If you haven’t read my related post have a quick gander – it will tie some things together for this post. – Julian

The Evolving Engagement Model

The Broadcasting Model

It would be an understatement to say that communications models are changing. Old marketing and communications practices followed a we speak/you listen model. This worked out pretty well for marketers when people used to have more attention to spare or we could rely on the novelty of an advertising medium to break through the clutter. Unfortunately, the expiration date these days on novelty expires in months and not decades.

The issue now is that people don’t have the time or interest in listening. Before they expend their time and attention on your company or product an exchange of value has to take place. For today I’ll call that exchange of value, engagement.

The old model looked something like this.

Ye Old Marketing and Communications Model

The Interaction Model

Interactive online tools like blogs ushered in today’s interaction model and extends today in webinars, livestreams, chat rooms, virtual worlds and social networks. Clearly we have a lot of tools that make it possible to better listen. The influence of these tools has grown and today companies are starting to see the value in listening more. But listening skills aren’t enough and far too many organizations are still stuck in the broadcast model.

The interaction model looked something like this.

The transitional model - think web 2.0

The Evolving Engagement Model

With today’s tools we have what we need to move towards a new engagement model that focuses more heavily on listening, processing, interacting, and broadcasting. Ideally, the net result is tangible engagement and then a lift in your brand.

It probably resembles a formula like this.

Listening 30% / Processing 20% / Interacting 30% / Broadcasting 20% = Engagement

The evolving engagement model

In my next post I’m going to dive into the engagement model in more detail and perhaps in another post or two we’ll bring it all together with an actionable process.

Let me know if you’ve thrown up in your hat yet or if any of this is making sense.

- 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.

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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

1. They’re failing to engage at all.
2. They not keeping pace with where people are moving due to budgets, expertise or red tape.
3. 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.

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 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.

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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

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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: It’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 benefit—in the form of enhanced constituent relations—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 retention—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 company’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 company’s ability to choose from the cream of the crop. Meanwhile, Clive Holtham, a professor at the Cass Business School, notes some California firms “are finding they cannot attract or retain staff because their IT infrastructure fails to meet the demanding standards of the new generation,” according to an article in Data Storage Today. Let’s face it: If employers in the don’t want to pay for the lion’s share of employee medical coverage. They do, however, because without it, they wouldn’t be able to attract the talent they need to implement their strategies.
• Employee engagement—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 won’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.

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.

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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?

1. How would you define Web 2.0, especially as the concept relates to technologies that might be adopted in an HR setting?
2. What sorts of solutions are now available to HR shops? How do these technologies differ from more traditional offerings?
3. What improvements could technologies based on Web 2.0 possibly bring to a corporate HR department?
4. 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 ‘user-generated content’ and the web sites that contain it are often grouped into the term “Social Computing” 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 – 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 “bottom up” 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 ‘web 2.0’ 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 “behind the scenes” 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 “employee-experience”. It has never been easier to literally “show” candidates the employee-experience by incorporating social features into the corporate career web site. Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep.

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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.

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When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.

“Join Company X, and you not only get a great job, but you also gain a family”

Trite as it may be, employees are expressing a sentiment that is widespread and based in truth. The workplace is a community. A community made up of people that you often see more than your own family. There is an undeniable group cohesion that resembles “family” that the work company-employee work contract generates.

When making a career choice, candidates are searching for information about a potential employer and if they will spend time to look for it. Use your career site as a venue to publicly display your community of passionate employees. Lead the search results by authentically communicating your employer brand and providing a window into the “employee-experience” on your career web site. Openly illuminate your employee-experience by incorporating social features into your corporate career web site and encouraging employees to participate in online communities where your candidates are spending their time. Don’t fight the decentralization of your employer brand… *enable it*.

Controlling the flow of information to employees, customers, partners etc, used to be easy with newspapers, TV, radio, print, email, and the like. Today, your brand is being watched, augmented, and de-located. People are writing their own stories, thoughts, ideas, and developing new products and services using social media technologies. These simple technologies and services: Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Tagging, Podcasts, and RSS are connecting people and information in new ways, conversations, faster than you can say oh shit. (via Advancing Insights).

Companies try to hide what it is *really* like to work for them like they are a secret society that you get to have no real knowledge of until you are accepted and initiated. There is the reality of a group being its own worst enemy, and a need exists to balance the idealistic view that companies will suddenly open up and allow completely public free speech, with the freedom and open spirit needed to create a thriving online community.

Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep. When it comes to communicating what the real employee experience is and helping to foster a public online community that potential candidates can explore when researching your company – do not put your head in the ground and fear your employee experience being public – embrace it and handle it with grace.

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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.

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Thanks to one of Shannon’s partner’s in crime (hat tip Laura) we have the following representative example of old fashioned marketing colliding with today’s consumer.

The inspiration for the movie comes out of Microsoft. Surprised? You shouldn’t be – Microsoft has proven more than any other company that if you get out of the way of your people, your people can save your ass.

