Hire Strategies Blog

Social Media in Recruitment Conference 7 April 2011

The third Social Media in Recruitment Conference takes place in London on the 7th April and Mike Taylor has put together another great programme with a good variety of speakers and topic areas. 

So Brave New Talent, WTF are you?

I read today that Lucian Tarnowski is expanding his social recruiting empire to the US. So, in advance of his epic journey to conquer America, I pose a simple question. What is Brave New Talent? 

I am sure Lucian will grace me with his presence here to answer the very simple question but let me help if I can.

BNT (always reminds me of BLT sandwich when he calls in BNT) is a job board for Graduates. Wow. What an amazing concept. Hmm, problem is there are not really any jobs. I mean, according to this article it's a Facebook for Corporates and major companies including IBM, L’Oreal and Tesco have signed up to the site. So I took a look.

L'Oreal

Yes they are there with some jobs. I applied with the scant profile I created. So far OK.

IBM

Yep, more jobs. Experienced Cognos Consultant? Questionable until I realised it was just a feed from Indeed and not even direct from the IBM career site. Great.

Tesco

Well, no jobs and some odd videos coming from YouTube posted by a student careers advice site.

Others

Looking around at other employers such as BBC, Google and Apple all I came across were profiles that stated "This profile's content is sourced from the public domain". In other words, they are not an advertising client so chances are nothing here to see and no jobs to apply for. The point of this is???

So, I thought I'd check out some of the Discussions. I see more discussion in our social media camping discussion on Facebook and there are only about 10 members! So BNT was not exactly compelling.

So now I am at a loss because here's what Lucian told me at TRU London last month.

"We are a laser focused product company"

So there you go. Milkround fear not. Jobsite sleep easily. Monster let your daughters out. America...... we love you and so does Lucian. In fact, as much as we all love Lucian (and he is a really nice guy - seriously) - you can keep him.

Good luck Lucian, the yanks will love your story in the same way they loved Jason Goldberg and Jobster. I reckon you've got at least another $30m to burn before anyone realises.

Or have I missed the point? WTF did Northzone invest in? Can anyone enlighten me on this prodigal Entrepreneur and his Graduate job board with no jobs? 

 

One night stand, short term affair or full on marriage?

Recruiters tend to dip their toe in the water and flirt with the latest sexy tools although in some cases they shy away because it all looks a bit too hot to handle. Everyone seems to be in bed with the job boards but then they are just a bunch of media tarts really.

Google is a bit of a geeky looking type that's hotter than hell if you spend some time getting under their skin but most think Facebook and Twitter look sexier but just flirt with them and never take it any further. Fickle lot these recruiters. But one night stands rarely live up to expectations and short term affairs are just a bit too risky which is why most just go back to hum drum job board land. Some recruiters do of course get their kicks from their job board and are happy to stay where they are but some are not yet they just won't take the plunge and try something more than just a dip in the water.

If you are going to flirt with SEO, Adwords, blogs, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook or any of the others can I suggest you go into this with long term in mind. Campaigns are fine as a one-off if you can get by with these but building a talent pool, or a community, or a Linkedin Group, or SEO, or Google Adwords need more than one night. Enough said.

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?

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!!

Sodexo UK Careersite gets SEO and social media upgrade

The US recruitment team of Sodexo have been doing great things with social media but, we have just implemented our own version of Jobs2Web for Sodexo in the UK as well as some initial steps into social media for recruiting.

Social Recruiting Workshop Update 4: The results are in! #SRWS

 

So having decided to pull together the social recruiting coalition last week, sponsored by Jobsite.co.uk and Mr Ted at the British Library did it feel like success or failure; good idea or bad idea; friends or enemies?

Social Recruiting Workshop New Format - Registrations Open #SMIR

Following on from the Social Media in Recruitment Conference last week (#SMIR on Twitter) I am delighted to say that you can now register for this workshop as of today at www.hirestrategies.co.uk/newformat. 

This workshop is being sponsored by Jobsite.co.uk which helps keep the cost down hence the first one is going to be FREE!  Thinking of registering?  Read on.

Do you, will you, can you measure it to death?

Measure what?  How many people REALLY measure the results of what they do?

The lion rarely attacks an elephant as there are better, easier targets. The poor old zebra just hopes he is faster than his drinking buddy.  As does the antelope.  The vulture just hopes the lion kills something.  As does the hyena.  The lion hopes he will survive.  To survive he needs to kill something.  That damn vulture would be a good start but it never comes close.  The hyena is all skin and bone.  The waterhole is dry so no animals come by.  Other than those damn, big, tough skinned, aggressive elephants.  With the soft underbelly.  Maybe, just maybe.  Next year will be different; if he survives.  Life on the savannah is taken one day at a time.  Tomorrow is yet another struggle.

Why posting jobs to Twitter is no different to RSS

There are as ever many opinions about having automated job feeds on Twitter.  Matt Alder wrote a post last week Why Twitter is the future of job boards which generated a few different opinions on the matter.  Shall we just get our heads out of our backsides and let the Follower decide just like they do with RSS?