Use Social Media to Win Clients and Influence the Hiring Process

By: Matt Charney, Monster Social Media Engagement Manager

What is the top driver for worker engagement, satisfaction and employee retention? Numerous studies show that an employee’s relationship with their immediate supervisor or manager is key, a correlation that’s even more pronounced in the burgeoning ranks of the Gen Y workforce. 

In fact, a recent Monster poll revealed that even in today’s tight job market, fully 60% of responders would leave their companies because of a bad boss, while 21% cite “great boss and coworkers” as the single most important element of their loyalty to their current employer (only 6% less than those driven primarily by employee compensation).

A Shift in Recruiting Analytics 
Ascertaining a candidate’s organizational fit has traditionally fallen into the realm of pre-employment screenings and behavioral-based interviewing. But today’s highly selective, employer-driven job market often favors pipeline-building and profile-based recruiting over traditional just-in-time hiring methods. 

Couple these trends with an increased emphasis on long-term, throughput metrics (such as quality of hire) over the more traditional, short-term analytics (such as days-to-fill and cost-per-hire.)

The result puts the onus of matching the right candidate with the right manager increasingly on the recruiter. This remains one of the most subjective, and therefore complex, components of successfully placing a candidate during the search process.

Your Social Media Recruiting Toolbox
The good news?  The methods that recruiters use to source, develop and engage with candidates and customers are only one piece of the Recruiting 3.0 tool box. Recruiting using social media also offers a competitive advantage, both in how to present a qualified candidate to a hiring manager, and in how to prepare a candidate for an interview. Both are critical components of the job recruitment process:

Create a Job-Specific Blog: Successful job searches start with successful job descriptions, but creating a comprehensive, targeting job posting strategy should involve more than simply repurposing the same position over and over again.

Using a free service like Google’s blogger or Wordpress, you can set up a basic blog for each of your searches in minutes.  It doesn’t have to be visually complex; just enough to create a hub for your other job posting efforts and social recruiting activities.  By setting up a simple blog for each job, you’ll organically boost SEO to your careers site as well as other platforms, like Monster, where your job is posted.  Most importantly, it provides a format where recruiters (and hiring managers) can provide perspective on a job while engaging candidates.

Film your Hiring Manager: While a good job description is often an important starting point, one of the most important (but often neglected) step in the hiring process is a three-way “kick off” meeting with the hiring manager, recruiter and HR partner to discuss the current employment situation. This will allow you to build a profile of what a successful candidate might look like and review the anticipated challenges and opportunities for the job search.

Critical to this meeting is the opportunity for both the HR Business Partner and the hiring manager to provide perspective on the hiring manager’s professional history, leadership style and management philosophy. 

Rather than simply use these notes as background material, however, streaming video technologies make it easy to record this information and possibly use it as recruitment advertising collateral during the search process.

For example, at a relatively low cost, talent organizations can purchase a shared FlipCam to bring to these ‘kick off meetings,’ capturing the hiring manager in their office, conference room or other meeting space where the interview is likely to take place, sending important visual clues about things like company culture and managerial style that can’t be conveyed in a typical job description. 

First, be sure to have the hiring manager’s consent to do film. If everyone agrees, you can record a few quick clips of them discussing their philosophy and the job position.  A few questions to get you started:

1. Describe what it takes to be successful in this role.
2. Discuss your management style and philosophy.
3. What do you look for in a candidate during an interview?
4. What’s the most interesting thing about you that’s not on your resume?

Once approved, you can post these videos on a company careers site, job blog or YouTube channel, along with a link to the written job posting.

This content can provide great insight (and differentiation) for potential candidates while augmenting your current online employer brand presence, giving greater transparency to the company’s culture. 

It’ll also give candidates a better idea of what to expect when they come to an interview and allow them to assess how their values stack up against a potential managers. Naturally, such information is also invaluable data to screen candidates against when assessing corporate and departmental culture fit.  

At minimum, you can have this footage readily accessible when executing a candidate search, creating a digital record that’s easily shared among recruiters or for reference on future searches. It also can come in handy to help recalibrate and refocus priorities in the event the search takes longer than expected or requires a change in approach. 

Source for Similarities and Connections: Creating a match between your hiring manager and prospective candidates starts with looking at your hiring managers’ online footprint. This can easily be done using a ‘people search’ site like pipl.com or 123people.com. These sites aggregate such things as social network profiles, available videos, pictures, blogs, etc. and provide a quick glimpse into things that might not make it into a job description or the initial meeting when opening a position. 

