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?

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.

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?

@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!

Gordon's gone - here's the social recruiting cabinet....

So now that Gordon has accepted that he needs to leave No 10, while his bed is still warm and the other parties are still squabbling of who sleeps with who, I thought I'd get in quick with my own cabinet.

If only selling recruitment was as good as this.....

Expert advice can make the difference

Quite a few years ago, when I was a Sales Manager, I wanted to implement a formal sales process which we would ultimately automate.  I battled internally with a bunch of moronic Regional Managers (they were great really) for about 18 months.  I then met a Sales Consultancy who specialised in such ideas and as they had been working elsewhere within the Group they carried credibility with our Board.

Google Search: Lessons from an eleven year old

My 11 year old daughter was pestering me recently to search NOW for a stylus keyring pen she needed.  After 5 minutes of persistence (from her) I accepted my fate and went onto Google and searched as instructed:

"stylus keyring pen"

I then proceeded as usual to the search results links and started looking for said item.

"What are you doing" enquired the impatient 11 year old.

"Searching" said me.

"No" she shouted.  "Go onto images".

So, onto the images tab I went and lo and behold THERE was the item she needed.  Determined to prove her wrong I went back to my own search technique and after about 5 different websites that didn't have the correct item I went back to images and 2 clicks later was on Amazon and buying the pen.  Simple as that.

I was amazed at how this much younger generation search!

Bored with this social media expert thing

On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.  But Hillary had much experience of other mountains that included various attempts on Everest.  "Failing" to reach the summit is a vital part of mountaineering and whilst failure can sometimes result in death, experience pays off in the end.

But I can't imagine anyone questioned Hillary as to his "expert" status or indeed that of any other member of the team.  Yet for some reason we have this constant bashing of the term social media expert/guru.

Social Media Word Forum #smwf #esm

So I went to yet another social media conference and have decided to only do the one day returning to Devon to see my children in their school swimming gala.  More time with the "family tribe" less time in the world of social media hype!

But is it all just hype, hot air and yet more Dell examples or is something starting to evolve?