Tag Archive for social media recruitment strategy

Passive vs Active – The game has changed

February 3, 2010 / Justin Hillier / 4 comments

Social Media has opened up a behemoth of opportunities for companies to converse and attract potential employees and understanding the thinking process of candidates has changed entirely. No longer does the traditional Passive vs Active candidate argument satisfy. Engagement is now imperative, however is it as simple as just trying to have a conversation with someone who is on your page/account?

We are now living in a much deeper, and to some degree, more complicated methodology of candidate interaction. Whilst the basic principle of “being social” is key, it is important to understand the different phases that a candidate is likely to go through to be the “bum on the seat” that you are trying to achieve.

Focusing on the ultimate objective of building a community, I believe there are 4 stages to consider that a candidate now moves through.

1. Browsing – Candidates are researching or surfing around Twitter, Facebook etc looking for a potential employer, or general searching and come across your business. There is no affiliation or loyalty with this candidate and they are not sure what it is they are looking for. This is as close as we get to the passive candidate in terms of “not looking”, however something strikes them they move to Interest.

2. Interest – Candidates whilst browsing see something that connects with them, and, in turn interests them. It could be a wide range of propositions that you have marketed, or could simply be a testimonial of a previous employee or a current employee. They are not entirely sold on your business quite yet but are intrigued enough to find out more. Two to three positive messages (estimation) should see them move to the Interaction phase.

3. Interaction – The Candidate is now asking questions, downloading information and conversing within the community to get a headline overview of the company and what potential career opportunities there are. They are still in the research phase, and will likely ask a wide range of questions to qualify their key criteria of what company they would like to work for. It is more likely that they will simply seek answers to questions and not offer any more communication unless they are genuinely interested. Then they will shirt to the Engagement & Contribution stage.

4. Engagement & Contribution – Your candidate now wants to join your business and you have now directed them to your Community Platform (Tribepad, shameless plug yes..) to engage in more meaningful conversations with current employees and HR staff and proactively apply to positions. It is at this stage that you have a candidate, that should their skills be applicable, that can not only be harnessed for positive word of mouth, but that is “sold” on working for your company and they may not have even applied for a job yet. They are giving back to your community their views and thoughts of your hiring process, and what they have seen that has made your company the one they want to work for. Can there be anything more powerful then that?

With Social Media/Social Recruiting forming an integral part of the recruitment process, it is important to adapt to the new ways of thinking that candidates or potential candidates now move through. Passive vs Active is no more.

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Minority Report

February 2, 2010 / Justin Hillier / No comments

Social Media

Does anyone remember this movie? Tom Cruise starred in a futuristic movie where 3 collective minds could predict vicious murders that were going to occur in enough time for the authorities to not only stop the crime but to catch the criminal before the act even occurred. An interesting concept, an interesting movie and great special effects for its time.

I was thinking about this movie the other day and noticed some stark connections between the concept of a collective mind producing outcomes for a desired positive goal. You see the 3 collective minds, lets call them, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, were all working together to produce a result. They all had their unique strengths and all played off each other to get the desired outcome.

Tom Cruise, lets call him “HR Director”, would watch all of this play out on video and be one step ahead of the game thanks to the forward thoughts of his assistant, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The three would talk to him in a unique way that no one else had access to and allow him to forward plan strategies to save the day.

Armed with this knowledge there was nothing that “HR Director” couldn’t achieve. HR Director had the deepest insights into the rest of the world, lets call this the “global community” and could plan well in advance. Now that HR Director understood his community, the engagement levels were heightened to a level that was never previously dreamed of. The Community was now a juggernaut and there was no stopping it. Plans could be changed well in advance and industry changes and community sentiment were known before others had thought about researching it.

So does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Or have I had to many sleepless nights of late?

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Why I Blog

February 1, 2010 / Justin Hillier / No comments

Blogging, it’s something that many people say takes to much time and to much thought to be successful at. It’s difficult to think about a new topic 3 times a week, and takes so much time to write that perfect blog that you are happy with. For me, 6 months ago I never thought I would be blogging and enjoying it. Not only realising how easy it is, but also the amount of ideas that I have to blog about, such as this

So why do I blog?

Tell the World what I think
Well it was something that I did not seek out personally and was desperate to get in to. Given my line of work I read blog after blog every day and sometimes, not always, I have differing views to that of the article and author. I have always commented on my views, however explaining my thoughts in more detail then 2 paragraphs was obviously not possible. Having my own blog however I can rant and rave as much as I like.