Look for things like volunteer work, interests, hobbies and non-professional networks in which the hiring manager might be involved. While you’re probably already searching for candidates who worked in the same companies or went to the same school as the hiring manager, these can also provide powerful ammunition in focusing your sourcing efforts on job search engines like Monster and within social networks. 

A shared philanthropy or membership in the same professional organization can often help turn an applicant into a candidate and create an instant connection that often provides the foundation for a successful interview.  Not to mention, a happy hiring manager.  And that’s what it’s all about.

Social Nation: Harness the Power of Social Media to Drive Engagement

By: Barry Libert

Success in today’s connected world of social media is increasingly tied to more modern, collaborative business approaches --  such as crowd sourcing, open sourcing, social sourcing, and word of mouth marketing -- platforms that exude characteristics of ‘connectedness’  more than ‘management’. 

It is in every organization’s best interest to build a social nation of friends and followers who can help each other achieve their full potential and avoid the sentiments so well expressed in the 1999 Monster advertisement. 

As a leading social media company , our experience in building and managing more than 15,000 online communities indicate that there are seven principles for success to transform your organization into one that highly engages its customers, motivates its employees and partners, and creates dedicated, long-term investors. Here are seven principles to enable these entities to be more fulfilled as they achieve their full potential:

Rule 1:  Develop Your Social Skills: Leaders in today’s socially networked world are expected to follow as much as they lead, while still providing structure and support. Example:  Ducati, the world-famous Italian Motorcycle maker, realized that by creating both on and offline communities of its enthusiasts they could spread the Ducati brand. They also let people create their own modifications and add-ons and display those modifications both in person and online. In so doing, they essentially let their community of owners, dealers and prospective buyers reshape the image of Ducati.

 Rule 2:  Let Company Culture Lead Your Way: When building your social organization, remember that company culture is very important, so let open and honest culture be a guiding principle. Example:   Tony Hseih, the founder of Zappos, created his firm based on a simple notion -- that achieving happiness is a universal principle and is applicable to both work and at home; with our friends and family members, as well as customers and employees. The result: he built two highly successful companies, most recently Zappos, which he sold to Amazon. 

Rule 3:  Mind Your Online and Offline Manners: How you say something -- be it online or off -- is as important as what you say, and can help make the difference in gaining fans, friends and followers who are engaged and committed, whether they are employees, customers, investors or partners. Example: Emily Post was the famed keeper of good etiquette of a time that has long passed us by. However, her grandson, Peter, keeps her thoughts and messages alive for our internet lives. His message of Netiquette is the same as his grandmothers; it’s not only what you say, but how you say it. 

In a world dominated by online communications, how you say something (your tone and sentiment) is as important to building relationships as what you say (content and context) especially if you want to build loyal relationships with employees and customers that mirror the values you cherish and nurture at home. Learn to be a responsible social media leader.

Rule 4: Listen, Learn, and Adopt: Social intelligence enables your company to benefit from all that is happening around you, including the conversations of your constituents so you can adapt what you do and how you do it to better meet the needs of your customers, employees and market demands. Example: Webkinz and its founder, Samuel Ganz, understands that what happens offline to build a great business is based on the feedback of customers and prospects and the ability to act on their recommendations.

The moral of the story is every company needs to really listen, learn and adopt to the needs of others if they want to really create communities of constituents that support them to either buy their products and services or devote themselves to an organization.

Rule 5: Include Others in Everything You Do: As an organization that is seeking to benefit from a broad range of communities that increasingly go beyond your employee base; relying on others in every part of your company is the only way to adapt what you do and how you do it to stay competitive. Example: Mountain Dew has major competitors including Coke.  So in order to compete, they turned to their passionate customers for new flavors and brand concepts. 

They called this nation of devoted fans Dewmocracy. Each year, they pick the top three new formulas and brand positioning based on customer input which is an amazing concept for all companies to follow if they really want to engage the hearts and minds of their constituents.

Rule 6: Rely on Others for Growth and Innovation: Friends, fans and followers are instrumental in achieving growth in today’s connected world. This means you need to engage people on their terms if you want to build new products and services that matter.  Example: General Electric (GE) is proving that this really works with their Ecomagination initiatives. This initiative has received thousands of proposals to create new and alternative energy efficient technologies. 