In this example Microsoft employee Geert Desager AND Microsoft’s Belgian communications agency Openhere have been turned loose in the blogosphere with some good ideas, a blog, and some video production talent. The result? Here’s what Geert has to say on their results after two weeks.

“Another small update:

• more than 75.000 views of the movie
• more than 240 incoming links
• more than 250 comments on the blog”

What a couple of people at Microsoft did, and even more importantly, what Microsoft DID NOT DO (try to stop bloggers like Robert Scoble), is what makes it possible today for Geert and Openhere to do this.

Today this outreach continues and has continued to evolve with stories like Geert’s and Microsoft Recruitosphere pioneer Heather Hamilton. To these people, The Scoble’s, The Hamilton’s, their bosses, and bosses bosses go the thanks! Not only does Microsoft win in advancing their products and services but they also build a stronger employer brand and employee culture. Moves like this make it easier on the recruiters at Microsoft to land their next software guru. It’s a nice contrast to the tyranical employer brand that Apple is presently building for their abusive blogging and employee communication policies. Apple would do well to go back and watch their famous lemming commercials while consulting Wikipedia with a keyword search for “Orwellian.”

Well done Geert, and Robert and Heather and the legions of other Microsoft talent who have helped move us forward. Everyone in corporate america owes you and Microsoft our thanks, and not just for Excel or Word.

– Jules

p.s. Check out Openhere’s about page. I love their pitch (even if it isn’t a pitch).

“Openhere is an agency where open-minded people work for open-minded advertisers. “

You get the idea that soon the agencies that pretend to hold these values will be replaced by ones that really DO believe in what they’re selling. We believe.

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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 what’s what with a company before they visit the company’s website. Even if they do visit the company website, it’s only to get the company’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 content—not just that which was pro-Microsoft—the company ensured that, for at least some journalists and others—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?

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My Dad just sent me a Fortune article called “I got my job through Second Life” all about real people and real companies finding jobs directly through Second Life. It reminded me that most every job I landed over my career was through my small network of friends and associates and how the same has been true for my business exceler8. Here’s an excerpt from the Fortune story.

“And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.”

“People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts,” says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive’s Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life.”

Imagine arriving for your Second Life interview in this little number…

I first heard about Second Life from Jim Stroud and went to check it out after our phone call. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago) SL hadn’t yet exploded on to the front page of every business magazine, blog page and tech site known to man. Despite my complete lack of interest in online role playing communities (which is strange given my dweebiness and love of online community) I recognize that I have to be involved in SL because it is a highly relevant community for my personal and business interests. I am a social media geek after all. While I find SL’s interface complex, limiting and ultimately boring, I’ll keep trying it for the promise that it holds in meeting real people. There ARE interesting people in this community. And just like other interesting communities, our exposure to the new people we meet in them expand our horizons on all fronts.

Hey Shannon, does this qualify for the category you coined “Job Search 2.0“?

Technorati Tags: Second Life, SL, Job search 2.0, social media marketing

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Cool hunters are often depicted as shallow wannabes who lack enough individuality to face the world on their own merits. To that I say, damn straight. But that’s just one side of the story. We also associate cool hunters with people looking for an edge, either trend spotters or drivers of important business, consumer, or social change. These are the individuals Malcolm Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point, the connectors, mavens, and salesmen of our world.

psfk.com announces job board today for Interactive marketing industry.

You might be interested to know that psfk, a web site and community often associated with the words cool, hip, and innovative has just launched a vertical job board or blogboard. It makes me wonder if the world of filling jobs, building employer brands, and recruiting, are somehow finally making a move to a new address somewhere along Hip Street?

psfk’s Piers Fawkes (left) and Simon King (right) scowl and smile their way into the future. That future now includes a community job board.

Piers Fawkes and Simon King, founders of psfk.com are both A-list bloggers and Cool Hunters (yeah, the good kind) who started their site as a way to talk about what was happening in London and New York. Today, they’ve grown their stable of sites to seven and feature content ranging from interactive marketing and fashion, to architecture and business. psfk was among the early adopters of social media, their sites typically feature blog posts, comments and significant interaction from other writers and community members all centered around interesting stuff. psfk has a strong creative bent and that certainly is manifest in the high-design present in all their web sites.

Piers sent out an announcement last week soliciting job content from the interactive marketing community we are mutual members of. Piers extended a free job posting to the community as a trial for the remainder of the month. Disclosure: I sent Piers a posting for Shannon for a job she’s recruiting for on her own team at Hodes Interactive in the Bay Area. Shameless plug for Shan: here’s the job posting for an Interactive Solutions Manager.

