The second Social Recruiting Summit will take place in New York on Monday, Nov. 16th. If you missed the sold-out Summit at the Googleplex this summer don’t wait too long to check out the agenda and register. The Summit topics and conversations will challenge your thinking about recruiting, give you an opportunity to network, learn from recruiting leaders and take away ideas that will help shape your thinking about the future of recruiting…..social recruiting. Follow Summit happenings on Twitter @socrecruiting and track the conversations through #socialrecruiting.
Here’s a preview of my session and I hope to see you there! Is social recruiting just another sourcing tool—a way to promote job postings and find potential candidates? Or is it a pathway to building a sustainable talent community and another tipping point in the evolution in recruiting?
The tools we have access to today deliver benefits that you won’t find through other sourcing vehicles. Harnessing the true power of social networking is about active talent communities. Talent communities provide a forum that enhances the relationship between candidates and your brand by inviting talent to engage in conversation rather than transactional activities and messaging.
In this interactive session, we’ll take all 200+ of you and create a massive brainstorming community of our own. We’ll look at community development through the eyes of talent and the organization. By organizing into sub-groups we’ll leverage our collective intellect to tackle key questions and begin shaping a sustainable recruiting strategy.
Some of the questions we’ll address include:
How can you attract talent to your community, engage them, and give them a reason to keep returning?
How can talent be inspired to help you grow the network?
How will you convert a community member to a hire?
How can your company approach social recruiting to build a sustainable strategy?
How can the recruiting function create greater value for the organization?
The growth, adoption, and momentum of social networking over the past 18 months brings another round of significant change for recruiting departments. The first question that needs to be answered is whether or not you believe social networking is all hype or if it will result in lasting change. Then you can answer the question, “If social networking is here to stay, is it right for our organization?”
Some look at the social networking trend and say that it’s all a bunch of hype. Some look at it and feel the need to, and will try to, be everywhere. Some will consciously decide to be nowhere — we have the phone and that works very well, thank you. Many are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening, the pace of change, and the fears about transparency. In most cases you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be everywhere. And, you may decide to be nowhere, but make sure that’s a conscious decision and not just resistance to inevitable change.
As for fear of social networking, the pace of change and transparency, think of it this way — whether you engage your brand in the discussion or not, the conversation moves on — nothing stands still, except that eventually people may just not care about your brand at all, and, well, at that point you won’t need to recruit anyways. If you want to influence the conversation about your brand and if you want to engage people in your brand story, then social networking has a lot to offer. The complete article featured in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership October issue, will delve further into that, but here are my more brief thoughts for the time being.
Social Media and Social Networking: Strategy or Tactics
The underlying premise of this article is that social networking is not a passing fad and that it deserves significant positioning in your talent attraction and management strategy.
Let me begin my differentiating, for the purposes of this article, the difference between social media and social networking. The terms are often used interchangeably, but I see an important distinction, especially for recruiting. Social networking is the application of social media, which provides the tools to share content and information, engage in conversations, and build networks. The key difference is what you choose to do after sharing your information. Social networking is pursued with the underlying intention of dialogue, engagement, and interest. It also results in a more sustainable talent strategy that differentiates your brand and brings forward many other business benefits. If you are simply pushing jobs out to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you are socializing job postings by using social media, but not necessarily engaging in social networking. If you’re engaging prospective talent in discussions and building active communities, you are pursuing a social networking strategy.
There’s also a significant difference between the two that influences how you design an effective strategy and how you define your desired outcome. Social media is in part strategic but mostly tactical and is really saying: “Hey, these are new channels through which we can reach people and we should broadcast our jobs.”
That may be fine, but it limits the value and doesn’t fully realize the potential or move you toward a sustainable solution. Also, and most importantly, when you use social media there is an expectation for networking! If you push a job out on Twitter and someone reaches out to you, they expect a response. When you don’t respond, the brand can be viewed unfavorably and over time this type of behavior will dilute the brand reputation and value.
This is similar to what job seekers expected with the introduction of corporate recruitment websites. They wanted a way to reach and connect with someone in a company they were interested in joining. Remember all the discussions about the “black hole of recruiting”? Well, in a social world, the expectations and consequences are higher. And, while today’s job market may be in favor of the employer, the cycle will turn again and the strategy that you develop and implement today will absolutely impact future talent attraction effectiveness — positively or negatively. If you want to develop a sustainable talent acquisition strategy and actively invest in the longevity of your brand, then it’s time to engage.
They Really Are Interested in You — Really!