In short, they have engaged everyone with a passion for finding a problem to our energy issues worldwide, including global warming; to share their ideas so that GE can grow and innovate based on others insights and creative passions.  Learn to cultivate employee performance.

Rule 7: Reward Others and You Will Be Rewarded Too: As organizations focus more and more on social connections, interactions and relationships, they want to be rewarded emotionally as well as financially. Successful businesses will have to meet both needs. Example: Apple has mastered this technique. The iPad is one the fastest adopted technologies of all times. Plus they have built and rewarded a community of developers that don’t work for them to create hundreds of thousands of applications. 

Imagine one day your company with friends and followers, fans and company advocates buying your products, but also, developing your next technology. If you can, you will be the next Apple because you share the rewards with them.  In Apple’s case 70% of the revenues derived from the app exchange go to the developers and 30% to Apple. Think about crowd or open-sourcing your next product or service offering and putting in place a revenue sharing mechanism of 70% to your partners, 30% to your organization and watch the community grow, as well as your new product and service offerings.

Recruitment using Social Media: How to Turn Connections into Candidates

By: Chris Ferdinandi

Whether you realize it or not, you already actively build your employer brand every single day.

You do so every time you talk to a candidate about what it’s like to work there, every time you talk to an employee or coworker about the culture and each time you talk to a friend or family member about your day.

Every time you talk about your organization’s culture, you build yourcompany brand.

Today, I want to talk to you about how you can use social media to spread your employer brand to a much larger audience.

Why Bother?
By helping people understand what it’s like to work at your organization, you can build a pipeline of talented people who are excited to come work for your organization… before you’ve even posted a job opening.

That makes it easier (and less expensive) for you to find job candidates.

Sodexo provides quality of life services (that means things like food service and facilities management). In 2007, they started using social media to help spread the word about their culture.

Because of their efforts, they’ve saved over $300,000 on traditional recruiting marketing. They’ve also seen a 25-percent increase in the number of candidates applying for their positions.

The Catch
There has to be a catch, right?

Here it is: This doesn’t work if your culture sucks.

If your organization isn’t a good place to work, employer branding won’t make it one. Fix your culture first. Then think about employer branding.

Another quick word of warning: Like all things worth doing, you’ll get out of this what you put into it.

Learning how to use social media tools isn’t complicated. But it does take time and consistency. It also takes a willingness to experiment until you find out what works for you and the people you’re trying to engage.

In other words, results may vary.

How to Get Started
One of the most common questions that people who are new to social media ask is, “What do I talk about?”

The things that make for good conversation online are the same things that make for good conversation in real life:

• Don’t just talk about yourself.
• Ask a lot of questions.
• Tell stories.
• Share interesting news and useful insights.

Think about the most interesting conversationalist you know. She probably asks a lot of questions. She’s funny and personable. She shares interesting information about lots of other people and things.

She doesn’t just talk about herself (chances are, she rarely talks about herself).

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• A-Day-in-the-Life. What’s it like to work at your organization? Give people an inside glimpse. Share interviews with your employees, tours of the building, and team profiles.

• Insights into your Culture. What makes your company culture unique? Are you a training and development leader? Are you a fun place to work? Let people know!

• Industry News. What’s going on in your industry? The people that you want to work at your organization are likely interested in this information.

• Community News. What’s going on in the community where your organization (and labor pool) is located? 

• How-To Information. How to write a killer resume. How to nail an interview. How to become a better leader. Share information that will help people be more successful in your organization.

• Ask Your Audience Questions. What’s their best interview tip? How do they hope to become a better employee or moreeffective leader? What’s one thing they want to know about your organization?

• Job Openings. Don’t forget that this is ultimately a recruiting tool. Have a job opening? Let people know about it.

Don’t Tell People. Show People.
Funny people don’t talk about how funny they are. They just say and do funny things.

Having a conversation about your culture works pretty much the same way.

If your organization is a training and development leader, you can use social media to talk about some of the cool development stuff you do. But you should spend a lot more time showing people what good training and development looks like.

Talk about how to build a great training program. Share insights on how to grow your career. Provide some free training and development resources that people can share and access online.

If you have a fun culture, you could talk about how fun you are. Or you could do fun things and let people watch.

That’s what Zappos and DAXKO do. They have fun videos, photos, contests and more. They don’t talk about fun. They are fun!

