EXCELER8ion » Candidate experience

Where you are is where it’s at

Julian — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:29:48 +0000

Where you are is where it’s at, The new interaction engagement model

One of our sister practices at exceler8 is called LOCAL Na8ion where we help small businesses harness the web to get more customers from their local city. Our slogan at LOCAL Na8ion is where you are is where it’s at. The slogan hints at how our physical and virtual worlds have become intertwined. At times, where we are is a state of mind, such as when we’re contributing to an online community, while at others we are grounded in the context of our physical location and needs like when we go out to dinner or look for a plumber on Google.

Where your people are at has changed

The slogan is apt for our new service Brand Trampoline because where you are and where your people are (be they job seekers, consumers or buyers of your product or service) has radically changed…if you want your company to be where it’s at you have to participate.

Every aspect of life is converging and connecting

Connections are now happening in multiple contexts and dimensions including our physical proximity and shared interests to our social networks of friends and associates on Facebook, Twitter, email and blogs, and yes offline too. Perhaps the ultimate mashup of all these interactions is TCFKAP – The computer in your pocket formerly known as a phone. Wait, did I just make a Prince reference?

Facebook is becoming the web’s top source of traffic

The web today is pretty search centric (that’s spelled G-O-O-G-L-E) but times are changing quickly, Facebook is fast becoming the web’s top source of traffic. Real time search results and social search are replacing the way we interact almost overnight. We have new interaction touch points, tools, and communication vehicles and in almost all cases consumers, job seekers, and local buyers are way out head of the typical enterprise - be they the mom and pop variety or the Fortune 500.

Companies of all sizes are making one of three mistakes

They’re failing to engage at all.
They not keeping pace with where people are moving due to budgets, expertise or red tape.
They’re failing to engage in a meaningful way, often in the form of broadcasting their information rather than following an interaction model (what we refer to as digital engagement)

We all need to let go of the paradigm where our company website is where it’s at. Not that we don’t need one, it’s just that your website has already become a spoke in the wheel as far as people are concerned while your business operations, marketing and PR are still treating it like sun that your customers all orbit around.

The new interaction engagement model

We’re going to take up the case of the new interaction engagement model in the coming week but you might not be surprised to learn that success in our new world is based not in technological expertise or marketing gimmicks but old fashioned common sense applied in a contextually thoughtful way. Not to sound smug but it’s called listening. Have you noticed how little room there is today for listening? It’s hard when everyone is an expert and all of us posses some fantasmic skill or solution for becoming wealthy, skinny or successful overnight. Listening and understanding are more important today than in any time in our history.

Rather than rushing to establish an online reputation it’s useful for us all to recognize that we already have one, just like we already have a company culture even if you HR team or CEO failed to launch a multi-million dollar culture initiative in the 90’s.

I look forward to picking up the conversation about the new engagement model (er, old) in the coming week. In the mean time we’ll be out there looking for threads of knowledge in this and other conversations and looking to engage in more understanding.

-Julian

Julian co-authors EXCELER8ion with his better half Shannon Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Most of his time Julian works on behalf of his clients at exceler8 and LOCAL Na8ion. Julian is launching an evolving digital engagement practice called Brand Trampoline where his first client is John Sumser of HRExaminer.com.

Internal Communications and Talent Acquisition/Recruitment Should be Better Friends

Shannon — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:42:12 +0000

Companies that will have the greatest success leveraging social media for recruiting will be ones that start inside, where the leadership actively encourages/guides their current employees to connect internally and externally using social media (… or at the very least avert their eyes and don’t block social networks). Employees should be the most qualified, the most credible, and the best source of information about your company culture, the employment experience and why someone would want to work for you. By enabling and distributing their stories across the web – companies create a powerhouse of information for job seekers considering working for your company.

You pride yourself on making good hiring decisions, so since you hired them, you should be able to trust them as professionals (I know this still makes many companies uncomfortable, but let’s start with this premise, and maybe that you even already have a social media policy). So how do you get Employees to talk about their experience online? Educate them.

Are Internal Communications and Recruiting a secret OR not so secret alliance in your company?

In many companies Internal Communications often falls under Marketing or Corporate Comm (and sometimes HR), while Recruitment or Talent Acquisition falls squarely under HR. In my experience, Internal Communications is rarely present at Employer Brand/Recruitment Marketing related meetings (unless their presence is specifically requested). I’ve also observed amazing Internal/Employee Communication Chats that happen all the time on Twitter – but I rarely see any peeps from the recruitment side participating.

Maybe my observations are wrong — but this apparent separation seems to block what could be a friendship made in heaven. Why? From a recent post on The BrandBuilder Blog, Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new Social Business:

Employees of P2P (People to People) businesses don’t hate their jobs. Why? Because they are empowered by their management team to collaborate with employees and the communities they touch. As a result of being clearly aware of their operational boundaries and because they receive ongoing, multilateral support from their organization, they know how to act professionally when dealing with the public.

Proactively educating employees through internal communications is a critical component to successfully using social media for recruiting. Employees need to know where/how to help if you want their help listening and responding online. Continually monitor your online reputation and then let employees know where conversations are happening about you as an employer (hint: Indeed Forums; GlassDoor Reviews; Vault; JobVent). Solicit their support in leaving their own honest reviews, responding and commenting on other reviews, answering job seeker questions etc.

Use your Intranet, email, SMS etc to regularly communicate to your employees things they can do online such as:

Where they can help answer your candidates questions (maybe even create a forum specifically for this purpose on your career web site)
Discuss why their work for your company, or their latest project
Post pictures and videos from Company Events
Post reviews and information about you
Tweet or contribute to the company facebook fan page (become a “fan” even )

Align with Internal Comms to create an Army of Davids out of your employees, guide them to tell their/your story via social media, and watch your social recruiting machine flourish.

So who’s doing this well?

- Shannon

Shannon co-authors EXCELER8ion with her other half Julian Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Shannon is a regular speaker in the HR & Talent Acquisition space where she’s known for her work in social media and integrated digital engagement. By day Shannon works at a Recruitment Marketing Agency.

Social Recruiting | Candidate Expectations and Community Manager

Shannon — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:54:38 +0000

Today’s candidates have high expectations for the experience that is offered by a company committed to attracting and retaining Talent. From the type of information that an interested candidate is able to find about working at your company, to how initial connections are made and a relationship established, to the experience on the Career Web Site. And it doesn’t stop there. Once a successful candidate becomes a hire, they also have high expectations for the on-boarding experience, the Intranet, and even after they leave in the form of the availability of Alumni networks.

This expectation isn’t set by the type of experience they are used to having on career or internal company sites, rather it is set by the type of online experience that are available on much of the rest of the web where they are using social networks, blogs and articles that allow comments, and discussion forums to connect and interact.

In order for corporations to successfully use social computing tools to connect and build relationships with talent in an authentic way that builds credibility and trust, an internal resource needs to be identified to foster this “candidate community”. While consultants and agencies can help provide knowledge and guidance, brand reputation monitoring and process research, technical support, web development work, and ROI metrics – the actual building, evangelizing, and cultivation of the community HAS to be done by the people at the company itself.

“But who is going to manage and moderate this?”

Utilization of social tools and the publishing of work related content will/should/already does happen through many employees at a company (how many of your people have facebook pages?) – but the Champion of how encouraging, leveraging, and distributing this work related content should fall under a specific owner.