I thought you would be as interested as I was to see an innovator’s take on a job board from someone outside our recruitment space. My suspicion is that we could both learn from each other. So I asked Piers to answer some questions for our blog and he obliged. Here goes:

First the press blurb to set some context (I feel that it is additive):

“PSFK the popular forward thinking innovation team, launch a new jobs listing service targeting emerging media, creative staff, employers and head-hunters. PSFK appeals to an audience of switched on creative professionals seeking inspiration in their day-to-day work place. Now users will have the added bonus of an international jobs list (jobs.psfk.com), which is targeted to professionals in companies driving the next wave of design, branding and media.

jobs.psfk.com is the first ever jobs site that uses a map function to help prospective candidates find jobs quickly in neighbourhoods they want to work in and provides an RSS feed for every type of category – plus email alerts. Listings are updated daily and companies at the launch include hip ad agencies, web publishers, video game makers, architects and design consultancies. Although the job site is international, the focus is on London, New York, LA, Berlin, Tokyo, Shanghai & Sydney.”

Now let’s have a conversation with Piers Fawkes of psfk.

exceler8ion: what spurred you to pursue this strategy?

Piers: “2 reasons. (a) we’ve been featuring quite a few jobs on IF! (http://if.psfk.com/if) and wanted to put them in a specific section to make it easier for people to find and (b) as we move towards a publishing business model, revenue from jobs listing will be a pillar of our success.”

exceler8ion: why now?

Piers: “There seems to be all these emerging and exciting companies and agencies but I don’t think it’s easy for people to find jobs in these agencies. We just wanted to put people in touch.”

exceler8ion: what do you hope to accomplish?

Piers: “Help inspirational people work in imaginative jobs.”

exceler8ion: Do you see the site being used to post mostly for full time positions? Or, would you hope for an equal mixture of freelance postings and users given the large contingent of freelance talent common to our space (interactive marketing)?

Piers: “We’ll see how the market reacts. I’m not too sure. In the past, we have featured full time jobs that we’d love to have.”

exceler8ion: how much does a job posting cost?

Piers: “$250 for a month”

exceler8ion: how firmly do you intend to manage the niche job content aspect of your job board?

Piers: “We want to list jobs we’d love to have. Adding jobs to the site is much like the content we put on one of our sites. We only put stuff up that interests us. By doing so, hopefully we’ll maintain a useful service to job seekers and recruiters.”

exceler8ion: Have you seen any pent up demand with your advertisers for targeting this new area?

Piers: “Maybe, it’s noticing an increase in numbers of jobs posted on blogs by recruiters who can’t find people through the regular channels.”

exceler8ion: With the highly virtual nature of our space, how do you think the location based Google maps will play with users?

Piers: “It’s about speed of access. People judge jobs on their location: for example, do you think people consider ad agencies in SoHo more forward thinking than midtown agencies. Location at a micro-level is very important to people in their job and it’s something that’s been long overlooked.”

exceler8ion: Would you like to use the expertise and experience you gain from this to roll out more job boards for your clients?

Piers: “This is just something we want to offer our readers. Maybe we’ll do something around each site – e.g. a fashion one for fashion.psfk (http://fashion.psfk.com). We’ll see. It took us a couple of days to build and prepare for this launch. We’ll go for it and see what the market says.”

exceler8ion: Can you confirm (because I think it’s quite a noteworthy accomplishment) that you put this together in a couple of days? Like as in 48 hours from a) hey I’ve got an idea to b) hey, here’s the finished site.

Piers: “48 hours from the time I decided to code it. Have been sitting around on it for a month or so.”

Did any of those answers turn your head? Sound off, tell me what you think.

Here’s a sample job posting (note the Google Map – I thought it was apropos considering that it was for a Google Job)

A sample job posting on jobs.psfk.com. Note the google map.

Wrap up

Where’s a functional keyword job search? There are two search boxes on the page (both powered by Google) but I couldn’t get either one to work with any reliability. Search engine indexing seems the likely cause resulting in delays between postings and valid search results. Then again, I searched for ‘hodes’ for Shannon’s job which posted on January 9th and had no luck. In another search for ‘TBWA’ I got a hit but then I was taken to the site’s index page showing all the jobs and not a specific job, or jobs, for TBWA. A search function connected to a psfk jobs database would seem much more useful here.

In contrast to this search issue, I love the simple craigslist style (or blog) reverse chronological order of the job postings. Simple works for me – as does the drop down box showing key cities for Interactive marketing jobs. I would add one called “Virtual”. Oh shit, they already thought of that. Not surprisingly, the design is clean, attractive and inviting, something the big boys like Monster, CareerBuilder and other careers sites would do well to mimic. Since psfk has a strong community, I’d love to see some interactive features added to the jobs section. Employer ratings or interview experiences for example, or a comments section where the job seeker or recruiter could ask questions of the job poster. All in all, with the exception of the job search, the psfk blogboard works, and the site’s base strikes me as a solid one to build on.