Their social media channels are like a sneak-peek into their culture. And that’s the whole point.

Portions of this article were excerpted from the author’s new book, Culture Convo.

How to Reduce Employee Turnover? Refine the Job Description

By: Ron Fry

Is your organization having difficulty retaining employees in a particular position? If so, it’s entirely possible that the job description is poorly defined or that the job requirements are totally incongruous. (Another possibility, of course, is that you have no written job description for employees to use as a starting point, in which case you should expect continued personnel headaches.)

One entrepreneur I know told me of a job description she once tried to fill whose job requirements included the following:

• Conducting regular meetings with key vendors.
• Evaluating quotes and references from new vendors.
• Making critical marketing strategy recommendations.
• Managing the inventory in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse.
• Composing initial drafts of flyer and catalog copy.
• Analyzing cash-flow predictions.
• Filling in for telemarketing staff when absences arose.

Do you see a problem here? Six different hires in an equal number of months certainly did. The longest lasted two months; the shortest (smartest?) two days.

The various elements of the job were so wildly out of balance (and required such varied skills and training) that no one person could have ever reasonably been expected to fulfill all of them. As a result, no matter how accomplished a new hire, he or she quickly felt overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid.

Define the Job’s Requirements
One of the initial keys to hiring qualified candidates for the job is to make sure it is a job, not a series of disparate tasks that would tax Michelangelo’s spectrum of skills.

There are undoubtedly times when a dynamic company needs to ask employees to “pinch hit” in areas outside their daily routine. But there has to be a daily routine from which to deviate! Before you try to find the “perfect person” for your “perfect job,” take a long, hard look at exactly what that job will mean to the person who will spend the majority of his or her waking hours performing it.

If your job description offers no defining, consistent sense of purpose, you will find it very difficult to attract top talent who will perform it well over an extended period of time. Remember: “Revolving door” positions cost your company money!

In most workplaces, asking the company “Renaissance person” to sweep up or punch endless reams of figures into a computer system is an expensive mistake that will inevitably leave someone (probably you) in permanent “search mode.”

Remember: They are Not You
Here’s an important reminder for entrepreneurs and others who have personal stakes in their organizations: You may well be willing to wake up early, stay late, and do anything -- repeat, anything --to ensure the attainment of your company’s goals. You may have to scrub toilets and crunch numbers and pack shipments and make sales calls and…and…. But you chose the bed -- you have to make it, sleep in it, and pay for it.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I applaud your dedication, zeal, and crazy (probably completely unsupported) belief that you will, of course, defy all odds and actually succeed.

At the same time, you should be aware that many candidates will not share your willingness to “go the extra mile” day in and day out.

If you want an accountant, create a job description that focuses on accounting work. If you want a salesperson, the job description should focus on sales work. If, however, you want someone who will pay any price as an accountant, bear any burden as a salesperson, and share your personal willingness to peel dried chewing gum from beneath tables at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, you’re going to have a problem. You’re not looking for an employee; you’re looking for a kindred spirit.

You may have to wait a while before you find one. And, when you do, you may well have to give up a piece of your company to compensate him or her for the overweening dedication you expect.

Some companies develop seemingly cogent job descriptions that include an innocent-sounding catch phrase: “other duties as required.” Then the poor new hire comes to realize that 85 percent of his day consists of tasks that fall into that “other” category. Save yourself -- and your employees -- some aggravation. Make sure the “miscellaneous” category in the job description does not camouflage something an otherwise qualified person would reasonably resent doing.

Identify irrelevant components of the job description. Then be honest about what should stay in the job description and what should be reassigned to someone else. Share your conclusions with others in the organization and get their input. Don’t stop tinkering until you’ve developed a workable job description that’s both coherent and well-organized around a central theme.

Remember: The fact that you yourself are (or would be) willing to perform any given task in the description will not be persuasive to an employee who ends up feeling pulled in 16 different directions. Make it your goal to avoid hiring applicants who (secretly) plan to stay with you only until a better opportunity arises.

Next, do a little brainstorming about the background, experience, and skills your ideal candidate should bring to the table. Try using the following questions as a starting point:

• What kind of educational background is required?
• What level of computer experience is required?
• What specific software tools are required?
• What other technical skills are required?
• What business background should the applicant have?
• What communication skills are required to fulfill the tasks associated with this position?
• How important are problem-solving skills in this position? 
• What kinds of day-to-day challenges will the successful employee need to routinely overcome?