New Ideas and Concepts
For those who know me, know that I have some really good ideas about certain aspects of recruitment but never had the platform to voice them. Blogging has allowed me to not only put those ideas on paper (yep I even forget some of my own ideas off the top of my head sometimes, Am I alone on that?) but also allows other people to add there opinions to the conversation thus generating constructive and creative debate.

Build a Network
I am actually quite amazed at some of the people that read my blog. At the beginning every blogger sits there checking stats 4 times a day to see if anyone has visited. The thing is once you get going and write thought provoking quality content the feedback you receive from all over the world is outstanding.

Be known and seen as a Industry thought Leader
This takes time and a lot of hard dedicated work. Something I am actually looking forward to. For people to approach you for your thoughts on a particular topic is not only quite humbling, but also shows that you are engaging with people in a way that we should all be striving for, knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Flex that muscle in my head
I don’t know about you, but my mind never stops thinking of how I can improve a particular process, a new way of doing things, or a new concept entirely, so why not share that with the world. Now I won’t always go deep into a new concept or a game changing way of thinking and operating, but the frame work is always good to put out there for feedback. Collaboration is paramount for Social Media and I am a big advocate.

Generate New Business
I would be lying if I didn’t want to garner some commercial benefit from blogging. The thoughts and concepts that I put out to on my Blog form the basis of what I advise and recommended to the clients I work with. I obviously don’t divulge everything but if a HR Director is reading through my site and likes what I have to say, I hope they contact me.

Share and Share alike
Collaboration and sharing a key components of Social Media and I am very very vocal about how important this is. If you read or follow numerous blogs, it’s only fair that you either A. Provide feedback on an article that resonates with you one way or another or B. Blog yourself and give back to the wider community.

Differentiation
There is a ridiculous amount of people out there labelling themselves as Social Media Experts (seriously none of you are) and a number of peers that have either differing views or actively blog. We don’t all think the same (which is healthy) and it is good to have a point of difference. Whilst the tools we all use are the same, the methodology can differ and thus produce different results for different companies. There is always more then way way to skin a cat, and not every idea or concept connects or fits with every company. So why not tell everyone what your ideas are work practices are to help you stand out.

Cause I can
Do I need to say more???

SO why do you Blog?

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Only Fools Rush In…….

January 13, 2010 / Justin Hillier / No comments

I am noticing more and more lately that companies are rushing in to social media for the sake of it. It’s the latest craze and “we just have to be there”. That’s all good and well, but what damage is a hap-hazard, 2 bit, thrown together job going to do for you. Pasting your company brand all over the place, typing whatever into each profile section, and not thinking about each platforms demographic, functionality and relevancy to your objectives could leave you with a dogs breakfast.

Social Media is like any other undertaking that you are going to do in the business world. Don’t take the easy way out just because you think “if we are not up and running in the next 20 minutes we are going to miss out”. And believe it or not there is more then Twitter and Facebook out there, and they may not even be right for you anyway.

One very simple old school line comes to mind. Fail to plan, and you are planning to fail.

P.S If you don’t know where to start or want to make sure you are on the right track contact me. (Yes shameless plug but hey why not)

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Social Media IS the Silver Bullet, for everything…..

December 15, 2009 / Justin Hillier / One comment

Sounds outlandish I know, Social media is the solution to all of our problems. This simply can’t be true, can it? Well it really just depends on how deep in to the rabbit hole you want to look. We are all aware of the rage surrounding it at the moment, you can’t turn on the TV, pick up a paper or talk to a friend without Twitter, Facebook or Youtube being mentioned. There are so called “experts” popping up left right and centre and their is a new site almost every hour.

According to Wikipedia this is what the term “Silver Bullet” means:
The term has been adopted into a general metaphor, where “silver bullet” refers to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem.

So how can this be related to Social Media? It is not exactly straight forward with so many platforms out there to use. But there has been a clear problem in the world, the lack of effective communication between countries, governments to citizens, companies to consumers, so on and so on.

Communication is the key. We all live fast and frenetic lives, always on the run and never a spare moment to sit down and catchup with people we haven’t spoken to in 6 months. And we always complain we never have enough time to talk to everyone in our lives. Social Media has enabled us to communicate, engage and collaborate with the wider world like nothing ever seen before.