This position may eventually be known by many different titles, but for our purposes here, I will call this position: Candidate Community Manager (CCM). Jeremiah Owyang outlines the main Tenets of all “Community Managers” in his post from November of 2007 – The Four Tenets of the Community Manager. For the specific “Candidate Community” as it relates to recruiting the best to work with your company, these tenets are just as relevant:

Candidate Community Advocation – An advocate for the candidates that focuses on listening and understanding their expectations, monitoring and participating in the conversations that are taking place in a variety of online channels such as social networks like facebook, job seeker forums like Indeed.com Forums, and feedback sites such as JobVent. By being good at listening and understanding the candidate community, the CCM can focus all content programming on the interests and needs of their candidate community members and help to evangelize these needs with company stakeholders.
Employer Brand & Reputation Ambassadorship – The employer brand evangelist heads the team that communicates career opportunities, company culture, promotes career events, and highlights awards and news items through tradition and channels. I currently know of no better example of using social channels to communicate company culture and shine a light on the many employer brand evangelists (read *your employees*) than what Ariel Meadow Stallings is doing for Microsoft through her blog Microspotting and the corresponding flickr photstream, Twitter profile and videos.
Online communication and analysis skills – A candidate community manager has to “get it” when it comes to social computing. They will need to be savvy users of social networks, understand RSS and content portability and distribution, blog participation even if they do not author one, how to create and respond to forum threads, how to encourage comments, as well as how to effectively and authentically use microblogging sites like twitter and plurk. The successful CCM literally has to be an active member of the online communities. Having a deep understanding of the best way to respond to the community and how to address negative or even inflammatory issues and deal with online trolls. Finally, in order to understand user patterns and site effectiveness, the CCM need to know how to get access to and to understand site analytics reports.
Candidate focused site requirements gathering and process improvements – In order for a candidate community manager to be able to meet the needs of their community, they have to have a true understanding of their on and offline reputation as an employer, as well as an understanding of the effectiveness and candidate perspective on the current recruiting process. In short – they have to be the expert at knowing how their members define an “excellent recruiting experience” and be able to communicate this internally and to consulting/agency partners in order to present the business case to secure funding, as well as to communicate actual solution requirements to the teams that will develop and implement them.

This begins to outline the tenets for a true champion of social recruiting and the candidate community within a company. The results for a progressive company that implements a social recruiting strategy, lead and fostered by a Candidate Community Manager will be increased relevant and real online conversation about their employer brand, their culture and job opportunities that exist. This will lead to increased credibility, exposure and most importantly, an increased understanding of your target – The Candidate.

Shannon co-authors EXCELER8ion with her other half Julian Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Shannon interview on Bill Vick’s XtremeRecruiting.com

Julian — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:57:19 +0000

Shannon isn’t one to toot her own horn but I don’t mind doing it for her. Er…Coming from her husband that sounded a little dirty didn’t it? Bill Vick published a great interview on Friday with Shannon on XtremeRecruiting.org about using social media in recruiting. Check it out here.

I think Bill asks excellent questions on all his interviews like this session with Jibber Jobber’s Jason Alba or this one with Chris Brogan.

My focus these days is helping small businesses attract clients in their local town or city using local online marketing and social media. Because of their small budgets, the small business market is one that doesn’t get a lot of attention from our Recruitosphere or ad agency types (or bloggers for that matter). Since there are so many recruiting experts who visit EXCELER8ion I would love it if you could stop by my latest post on recruiting for small business on Local Na8ion and give them some of your words of wisdom in the comment area – it will really help my Local Na8ion readers a lot.

Thanks so much!

- Julian

Social Recruiting: corporate adoption of social media for recruiting and retention

Shannon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:10:50 +0000

Is corporate HR and their executive team receptive to social media?

A commenter recently asked:

Curious of your thoughts regarding how receptive HR is in including social media strategy as part of their marketing and media mix. I think for many of us it is a no-brainer, and I believe Executives are beginning to understand the power of social media and the habits of their target, but from your experience, are you finding HR Execs receptive and willing to allocate appropriate portions of their budgets for this?

Julie O’Reilly
Marcom Village

What do you think when you hear “do you have a social media strategy?” Do you think about making media buys to run banners on sites like facebook and LinkedIn; or maybe placing employment messaging within other publisher’s podcasts? In recent years the number of sites where you can place ads and the forms these ads are offered in have increased. The introduction of these options for interactive recruitment advertising is exciting and the possibilities are growing by leaps and bounds. But, this is advertising – which doesn’t happen to be the core compentancy of social sites and mediums. These sites are forums where millions upon millions of potential candidates are connecting with one another, participating in active conversations, and changing the very definition of thought leadership. The potential for social media to completely disrupt how companies find and build relationships with candidates is powerful, if they can be convinced to learn how to harness that potential.

I have spent the last eighteen months speaking with corporate HR leaders at some of the largest organizations in America on this very topic – urging then to adopt social computing in their recruiting and retention efforts. It is just in the last month that I have seen corporate HR realize that they have to begin “thinking” about adding social media to their recruiting and retention efforts. But when I discuss crafting a social media strategy, I am not talking about using these sites for advertising, I am talking about efforts such as:

Publishing employee-generated content that shows the real soul of the company and tells the stories that make the company what it is.
Using photo, video, audio sharing sites to help those stories come to life.
Using RSS to distribute this content outside of the corporate career site.
Having real FAQs sections where candidates can ask questions, get real answers, and have this exchange be indexed and searchable for others.
Evolve the definition of “relationship marketing” to include building and cultivating your candidate community on your career site through real two-way exchange of information.
Encourage recruiters, hiring managers (all employees really) to seek out potential hires and build relationships within online communities.

What is the “right” strategy for one company is not necessarily right for the other. The key is to allow your employees to express their stories in the way that is RIGHT for them, thereby authentically and quite literally showing candidates who your company is and what it might be like to work there.

So to answer Julie’s question, in my experience, “how receptive is HR in including social media strategy as part of their marketing and media mix?” I think that companies are starting to view advertising within social networks as the no brainer, and they are using budget that they already have allocated to interactive advertising, but just changing where those dollars are being spent. When it come to harnessing the power of social media to connect to candidates and literally give them the a behind the scenes view into the making of the organization – I would say, “not so much.” The fear of creating “too much risk” for the organization due to not being able to control the message is the root of the hesitation.

I have spent so much of my time passionately trying to explain to HR execs what social media IS, describing the changing of the guard that is happening, how thought leadership is changing, how the ability to spread and amplify the affect of messages has evolved, all of this can be seen so clearly through growth and impact of social computing – that I have probably done a poor job of making a traditional bottom-line focused business case for why companies would benefit for using social media to attract and retain the best.

Shel Holtz, an author and blogger with 30 years of organizational communications experience in both corporate and consulting environments, just wrote a terrific post addressing the business case for using social media as a communication channel entitled, Business adoption of social media: Itâ€™s not about employee rights, where he simply states:

My position on employee engagement in social media is based on my belief that doing so will produce far greater benefitâ€”in the form of enhanced constituent relationsâ€”than risk, particularly when it is managed strategically. There are many dimensions to these benefits, some of the most important of which include the following:

Recruiting and retentionâ€”Deloitte is frequently named the best company at which to begin your career. Deloitte is also the company that hosted an employee film festival, in which employees submitted creative videos articulating the companyâ€™s values and culture. The best of these are now on YouTube. Deloitte has engaged in social media in a variety of other ways, which in part accounts for the companyâ€™s ability to choose from the cream of the crop. Meanwhile, Clive Holtham, a professor at the Cass Business School, notes some California firms â€œare finding they cannot attract or retain staff because their IT infrastructure fails to meet the demanding standards of the new generation,â€ according to an article in Data Storage Today. Letâ€™s face it: If employers in the donâ€™t want to pay for the lionâ€™s share of employee medical coverage. They do, however, because without it, they wouldnâ€™t be able to attract the talent they need to implement their strategies.

Employee engagementâ€”Companies with populations of mostly actively engaged employees tend to outperform those with populations of mainly disengaged employees. Engagement flows from a number of factors, but it wonâ€™t flow at all without trust. Once employees are engaged, they produce discretionary effort on behalf of their employers.

In my view, using Social Media to provide a window into what it is like to work for an organization provides validation for a candidate against the marketing messages. This validation leads to a feeling of trust and genuine interest in the company (engagement), credibility (feeling that working for this employer is a good career decision) and ultimately loyalty (retention). I participate in social media everyday, it has become part of how I work, how I provide thought leadership, and how I judge the thought leadership coming out of other companies – that I know the potential for what it could mean for recruiting and retention – literally in my bones. Is it the only way? No, of course not. But the expectations of candidates are changing. They EXPECT to be able to find out what it is really like to work for a company, and they respect the companies that enable that process and help bubble that relevant information up to the top for them.

Shel says:

People may still want to work there even if they cannot engage in social media. The pay, the experience, the benefits all may carry greater weight than the ability to talk about work on a blog.

In general, though, based on dramatic shifts in culture, society, business and communication, most organizations will be well-served to integrate social media into their communication models.

