Great use of video for graduate marketing

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Justin Hillier

So it takes a fair bit to surprise me when it comes to the use of social media, and I must say that before I did some research on Mainfreight, a blue collar logistics & supply chain company, I wasn’t expecting to see a great deal of social media integration or anything at all. Well to say I was pleasantly surprised and impressed is an understatement.

Now here is a company who’s cliche target demographic are often thought of as the everyday worker, blue collar, true blue and honest hard working individuals. This is fantastic as you know who you are, however I have heard many companies in this demographic state that our target audience just aren’t on social media. (guess what they are)

So I headed deeper in the Mainfreight site and found their graduate program page where I wanted to review what they were up to. And what should jump out at me in the very first instance, VIDEO!!!

Not just 1 video, but many. Video’s telling you all about the company, what its like to work there, is Mainfreight the right company for you, it goes on and on. The reason I love this so much is that whilst watching the video’s you get a real sense for the Mainfreight culture. Not only have they put a face and personality to their graduate marketing, they have also stayed true to their brand ethos of blue collar and honesty.

Furthermore, after talking to the team yesterday, their thirst for social media just blew me away. It just proves that you don’t need to be a bank or a large consulting firm to have a truly engaging and informative social media presence, take the Mainfreight lead, keep it simple and true to your company culture.

Check it out here - http://bit.ly/MSwkPb

Kudos Mainfreight!!

Social Media – We built it and they didn’t come

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Justin Hillier

On the back of the World Cafe unconference style session last week at the ATC, I wanted to explore the growing conversation that I hear regarding companies building social media pages/accounts/channels, and the concern that now that it is built, surely people will follow/join.

Sadly this just isn’t the case. Whilst in principal I guess you could argue the case that everyone in some way is on social media, and that in itself should be enough for them to start following you, but who has really experienced that, especially from a careers/recruitment perspective?

Here are a few things I think you should have covered off to ensure at least initially you are creating awareness about your new (or current) social media assets:

Add your social media links to your email signature, such a simple thing to do but how many of you do it?
Add your social media links to your business cards
In fact just add your links to every recruitment marketing you have, amazingly this still isn’t being done.
Make sure your Facebook/Youtube/Twitter?google+ accounts are easily accessible on your careers site. I still see so many companies who have them almost hidden or not at all
Cross promote your channels -
Ensure all newsletter/ezines you send to your candidates in your ATS has your social media links.
Whilst on ATS why not invite people to join, a personal touch can go a long way
Ensure your content is diverse and relevant. Just posting blogs, or worse still jobs (don’t ever just post jobs, big NO NO)., will just turn people away and bore them. Ask your audience and employees what content you should produce and encourage them to create it for you. Diverse content that can be shared like photo’s and video’s will encourage more followers and interest.
Follow Thiess’s example and put a big Facebook Like foam icon in your foyer, something different for sure but it certainly catches the eye.
Don’t be afraid to take a risk and learn from your mistakes.
Ask your current employees to join your networks. There is nothing better than an employee referral and if they share your creative and relevant content then your network hopefully attracts more of the same.
Further more why not have 1-2 employees per month available to answer questions about their area of the business and the company as a whole. Great Employer Branding and an engaging exercise. Video/Radio/Forum are some of your options.
Use the many many tools that are out there to target the people you want to engage with and do so.

This isn’t the be all and end all but hopefully it gives you some ideas to get moving with. If you have any more ideas or have seen something that works please feel free to add your suggestion below. We can all benefit from those that are being successful, social media is as much about giving as it is taking.

Big data killed the job board

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Justin Hillier

Well firstly it’s been a while since I put the fingers to the keyboard and blogged. But after much hassling from various people and the realisation that I really do miss blogging, I am back.

To get things started I want to firstly thank the ATC crew for a great event last week. It got my mind ticking over with the wide range of fantastic speakers, a wealth of knowledge swirling around and people to meet.