Pay particular attention to the specificity of each of the job duties listed.

Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Ask the Right Questions, Hire the Best People, Third Edition © 2010 Ron Fry. Published by Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.

Resume Review: How to Find Qualified Candidates

By: Malcolm Fleschner

With nationwide unemployment levels still high, today's employers undoubtedly enjoy a "buyer's market." One downside of this trend can be too many applicants, many of whom are not qualified for the position.

So how can you deal with the crush of applications that's likely to result from a single job announcement? For starters, says RaveResumespresident Leigh Inskeep, employers should create job descriptions designed to discourage unqualified candidates and keep the number of resumes manageable.

"Preparation and thought need to go into making the job description specific," she says. "That's what people are going to read when they decide they want to apply. The more detailed you are with your requirements, the better pool of candidates you're likely to receive."

Creating a Well-Defined Job Posting
Ron Fry, author of Ask the Right Questions, Hire the Best People, agrees. He describes vague job descriptions as the biggest problem with how many employers, particularly smaller companies, tend to approach announcing a job opening.

"Larger companies are used to saying, 'You must have X, Y and Z.' They set out exact job requirements and they don't deviate,” he says. “But entrepreneurs and people who have less experience hiring might say, 'Well, I kind of want this, and I want that, and maybe this other thing.' Then someone charming comes along who doesn't meet the requirements, and they're suddenly finding a new spot for the charmer without filling the opening they have."

Fry says that the operative term is "discipline" -- set down precisely what you're looking for, he says, and don't deviate.

"If they have to know Excel, they have to know Excel, period," he says. "They've got to be able to use a Cad/Cam, period. No negotiation. Which makes life much simpler. If they've never used a Cad/Cam, they're out."

Fine-Tuning your Job Description Parameters
RaveResumes’ Inskeep also recommends making the job description even more explicit by including a short list of filtering "yes or no" questions.

"'Do you have X number of years' experience? Yes or no? Do you have this particular certification? Yes or no?' By setting up these filters," she says, "you tend to generate a better, smaller pool of candidates, which will mean less time spent prescreening later."

Even after narrowing your pool, you're still likely to be knee-deep in applicants. One recommended strategy for weeding out the chaff is to skim your resume stack for the following red flags:

• Spelling and grammatical errors 
• Lack of relevant experience
• Long or involved descriptions

Another traditional resume red flag that can be downgraded to "pink" status is lengthy employment gaps. With today's high unemployment levels, says Renee Bucklin, founder of the Rhode Island-based Bucklin Human & Administration Services, long stretches between jobs should not be an instant disqualifier.

Otherwise, she suggests scanning resumes for job-specific keywords. Refer back to that carefully thought-out, comprehensive job description you wrote, she says, and then prioritize more important keywords or phrases to help divide that big stack into separate "Yes," "No" and "Maybe" piles.

Employers looking to automate this process may want to consider "semantic search" applications, which use combinations of terms and meanings to highlight resumes that include words specifically related to your identified search terms.

More Ways to Identify Qualified Candidates

Fry also reminds employers not to ignore cover letters, which he says can indicate glimmers from great candidates who might otherwise go unnoticed.

"If you get a cover letter where the person clearly knows your industry, knows your competitors and refers to things about your company that show they've taken the time to do their homework, that's a big plus," he says. "If I see a cover letter like that, I set it aside and it's in on the first round just because of that."

Whatever methods you use, a first-pass should be focused and speedy, Fry says, and within a couple of hours should rule out between 70-80 percent of the applicants.

Fry suggests that you take more time in your second pass of reviewing resumes. In fact, he notes that during this process some employers may even want to narrow their job description prerequisites.

"In this environment I would take every requirement you have and add a little to it," he explains. "If you said applicants need to have three years of experience, look for those with four years or more. And start eliminating people -- at least initially -- who only have three. Because what you're going to find today are lots of overqualified people."

But whether you're just writing up your job description, making the last cuts from the resume pile or going through the actual interviews, Fry says the untrained hirer's mantra should remain the same.

"The less experienced you are, the more disciplined you need to be," he says. "Because the people who aren't used to buzzing through resumes and take forever just to narrow a pile of 500 down to 200, those are the same people who spend an hour-and-a-half during interviews telling candidates about themselves, how great they are, how great the company is and never ask a question. And then they wonder why they can never hire anyone."