But for any F500 company, it comes down to money – not passion for an idea. So my goal for the next month is to put together that financial business case for why Corporations cannot afford to ignore the potential of social media for attracting and keeping their best people.

Shannon co-authors EXCELER8ion with her other half Julian Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Web 2.0 and Employer Branding

Shannon — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:30:08 +0000

At work a few weeks ago, I was asked to answer questions for an upcoming InsideCRM story on the promise of Web 2.0 technologies for human resource departments looking to make internal changes. My focus is really on employer branding and the candidate/employee experience, so I have no idea if my input was ever used, but thought I would post my responses here on EXCELER8ion as well to see what our little community has to say. How would you answer these questions?

How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?
What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?
What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?
Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?

Here are my responses:

How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?

Web 2.0 is a term used to describe the tools that people are increasingly using to connect to one another and share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and more. The information that is shared can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. This â€˜user-generated contentâ€™ and the web sites that contain it are often grouped into the term â€œSocial Computingâ€ or Web 2.0 web sites. Popular social mediums include social networking web sites that allow two-way communication, message boards, as well as videocasts and podcasts, blogs, wikis, social search and tagging, and rss are connecting people and distributing information in new and efficient ways.

What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?

Utilizing the web 2.0 principles of authenticity, collaboration and participation â€“ solutions are being developed at a rapid pace to allow companies to easily incorporate real first hand stories into their career web site and within social networking groups such as those on facebook. As compared to more traditional offerings, web 2.0 is about communicating, not advertising. Creating, publishing and distributing authentic information about an organization creates opportunities and forums through which to directly connect with customers, employers, or talent. Utilizing these principles will introduce a level of transparency, authenticity, and credibility into how an employer is perceived. Building employee social networks or participating in social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and facebook, allow companies to communicate with customers and candidates where they already spend time online.

What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?

The authentic information that is generated and shared through social web sites can powerfully influence the overall perception of a company and give the audience, customers, as well as potential job candidates, a deeper and real understanding of an organization as an employer – greatly affect their consumer and employer brand. Concepts such as Social Search, tagging and ranking could be introduced into the career site. Social search results that are validated by the candidate community help to highlight the pages that they found most useful:

Tagging: Candidates could tag content themselves based on words that they would use to describe the content. It will create â€œbottom upâ€ categorization, which will be more relevant to the candidate community.

Audience Rankings: Candidates rate the importance of content, pages, announcements or news, which will make it simpler for other candidate to uncover what is important and create a mechanism to provide feedback to the employer regarding where the career site user interests really lie.

HR specifically would benefit from utilizing evolving applications and tools that use concepts from web 2.0 such as social bookmarking and social networking to enable the sharing of information; collaboration; sharing information across different units and to help the important information bubble to the top – but within a secure framework.

New â€˜web 2.0â€™ mash-up technologies are enabling the aggregation of data from multiple data sources, saving time for the HR staff by putting their most important information and common reporting tasks at their fingertips and adding insight to their most important work in order to work facilitate better decision making processes. Such data aggregation mash-up tools help bring disparate data point together (ATS Metrics; Job Board Metrics; Career Site metrics; Employee Research Data etc) and summarize existing data into useful new forms that promote analysis and informed action.

Do you have any other thoughts on these or related issues?

When making a career choice, candidates are searching for real â€œbehind the scenesâ€ information about a potential employer and they are often willing to spend the time to look for it. Web 2.0 tools and principles enable employers to make there career site that authentically communicates their employer brand and provides a window into the â€œemployee-experienceâ€. It has never been easier to literally â€œshowâ€ candidates the employee-experience by incorporating social features into the corporate career web site. Effectively communicating what your companyâ€™s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep.

A River of Reputation Runs Through Your Employer Brand

Shannon — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:06:02 +0000

River of Reputation

Blogs. Tumblr. Twitter. Vlogs. Google. FaceBook. Syndication. Jaiku. Pownce. YouTube. Myspace. User-Generated Content. Indigenous Content. Del.icio.us. Online Community…. Data streams flowing via RSS, ATOM and furiously converging to create a River of Reputation…. a River of Relevance.

I started playing with Slideroll yesterday and ended up creating this slide show regarding how Employer Brands are affected by ‘Rivers of Reputation’.

This is a work in progress meant to get across the concept of the decentralization of the Employer Brand via the flow of easily accessible information regarding your brand that is being generated by individuals everyday. Let me know your thoughts.

Hat tip to a twitter mention of a conversation between Scoble and Anil Dash. I was also influenced by Brian Solis’s post Lifestreams Channel Online Activity, Creating Rivers of Relevance, discussing data streams and one’s personal brand.

The Rise of the Career Prosumer | Career Sites and Social Media

Shannon — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 05:51:57 +0000

The next generation of corporate career sites need to completely invert the funnel and begin to engage visitors on their terms – with immediate access to information that is real and important to them. Career sites will HAVE to incorporate two-way communication and distribute their content through the innumerable web-tubes in order to create opportunities to directly connect hiring managers and recruiters to passive talent where they live online. This also means that companies have to come to terms with the fact that

“C2.0″, as in Careers 2.0. – the next generation of Career Sites and Intranets that enable dialog and collaboration, closed corporate social networks, and employee communities will define and build Employer Brands in the future.

many of the interactions between talent and company will not begin on the corporate career site at all as people increasingly utilize social media and Google in order to gain access to *authentic* information and gain access to windows into the soul of a company. As any reader of EXCELER8ion knows, my tireless mantra is – “C2.0“, as in Careers 2.0. – the next generation of Career Sites and Intranets that enable dialog and collaboration, closed corporate social networks, and employee communities will define and build Employer Brands in the future.

People are increasingly using “new technologies” that make it easy to publish content to the web to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. For the uninitiated, the applications and web sites that enable this user-generated content are often grouped into the term Social Media. Authentic user content that can be generated by anyone (and everyone) and shared through social media. This content can powerfully influence overall perception of a company and their employer brand. In my experience, Social Media has a bad rep in the corporate HR world – and yet this is with social media tools that people are connecting, building relationships, and the sourcing of talent is happening.

We are living in an age where we are finally seeing the rise of what is being called the prosumer – a consumer who is actively involved in the design and manufacture of products, no longer a passive player upon which preferences are pushed upon, rather – consumer that is part the process. Duncan Riley on Techcruch discusses prosumer in a recent post:

The word is a combination of producer and consumer that perfectly describe the millions of participants in the Web 2.0 revolution.

This revolution that we are witnessing doesn’t stop because we are talking about employer brand and recruitment. I am calling the ‘prosumer’ of the employer branding / recruitment world – the “Career Prosumer” – an individual that actively produces content, participates, and engages with prospective employers – often outside of the careers site on a corporate blog or in a social network. Career Prosumers will not necessarily always use or relate to the sites that we create in the ways that companies expect them to.

Providing platforms and forums that seek out and *encourage* such real user generated content introduce a level of transparency and credibility into how a company is perceived. Participating in social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook allow employers to communicate with talent where they are ALREADY spending their time. Want a live example? Check out this Facebook group that was just started by my Twitter bud, Chris Brogan, called Grasshoppers. The description of this group:

Grasshoppers are motivated, talented people with a shared belief that helping others comes back in good ways to everyone involved. From friendsourcing (finding help with business or personal projects through friends) to building a network of colleagues for future collaboration, Grasshoppers is a group that hopes to answer the question, “How can I help?”

Talent sourcing is becoming intertwined with “Friendsourcing”. In a way, this is no different that how it has ALWAYS been. Referrals have ALWAYS been the number one source of hire – now we are just making our friends and networking differently. What’s new here is that we’re using the network effect of the Internet so your message is amplified a thousand times over and can reach the furthest reaches of the world, or right next door where your hidden candidates live, as in within a 20 mile radius of your headquarters. The latter is often overlooked due to the vast reach of the Internet – we forget that the Internet is one of the most efficient self-selecting people connectors ever seen. People self-select around interests, passions AND LOCATION. What’s better, an online Ducati motorcycle group or an online Ducati motorcycle group that’s based in your area where you can meet up for group rides? (Yes, Julian and I are going to get a Ducati, and yes I am going to take riding lessons). Chris distributed a message to all of the Grasshopper group’s member asking them Go to the Discussion Board for the Group and post Job Wanted or Job Opening threads, and start populating them.Top companies understand that and will create a “recruiting culture”, ensuring that their recruiters and hiring managers spend their time building relationships where candidates already live – not the other way around. So often in life, we are just going through the motions instead of really driving our reality, driving our business, really engaging with real people, with real talent. I can name only a handful of companies that are overtly using social media for the purposes of connecting to and engaging talent in their employer brand and yet we are witnessing the development of ‘Un-Careers Sites’ - as employer brands and messaging can now be easily found, aggregated, but not controlled on dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of sites across the web. Aggregating that content for easy consumption for interested individual, and becoming an active participant in the creation of that content, is the key to engaging the Career Prosumer and understanding C2.0.