The evolution of technology, social tools, and ease of access are driving rapid advancements in communication. People like to play, create, share, and comment about your company and brand. The fear you may be feeling about letting people “in” to your brand, so to speak, can be looked at one of two ways. You can either be fearful of what they may do to your brand, which “they” will do anyways, or, you can celebrate that people are interested in your brand, products, and services. Listen to what they have to say. You may learn something. Engage them in your business challenges; they may solve them for you. Yes, they want to hang out with you — if, that is, you have something interesting to say! A UK student who found his job through Twitter shared this with me:
Personally, the companies that I’ve been most interested in have been the ones that are blogging and therefore appear to be knowledgeable industry leaders … also, some companies have begun posting jobs on blogs, which I think is better than on a recruitment website or in a newspaper, because the candidates applying have read the blog and are interested in the company.
Now, that’s something to think about. Does silence imply your company has nothing interesting to say? That you’re not knowledgeable about your industry? Pursuing a social strategy isn’t just a way to attract and engage talent. It can also be a way to expand the innovative capacity of your organization — perhaps something we should consider as the talent function evolves.
Clearly the impact of “social” is still emerging and the potential is just beginning to be understood — although it’s already profound. We are still at the edge of what the social media wave will bring. The potential for sweeping change is enormous. We will certainly see the future impacted and unfolding before our eyes.
You’ll find the complete article in the October edition of the ERE Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. You can subscribe to the Journal or to purchase this article only please contact the editor, Todd Raphael.
How effectively is today’s HR function meeting organizational business needs? How about the individual and collective needs and capability of the organization’s workforce? How can a global CEO study indicate that Talent is the most critical imperative, ranking high above access to capital, (see pg 24 of the exec summary) and at the same time reports are emerging that upwards of 60% of employees would leave their jobs when the economy improves? Increasingly, Talent is disconnected, underutilized, over managed, dispensable and bored. And, companies are not realizing the value in their workforce by merely creating a place for work to be done. Where is the excitement around business? Around new ideas? Innovation? Collaboration? Competition? How frequently have talented employees left a company to give birth to a successful venture on their own – could the idea not be born internally? Can we create a true entrepreneurial culture that supports internal incubators and reward innovation? What’s driving the disconnect and when will business get serious about the value to be realized in attracting, engaging and leveraging individual and collective capability? When will organizations recognize there is greater reward than risk in hiring for potential rather than always hiring to fit the round peg in the round hole and that the same approach applied to successful, innovative business practices can and should be applied to talent practices?
As the ecosystem within which companies operate continues to test and challenge the ability of organizations of all sizes to attract, engage and leverage talent how has the HR function stepped up to lead the way? Today’s business environment persistently demands more from people and their companies. What is the new leadership model at the intersection of HR, Talent and business? And, yet, how many companies have truly evolved their internal environments to navigate the waters of the business environment they operate in today and will be faced with tomorrow? This article from BusinessWeek raises some very relevant questions about R&D. Where is the relationship between R&D leaders, the HR function, the CFO and CEO to set a vision that prepares for the future? Any business issue today is also a Talent issue. How will we create adaptive practices that support continuous evolution that better keep pace with an increasingly shifting world with so much to offer, so many opportunities and filled with so many unique challenges?
The Big What If I like to ask “what if” questions, a lot! It helps me imagine different realities, explore new possibilities and develop differentiated solutions. The BIG “what if” question I’ve been tossing around? Here’s part one – What if the HR function didn’t exist? Lets just imagine this for a minute. Some how business has been able to survive all these years without an HR function. New employees were still hired. Internally, people were paid on time and appropriately. Employees had access to development opportunities and internal movement happened as needed/desired. Things just happened, maybe not in an exciting way but we plodded along and managed. Now, part two – What if the HR function didn’t exist today BUT a business need was identified that recognized there was a synergistic relationship to be leveraged with talent in a way that would drive adaptive business practices. That would drive personal engagement, job satisfaction, creativity, collaboration, innovation and competitive advantages stemming from a talent-centric organization aligned through shared values and a clear vision.
Needless to say, this is a BIG what if! It’s also a critical question to explore during uncertain times that, to a large degree, has widened the gap between the organization and its current and prospective employees. The result of which does not look good from any perspective – and certainly not if you gaze into the future and wonder what will be different.