No Better Time than Now to Improve Job Posting Results

By: The Recruiting Training Corner

There is no better time than now to reexamine your job descriptions and determine if your job postings are achieving the results you were expecting. Are they helping you find employees? Are they telling a compelling story? Are they attracting the best pool of job seekers for your position? Whether your organization has a handful of open opportunities or hundreds, you can use the same evaluation points to determine effectiveness. Here are 5 tips to keep in mind:

Tip #1:  Use Keywords in your Job Title

Your job advertisement serves different purposes; it can demystify a job position, provide clarity and set one opportunity apart from another. In a market flooded with job seekers, you will want to be the first recruiter to speak to that highly qualified job seeker.

By focusing on formatting, including call outs such as employee benefits and unique job qualifications as well as the job title, you will increase the chances of your posting returning your ideal job seeker in search results. 

There’s another, more technical reason for creating a clear title and well-written job. A large percentage of job seekers search Monster using only keyword and location. By incorporating keywords that are associated with your job in the title and description, you will make your job posting searchable via search engine optimzation. Thus your job posting will become more relevant to the job seeker and will appear higher in a job seeker’s search results.

Remember to use words that are relevant to the profession. If there is more than one way to refer to a position or role, it’s best to use both. Stay clear of internal language and acronyms that are well not recognized in the industry. Example: Infectious Diseases Nurse (RN). 

Tip #2: Speak to Top Performers

Job postings are a recruiter’s introduction to job seekers. Seekers form an opinion of the person responsible for creating the posting. Be sure that the impression you make is positive. An easy way to do this is by creating a posting that clearly states that you understand the position. Target the candidates you are seeking and speak their language. Attract top talent you identify through networking and referrals to that job posting. Make it clear that you are in control of the process and are anxious to speak with them.

Top performers know what a job entails. Since they have a choice of where they work, they are interested in hearing why they should work for your company rather than your competition. 

Your approach will vary by discipline and candidate level, but there should be considerable thought given to your strategy for targeting the best of the best. As we all know, top performers DO read Internet job postings!

Tip #3:  Formatting Matters

• Once you know what you want to include in your posting, utilize a consistent format to convey the information. Not only will this make it easy for seekers to recognize your posting, it will also maximize the chance that they read important information. Additionally, consistency across all of your organization’s job postings will send a confident and strong marketing message to the seekers who may like what they see on one posting and then view other postings.

• Company Information should be consistent across all postings. Be clear about how you describe your company’s legacy: its websites, how many years in business, how many people it employs, etc. 

• Start with the job description. Monster search results include both a hover view that includes the first few lines of the job posting as well as a detailed view of the job listing. You can leverage this format by putting the job description at the top of your posting rather than starting with the company description. 

• Provide a physical location for the job. When you provide Monster with a physical address for the position, we can add your opportunity to the map view of job seeker search results. Your opportunity can be seen in relation to other positions in the area and as mentioned above, the job seeker can hover over your location indicator for a glimpse at you job posting description. 

• Separate the requirements for a position into two sections. First, include the position’s basic requirements and then the preferred requirements, or ‘nice to have’ skills. 

• Highlight the job’s benefits to close the deal. Be sure to leverage anything competitive about your company or your client’s organization. You can find this information directly from the company’s website or by asking.  

• Create a clear call to action. Tell them what to do next, Apply Online.

• Include salary information. Job seeker feedback tells us time and time again that they want to see salary or salary ranges linked to a specific position. Again, keep in mind the streamlined display of search results on Monster. When no salary is listed, Monster provides a market data salary range. Get out in front of your competitors with salary. Not only is this element a great differentiator, it will help set proper expectations and encourage the most qualified job seekers to respond to your opportunity. 

• Formatting counts. If you are not utilizing a custom template for your postings, experiment with basic HTML or use of the formatting toolbar.  Remember, an Internet job posting is unconstrained by space, but a job seeker’s attention span IS! Consider formatting with bulleted lists, rather than paragraphs, to make your posting easier to read and scan. Bolding paragraph headings is also an easy way to attract eyes to important content.

Tip #4: The Follow-up

The number one job seeker complaint is that employers never acknowledge receipt of their resumes. If you are not doing this, that means you are not thanking them for their interest in your organization. This means you are NOT viewing them as consumers. Think about the fact that you are also hoping to sell them or someone they know your product or service down the road!