Technorati Tags: Piers Fawkes, Simon King, psfk, jobs.psfk.com, if.psfk.com, Cool Hunters, Blogboards, Job Boards, Niche Job Boards

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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

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2007/01/10/next-generation-of-corporate-careers-sites/feed/ 10 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/27/jobster-internal-email-communications/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/27/jobster-internal-email-communications/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2006 02:33:51 +0000 Shannon http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/27/jobster-internal-email-communications/ a
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40 minutes after I finished posting about the speed at which information flies around the web saying:

In the Web 2.0 world, we have CEO’s blogging; employees blogging; reporters blogging; all with trackbacks and permalinks. The speed at which a story can spread for all to see in the blogosphere is dizzying. Social media and its uncoordinated actions of individuals – many voices, tones, and resulting comments – introduce a level of unpredictability into the equation that has to be managed.

… these official internal Jobster communications were forwarded to me by a reliable source requesting anonymity.  The information was not meant as Organizational Terrorism – the intent was to share the real internal communications and take the place of the blogo-speculation that has come about in the absence of hard facts.
The first e-mail was sent out last week. The second was sent out last night. What would your reaction be if your company sent this to you? What type of employee experience does this provide?




Technorati Tags: Jobster, Jobster Layoffs

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/27/jobster-internal-email-communications/feed/ 13 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/10/social-media-employer-branding/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/10/social-media-employer-branding/#comments Mon, 11 Dec 2006 02:43:44 +0000 Shannon http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/10/social-media-hasn%e2%80%99t-changed-employer-branding-%e2%80%93-it-has-always-been-for-the-people-by-the-people/ a
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…It Has Always Been For the People By the People



“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.”

The ClueTrain Manifesto, April 1999

The ClueTrain is where the reality of today’s blogosphere and social media revolution were first predicted back in 1999. And sure enough, even my beloved – though often slow to ‘get a clue’ – recruitment industry is feeling the reverberations of social media. I am asked almost daily for tips on how to effectively incorporate social media to ‘create’ a ‘more modern’ employer brand that ‘gets it’ and resonates with the next generation of workers.

A company’s employer brand can not be created. An Employer Brand is made up of the relationships that exists between your organization and its employees, former employees, potential employees, job candidates, and even customers. These relationships, and thus your employer brand, already exist and cannot be contrived through marketing. However, it is the open and direct communications that are the hallmark of blogs, that if applied correctly, can strengthen these relationships through a deeper understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. These conversations and their effects on people are at the foundation of social media’s power – a vehicle that has the opportunity to effect lasting change on your employer brand.

When a company suddenly realizes that they are having trouble hiring in this increasingly competitive job environment, they seek out marketing professionals to come up with an ad campaign that will increase their flow of applications and hopefully hires. The result is often an ad campaign that attempts to sell candidates on imagery and messaging that are built upon ideals that the company doesn’t really live up to. You are expected to prove you mean it in today’s market by your actions and by answering the questions put to you by the marketplace. Given this reality, do you want a one dimensional print ad or job posting to represent you or an interactive forum where a dialog can take place?

In this way social media can be particularly strong as a transitional vehicle when you want to communicate that your employer brand is ‘on the move.’ You might create a more traditional aspirational marketing campaign about your company vision and work environment while simultaneously using your blog to let your job candidates know that you aren’t implying you’ve reached your desired state. By inviting your candidates behind the curtain, for a peek back stage, you give them the opportunity to see themselves in the part of making that future a reality. We appreciate it when people talk with us, and not at us, and more often than not, communicating that you’re improving your business will only give you more credibility. Credibility is the key to improving your marketing results. Just as you can smell a rat when interviewing a candidate with all the right answers, job candidates too are measuring your words for ‘company spin’ and making their own judgments and performing their own Google searches to find out what the ‘real deal’ is.

Good or bad, what social media can do is give an authentic view of your company – that can be shared and commented on at lightening speed. Social media can go a long way toward helping you begin the process of letting go of your perception that you are in control so that your people can connect and share real information. Companies that let go of their focus on controlling the message, and rather focus on nurturing the relationships that people have to their organization – will reap the benefits of their people using social media to convey your employer brand with transparency and integrity.

Technorati Tags: employer-brand employer-branding social-media web2.0 recruiting recruitment-marketing talent acquisition

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/10/social-media-employer-branding/feed/ 2 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/04/lifehacker-on-landing-your-dream-job/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/04/lifehacker-on-landing-your-dream-job/#comments Tue, 05 Dec 2006 02:25:47 +0000 Julian http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/04/lifehacker-on-landing-your-dream-job/ a
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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

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/12/04/lifehacker-on-landing-your-dream-job/feed/ 2 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/15/how-long-is-your-commute/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/15/how-long-is-your-commute/#comments Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:27:56 +0000 CollegeRecruiter.com http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/15/how-long-is-your-commute/ a
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This CollegeRecruiter.com Blogswap article is courtesy of Recruiting.com and CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students and recent graduates who are searching for internships and entry level jobs.

We recently surveyed more than 4,400 business professional members across our network of 11,000 niche career sites. We asked them “How long is/was your commute to work for your most recent job?” The purpose of this survey was to gather and share valuable information about the habits and interests of job seekers. The results were:

• 73 percent said they work less than 25 miles from home;
• 45 percent said that they commute less than 15 miles;
• 27 percent commute 15 to 25 miles;
• 17 percent commute 25 to 40 miles; and
• 10 percent commute more than 40 miles to work.

