Posts Tagged “Social Media”

Guest Post from an HR Analyst. About the Author: Kyle is the HR Analyst at Software Advice – a company that reviews human resources and applicant tracking software.

Social media can be a great tool for sourcing, screening and recruiting candidates. For a number of reasons, though, many recruiters sometimes find themselves crossing the line as their quest to find quality candidates. Many are asking, “How far is too far?”

Beyond learning the hard way, there are some best practices emerging to help recruiters know when they’ve pushed the envelope too far. And hiring professionals are discovering a new line of recruiting applications and tools built into applicant tracking software to help them rise above the same old hashtag to better identify, connect with and place viable candidates.

Many folks using social media in their recruiting efforts are running into the same issues. Regardless of how good your intentions, these issues can tarnish your reputation and cause you to miss out on golden opportunities. Here are the top three:

  • Spamming job posts. Want to render your social recruiting efforts ineffective? Spamming people with your job opportunities is a surefire way to do just that. The key to social recruiting is to be social and engaging. Share industry news and articles of interest, exchange personal messages, etc.
  • Prying rather than researching. Some positions require a flawless social media presence. For the rest, you shouldn’t be digging too deeply into their profiles. Screening should be focused on general impressions of candidates to see if they would fit within your company culture.
  • Penalizing candidates for level of access. It’s not unusual for candidates to deny recruiters access to their Facebook profile, inviting them to connect via LinkedIn instead. Many people use Facebook for personal, rather than professional networking – especially in Generation Y. Don’t write off candidates for showing a bit of backbone and managing their public image – it’s hardly something to penalize.

Lessons Learned from the Trenches

Carolyn Betts, CEO of Betts Recruiting, is one person experiencing more success in social recruiting than others. She was recently featured in a New York Times article, for leveraging social media to grow her recruiting success.  She’s picked up a few tricks worth sharing:

  • Focus on strategy. You won’t be able to make the most of social media if you’re going into it blindly. You need to have a plan for how you want to accomplish your goals. Betts suggests starting with one social media site, familiarizing yourself with it, then growing your presence gradually.
  • Have realistic expectations. When you consider the industry you’re in and the position you’re hiring for, are your deal-breakers realistic? You need to determine upfront how much weight you are giving a candidate’s social media presence.
  • Leverage the right apps and tools. Many successful social recruiters know that in order to make the most of your social recruiting efforts, you need to leverage the right tools. Why go it alone when there are applications with built-in best practices for recruiting more effectively?

Expanding Your Reach with Software

According to a recent study, approximately 85 percent of U.S. companies used LinkedIn for recruiting last year, though only 30 percent of active job seekers are on LinkedIn. As such, many recruiters are finding LinkedIn a bit overcrowded. Where are the candidates? The large majority of them are on Facebook.

Because the data recruiters are looking for is a little harder to find on Facebook, however, many miss the sourcing opportunity this vast network provides. Fortunately, there are third-party software developers devising methods to put actionable candidate information into the hands of recruiters quickly and efficiently. Some of these recruiting solutions are standalone applications that leverage recruiters’ networks. Others – like Bullhorn Reach – are applications designed specifically for automating social recruiting.

For further reading, check out Kyle’s HR blog at: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/social-recruiting-how-far-is-too-far-010271/

 

Most people that are familiar with JobShouts know about our job postings and that we’re integrated with social media – but some may not know about or have yet to try our Social Search feature.

So, what is JobShouts Social Search? How can it help my recruiting/sourcing process?

If you’re an employer or recruiter who regularly uses resume databases to source your candidates, pay attention.

Social Search was developed from a sourcing technique that I personally used very successfully in my days as a recruiter. I specialized in recruiting a lot of hard to find candidates and clients were often amazed at my pinpointed accuracy. My secret? Social media, networking sites and search engines. I used a variety of sites to source from where I could make real connections with people based on a specific opportunity uniquely matched to them. Some might call this cold call sourcing or passive candidate sourcing. This method for me was very successful – so successful in fact, that I was able to stop relying upon resume databases full of outdated content.