Talent Camp About a year ago I began kicking around the idea of Talent Camp – bringing together an intimate group of keen minds with a unique orientation and passion for Talent, business and the HR discipline. All things happen for a reason and in this case I’m particularly pleased that circumstances resulted in Talent Camp being a 2009 venture because there are a few people
involved that I didn’t know last year. On October 18th, 12 incredible people will come together for 3 1/2 days to explore the BIG “what if”. Collectively we have more years, depth and breadth of business and HR experience than I can begin to measure. We also share a strong passion for what could exist at the intersection of talent and business to serve both interests and advance organizational capability and effectiveness. We’ll be gathering in a 4500 square foot beach house on the Oregon Coast to immerse in a dialogue around our big “what if” question, that will no doubt experience the ebb and flow of progress, frustration, curiosity, pain, breakthroughs and clarity as we craft our talent function vision.
What can you expect out of Talent Camp? Well, that’s something that we’ll be defining while we’re together. My goal, hope and desire is that we’ll be publishing a collective work outlining the talent function required for business in the 21st century.
I am so pleased and excited about the incredible collection of people who have committed to join me at Talent Camp. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from them and can follow each on Twitter (their names are linked) and look for #TalentCamp to follow the conversation.
More risk exists in standing still than in moving forward. We are the future and its time to craft the vision at the intersection of Talent, HR and Business. Talent Camp!
Think about a brand that you admire. What comes to mind? How do you feel when you interact with the brand’s product or service? How about when you interact directly with the brand through their website, retail store, phone service, advertising or other means of outreach? Brands are emotive and most people like brands that make them feel good, are dependable, provide some desired combination of quality and value, and have a fun factor.
Now, think about your company’s recruitment process. What does the candidate experience feel like? At the most basic level, is it efficient? Respectful? Is it easy for a candidate to get to know your company in a meaningful way? Has appropriate attention been paid to the importance of design? Are the job descriptions well written? Do they get the candidate excited? Can the candidate see not only how their work contribution benefits the company but also what opportunities employment could provide? Would they be excited enough about what they’ve learned to tell someone else? Keep in mind that these elements only begin to address the front-end of your brand experience. If you don’t have a clear talent philosophy and process that delivers brand continuity through each point in the application and interview process, your front-end experience will be quickly diluted.
If you read my post on Adaptive Talent Strategies you know that employment branding is one of the key elements. In that post I discussed the importance of resource allocation, technology and process design to developing an adaptive strategy. An adaptive talent strategy provides you an architecture to meet the evolving needs of business and develop a value-oriented talent function. The employment brand is a key component of the strategy. Closely related is the use of networks, which has been increasing in importance to the brand and establishing an adaptive, sustainable approach – see the post on community managers.
Employment Brand and Networks Employment brand and networks are tightly linked and should not be looked at as being independent from each other. We also should not lose site of what’s at the center of the external employment brand and networks – the prospective employee. And, yet, most candidates have less than desirable experiences with a company. The job seeker’s experience will directly affect the company’s current and future competency in attracting and hiring the talent they desire. This starts with the front-end experience and all too often deteriorates further as the candidate moves forward and expresses interest in a job. The fact is that most corporate recruitment sites have become incredibly boring. They’re flat, static and lack engaging attributes. Very few catch your attention and draw you in. I can hear the arguments. “But, we’re not really hiring now.” ”We don’t have the resources.” ”Business is way off.” These may all be true but there other important truths. What doesn’t happen today will be significantly more costly tomorrow because it will be much harder for you to catch up and secure the talent you need when you need it, which is why brand and networks are part of an adaptive strategy. Ultimately, the job seeker doesn’t care what your issues are – they only want a good experience and to be treated respectfully as they move through the application and, potentially, the interview process. Even making relatively small investments today will provide exponential value tomorrow. Think of it this way. After connecting with friends on Facebook, exchanging tweets on Twitter, or connecting on LinkedIn they come to your website. Does it measure up? Is the experience as interactive and engaging or does it feel like it needs an infusion of energy?
Moving from Fragmentation to Integration The first place to look is at your corporate recruitment site – the center of your employment brand for prospective talent. Aesthetic design, the application of technical elements and community spaces haven’t continued to evolve. I do like Microsoft’s new site, and am still playing around on it. The job search integration is sweet. I also had a sneak peak at what Steve Fogarty is getting ready to launch at adidas and can only say that it will significantly raise the bar….stay tuned. In many instances, brands have become fragmented through the introduction of new channels that are shifting quickly, but also important to connecting with prospective talent. The model included below provides a view into the complexity of the recruitment ecosystem. The corporate career site is at the core and each of the spokes shooting off from the center are brand touchpoints. While it certainly isn’t necessary to be represented through every touchpoint it is important to understand who your trying to reach, what they do online and what is brand appropriate for your company. However, This approach will help you capture and drive the most relevant job seekers to your site and set the stage for providing a positive experience. Integrating a set of touchpoints into the corporate career site and supporting bi-directional links delivers a more enhanced brand experience and adds value. The dashed line circling the corporate career site and intersecting with each touchpoint represents the tools used to communicate and manage (CRM), support viral behavior (sharing), and push out content (RSS). Lastly, implementing an SEO and SEM strategy will advance visibility for your brand and drive relevant traffic to your site in a very cost effective manner.