Not only are these tools helping connect with lost friends and relatives, but also the business world is using social media to connect and communicate in ways we only dreamed of 10 years ago. I now know more people in my industry then I did 2 years ago, and that’s not locally, that’s globally, all due to social media. The fact you are even reading this article right now is full testament to that.

Without communication we have nothing. Without the ability to tell people our stories, share our wealth of knowledge and experience we do not grow as a society or as human beings.

There have been many people pitch, state and scream to the world that social media is not a silver bullet. Well in my mind your not thinking laterally enough and probably trying to protect some other revenue stream of your own, hello newspapers, job boards (although JB’s just need to get more social).

The key to using social media all comes down to your approach. There are so many methods making up the “bucket” of social media that it can be hard to know where to begin. For those who “get it”, know its a very powerful communication and engagement platform. We know that we can reach a wide audience and have our voices heard and people will in turn talk with us.

Social Media was a catalyst to help promote change with Obama, it has allowed the rest of the world to know what is going in Iran when all other media outlets have been banned. We saw lives saved in the Mumbai attacks with hostages using it to inform police of the location of the terrorists via Twitter. It has allowed communication to flow far more freely and for people to connect and engage with each other in way that we only dreamed of 10 years ago. It’s a powerful tool that can deliver powerful outcomes.

Now is that not the silver bullet that everyone has been so desperately trying to find?

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Is your social media strategy, 120, 240 or 360 degrees

November 22, 2009 / Justin Hillier / One comment

So chances are you have heard of social media and you have a strategy in place to reap the benefits of the new wave of interaction that is now available to us all. You are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Xing, Delicious, Digg, ah the list goes on and on.

Your strategy is sourcing you a great deal of traffic and to date you have somewhat figured out there is a benefit in doing all of this and you are starting to see some return for your efforts. Well done, this will and should occur with a defined plan in place. Whilst it is still very much early days and the approach may very well change in 5 years time, we must get the most out of it’s current structure while we can, why not, it’s an opportunity missed otherwise and what is the business value in that?

So for now you have solved what is the puzzle of social media and recruiting. But is that really it? It can really be that “relatively” easy can it?

What if I was to suggest that your strategy is only 33% complete? And there should be in fact 3, yes 3, parts of your social media strategy.

1. Attraction + Engagement + onboarding

This one is a bit of a no-brainer for the first 2 uses, but who is using social media for onboarding? Attraction and engagement is great when talking about utilsing all of the above mentioned sites to spread the word about your company, the fantastic opportunities you have, and what a great business you have become.

But what about on-boarding. Do you encourage new employees to connect with current employees prior to starting and entice them to start getting involved in the business in any way they can. Either just by following a conversation or getting up to date with current projects that they will be working on.

2. Retention + Engagement + Collaboration

Here is where your social media strategy provides you your greatest ROI. You have attracted talent, hired them, they have under-gone a great on-boarding process and they are starting to hit their straps. You’re employees are all over social media as we know, however how can you harness social media internally to improve outcomes and enhance engagement and more collaboration. We do after all enjoy the people we work with, more then the job itself most of the time.

Supplying your staff with the ability to create chat groups, pose questions to the rest of the business and move projects along with more communication is every companies dream. Imagine allowing managers the ability to have a better understanding and the “pulse” of their staff by simply getting more involved in what they want to talk about, business or otherwise.

With meetings always cancelled or shifted to a time when not everyone can attend due to sickness or holiday, the meeting itself never resolving or covering every discussion point required, and follow up more and more difficult as some people just cannot be tracked down, why not have your staff continue moving things along with the power of a community platform.

Not only is this great for speeding up discussion and greater collaboration, but if you ever have a question why not pose it to the rest of the company in a non-intrusive manner. Who knows what answers you will get and what other business enhancements may be raised from one conversation alone.

3. Exiting + Alumni

It is suffice to say that people move on at some stage, but does that mean your communication should cease entirely. Understanding why people leave is never easy or straight forward, and answering surveys, being involved in discussions and simply making them feel like their voice is still being heard is crucial.

You may not want to stay in touch as a business with every ex employees but it would be remiss not to have some connection with former employees for either future job opportunities or business deals. You never know who might be your client or vice versa moving forward.

This is just a snapshot of course, but how many of us can say, we are indeed utilizing social media and its power to its full potential. My mum always told me if I’m going to do something do it properly, I wonder if this relates to social media and its use in recruitment as well?

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