Following up can be as simple as utilizing Auto-Response Letters to acknowledge receipt of their resume submission. Job seekers say that is enough. At least they know the technology worked. If you really want to stand out, experiment with sending a customized letters based on screening results, send a letter after you have reviewed and considered their resume, or include a marketing message or a request for referral.

Tip #5: Capitalize on your Brand…or Create One

The Internet has provided job seekers with something they never had before, CHOICE. How you position your company culture and package the opportunity has become increasingly important. 

Technology has made it easy for you to graphically enhance your postings. In fact, they can look as if they are housed on your own corporate web site. There are plenty of examples out there. You have seen them…and most likely remember seeing them. That is the point. You want job seekers to REMEMBER having seen your ad. The best way to do this is to leverage your brand.

Corporations spend millions of dollars to increase brand awareness and recognition to drive consumers to particular products or services. When you create and leverage your brand throughout the recruitment process, you further establish yourself as a serious company with a streamlined message. 

Remember to view job seekers as consumers. We all have something to sell. Corporations focus on your most important requisitions. Remember that the recruiting process cannot leave a bad taste with your consumers.

The goal of Internet recruiting is to bring top talent into client organizations. A well-executed job posting can do just that, but it can ALSO bring a new consumer to your brand.  Sounds a lot like marketing, doesn’t’ it?

If you don’t feel that you HAVE a brand, it is relatively easy to build an employer brand. Just remember that consistency is critical. Every time you create a posting, it could potentially be viewed by thousands of people. The impression you leave can be lasting.  It is definitely worth your time to make it right.  

Social Media and Hiring: When Potential New Hires are Searching YOU

By: Emily Bennington

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of or experienced a good social media cautionary tale. You know, the one where Potential Employer A searches for Candidate B online, only to be confronted with an image of him mooning a crowd during Spring Break or holding an arsenal of weapons? (Both of these are true by the way.)

There are a million stories and articles out there about how companies are using social media to screen candidates, and as the business owner or hiring manager, you may feel like you have all of the control, right?

Not so fast.

Naturally, candidates can use the same tools to screen you and,  just like you, if they don’t like what they see, they move on. Any guesses on where they begin their research?

Google 
That’s right. So if you don’t have a Google alert set for both your name and your company’s name, stop right now and sign up. Google alerts are free.  But when it comes to keeping you informed about what others are saying on the web, they are priceless. Even if you have an alert set, though, it’s still a best practice to Google yourself and your business every few weeks to see what’s ranking high in the results.  Since prospects are obviously searching for you on Google, you want to be hyper-aware of what they’re finding.

Facebook 
While Facebook can certainly be considered the most social of all social media sites, your business should still be here as well. If you’re not convinced Facebook is the place for social media recruiting, consider the most basic rule of marketing, i.e.,go where your customers are. Certainly when it comes to college students, you will find them on Facebook. The question is: Will they find you? To get started, simply set up a page for your company and post industry updates, events, photos and so on, and do so a minimum of every 2-3 days. Once you have a pretty lively page going, it’s worth testing a few ads on Facebook that specifically target the demographic you’re trying to reach. Assuming you have a compelling message and photo, Facebook ads can really drive traffic to your page and make it easier for potential hires to find you.

Twitter 
For businesses, Twitter represents a huge opportunity to directly engage with your audience. However, many companies are too scared to fully utilize the site for fear that someone may post something negative about their experience. Meanwhile, users are posting anyway and, if you’re not part of the conversation, you miss a key chance to respond. So, if your business is not on Twitter, sign up and jump in. Use the site to communicate with your clients, find out about HR best practices, offer deals to your followers, launch exclusive promotions, be a resource to your industry, or -- ideally -- all of the above. Your next great hire may be watching so understand that it’s okay to be a Twit, just this once. Really.

LinkedIn The first rule of thumb with LinkedIn is to actually have a presence on the site. If you don’t know where to start, see what your competitors are doing…then top it.

Blogging Blogging is a great way to give your company a voice in the marketplace today. In fact, with the right content and design, it could become the linchpin of your marketing strategy. That’s because we all want to pull back the curtain on our favorite companies and a blog is the perfect format for this. So develop and embrace a company blog and use it as a way to distinguish yourself from the competition. For examples of how businesses have successfully leveraged their blogs, check out Michael Hyatt as well as Zappos.