Evolution Ideally, the corporate career site has an embedded community. Extending the corporate career platform to support actively engaging job seekers in a dialogue is simply an evolutionary step. Why not engage job seekers in a discussion about the company, its products and services? What are you proud of? What problems are you trying to solve? What are you working on? Wouldn’t this type of interaction be more rewarding then having someone stop by for a visit and read, watch or listen to what you have to say? Blogging is a good way to begin. If your interested in learning more about how to incorporate a blogging strategy here’s a link to the Definitive Guide to Corporate HR Blogging. I had an opportunity to work on this guide with Ben Yoskovitz of Standout Jobs. Trust me, blogging is hard work and can take a lot of time but there is value in staying the course to develop your voice and a regular writing habit – I’ll let you know when I’m there! You’ll find that there are a lot of opportunities for companies to enlist a variety of voices as part of a blogging strategy that can make developing a diverse mix of content much more manageable.
As your thinking about your recruitment strategy, the talent your trying to reach and the experience you want to create, think about your favorite brand and how it makes you feel. Then, go to your website with the “eyes of your job seeker” and experience the brand. Are you smiling?
Developing a strong, clear, engaging employment brand can be the difference between a whisper getting whipped around in a breeze and a crank-up the volume, highly amplified message, metaphorically speaking, to attract the best talent to your organization. That doesn’t mean you have to get out the megaphone and scream from the rooftops, but it does mean you need to get better at targeted positioning to catch the attention of prospective talent and move them to action. EnticeLabs has a technology called TalentSeekr that will help you do just that – without having to grab your megaphone!
I had a chance to talk with Joshua Westover of Entice and Steve Fogarty of adidas about TalentSeekr and Steve’s pilot campaign while we were in Las Vegas last month for the Kennedy Recruitment conference. Here’s their story about TalentSeekr. You can read mine following the video and the last paragraph captures Steve’s results.
What’s your brand story? Crafting a great brand story begins by knowing your company’s culture, what attracts people to seek employment with you, why people stay with you, and articulating what sets you apart from the competition. How you engage prospective talent in your brand story occurs through a number of different touch points. It could be your corporate career site, social networking sites, blogs, job boards, Google Adwords, video, etc. Even the biggest and best brands need to work harder than ever to keep this a streamlined, efficient process that produces a solid ROI – converting prospects to hires. The persistent increase in the number of channels that companies need to engage in has made this process not only more complex but more expensive, harder to manage and harder to track.
Once you have your brand story articulated there are four elements that will help your marketing and advertising strategy produce more value: positioning, reach, relevancy, and experience. Positioning is important to make sure your brand will be seen by the talent your trying to attract. Reach is your ability to expansively target the talent your aiming for – narrow and deep to broad and deep. Relevancy ensures that your brand is reaching the most interested, best-fit prospects based on skill, interests and work experience. And, lastly, “experience” is providing a brand experience that results in an emotional connection that moves the prospect to action – expressing interest in your brand and career opportunities. The ability to break through the environmental noise in order to not only reach the talent you’re company needs but for that talent to take notice and act is where the true value comes in. Its also one of the most challenging aspects of employment brand advertising. The days of jobs, and job seekers, ending up in the classifieds or on a few key job boards are long gone. Plus, if you want to reach a more passive prospect your going to need a more sophisticated approach to reach them and capture their attention.