If you’re ready to dive in – read my earlier posts on Employer Brand and a Corporate Un-Careers Site as well as Top Ten Tips for starting a Recruiting Blog.

Employer Brand and the Corporate Un-Careers Site

Shannon — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:43:27 +0000

Focusing on the corporate careers site as the main destination where companies can connect with and engage talented people is a continuous theme here on EXCELER8ion. It used to be that the corporate careers site was THE destination where job seekers could learn about the company and have their first exposure to the employer’s brand messaging. I now find myself in every client presentation having lengthy discussions about the new reality we face that when someone does a search on Google or Yahoo! when researching your company – it is likely that the search results returned will be posts from the blogosphere, not necessarily the corporate careers site, and not necessarily with a positive message.

This has a huge impact on how job seekers perceive your employer brand – as the information that is found on a blog post is often considered more credible and real as compared to the ‘controlled’ information that companies usually make available to job seekers on the careers site. Since the information posted on the corporate careers site usually does not really portray what it is really like to work for a company this lack of real information is literally forcing them to go to search engines to seek out the ‘real deal’ before deciding if they want to consider a company as a future employer. The result is that your employer brand message can now be found (but not controlled) on dozens, hundreds, and possibly even thousands of sites across the web.

The changing expectations regarding where job seekers can go online for ‘real’ and transparent information about a company are being seen outside of Careers as well. Shel Holtz, VP of New Marketing for crayon, spoke at the New Communications Forum in Las Vegas last week (I would have killed to attend all of Track 1) and he just posted asking his readers what their thoughts are regarding the value of company websites:

A recurring theme here at the New Communications Forum (in Las Vegas) is the value of corporate websites. Speakers from David Weinberger to John Bell (from Ogilvy PR) have reiterated the point: People will search Google and engage in the blogosphere to find out whatâ€™s what with a company before they visit the companyâ€™s website. Even if they do visit the company website, itâ€™s only to get the companyâ€™s point of view, not to make an ultimate decision or establish an opinion.

While Shel is looking to discuss the extent to which this is indeed the case – the fact remains that from a employer brand point of view – every day there are conversations that are taking place on blogs about what it is like to work for a company, and those conversations are being indexed and found during searches.

The result?

Companies do not have one careers site – they may literally have thousands. Instead of fighting this reality, I want to to talk about the possibility of breaking away from the traditional careers site experience and provide people with an ‘Un-Careers’ site? (I owe the credit for coining this term to my colleague, Jeremy Shapiro – VP, Hodes iQ).

What to do?

Make the site a destination that aggregates all of the content out there about a company – all of the employee blogs, past employee blogs, personal blogs – all of it – not just the typical careers marketing spin.

Shel discusses how Microsoft did this a few years back (not for careers):

There also are ways to make the corporae [sic] site more of a destination. Microsoft did this by creating a bias-free clearinghouse of content related to the federal and state lawsuits it was facing a few years back. By offering all contentâ€”not just that which was pro-Microsoftâ€”the company ensured that, for at least some journalists and othersâ€”the Microsoft site would be the go-to destination for documents and other materials dealing with the lawsuits.

I view this as an immediate, no BS way to provide a real and transparent view of the company, and as a byproduct, such a move would also up the credibility of the more “traditional” careers content that might otherwise have just been brushed off as spin. Once companies leverage the social network, instead of hiding from the content that already exists out there – a world of possibilities immediately opens up for distribution of job postings via rss and widgets – but I will save that for another post.

What do you think – will corporate America ever be ready for such a move as a un-careers site?

Live Like Steve Irwin – Pursue Your Career With Passion

Julian — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:42:02 +0000

Today, we’re happy to publish a blogswap article on EXCELER8ion and introduce our guest author, Liz Handlin, of Ultimate Resumes. Here’s a little more about Liz and her blog:

“Ultimate Resumes’ mission is to help great people find great jobs. In addition to my work at Ultimate Resumes, I am the Vice President of Marketing for Broadpeak Collaborative. Broadpeak is a professional services firm that provides financial consulting services and executive search for financial professionals. www.broadpeak.us”

This morning I saw Terri Irwin, widow of “The Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, and her daughter Bindi on TV. Seeing them and hearing them talk about Steve Irwin made me wish that all of us could live our lives as he did. I don’t mean wrestling crocodiles, although corporate America can feel like a jungle at times. What I mean is that we should all strive to do what we love and do it with passion.

I don’t know if you watch The Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet but if you ever have a chance to check it out you should do so. Steve was a larger than life person who clearly loved what he was doing. I saw a retrospective that described how Steve started out. You could see that he had no idea back in the days when he was wrestling crocs in the Australian outback that he would become rich, famous, and reach iconic status. He just did what he loved and he did it with such passion that it was infectious. I don’t even think money was that important to him except as a means to further his goal of wildlife conservation. Who would think that anyone could make crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and spiders seem vulnerable and in need of conservation? Steve Irwin did. And he was so convincing because HE was so passionate about those animals.

If Steve had cared about the kind of career path that crocodile wrestling would take him on back when Australia Zoo was little more than a small exotic animal park he might have decided to do something else for a living. But Steve didn’t worry about that. He was passionate about animal conservation and he had a way of showing us the beauty in animals that are not cute and cuddly. He was so passionate about what he was doing that the world couldn’t help but watch. The success, the money, and the fame all came as a result of Steve Irwin following his passion.

I am not suggesting that you should quit your job and run off to do whatever it is that you are passionate about without a plan. I don’t think Steve Irwin was capricious in any way. But I would submit that if you do what you love the money will follow.

Who knew that Martha Stewart would create an empire out of “gracious living”? She has sold us household hints, cooking tips, books, and magazines and now she is worth billions. But when she started out she was just a caterer who was doing something that she loved and was good at.

What about Joel Osteen? He has grown the Lakewood Church ministry in Houston to the point that they fill the Staples Center every Sunday morning. Unbelievable. Whatever your spiritual beliefs you should check out one of his sermons on TV sometime. He is so engaging and articulate. I think its because he is full of such passion for what he does.

Jodi Smith, owner of Mannersmith is passionate about her job. She has created a successful business and has authored several books on manners. She is doing what she loves and she has become a huge success. I would never have thought that lecturing on manners could lead to such personal and professional success but it sure has for Jodi. She is doing what she loves and the money and success have followed.

So, what are you passionate about? Can you turn your passion into your career? If so, you will never work another day in your life.

Liz Handlin

http://ultimate-resumes.blogspot.com/

This CollegeRecruiter.com Blogswap article is courtesy of Recruiting.com at http://www.Recruiting.com and CollegeRecruiter.com at http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com , a leading site for college students and recent graduates who are searching for internships and entry level jobs.

Technorati Tags: Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, Liz Handlin, Passionate Careers

The Next Generation of Corporate Careers Sites

Shannon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:30:00 +0000

My 2007 Wishes

I am not one for predictions – its not that I mind putting myself out there; rather, Julian can attest to how much I just hate to be wrong . So instead I am going to put out 2 wishes for what will happen with Recruitment Marketing trends in 2007. A company’s employment web site continues to be the top “Source of Hire”. While this fact doesn’t speak to how candidates arrives at careers site destination, we do know that regardless of how they got there – they went there. The majority of candidates will visit the careers section of a company’s web site and it often represents the first opportunity to engage and connect with a candidate. Pair that with the HUGE growth in the popularity of social media like blogs; vlogs; and podcasts and you have the makings of my wishes for 2007:

1. That companies will not spend another dime on media that merely serves to drive traffic to their Corporate Careers web site before they spend that money improving the functionality; opportunities for interaction; content; and design of their sites.