Now to my first rumbling, or rambling in quite a while. The essence and focus of last week ATC event was all about data, big data. It’s all around us, it’s in-between the cracks, under our finger tips and is just waiting to be unearthed, dissected and massaged to everyones benefit.

Thinking hard and long about the various big data topics that were discussed it dawned on me that if anything is going to kill the job boards, it is BIG DATA.

The recruitment world has been saying for a few years now that social media will kill off the job boards, however from a traction perspective social media is not delivering a large number of direct applications that supports this argument. Yes social media will assist in bringing some of this data together and taking advantage of it, however all in all big data will circumvent any need for job board advertising if you know where to look.

Job boards rely on active candidates, consistant traffic and minimal information input, most candidates these days are shipped off to an ATS and may or may not complete the process. What happens when unemployment lowers and traffic stagnates or vanishes? Big data will allow you to find them in an unassuming and stealth like manner, ALL THE TIME!

So for all those at ATC last week and anyone who has thought about this themselves, what do you think?

Social Network Ownership – Tug of War?

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Justin Hillier

Had an interesting chat with a recruitment agency earlier this week regarding their consultants and LinkedIn. Firstly hats off to them for pushing the use of LinkedIn as hard as they are, it’s a recruiters gold mine if you engage and use all aspects of the site/network, we receive a lead on average once a week currently from our efforts.

What was an interesting topic of discussion was “Who owns the 1st level connections that each consultant builds as their efforts on LinkedIn, the Employer or Employee/Recruitment Consultant?

This particular recruiters feels that all of the work that is done to either build an online or offline professional network during business hours, representing their company to promote their services, and thus connecting to that individual/s is the property of the business. I can certainly understand where they are coming from however is it that straight forward?

What of proof of time of connection (where they at the current employer when they connected on LI), can any company really stipulate that they own every person that their employees come in to contact with, and is this just taking the rules to far with internal business information and knowledge. Considering a LinkedIn account is represented by an individual, under their name, what ownership can a company have? Quite often you connect with more then just professionals in your industry, how can we really define or argue the two?

Now I agree that a LinkedIn network is certainly an asset, and once an employee leaves that asset is lost, however that person still needs to be replaced, with, you would expect, a potential new asset to bring with them. Can you really prove or is it realistic to ask an employee to prove their network and when they connected with them?

What are your thoughts? Should companies have the ability to “own” the employees networks either on LinkedIn or Twitter and demand they are deleted or similar once their tenure has ended?

Social Media Inception

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Justin Hillier

Over the weekend I finally went and saw Inception. Unless you have been living under a rock you know this movie has something to do with dreams, and stealing them. On the surface that is initially what it is about, however as the movie progresses the key plot is planting an idea in someone’s dream/subconscious so that when they wake they will think the idea is their own.

Sounds simple right, wrong. And without giving away any more of the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet, (Go see it now) I want to focus on that point, “planting an idea in someone’s dream/subconscious so that when they wake they will think the idea is their own”.

Something dawned on me when I heard this and thought back to my recent Social Sofa episode with Steve Ludlow. Steve mentioned that the benefit that his business receives out of Social Media is that he gets to communicate with his network and does not feel the necessity to sell to them at every opportunity. With a more engaging and sharing approach, Steve has been able to fill 25% of his positions via Social Media in the last 12 months, without the need to sell or broadcast/spam his jobs.

Engaging with your network, providing interesting and varied content, encouraging feedback, conversation and no selling. When someone within your network is seeking a new career opportunity, they reach out to you, without the thought of another company. Without realising it they have you in their subconscious as the “Go To” company and it was all their idea. Did I hear you say Social Media Inception?

If this is not your strategy perhaps it should be, or at least be forming a large part of your social media communication, engagement and content creation strategy.

Social Media Inception, not a bad thought/approach if you ask me, what are your thoughts?

Social Recruiting 360

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