As you can see, it’s smart to turn the tables and take a hard look at your own web presence once in a while, particularly from the standpoint of a valuable potential hire. But remember: Do not be afraid. NO, you won’t have 100% control of the messageand that’s okay. The benefits of putting your company “out there” and having a positive, online message far outweigh the negatives. In other words, Pandora is out of the box and she’s not looking back. Neither should you.

Twitter and Recruiting: Practical Social Media Strategies

By: Rich DeMatteo

As a staffing and human resources professional, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to engage job seekers.

In the realm of social media, Twitter is one such platform. After all, job seekers have a burning desire to engage with recruiters and HR professionals -- and doing so in 140 characters or less can be very appealing. 

While Twitter has some great advantages for recruiters, HR professionals and employers, it’s difficult to engage with more than one or two Twitter users at a time. While this might be exactly the kind of candidate engagement that job seekers are looking for, it’s not always practical for talent seekers. 

Another challenge: it’s difficult to locate where active job seekers are hanging out on Twitter. And while it’s important toengage with passive job seekers, it’s clearly better to target a group of people who are looking for work and are eager to engage. 

To address these issues, some industrious recruiters have started to experiment with new ways to use Twitter. One format that I’ve found to be successful is Twitter chats. 

What is a Twitter Chat?
Twitter chats were created to provide like-minded Tweeps a place to hang out, learn and network with each other, right on Twitter. If you’ve never participated in a Twitter chat, or you’re completely new to the concept, it can be a little confusing.

Chats are run by a moderator or multiple moderators who direct the discussion with questions for the chat’s participants. These questions sometimes follow a theme or they might cover random topics that are related to the chat’s main theme.

Twitter chats give participants a chance to interact with a large number of people who they aren’t following. In fact, it’s not uncommon to walk away from a chat with 20 or more new followers. Some Twitter chat moderators have reported that their chat produced over 1,000 tweets. While that number can be much lower or higher depending on circumstances, it will only help to expand your Twitter network.  

Twitter Chat 101
Each Twitter Chat has its own hash tag (for example, the chat that I run is called #JobHuntChat.) Moderators and participants should include their hash tag in every tweet. This will group together tweets and create a chat feel. 

An easy way to follow along and participate in a Tweet chat is to log into TweetChat.com (another popular hash tag following site you can use is TweetGrid.com.) When you log in to TweetChat.com with your Twitter handle, you’ll be asked to enter the hash tag that you wish to follow. A stream focusing in on your desired hash tag will then display. TweetChat will automatically add the selected hash tag to any tweets you send.

Approximately 5 minutes before each chat begins, our moderators ask participants to introduce themselves by tweeting out who they are, what they do (job seeker, recruiter, company they work for, etc). Let’s call this a pre-chat icebreaker.

You can ask participants to email their questions to the moderators in advance of the chat, which also helps generate pre-chat interest. The #JobHuntChat moderators pre-select four questions to discuss during the hour-long session.

Twitter Chats: How to Make it Time Well Spent
While #JobHuntChat runs for an hour, I’ve seen other chats go as long as three hours. Twitter chats can be scheduled daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or however often the founder and moderators choose. On #JobHuntChat, we give each question 15 minutes of “air time.” Moderators make sure to retweet the answers they feel are most insightful, which ensures those answers are seen.

At the end of the chat, we invite participants to network and connect, share blog posts, or simply continue the conversation. People will send links out to connect on Linkedin, Facebook and even make plans to chat offline.

Since it began in mid-February, 2010, #JobHuntChat has quickly become a community resource where recruiters, HR professionals, resume writers, career coaches and other career experts connect with job seekers and answer their job-hunt related questions. This is engagement at its finest! Even better, it’s a very simple way to reach out to job seekers.

You can also think about focusing your Twitter chat to a specific segment, such as Java Software Engineers. While it will inevitably start small, over time you may just find that it becomes the number one hang out for Java engineers on Twitter. 

Another new approach to matching job seekers to opportunities is Monster’s bi-weekly #monsterlive Twitter chats. Every #WorkWednesday and #HireFriday from 3-4 PM ET, job seekers can tweet their location and job title to @monsterkaw with the hash tag #monsterlive. Using the new Job Search Beta precision matching engine powered by 6Sense, Monster will reply with real time results of potential matches. 

Learn more about how Monster’s making the job search more social visit the Monster Career Advice blog.

Happy Twitter chatting to all!