Rather than dropping a bag of money on media – driving candidates to your site – and then having them leave because the site is horrible; difficult to navigate or boring enough to make the experience rate up there with going to the DMV…take a step back and spend that money where it will count – THE destination – the Employment Web site. If you have $250K budgeted that you plan to spend on media – i.e. print, trade pubs, job boards, Google AdWords etc – the best thing that you can do for your company, and your Employer Brand, this year is take 50% of that and put it toward overhauling your careers site.

2. That corporations take the leap and begin incorporating participation and conversations into their corporate careers sites. Companies do not have to have a separate blog, rather it is the easy-to-publish ability to generate real content and the two-way conversation that is the hallmark of blogging that should be incorporated in to the overall careers site. Employment web sites could be rebuilt on platforms that allow for the integration of blogs; private-label social networks; employee videos and even *gasp* the upload of video-resumes. This is something that most HR departments are not willing to do, as it is perceived as too risky. On the other hand, candidates are DYING for real information and real ways to connect to potential employers and even future coworkers to help them make their career choices. If this wish is going to come to fruition, then it will not start in HR. The companies that are using social media effectively are the ones that have had it sanctioned from the top down.

So there you have it. For 2007 I wish to see better Employment Web sites that balance the ‘process’ with interactivity and ways to connect – for real. What are your wishes?

Technorati Tags: career site, careers sites, careers web site, employer brand, employment brand, employment web sites

LifeHacker on landing your dream job

Julian — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 02:25:47 +0000

I always enjoy reading discussions about jobs from outside of our Recruitosphere. You know – the place where we don’t have all-expert opinions, all-the-time. It’s amazing what these mere amateurs know about our space.

There’s one such debate over on A-List blog LifeHacker. Go on, go check out the story called Ask the readers: get your dream job. Here’s a post excerpt to get you started:

“Reader Francis writes:

Since the age of 10, I’ve known exactly what company I wanted to work for (incidentally, it’s the Jones Soda company). I’m not 100% sure what I want to do, but I would like to have my foot in the door, have them know that I am out there ready for anything they might need. I am even willing to start at the bottom, working as a temp or whatever need may arise. So my question for readers is this: How would you go about getting your foot in the door at your dream job?”

I know – you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin.’

What the hell do they put in that soda and where can I get some?!#@!

I saw that a commenter also added a couple of links that I haven’t seen before (I feel so ignorant admitting that) and if by some chance you haven’t come across them before they’re well worth a look:

Here is an interesting story.

A few years ago a group of students at Pepperdine University sat around, and had no clue on what to do with their life, so they got a big RV (painted it green) went out on the road to find their own path in life, while interviewing other influential people on how they found their passion in life. The roadtrip evolved into a grassroots movement, a book, and a PBS show, if you are interested they have some videos on their site

http://www.roadtripnation.com/interviews/

It’s pretty interesting, the people they interviewed found their dream job (their passion) in so many ways that no two are alike.

http://www.roadtripnation.com/

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: LifeHacker, life hacks, dream job, dream jobs, Jones Soda Company, roadtripnation, road trip nation

Jobster’s Jason Goldberg and the Monster.com User-Experience

Shannon — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 05:05:45 +0000

JG and I spoke today on his way to Toronto to play Poker with Jay-Dee of Recruiting.com and many other recruiting cronies. No, I wasn’t talking to my JG – Julian Gude, rather – Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster. I really wanted to go to play a few hands with those boys, but My JG basically said, “over my dead body.”

Regardless, during the conversation with Jason, I found out that during his talk at the Direct Employers meeting he made it clear that Monster.com provides its users with a poor user-experience. To be specific, he said that:

these guys are literally printing money with a crap product.”

and that Monster users are:

giving their personal info to some companies that Monster has basically pimped out their site to …”

What was he talking about? Interstitial ad pages. You know, those annoying pages that appear and force you to physically click the link to skip the page before you are allowed to see your content. These are now an integrated part of every Monster search. The defined Monster user path: Job Search > Special Offer > Search Results.

Jason is right about this one – bad job seeker experience – but I am curious about the kind of response rates those pages garner on Monster. Julian worked for a short period of time at a clearing house for this type of product that made huge amounts of money for online leads like these interstitials generate. He shared with me that these registration pages are tremendous direct response vehicles for advertisers and that they will bid anywhere from a few pennies all the way up to $100 or more for every one of these submitted leads. So clearly these are huge money-makers for Monster. What affect do ads like these have on brand? I know that my reaction to seeing an interstitial page is that is asking for my personal information is that the company is begging – not the best brand message.

Monster has taken quite a bit of flack in recent years, and while I agree with Jason’s sentiments completely – I DO give Monster credit for almost single handedly directing job seeker behavior away from newspaper classifieds to online classifieds in the Web 1.0 world. It is easy to dismiss them as the money printing dinosaur and as much as we hate it – today, if you ask any job seeker on the street, they will know what Monster.com is, but few will know a site like Indeed.com for example.

While improvements to online Job search are coming in leaps and bounds – the new job sites have a long road ahead of them evangelizing and getting current users to spread the word about their new solutions in order to change job seeker behavior again. It remains to be seen if the new job sites can attract gaggles of job seekers simply because they’ve produced a better solution or if they will need a blimp and a mascot. What is the key to changing the job seeking behavior of the masses? It can’t happen fast enough for me

BTW: I updated my Jobster profile today just to see how the new Superstar tags work. Its cool. Go ahead, add your profile, add me to your faves . Now – if only they would allow me to display my RSS feed on my profile page….

Technorati Tags: monster, jobster, intersitials

Bridging the Gap: Recruiting Blogs vs. Corporate Blogs

Shannon — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:42:45 +0000

In my last post I discussed how a corporate blog impacts employer brand by enabling prospective job candidates to find out more about a company than they typically find on the careers section – even if the corporate blog doesn’t overtly speak to recruiting or specific employee related issues.

In fact, except in some standout cases, it may be that the blogs that aren’t focusing specifically on recruiting will be viewed as more authentic by potential job candidates than the true recruiting blogs.

It is possible that the Fortune 500 companies that are allowing their employees to blog about their job, their function and their company openly and honestly (and with integrity) may actually have an advantage over the ‘recruiting blogs’ that represent the voice of a recruiter whose job is to sell top talented candidates that may be a match on working at the company. Despite this possible advantage – most corporate blogs fail to acknowledge this and forget to take simple steps like providing links to job search; benefits info; day in the life profiles etc.

In my opinion, the ideal situation would be a blog where both voices are represented – the recruiter that can offer up information about who they are looking for and why, as well as employees that are empowered to blog about their jobs and company. At some point in the process of engaging and connecting with readers – the reader may very well decide to explore job opportunities at the company. Doesn’t it only make sense to provide a link at the right time/place that says something along the line of:

“We understand the value of our people. Would you like to discuss the possibility of working together? Click here to learn more”

Why doesn’t this happen more often? It is related I think to companies still learning what it means to truly have a recruiting culture. That it is the job of every employee to seek out and recruit top talent to work along side them. Only when this ideal is coursing through the veins of a workforce do you tend to see a blending of corporate communications and process with recruitment communications.

Corporate blogs impact Employer Brand whether that’s the intent or not

Shannon — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 01:35:41 +0000

Before I continue looking at the Fortune 500 blogs and evaluating whether or not they are using their corporate blog to recruit talent, I should take a step back. I would say that simply BECAUSE these companies have blogs – they are impacting their employer brand and attracting prospective job candidates whether or not that is the intent. Not that this is unique to blogging. I believe that ALL corporate communications impact employer brand and present an opportunity to attract talent and engage employees – they make an impact whether they were meaning to speak to that audience or not.

If companies have already decided to remove their veil and are partially (or more fully in the best examples) exposing themselves via a public forum like a blog – WHY NOT include a careers message? It could be as simple as a link to ‘job search and apply’ – to as open and transparent as full discussions with interested readers about company values, beliefs, and work environment.