It appears that more and more candidates are choosing to work close to home in order to help maintain a healthier work-life balance.

Steven Rothberg is the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for students searching for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level job opportunities.

Technorati Tags: CollegeRecruiter

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/15/how-long-is-your-commute/feed/ 2 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/06/top-ten-tips-for-lunching-a-recruiting-blog/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/06/top-ten-tips-for-lunching-a-recruiting-blog/#comments Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:00:50 +0000 Shannon http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/06/top-ten-tips-for-lunching-a-recruiting-blog/ a
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You may be a reader of blogs. You may even participate in blog conversations through commenting. But, starting your own blog and becoming a ‘blogger’ may be daunting. Such apprehension is often driven by a real fear of the unknown. While I can only speak for myself, there are a myriad of natural reactions / assumptions that may keep you from starting a blog:

• No one would care about what I have to say
• In some circles being a blogger has a stigma attached and the word is almost a pejorative
• People will think that I have too much time on my hands
• What would my employer think
• I am not technical and would never be able to set up a blog
• I don’t feel that I can safely write in a real and authentic way

When I hit ‘Publish’ on my first blog post in December of 2005 – my stomach dropped – I even felt a little nauseated. Naked is how it is often described in the blogosphere. And honestly, for me, blogging is a lot of work – work that I love, but work nonetheless. But, I never hesitate to emphasize, that I am so glad that I took the leap as the rewards have come in heaps. Having a blog has provided an outlet:

1. to publish what I think about Interactive Recruitment Marketing and Employer branding. The public nature of blogging has forced me to think in ways that I may not have if I knew that no one could see it.
2. to refine (and often rethink) my ideas.
3. to engage with others from inside, and outside of, my industry. When people are gracious enough to share their point of view on a topic – negative or positive – I have the privilege of learning from their ideas.
4. to connect with people that care about the topics I am writing about. These are not just virtual connections. I have been able to meet and talk with many of the people I have connected with online – at various industry events and via phone.

These connections are immediately deeper upon initial live contact because we already know to a certain degree what one another stands for. Further – the live interactions may have never taken place, we may never have met one another, had we not connected online in this type of forum first. We actively look for opportunities to meet live. I have learned more, and met MORE real people with which I share similar interests, than I did in all of those years of acquiring a top notch education.

Even though I still feel that I am relatively new to blogging professionally, I get asked often if I have any tips for a new blogger and wanted to put together a top-ten list of what I have learned. Creating this list was inspired by a recent post covering 21 tips – you can find that here.

Top Ten Tips for Launching a Recruiting blog

1. Don’t be afraid to let readers know that you are a real person. Include information about you and about why you blog. This can take the form of a ‘Welcome message’ on a side rail; a full ‘About Us’ Page; Pictures; Contact Info or all of the above. One of things that makes blogging so compelling is that it is usually content written by real people – not just company PR; White papers; or brochureware. ‘No bullshit’ is core of true blogging. The more readers can connect with a real person – the more people can relate to you.
2. Go ahead and turn comments on – for better or worse (just be sure that you have a good spam protector installed or activated. We use Akismet.). There are many blogs that have turned on comment moderation for various reasons or even require people to register before commenting. We have done neither of these as we just aren’t inundated with comments (that would be a great problem to have) and I believe that commenting is a bit of an impulse buy. I don’t want to introduce any kind of delay in gratification for the commentor.
3. Make Sure that you have your RSS feed turned on and visible on your blog. If you have some control over your feed – I recommend changing it to a FeedBurner feed as it provides a friendly nontechnical interface for readers that are grabbing your feed and it provides feed metrics. Further – I encourage the use of the universal orange RSS icon and use easy to understand words like ‘grab my feed’ vs. ‘Syndicate my site’. The goal is to make your content updates as easy to consume as possible for anyone interested. To that end – services like FeedBurner even allow you to offer blog updates via email. For those that feel the geek factor is too high with RSS – offering an email option breaks down that barrier.
4. Build some content before you proactively notify the blogosphere or search engines that you have a blog. 5 posts is a good rule of thumb. You may even want to do a little future content programming by making yourself a list of topics that you hope to cover on your blog. While there are posts that come during moments of pure inspiration – most bloggers get to a point where they ask themselves – “so now what do I write about”? It is bound to happen – that is why there are so many blogs that have “gone dark”. If you’re really going to be a ‘blogger’ – it gets into your blood and you will work through those moments. How you work through that is a moment of truth for bloggers.
5. Add a “Submit to Recruiting.com” bookmarklet to your posts. Read the post that I just linked to to get the code and insert that code in the HTML for your post. In WordPress – you click on the HTML icon in your rich text editor bar to bring up the HTML code. In Typepad, you click the HTML tab when you are writing this post. This will make it very easy for readers to submit your post to the recruiting.com community site where your content exposure will increase dramatically.
6. Once you are ready to launch – go claim your blog on here is a great link for tips on doing that and other SEO tips. Get the Google Sitemap plugin available for most blog platforms and turn it on.
7. Begin connecting with other bloggers – start commenting on posts in the Recruitosphere. Most bloggers LOVE comments and thrive on the interaction. By adding to the conversations on recruiting blogs, the authors will often recognize you and seek out your blog (this should go without saying, but be sure to add your blog address to the URL field in the comment form).
8. If you link to other bloggers via your posts or your blogroll – the blog that you linked to receives a notification. This is another action that will often prompt a blogger to notice you and check out your site. Often people will reciprocate with a post that mentions you along the lines of – “I just found this great new blog in our space”. Not everyone will do this – so don’t be offended. In addition to interacting and adding richness to the community – these inbound links directly affect your search engine rankings as well.
9. Frequency. This is an issue where every blogger needs to figure out what works best for them. The more often you post – the better your traffic. For those of us that work during the day and/or blogging is not a sanctioned part of the job – keeping up that kind frequency can be hard. There are bloggers that have to be disciplined about it and set aside a specific time every day or every week to blog. My posts tend to happen on the weekends or after my kids are in bed – so between 10pm – 2am
10. Promote your blog in as many natural ways as possible. For example, put a link to your blog in your email signature; add it to comments on blogs and forums. Add it to your LinkedIn profile. Add a link to your RSS feed as well. Put links to both in your MySpace or Facebook profiles. Participate in Recruiting Blog Swaps when they are happening. Be a guest author on other blogs – most bloggers love good free content, and if they respect your ideas, offering up a guest post can be a match made in heaven.

