The Social Recruiting Summit in New York City on Monday was a great event—from the networking TweetUp event at Bar 657 sponsored by Monster to the final conference session given by Jessica Lee (who slung some mud at Monster ironically – but Eric took it like a champ with his flair for sarcastic wit) I learned a lot and confirmed a lot about what I’m currently doing within the social media space.
It was also great to be able to meet some of the people I’m following on Twitter and meet the authors of articles & blog posts I read all the time (John Sumser, Dr. John Sullivan, Gerry Crispin, Laurie Reuttimann, etc.) as well as meet some recruiters who echo many of my client’s concerns, frustrations, and questions.
As I reviewed all of my notes, I noticed a lot of the questions for the speakers focused around the “How-To’s.” My colleague, Annette DeHaven did a great job of summarizing the “take away’s” from the conference (if you haven’t read it – you shouldn’t miss it!)
The Q&A theme, especially for Social Recruiting Panel with Sodexo’s Kerry Noone, Microsoft’s Heather Tinguely and RSM McGladrey’s Ben Gotkin focused on the details. Most common questions that were asked:
- How much time do you spend on social recruiting in your daily routine?
- How do you engage your executives/CFOs for budget buy in?
- How do you engage your own employees to support your social media messages?
- What are you doing about compliance?
- Did you outline a strategic approach before getting into social media? If so, what was it?
- How do you measure results?
Fred Wilson in his Keynote session really hit the nail on the head when he mentioned that there was a “big area for growth in the industry for creating recruitment strategies and providing a single dashboard/platform” that can manage all social recruiting from one centralized resource.
So…since there is a technology gap within this area, I thought I’d list my vision for “How-To Build a Social Recruiting Strategy / Dashboard” the bricks and mortar way (until someone can create a dashboard that can sync all of the items below):
My New Social Media Mantra/Dashboard Theme: “Complete Transparency. Transparency Breeds Authenticity. Let It Be. Don’t Limit the Dialogue.”
Blogging:
- Create a program & schedule to engage current employees (each department/business unit will write one blog post/week.
- Feed/link this blog from the home page of my Career Site home page. (Add video (upload on YouTube) and podcasts as well if not available on Career Site).
- Sync blog with photos on Flickr.
Twitter:
- Set up automatic Jobs Feed under corporate careers channel.
- Highlight 3 jobs/day or other job-related news with manual tweets.
- RT valuable; tweet original/researched content.
Facebook Fan Page:
- Set up schedule for daily status updates & link promotion to blog.
- Create Jobs RSS Feed for up-to-minute content from our Career Site/ATS/TAS.
- Set a goal to publish link to one newsletter, article in the news, press release etc.
- Set a goal to upload one new video/podcast/photo per week.
LinkedIn:
- Use LinkedIn for reference/resume checking.
- Update my status to promote blog posts and featured job openings (sync with Twitter account).
- Create LinkedIn Groups for each business unit/department—encourage employee bloggers and current employees to join and promote the groups to colleagues, friends, etc.
- Send out discussion items and Q&A to members of the group on a weekly basis.
Job Search Engine Promotion/SEO
- Create a job search engine sponsored job pay-per-click campaign (either on Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com or LinkUp.com). Budget doesn’t have to be huge, monitor results and reinvest accordingly.
- Sign up with Jobs2Web.
Internal Promotional Campaign
- Establish an incentive campaign to recruit employees to engage in Social Media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Koda.us). (ie. iTunes gift cards to person who has most Twitter followers, etc.). Promote campaign through Intranet.
External Promotion Campaign
- Request each employee blogger to find 20 people in their industry/line of business via Twello (or other Twitter directory) and invite them to follow our Twitter jobs channel/join LinkedIn Group.
My Daily Social Media Recruiting Itinerary
- One blog post/week; Tweet 3x/day; Check Facebook Fan Page for posts/comments and submit new status update daily.
- Use bit.ly to find people who are RT our tweets and RT information about our competitors. Follow these people.
- Engage these people to follow our Twitter Jobs Channel, read our Blog and join our LinkedIn Group(s).
Google Reader
- Set up Google Reader for key word Twitter searches/news trends/industry trends.
- Competitor blogs/news.
- Industry News.
- If it’s a search or something of interest, get the RSS feed.
That’s a lot to fit on one dashboard, but that’s what I envision being a great resource for efficiently managing a fluid social recruiting campaign. Measuring results and monitoring budgets would be a nice module, too—but I don’t want to get too greedy.
Please feel free to add your notes/thoughts/feedback to the areas I found to be major assets to a social media recruiting campaign – I’d love to hear from you! – Jen Hitchens-Greenfield
so, are you going to build it?
Jen, I love how you took all of the tips, advice and knowledge and created a Social Recruiting Summit dashboard. It is a great resource. Since there isn’t one social media solution (aka silver bullet), it is nice to see the different tactical options you gathered. It was a pleasure meeting you. Nice work!
Fred, I’d love to build it! Would be interested in any ideas you might have for obtaining venture capital and/or technology resources!!
Thanks so much Jenny! I was great to meet you as well!
Thank you thank you thank you!!!! you just saved me days if not weeks of research! Thank you! (did I say thank you!)
Great post! Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Thank you for the great summary…. I missed a couple when I reviewed my notes, so you completed mine…tx again
Hey Jen,
Sounds like a great event. Will catch up with you on it when you have time. I just got done really a pretty good book you’d like that talks about the “NET Generation” and how companies will fundamentally change how they do business. From posting jobs, to communicating with employees, and social media ties into all of that. THe book: Grown Up Digital – Don Tapscott. http://www.grownupdigital.com/
Also – excited about the products Monster is offering for Social Media recruiting, so def wanna catch up sometime!
Hi Jennifer, I attended the Social Recruiting Summit in NYC and also thought Fred’s presentation rang a few bells. (I think http://www.RogueRecruiter.com and http://www.RogueRecruiting.com were quickly snatched up!). What you write here, laid out so clearly piece-by-piece is what’s needed now. No doubt, some sharp minds are already working on it. Seems you caught Fred’s attention with his post above: “so are you going to build it?” Seems there may be some VC money here. Perhaps, put a team together? (:-) Best, Mike Ramer
Hi Jennifer,
This is great information and should help me get organized with my social media.
Regards,
Leslie Westmoreland
Hi Jen,
Excellent post! Couple of things I would add. We recommend creating separate Twitter channels for job postings and original content. And, I recommend adding a content sharing site liked Scribd or Slideshare to the dashboard. These sites are an excellent way to capture audiences that don’t or can’t participate in “traditional” social media like Twitter or Facebook. They are also great sources for name generation.
Great work!
Best,
Carmen
Thanks Carmen for your great feedback ideas! I think they are excellent points and will certainly be worked into the plan! Wonderful to meet you at the Summit and great un-conference session!!
All the best,
Jen
Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback! I’ll follow up directly with each of you regarding your points as well!
-Jen
I really like the thought put into this dashboard idea an think it will certainly have legs. You could almost build it using Netvibes but the full functionality might not hit 100% of what you outline here.
As far as strategy goes I would only make sure that your content is especially useful and engaging to the audience. If you are going to use Twitter and Facebook as promotional channels for your content, the content needs to be very useful. I would always recommend adding a bit more informal and conversational tactics to those channels if you can.
The last thing I think might help the dasboard be successful is to have a list of the goals of the effort visible at all times. With a continual reminder that you’re driving business, members, resumes, etc., through those activities, you’re more apt to stay on course and not just produce outputs, but also outcomes. Good thinking. Thanks for sharing.