Virtually everyone that is new to social media in the business of recruitment marketing jumps to the notion that companies just aren’t willing to give up control of their brand and open up their juicy insides to possible negative comments. While most companies I come into contact with aren’t ready to just start blogging – I am shocked that more aren’t at least monitoring what is being said in the blogosphere from a recruitment and retention stand-point.

It usually takes about 5 minutes of explaining that social media actually enables companies TO REGAIN CONTROL of their brands before eyes begin to light up. Once I explain that blogging platforms allow the moderation of comments to prevent spammers and vulgar content – minds open up a little to the possibility that a company could actually ADDRESS and participate in what is being said about them by providing a forum for two-way communication and interaction. Great companies will learn that it is OK to let go of traditional employer brand control, and utilize forums like blogs to allow their employees to openly represent the company with transparency, authenticity, and most of all, integrity.

Fortune 500 Blogs – AMD, Amazon, and Cisco

Shannon — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:21:45 +0000

Since I last wrote about this subject a few weeks ago – 10 new blogs have been added to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki. There are now 40, or 8%, of Fortune 500 companies that have official corporate blogs. Here is the updated list:

Blogging F500 Company	Corporate Blog - Using it Directly to Recruit?
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.	AMD Notebook Tester – NO
Amazon.com Inc.	Amazon Web Services Blog – NO
Cisco Systems, Inc.	Cisco High Tech Policy Blog – INDIRECTLY
CSC	Team CSC
Cox Communications	Digital Straight Talk
Dell, Inc	one2one
Eastman Kodak Company	A Thousand Words
eBay	eBay Developers Program Blog
Electronic Data Systems	EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog
Ford Motor Company	Bold Moves
General Electric Company	GE Global Research blog
General Mills, Inc	Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum
General Motors Corporation	FastLane Blog
Google	Google Blog
Hewlett-Packard Company	HP Blogs
Honeywell International	HoneywellBlogs
ING Group	My Cup of Cha
Intel Corporation	Intel Geek Blogger
International Business Machines	Guide to IBM Blogs
McDonald’s Corporation	Open For Discussion
Microsoft Corporation	MSDN’s Microsoft Blogs
Motorola Inc	Snowboarding Team blogs [lame]
Nike Inc	Nike Basketball Blog
Oracle Corporation	OraBlogs
Southwest Airlines	Nuts about Southwest
Sprint	Things That Make You Go Wireless
Starwood Hotels & Resorts	The Lobby
Sun Microsystems Inc	Jonathan Schwartz
Texas Instruments	Video 360 Blog
Time Warner Inc	Jason Calacanis’ Blog
The Boeing Company	Randy’s Journal
The McGraw-Hill Companies	Blogspotting
Tribune Company	The Swamp
Viacom International Inc	MTV News Correspondents
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	Wal-Mart Facts
Wells Fargo & Company	Guided by History
Whole Foods Market, Inc.	The CEO’s Blog – John Mackey (inactive since June)
Xerox Corporation	Palo Alto Research Center
Verizon Communications	PoliBlog
Yahoo!	Yahoo! Search Blog

So Who’s Directly Recruiting from the Corporate Blog?
The following info is from my own review of the sites – if you have information to add or correct, please leave a comment and let me know. Here is a break down of the first three:

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. – Not that I can tell as the blog is in German. I translated the categories in MS Word and found one possibility – ‘mobiler einsatz’ which means mobile employment – but found no direct recruiting info; job openings, or info about the company culture in this category. I actually met two really great recruiters at a recent Jobster dinner down in Hollywood, Hazeef and Sal. Hey – do you guys have any input to add about what AMD thinks about using a blog as a way to connect and engage potential candidates in the AMD employer brand? …especially if they don’t speak German
Amazon.com Inc. – This blog has been running since Jan. 06. While Amazon has several blogs, none of them speak to recruiting or the employment brand.
Cisco Systems, Inc. – The blog that is listed as the main blog on the F500 wiki doesn’t use their blog to address employment related issues. But they do have another blog that has been live since April 2006 called News@Cisco with the tagline = “People and events transforming the network”.
A recent post, Actions speak louder than words, discussed employees and the need for them to be cognizant of security risks when working remotely on company machines. Another recent post, Promoting Gender Diversity – discussed how Noni Allwood, Cisco’s senior director of Human Resources, views the promotion of gender diversity in the workforce with the eminently rational view that diversity is in everyone’s best interest.

They do not categorize their posts on the blog, so finding specific employment and work environment related content that would be highly useful to a job seeker is more difficult than it could be. There are no direct links to the careers section of the Cisco site. Opportunities that are being missed in my opinion

Interestingly, Cisco also has great messaging on their actual corporate site regarding what they are calling – The Human Network. The Human Network ‘micro-site’ within the Cisco site encourages visitors to “discover how the human network brings people together to accomplish great things.” Here is a screen shot of the site:

See anything missing? Any mention of the Cisco Humans? The Cisco Employees? A link to careers? Even the upper right hand content box that is entitled ‘Work’ says nothing about working at Cisco.

I am consistently baffled to see opportunities like this one where companies neglect to bring their employment brand messaging into what they are already spending dollars on for the corporate branding initiatives.

Look out for the next three F500 blogs on Friday.

Technorati Tags: corporate blogs, business blogs, recruiting blogs, employer branding, employer brand, employment value proposition, recruitment, social networking, candidate experience

Give Your Careers Site Or Recruiting Blog Some Character

Shannon — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:21:17 +0000

There is no getting away from the fact that most job seekers begin forming their opinion of you as an employer from the first click of their mouse on your corporate web site. As such, how your “online candidate experience” measures up has become one of the hottest topics in recruitment this year. CareerXroads just came out with their list of the top 25 careers sites, reviewing the ability to “Target, Engage, Inform and Respect the job seeker.” According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on the same topic, the type of experience that a job seeker is looking for is one that:

1. Acknowledges them
2. Provides an easy process
3. Targets their interests or considerations
4. Protects their information
5. Provides details
6. Informs them about your company
7. Makes them feel wanted
8. Has a quick and easy application process
9. Application process is ONLINE
10. Has job listings that are easy to locate on the site

Most corporate careers sites don’t even come close to meeting these job seeker “bill of rights”. In fact, most are woefully pitiful with horrible navigation, lacking in updated information, confusing instructions regarding the ways for the candidate to connect with a recruiter that may be interested in them…etc. The result? A SAD overall candidate experience. Today I found something that might go a long way to helping all that.

Remember CareerBuilder’s Monk E-mail? Hilarious right? This fun viral campaign (one of the best CareerBuilder.com campaigns ever from a creative perspective in my opinion) was created by their agency Cramer-Krasselt along with the technology from an interactive company called oddcast. The Monkeys that you could add audio to and have them say whatever you wanted, is an example of the “talking avatar” products that oddcast develops. Their products can be delivered to any device including browsers and mobile devices, clearly enabling companies to personalize online communications.

Oddcast has ads running on Technorati for a new product that they have created called SitePal. According to oddcast, SitePal Avatar is:

…a virtual talking character that you can easily add to your Blog, Website, Flash movie, or even MySpace profile to express yourself online. SitePal avatars help you connect with your visitors (readers), impress your friends, and bring your website and blog to life, or just to be cool!

Such a component on your careers site could be used to provide job seekers with live audio information on where to quickly find jobs; give information about benefits; fun stories about working at your company; instructions on how to apply; and yes – even give job candidates information on next steps after they apply. An annual subscription to SitePal is about 1/3 of the cost of a recruitment newspaper ad for a single sunday.

Go on over to the site and look at their examples. You have to see it to really get how this would work. You can see how sites are using SitePal to help close sales here (just translate this to say: how to use SitePal to sell candidates on your company and positions). You can even incorporate these into your recruiting blogs – see how one blogger is using a SitePal avatar here.

Adding a “SitePal” might be an interesting way to interact and connect with your site’s visitors and online job seekers. Very Cool – very effective.

technorati tags: oddcast sitepal Careers Site Recruiting Blogs

Google’s AdWords Sales Team and the Candidate Experience

Shannon — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 06:38:27 +0000

I am fascinated with the Google Hiring Process. How many CEUs (Candidate Experience Units) does Google get for this one? Come up with a response to the scenario below - and you too could work on Google’s AdWords sales team:

Google’s policy is to not allow ads for tobacco products. An AdWords advertiser’s ad is reviewed and rejected for selling tobacco products. The advertiser writes the following email response:

Dear Google AdWords,

I am outraged by your decision! You allow pornography to be advertised on Google and not tobacco? Your policy is hypocritical, and you are practicing discrimination. My products are legal, and I have been selling tobacco products online for years. I demand you reconsider your decision and run my ad immediately!