There is my top ten gathered from what I have learned this last year. Of course, I forgot the most important one – have fun, connect to others, and make it a continuing learning experience that enriches your life and work. OK, that was more than one.

Next, we will follow up this post with a top ten list of “What Not To Do” when blogging.

Blog on.

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/06/top-ten-tips-for-lunching-a-recruiting-blog/feed/ 8 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/05/your-employees-are-blogging-how-yahoo-uses-employee-blogs-to-recruit-talent/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/05/your-employees-are-blogging-how-yahoo-uses-employee-blogs-to-recruit-talent/#comments Mon, 06 Nov 2006 03:53:54 +0000 Shannon http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/05/your-employees-are-blogging-how-yahoo-uses-employee-blogs-to-recruit-talent/ a
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As a person who focuses on employer branding and recruitment marketing everyday – I get excited when I see companies doing really smart things online to build their employer brand and attract talented people.

Tonight – I came across one of the SMARTEST tactics to date, and it was by Yahoo!. Here is how it happened: I am giving a talk on Thursday called ‘Creating Great Employment Brands Online’…so I sat down and did a Google search on ‘Employer Branding’ on my new Google Custom Search Engine – popula8ion - to see what my peeps are saying about this topic. Then I did a technorati search to see if the ‘blogosphere according to technorati’ had anything else to offer me.

Here is a screen shot of the Technorati SERP and look what I found in their Sponsored Links:



Do you recognize that URL from the recruitosphere? If you don’t – that is http://www.jobsearchmarketing.com – the terrific blog by Matt Martone, a Recruitment Media Sales Executive over at Yahoo!.

My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe Matt was buying text ads on search engines to promote his blog. After all, he works for Yahoo! – what could he possibly gain personally by paying for an SEM campaign to attract readers to his blog? If you have your own business – that is one thing. But if you work for a company – what would make it worthwhile to spend your personal money like this?

I am so intrigued. So I click on his ad (sorry to skew the numbers Matt ) – and here is what I see this time:



If you aren’t connecting the dots the way I did – the text ad on Technorati links to a specific post on Matt’s blog called – “What’s it like to work at Yahoo!“. I think that this is a recruitment marketing campaign!

Yahoo! is leveraging the fact that their employees blog and using Matt’s to recruit talent. (OR Yahoo! has a KICK ASS employee referral program and Matt IS using his own money as he is betting that he will make more money from an ERP bonus than the cost of this SEM campaign). Yahoo! is leveraging their employee bloggers to recruit talent. SO smart. I love it. The post is complete with a recruitment video that you can see here if you’re interested:

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, recruiting blogs, employer brand, employment brand, employer branding, employee blogs, recruitment marketing

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/05/your-employees-are-blogging-how-yahoo-uses-employee-blogs-to-recruit-talent/feed/ 10 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/04/womma-how-to-connect-to-a-blogger-for-marketers/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/04/womma-how-to-connect-to-a-blogger-for-marketers/#comments Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:29:34 +0000 Shannon http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/04/womma-how-to-connect-to-a-blogger-for-marketers/ a
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“How do we market to bloggers and become part of what they are discussing?”