How relevant and targeted is your brand strategy? Through TalentSeekr, EnticeLabs offers a sleek and effective approach to targeted employment brand positioning that provides companies a streamlined, intelligent approach to zero in on the talent their trying to reach. TalentSeekr applies geographic, contextual, behavioral and social media profile-targeting to deliver the highest ROI on each of your digital campaigns. By combining these four targeting capabilities, TalentSeekr automatically addresses positioning, reach and relevancy through location, targeted key words and site preferences (think Facebook, LinkedIn, User Groups….). As Joshua Westover of EnticeLabs says, ” We can get as broad as a nation or as narrow as a building”. EnticeLabs begins by collecting information from the recruiter about a job or a job category to develop a highly relevant positioning strategy. They’ll work with you to understand key markets (talent and geography) and create text, image, picture, video or flash ads that will appeal to passive and active seekers. (examples to the right from an adidas campaign)
Then, TalentSeekr automatically generates an engagement page that serves as a “storyboard” type concept to enhance the prospect’s experience with your company’s brand. Through the engagement page, TalentSeekr weaves together video, photos, referral capability, and links to your career site, job posting, community interface or any other digital real estate to which you want to drive traffic that results in a valuable employment experience.
Does your candidate experience measure up? So, sit back and think about this for a minute. A prospect logs into their gmail account or Facebook profile and sees a highly relevant ad. They click on the ad and get a cool video and pictures about your company and / or product. They get information in another panel on the page that talks about your company culture. Another panel may invite them to join your community. And, there’s also a job link. How do you think the prospect is feeling about your company and the career opportunities after that experience? Probably pretty enticed! (yes, pun intended!) Don’t get hung up on thinking that you need to go out and produce a professional video. The more real the video the more effective it is in creating emotional engagement between the prospect and your brand. Flip cameras are about $100 and create great videos. Also, chances are that your company has some cool product videos that you could use (like the video used by adidas in their engagement page above). If the videos are interesting and relevant to the roles your focused on then why not use them?
Are you also beginning to see how TalentSeekr serves as a brand equalizer! While the graphics here represent adidas, a very well known and respected brand, the more relevant the placement, the better the brand attraction and the stronger the brand engagement experience. Brands of all sizes can overcome what traditionally has felt like a “big brand” advantage to become equal in appeal and attraction strength.
Is brand intelligence on your side? TalentSeekr also gets smarter with age. The longer a campaign is run the more data TalentSeekr has to refine your positioning, ensuring that your receiving the highest ROI. While TalentSeekr can be applied successfully to specific jobs it’s even more effective if you think of job categories and integrate your marketing strategy with a talent pipelining or community building strategy. Think about the power of this integrated with your talent planning strategy and CRM tool! Through the Talent Seekr dashboard (below) you can track the effectiveness of your campaigns. TalentSeekr automatically reallocate advertising dollars so the brand placements that are driving the best traffic (not just volume but relevant traffic) will receive more impressions and in the end you’ll have a highly relevant pool of prospects and a data set that will inform future campaigns. You can also work closely with the EnticeLabs team and play a more active role in how ad placements are reallocated.
(Dashboard shows sample data for demonstrations only)
In the first campaign Steve ran through TalentSeekr for adidas they focused on a very difficult to fill position. In fact, it was a position that in the past had required outsourcing to executive search. Within two weeks adidas had attracted a number of highly relevant, top quality candidates and converted one to a hire and filled the position. The prospect adidas hired had seen the ad on their Gmail page and was so taken by the experience and highly relevant content they were blown away. Relevancy rules!
The second Social Recruiting Summit will take place in New York on Monday, Nov. 16th. If you missed the sold-out Summit at the Googleplex this summer don’t wait too long to check out the agenda and register. The Summit topics and conversations will challenge your thinking about recruiting, give you an opportunity to network, learn from recruiting leaders and take away ideas that will help shape your thinking about the future of recruiting…..social recruiting. Follow Summit happenings on Twitter @socrecruiting and track the conversations through #socialrecruiting.
The growth, adoption, and momentum of social networking over the past 18 months brings another round of significant change for recruiting departments. The first question that needs to be answered is whether or not you believe social networking is all hype or if it will result in lasting change. Then you can answer the question, “If social networking is here to stay, is it right for our organization?”
be everywhere. Some will consciously decide to be nowhere — we have the phone and that works very well, thank you. Many are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening, the pace of change, and the fears about transparency. In most cases you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be everywhere. And, you may decide to be nowhere, but make sure that’s a conscious decision and not just resistance to inevitable change.
How effectively is today’s HR function meeting organizational business needs? How about the individual and collective needs and capability of the organization’s workforce? How can a 
Think about a brand that you admire. What comes to mind? How do you feel when you interact with the brand’s product or service? How about when you interact directly with the brand through their website, retail store, phone service, advertising or other means of outreach? Brands are emotive and most people like brands that make them feel good, are dependable, provide some desired combination of quality and value, and have a fun factor.
help you capture and drive the most relevant job seekers to your site and 