From,
Jamie Young

a. Please discuss at least three reasons you believe Google would make the decision not to allow the advertisement of tobacco or tobacco products while allowing ads for pornography. These might not be what you tell the advertiser, but rather internal reasons for this policy.

b. Below, draft an email response you would send to the advertiser.

Easy right? Here are my 3:

1- Obviously Tobacco ads are not allowed because Google “Does No Evil”
2- Tobacco is known to be addictive and cause cancer
3- Porn is WAY too lucrative to turn away the ads

HatTip: Google Watch

Google’s Candidate Experience: You Leave Empty But Well Hydrated

Shannon — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 04:26:18 +0000

We were watching Rocketboom’s vlog last night and came across this really interesting story about Google’s hiring process. It is by Pete Abilla on his blog schmula – you can find the post here.

Pete is a blogger and mathematician that works for Myfamily.com in Provo, Utah about his 2 days of interviews with Google last year. He turned them down when they offered him a high-paying contract position but Google Stock Units and No benies.

Some interesting pieces of the story:

unlike most companies that fly their candidates out for an onsite interview, google’s policy was for me to pay for my flight, hotel, and food, but that they would reimburse me later. i thought that was lame and unprofessional; after all, they are the ones that contacted me for an interview and i never applied for a job with them.
————————–
my first interviewer came in late and was really sweaty. he had just ridden his bike to work. he was sorry he was late. he was super nice and his questions were easy. the next person was a little tougher; she had been with sun microsystems for several years and was in charge of their warehouse and distribution side. she asked some tough questions, was very open about her frustrations with google, but ended up very nice to me.
————————–
day 2, 7 interviews
————————–
all in all, the experience was okay. there is certainly more hype about google than i believe it really merits. true, they hire sharp — really sharp people; i felt a lot of energy and could see the innovation happening there. but, the people i interviewed with didn’t seem happy to me. they looked tired and grumpy. i didn’t get a feeling that google treats their people very well. i’m glad for my decision not to join google. but, i’ll always wish i had free reign on those odwalla drinks

Sounds like a nightmare and given the way people blather on about Google in the recruitosphere – it is not exactly the candidate experience I would have expected. Off the hiring topic, but another very interesting snippet from the post:

on the wall was a large flat monitor that showed, in real time, the current google searches. this was really amusing. i remember the following searches:

* size d bra
* how to make a bomb
* osama
* italian mob + hbo
* catholic anger

Ok – that’s really cool and a little scary. Very interesting read.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? The MySpace Candidate Branding Conundrum

Shannon — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:53:46 +0000

Do you have a MySpace Page? I don’t and I don’t have any real plans to have one. Not because I am against MySpace, not because I am trying to keep potential employers from learning about who I am – I just don’t have time to build another social community right now, but I might sometime soon. My 16 year old sister has a MySpace page. My 15 year old step-son has one. We have a witch in our town – she has one too (you can see it here), but that’s a whole other story.

I really support how MySpace has fostered an environment of self-expression and I totally support the undercurrent of a revolution that you feel every time you hear how many more users the site has. Ross Levinsohn, President of News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media unit (see his MySpace page here) recently said,

“Kids don’t have a way to express themselves, and that’s led to the rise of social networking…It’s all about getting them to interact and express themselves. We are starting to take a different mindset. We don’t want them to sit back and be passive.”

Right on. No More Boring Vanilla.

Sites like this are increasingly enabling people to develop their personal brand, but they are also being used as a window into what I am calling your ‘candidate brand’. We keep hearing the references to young adults missing out on job opportunities because of what recruiters are finding out about them on the internet. MySpace and other tools are being used to target and/or research job candidates. Unfortunely, recruiters are often shocked at what they find. It seems that one’s personal brand doesn’t always bolster their candidate brand. According to a recent article by Alan Finder in The New York Times,

“Many counselors have been urging students to review their pages on Facebook and other sites, removing photographs or text that might be inappropriate to show to their grandmother or potential employers. Counselors also encourage students to apply settings on Facebook that can significantly limit access to their pages.

But it is not clear whether many students are following the advice. “I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult world doesn’t know about it,” said Mark Smith, director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. “But the adult world is starting to come in.”

The adult world? Or the Real and Authentic World? The Canadian HeadHunter over at The Recruiting Animal in a post here liked Julian’s snippet from our recent project building a corporate recruitment blog:

“My favorite moment from blog training? When a recruiter explained that she didn’t see how she could possibly write on the company blog when all she’s done for the last year is tell her teenage son to avoid posting on blogs for fear of sexual predators. That was one question I didn’t anticipate.”

Do we as a culture really want companies, and thereby the employees that make them what they are, to be as vanilla and safe as your average gated community on a golf course? Is this what builds a great company? Are we too afraid that we will see something about their “lifestyle” that isn’t safe or vanilla? So much of our culture, especially corporate culture, is just devoid of any real character. Everyday it seems that there is an article or a post out there that points to how we need job candidates to only have “safe” representations of themselves on the web, we want safe and ‘professional’ blog content in order to have it be ad supported and we need corporate blog policies to keep ourselves from making an ass out of you and me.

But I digress….just like Employer Brands, Candidate brands should be built on truth. Employer Branding is not supposed to be about what you think job seekers want to hear – it’s about displaying the realities of your organization and getting to its essence. More and more the next generation of job seekers are willing to give that to us – their essence – their personal brand – but we are trying to squash them for it. Instead of trying to quell the revolution that is happening on social networking sites – employers should embrace it and participate openly in online communities to get out the company’s value proposition and message to connect with talented job candidates. Like it or not, it’s the *real* content on these user generated pages that is the gold.

From an article in The Economist:

“Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, two British academics, eschew the notion that effective bosses can be constructed piecemeal. Their implicit message is that bosses are born, or at least made before they delve into books on management. Rather than suggesting that high-quality leaders can be constructed from what they dismiss as an “amalgam of traits”, they stress that there are “no universal leadership characteristics”. The talent that the pair thinks most vital is “authenticity”.

After 25 years spent observing well-regarded chief executives and good managers further down the ladder, the authors conclude that those who are true to characteristics they already possess make the best bosses. Their message to the aspiring high-flyer is “be yourself”, have a lot of self-knowledge and be comfortable with who you are. Identikit executives hiding behind the latest management fad, ambitious role players, time-servers and office politicians may manage to creep to the top. But Messrs Jones and Goffee insist that those they seek to lead will soon find them out. Authenticity cannot be faked, they say, and a little eccentricity won’t hurt either. The authors approvingly cite Mr Branson’s casual style and endearing difference from the norm that his followers appreciate.”

Maybe Recruiters shouldn’t go looking for ‘dirt’ about candidates online unless they are willing to do that for their current employees – they might be surprised at what they find.

The Cure for Marketing Gasbag Syndrome? Wikis and Blogs of course!

Julian — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:43:38 +0000

It’s one of those things that you know you’re doing wrong, but you can’t seem to stop doing it. Like the dream where you’re plummeting towards the ground and you keep fumbling for the parachute ripcord to no avail. The latest evidence of my general lack of oratorical control was mercilessly showcased in a recent Business 2.0 article by Ann Marsh about gasbag syndrome in the interview process. You run an interview and somehow spend WAY too much time talking about you, even though you were intending to efficiently showcase your company, team and open position. Well, at least I felt like she was writing about me! If you haven’t read my blog posts before (lucky you) you need to know now that I am the poster child for the International Brotherhood of Gasbags, local 1388, West Palm Beach. But, as usual, I digress. You’ve no doubt been part of an interview like the ones described by Ann, from one side of the desk or the other. Perhaps, if you’re like the rest of us mortals, you’ve been on both sides of that experience enough to recognize the wisdom in Ann’s story. Our attempts to sell a candidate on our open position become a series of breathless stories about US: our jobs, our experiences, and our accomplishments. But as Ann points out these well intended actions can have a seriously negative effect.