Because I am a blogger, I get asked this question on a regular basis. Traditional Marketers, and even hiring managers, are beginning to sense the power of the conversations going on in the blogosphere (the recruitosphere specifically in my everyday) – and they understandably want a piece of that action.

There are a variety of reasons to connect with a blogger. Here is the short list of how I have been personally contacted by companies outside the blogosphere:

• Companies that make their business selling to my reader segment
• Companies looking to heighten awareness of their services or research
• Companies looking to initiate some BR (vs. PR)
• Hiring Managers and Recruiters, looking to bloggers that have the skills you need for a certain job and you want to connect with them
• People that are looking to network with other professionals
• People trying to combat some negative publicity and want a blogger to address it

The problem of course is that, from the outset, the approach is all wrong. All of these approaches achieve their end – not mine. So essentially every exchange take the form of asking for a favor. While I don’t respond negatively to such marketing attempts – there are other bloggers out there that clearly do and relegate such practices to the level of erectile dysfunction spam. Every blogger is going to respond differently to incoming promotional requests of one variety or another. The bottom line is that you actually have to get to know what specifically a certain blogger writes about – what their interests are. If you have content, a product, or a job opportunity that adds to whatever topic they are dicsussing – then that may represent a synergistic opportunity to reach out and make a real comment on their blog referencing whatever information you are trying to share.

It is a really slippery slope – and trying to market through bloggers can very easily backfire with the blogger posting a rant about you and your spamming company. To try and help marketers navigate these waters, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has developed a public draft open for comment called “The WOMMA Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines”. The draft attempts to give marketers a 10-item checklist to ensure that they acting in an appropriate and ethical manner when communicating with bloggers.

According to the WOMMA site, “…its intent is to give clarity and guidance to marketers who are working and corresponding with bloggers, and to ensure that their efforts adhere to the standards set by the WOMMA Ethics Code.”

WOMMA recommends that all companies that have (or may have and they just don’t know it) employees representing your company and company brand by participating in online discussions with bloggers:

1. Provide a copy of the Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines, along with a copy of the WOMMA Ethics Code, to all personnel reading, writing, and commenting on blogs.
2. Prior to corresponding with a blogger, review each of the 10 ethics principles.
3. Create a monitoring program to ensure that your staff is complying.

The checklist itself (while still in an open draft version) is supposedly representative of specific outreach behavior and marketing practices that are deemed ethical by bloggers. If you are a blogger, or plan to be soon, do these resonate with you?

10 Principles for Ethical Contact by Marketers

• Review these guidelines before initiating any contact with bloggers.
• Share these guidelines with vendors, agencies, and staff.
• Keep disclosure and transparency top of mind.

Remember: Consumers come first, honesty isn’t optional, and deception is always exposed.

For more information, visit www.womma.org/ethics.

---

1. I will always be truthful and will never knowingly relay false information. I will never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.
2. I will fully disclose who I am and who I work for (my identity and affiliations) from the very first encounter when communicating with bloggers or commenting on blogs.
3. I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers. I will respect all community guidelines regarding posting messages and comments.
4. I will never ask bloggers to lie for me.
5. I will use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.
6. I will not manipulate advertising or affiliate programs to impact blogger income.
7. I will not use automated systems for posting comments or distributing information.
8. I understand that compensating bloggers may give the appearance of a conflict of interest, and I will therefore fully disclose any and all compensation or incentives.
9. I understand that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them. Bloggers can return products at their own discretion.
10. If bloggers write about products I send them, I will proactively ask them to disclose the products’ source.

In my opinion, the is a really good start. The grayest area is number 3 – “I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers.” The problem comes back to that you don’t know what those boundaries are unless you actually read and monitor a particular blog. There has to be real and honest reasons to reach out and connect – no ‘blast’ alerts or releases. Rohit Bhargava, the VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy PR, recently said it best:

Listen, participate and respond. This may be fifth in the list, but is perhaps the most important. If you look at every instance of personal media marketing horror stories, from the Kryptonite Bike Lock, to Dell Hell, to Walmart … each could have been managed far better if the companies involved had listened, participated and responded to issues or problems raised on blogs. This is important at all times, and particularly after launching new campaigns and marketing efforts as well.

If marketing or other outreach efforts only focus on the needs of the marketer – pushing out content – then all they are doing is treating bloggers like any other traditional media outlet. Social Media has streamlined the ability to build real and meaningful connections with consumers, partners, and potential employees. Treat this like any other media outlet, and you may quickly feel the sharp tongue of the blogosphere.





Technorati Tags: word-of-mouth-marketing, word-of-mouth-marketing-association, womma, blog marketing for dummies, buzz marketing with blogs for dummies, blog marketing ethics, social media optimization, SMO

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/04/womma-how-to-connect-to-a-blogger-for-marketers/feed/ 3 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/01/scrybe-online-organizer/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/01/scrybe-online-organizer/#comments Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:27:12 +0000 Julian http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/01/scrybe-online-organizer/ a
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“ Scrybe™ is a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today´s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way.” -Scrybe home page.

