this is a VERY smart move by Stepstone. Or Mr Stone as they may now become!

Without doubt Stepstone can sell software but, and this is the key bit, their technology is old and needs rebuilding very soon. However, Mr Ted has a newer technology solution but has only just started to learn how to sell by hiring some great sales people. So Stepstone get a much better ATS without having to go through the pain process of building and then launching a new product. A bit like taking on someone else's children once they have gone through the baby stages. Still some work to do, but a lot less hassle I can tell you.

Will be interesting to see how it all plays out although the likes of Jobs2web will be needed as the Mr Ted candidate experience could learn from the old iGRasp candidate portal.

Good luck both.

Are you looking?

I am reading a great sales book at the, moment where the author demonstrates how around only 3% of people are actively buying at any time.

Yes, some may buy under certain circumstances, but only 3% are actively in the market right now. Some may be interested if there is a great offer. Or may be looking in 6 months. Some won't be looking right now under any circumstances. But, the key point is that if only 3% are actively buying right now, what is your strategy for survival? Cold call the 3% more often than your competition? Well, that's what most agencies do.

Create a recruiting culture right from the top

I have lots of people attend my workshops. Other people can make similar claims. But recruiters need to start at the top. Training you lot is all well and good but your boss, and their boss, and the one above them; they are better recruiters than you are. So we ALL need to be training them.

I'm glad to say in some organisations we are. We are getting the very Senior Management (C level) onto sites such as Linkedin. That great sales person would rather connect with your Sales Director than you. The senior Buyer wants to connect with your Buying Director. The potential Store Manager wants to connect with the Ops Director. You get the point. We ALL need to start at the top. Getting buy-in at the top will also get your own advanced training signed off a lot easier as well. Once results come in, the rest of your career will develop at the same rate.

Not convinced; I'll show you. Watch this space.

Convinced? Get in touch to find out more.

The aggregation of advantages

Simple things can make a difference and added together make a big difference. The above title is from the British Olympic cycling team and is something Chris Boardman uses. If you are struggling to recruit top talent (I hate that phrase BTW) best you look at every step; and I mean every single step.

Here's an example. A simple auto e-mail I saw recently to all applicants, including those hard to find one's who are rare at best. It was was short. It was pants. It was a basic one liner and felt like a "Don't call us, we'll call you" typical HR response. If I'd made the effort to complete a full online application form and I got that, I'd probably delete my application.

Remember, every time an applicant engages with you as a recruiter they form an opinion and if your copy is great on your website but does not extend to the rest of the process don't be surprised if your results don't stack up. Copy goes under the skin of the entire process so maybe just add 1 more day for the copywriter to finish off what they started - it will pay dividends!

Facebook Pages: How to aggregate all of your social feeds direct to your wall

One of the joys of social media is being able to aggregate all of your feeds into one place and then share them via an RSS feed. So using the same process I have been trying to get the same information together then back out again to my Facebook Wall. Now this is a bit of a work in progress job but rather than try and get it perfect before sharing I thought I'd share what I have managed to do so far hoping that someone can come up with a better idea?

What's got into everyone? I'm just asking don't shoot me!

I reckon the summer has come about at just the right time so a few people can get off on holiday and take stock. I'm not sure where it all started really. A long, long time ago (maybe before the Romans) I commented on blogs becoming, dare I say, a little boring. This was based on my comment probably on Twitter that I hadn't read all my RSS feeds for a while. Jon Ingham suggested I had the wrong feeds and I should add his. So I did. I still can't remember the last time I checked Google Reader. I resorted to e-mail alerts. Maybe I'm old. Maybe I'm going to be accused of a Ratner moment (if anyone knows what that means) as Bill Boorman was accused of last week. It was Bill that started all this summer madness off with his post Stop the social recruiting BS.

You see, there is a lot of great stuff out there but also a lot of noise (nothing knew I know). But I do listen. Lisa Scales goes out in the middle of the night and runs. I run but not being a badger/vampire/burglar tend to wait until the sun is up. I thought I'd listen and learn and give it a try. Today I left the house at 05:30. If my wife had been awake she would have probably thought I was doing a runner! I got back at 06:30 and no one even knew I had been out - not even the dog. So I did some work. Then got everyone fed and watered and off to school/work and back to my desk. It's now 10:30. What do I do now? I don't normally see my desk until 11am at best. (After a run of course so it's not like I am in bed until that time.) So I thought I'd write this blog post. Just to show I'm still here. Not that anyone would notice of course. OK so 100's of people (literally) watched the SRSW video yesterday but that was yesterday. You are only as good as your last post/update/tweet etc. Or are you?

Social Recruiting Workshop - The Video! Turn up your speakers and enjoy :) #SRWS

Absolutely fantastic job from Nick Price of Working Films. More guru's than you can shake a stick at and all in one place at the same time!!

@andyheadworth response to planted wind up question at Social Recruiting Workshop #SRWS

As most of you that attended the the workshop know, the WIFI was pretty poor. On some occasions it worked, on others it didn't. For Andy Headworth his presentation was full of promise but let down by the WIFI. Nick Price of Working Films who is producing the video for the day asked Andy how he felt about me cutting his WIFI half way through his live presentation (which I didn't of course). This was his response. The delay is amusing while he thinks of a suitable answer.

Thanks Andy :) Oh, and the Matt Alder interview is even better!