The same is true for well intentioned recruitment marketing. Spray and pray come to mind? For me, Ann’s story is a great reminder of two critical aspects of marketing: relevancy and execution. You have an arsenal of information and tools at your disposal to find candidates but in the end they are all useless if you fail to use those funny things protruding from the side of your head. You have not one, but two of these funky, satellite dish shaped wind catchers on your noggin (mine are almost big enough to get me in the Elf local). These ears of ours are the perfect tool for making sure that what we focus on and say is relevant – be it a conversation or a new campaign. Even better, by listening you learn what the right thing to say is, and that in turn exponentially increases your ability to execute. Listening allows you to leverage your doing. Are you picking up my signal yet? (Now, if I could only follow my own advice that would be something!)

So as I sit here I’ve written notes on about five divergent tangents that come to my mind on this topic. But, rather than trying to weave my web of wonder for you as you sit pondering this story I’d rather take myself up on my own advice and…listen.

What ways do you currently use to listen to your internal and external customers? What have you found to be most successful in getting right to the point of matters in your recruiting efforts or recruitment marketing campaigns? What feedback loops do you have in place that support real conversations (a la recruitment blogs and wikis) with the people you market to? Have any funny stories about gasbag syndrome that you’d like to share. Let me know – I’m all ears (for once).

Do You Have Good Employer Kharma? What Goes Around Comes Around

Shannon — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 03:25:26 +0000

How do you attract and keep top talent? How do you develop your brand as an employer? Duh! It seems so simple, and yet it is so rare – Manage your people well, develop them, train them, grow your own when you can. ‘WALK the walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk’ found in your employer brand marketing. Give to your employees and you will get back tenfold.

The results of Fortune Magazine’s Annual Survey to find America’s Most Admired Companies is out and one of the dimensions measured is the ability to attract, develop, and keep talented people – i.e. Manage Talent. You can find the Best and maybe even more interestingly – Worst, lists here. According to Ann Fisher, Fortune writer, the companies on the Best dressed list have three main things in common:

Open and frequent communication between the ranks and executives. Top management is accessible and employees feel that they truly contribute to meeting the company goals.
Operational Excellence. The top companies have an expectation of excellence from everybody.
Grow Your Own. According to the Fortune story, “Instead of grooming only so-called high-potential workers for bigger opportunities, they offer plenty of chances for every employee to learn and grow — which means that when they need talent, they can find it in-house rather than having to look elsewhere.” These companies keep right on developing and training their people regardless of market conditions. They promote from within allowing employees to really believe that there are long-term opportunities.

The best/worst lists for ability to ‘Manage Talent’ are very interesting but I do question if the results are a true reflection of the internal attitudes and practices toward managing talent, as in this study “a broad cross-section of executives were asked who they believe has an edge when it comes to recruiting and developing talent.” While many on the list have a well-known reputation for their great people management (P&G, GE, Google), I would like to see the results from a study where a broad cross-section of EMPLOYEES are surveyed. Would their lists be aligned with the one’s here? While this study will certainly bolster/hurt the employer brands on the best/worst sides – it is the real overall employee perception of how they are regarded and treated that ultimately makes or breaks your employer brand.

Regina at HR’s Brand New Experience alerted us to the blog post about the now infamous note from the employees at that Vancouver Coffee House illustrating that while the coffee house boss-man may have thought that he managed his people just fine – the barristas clearly thought otherwise.

How do we relate to all this from a marketing perspective? Lou Adler recently wrote on ERExchange, an article on ways to get more top performers into the candidate pool where he said:

“Fire your recruitment advertising agency. Stop listening to excuses. If you’re not seeing top performers, your recruitment advertising agency isn’t any good. Hire a consumer products marketing agency instead. For the same money, you’ll get 300 to 400 percent better performance — and a new way of thinking”.

We say BULL.

While he is dead-on that recruitment ad agencies need to start looking at recruitment marketing more like consumer marketing, all too often hiring companies have major areas of dysfunction that people try to solve with marketing. Surprise – that doesn’t solve the problems.

Sometimes recruitment/consumer marketing can create a vision that is so compelling that it helps drive the culture of the company, think “Just do it.” from Nike, but the vast majority of the time marketing seeks to win the favor of your target audience at the expense of any rationale thinking around how to deliver on that marketing promise. Then we sit around and wonder why the marketing didn’t work.

Google Base, Optimized Job Postings and the Candidate Experience

Shannon — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:59:52 +0000

The total candidate experience is impacted by many variables in the talent acquisition process including: interactions with the recruiter, hiring manager and other organization representatives, but what many companies don’t consider is that the experience often starts online at the corporate web site and through job postings. Candidates consider their online experience a window into the organization. The key to ensuring a positive candidate experience is to optimize communications at critical points in the recruiting process. Again, the first of these touch points is often at the corporate web site, at a job board, or increasingly, on a search engine like Google.

But, I believe that it is always best to start at the beginning. Before we can enhance a candidate’s online experience, we have to help them FIND your web site or job posting. This issue is the same whether the candidate is utilizing a search engine or job board (think of the boards as basically niche search engines just for jobs). Further, as search engine-like posting aggregators such as Indeed and SimplyHired gain in popularity, and as Google continues to develop their emerging business model around Google Base, the inevitable result is that job seekers’ utilization of search engines to search for jobs will increase exponentially. Many predict that when this happens, it will be the end of CareerBuilder and Monster – but I tend to disagree. I am a Knight Ridder Digital alumnus, and I was the Careers Channel Regional Sales Manager when KR bought its stake in CareerBuilder. Many people predicted the death of the print classifieds then too. Make no mistake that I am an online evangelist and “new school” recruitment girl through and through, but I mean come on – how many job seekers still use the local paper in a job search and how many companies still place line ads in the local paper? Quite a few. The job boards have definitely dampened their print spirits, but they have not killed them – and I don’t expect that Google Base will extinguish Monster’s torch either.

Regardless, what IS important right now is the necessity of companies to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Job Posting Optimization (JPO) techniques. You may not be up to speed on all of the SEO-speak. The easiest way to explain it is that the average online job seeker, whether active or passive is “Boolean illiterate” – meaning that they don’t know the magic words to type into a search box to find your company careers site, posting, or job board posting. You can bet that where one job seeker searches using the words “account executive”, another job seeker will search for “sales”. One will choose “RN”, another will choose “Nurse”. You say “Eggplant”, I say “Aubergine” – ok, not really, but you get the point. Understanding these issues and utilizing that knowledge to construct or optimize job postings effectively will help you attract top-level active and PASSIVE candidates.

For this post, let’s focus on optimizing job postings, and I will leave the Careers Site Search Engine Optimization topic for later.

Best Practices:

• Titles should state the job name and other words that might commonly be used to describe that position, as well as a strong selling feature to pique curiosity.

• Description should lead with a strong summary statement since this sentence is what candidates will see in the search results. The major job boards’ search results deliver the title and the first 1-2 lines of the description. Further, top-level, passive candidates won’t read any further unless they’re convinced it’s worth their while.

• Body copy MUST contain as many relevant key words that a candidate could possibly include in a search.

• Provide instructions on how to apply or make contact with a recruiter if they are interested in you, and let them know what the next steps are in the process.

I can’t stress this one enough:
• If the candidate is truly passive and does not have a resume with which to apply – a short application should be provided requiring only the most necessary information needed to evaluate their fit with organization’s needs and make contact.

Tips to Optimize Response:

• Refresh your postings every 7 days if the site allows it.
• Post ads on Friday for weekend exposure – job searching is at its highest on Mondays.
• Always acknowledge receipt with an auto-responder and advise what the candidate can expect for next steps.

Now that they can find you – as far as the candidate experience is concerned – your job postings serve as marketing communications about what makes your company an employer of choice. Unfortunately, for a passive candidate, being an employer of choice isn’t enough. They have jobs and are not necessarily looking for your job, but even happily employed top talent will be interested in a career advancing opportunity. Pique their interest and tell them right at the beginning what is in it for them. Lesson: Help candidates find you by properly optimizing postings, focus on what is in it for them and TRUTHFULLY entice them to explore the opportunity, then invite them to connect. We have engagement.