The only trouble with this method was, it was very time consuming. Going to each site, figuring out what search criteria worked best, sifting through results for good quality, etc. Each site search could take from 5 minutes to 2 hours depending on the number of results that I got.

The premise behind Social Search was to streamline this process. Social Search allows you to search up to 8 different sites all at one time: LinkedIn, MySpace, Spoke, ZoomInfo, VisualCV, Twitter, Facebook AND – the best part of Social Search – the resume search feature. Social Search finds “hidden” resumes of potential candidates wherever they might be posted publicly, such as on their webpage or blog. Best of all, the results are sorted and labeled according to the network on which they were located.

Here’s an example. Using Social Search, I searched for “business analyst” in Miami:

You can see it pulled up a number of profiles on various sites; from there you can click on a profile to see if it’s a match.

So now let’s say you’ve located a great potential candidate on MySpace (“Suga Cane” listed above) but you don’t know her real name or how to reach her. Well, you can message her through MySpace and hope she responds OR, you can use the information you find on her MySpace profile to help locate her real identity.

This is what we know from her MySpace profile:

So now we know who she currently works for. Using “Gemaire” and “Inventory Control Analyst”  I searched LinkedIn and found out that her name is Marisa Howell. Now, she’s a viable and potential candidate! Connect with her through a shared group on LinkedIn or use her name to search for contact information. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s face it – in the world of social media and online networking  – far more people are keeping up with their social profiles more often than their resumes. Using this search will net specifically targeted candidates through publicly available information and eliminate the need for using a resume database. Recruit smarter, deliver better results to your clients and stop wading through the same candidate pool as everyone else.

Questions? I’m all ears. 🙂

JobShouts.com has been working really hard to transition to next level and build something of true value to employers, recruiters and job seekers.

For employers and recruiters, our newest tool is now in beta testing and we need your help and feedback! We’ve put together a search tool we call Social Search, that allows you to search multiple social networks in one click. You can search for specific skill sets on social networks such as Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, VisualCV, Spoke, Jigsaw and more (we can release additional networks as they come online)

social_search

Check out Social Search, see what it can do help streamline your pipeline development. Do a search, search for PHP in Dallas, “Business Analyst” in Ontario, Cosmetologist in NYC – anything!  From these results, you can click through to the social profiles to view them. Our “Shout Bar” will iframe the profile and allow you to “Star This” candidate for later evaluation. (the “star this” feature is not fully developed at this time, so while you can star candidates, you don’t have the ability to view them) That’s a feature reserved for premium employers.

We’d like to gauge interest in this tool to help us determine value, pricing, etc. For now, it’s free. 😀 Tell all your friends and let us know what you think! Comments, questions – all feedback is welcome!!

NetworkingIn 2008 America shed a record numbers of jobs (over 2.5 million) The largest decrease since the end of WWII. With more losses looming on the horizon, and no slowdown in site, many people are wondering when will it end. This is an unprecedented time for workers in the US, with many people losing their jobs through no fault of their own. This will cause a ripple effect globally. No one is really safe. JobShouts.com wants to offer some ideas to help you in  your search.

2009 marked the beginning of a new era in America.  A new president is in the oval office. Social media is taking center stage in the web 2.0 movement. Job boards are getting a lot of attention from job seekers.  This article is designed to assist the job-seeker. It includes ideas and information gathered from a variety of resources. It details the specifics of using LinkedIn to build your career network, and ideas on how to grow and develop your social networks.

It’s not the be all, end all guide that will guarantee your immediate success. It takes time to build and develop a network. There is no 30 second microwave networking class that actually works. JobShouts.com wants to help by providing ideas and solid advice. Please share this by passing this information along to your peers, friends, family members, or anyone affected by the current employment crisis.

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