The much anticipated Scrybe online personal organizer has launched their beta today. I’m writing about it here for two reasons. First, who isn’t interested in ways to be more productive? As far as tools go, the quality of the axe you swing does make a difference, even if the skill of the operator is more important. Second, it’s a great example of how you might use savvy online marketing techniques to promote your effort (be it a recruitment campaign, local, national, or even international, hello world, launch) as Scrybe is going for.

Scrybe made all the cool watcher lists due to a knock-your-socks-off video that they circulated on video sharing sites like YouTube. The video has been described as a savvy use of modern online marketing. Take a look at their home page and all the ‘A list’ blogger testimonials and it’s pretty obvious that Scrybe made the blogging digerati a key part of their social media marketing plan as well. Call it what you want: guerrilla marketing, word-of-mouth-marketing, buzz marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization. Whatever! I’m calling it a great example of how to make a ton of people aware of your stuff so that they’ll want to someday buy your stuff when you’ve got a budget of…well, pretty much nothing. Judge for yourself.

Remember folks, this is only the launch of Scrybe’s beta – not the final product. If you’ve watched the video, you’ll get an idea of how their use of the latest web technologies (like Ajax) are used to create what would appear to be, highly functional and useful tools.

Useful tools eh?

OK, here are a couple that make my list. Offline sync, once the Achilles’ heel of web based programs, is handled with aplomb, as are paper output modes designed to appeal to the luddite or PDA Hipster in all of us. And it all looks easy to use – dare I say it – even enjoyable to use.

So here’s the thing. I’m always on the hunt for better ways to organize my life (I use David Allen’s framework) . Yes, sometimes my lust for new tools even outweighs my desire for productivity itself. But, never for long, and I’m quick to apply a .22 to the head of any self described productivity tool if it gets in my way. For now, I’ve signed up to be part of the beta with about four different e-mails in hopes of getting in on the action. So far, I haven’t heard a peep from Scrybe. I imagine this blog post might help. At least it will if Scrybe is as up on their social media marketing as they appear to be. Because if they are, they’re monitoring the blog buzz on their launch right now and they’ll see this. So, what are you waiting for Scrybe? I can’t write my review until you give me the keys.

Technorati Tags: iScrybe, iScrybe.com, Organizer, Calendar, PIM, Personal Information Manager, Life Hacks, GTD, Getting things done, Time Management, To-do Lists, PowerLists, ThoughtPad, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Interactive Marketing






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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/11/01/scrybe-online-organizer/feed/ 3 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/30/careerbuilder-attempts-to-screw-pooch/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/30/careerbuilder-attempts-to-screw-pooch/#comments Tue, 31 Oct 2006 04:31:06 +0000 Julian http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/30/careerbuilder-attempts-to-screw-pooch/ a
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Newspapers and recruitment ad agencies agree. CareerBuilder has gotten too big for its britches. It used to be that ad agencies were the only ones crying in their martinis about working with CareerBuilder. Why? Among other things, CareerBuilder has earned quite the reputation with agencies for ’stealing clients’ from agencies.

Enter the newspaper partners. They’re on the same side as CareerBuilder, right? CareerBuilder has been THE lifesaver for newspaper companies all over the U.S. for the last 5 years – yielding tremendous profits and product growth and stock saving profit margins. But things have changed. While I was still at Knight Ridder Digital (up until 16 months ago) internal talk was starting to shift about CareerBuilder’s attitudes. Once the can’t miss darling of the company, more and more anecdotal reports from internal people told of experiences with CareerBuilder personnel and practices that smacked of arrogance. People’s teeth were beginning to grind on both the print and online side of Knight Ridder. But the prevailing feeling at the time was that CareerBuilder was doing a fantastic job (just look at their results) and that a little adolescent cockiness was tolerable.

Enter the McClatchy purchase of Knight Ridder. News this morning is that another former Knight Ridder paper, (one of the properties that McClatchy sold) The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa) has joined The Philadelphia Inquirer and Akron Beacon Journal in dumping CareerBuilder for Monster. I’ve talked to some insiders about these deals. It’s a simple money decision. CareerBuilder wants a huge cut (many times inflated over just a few years ago) and newspapers feel like they’re getting screwed. Monster is simply walking in with a sweet deal for the newspaper and signing them up.

Hey CareerBuilder clients… Does any of this sound familiar? The newspapers have been only too happy to leave, based on the experiences they’ve had with CareerBuilder. A month ago I was speaking with a print/online executive from another major market independent newspaper who uses CareerBuilder. Without any prompting, the discussion we had on their online recruitment efforts quickly turned to frustrations with CareerBuilder. Something along the lines of feeling bent over if you know what I mean. I’ve got to tell you, this independent property is one that CareerBuilder would REALLY hate to lose as a partner, but if things continue as they’ve been going, that’s exactly what’s going to happen and either Monster or Yahoo! will happily take their place.

As a contrast, companies like Yahoo! Hotjobs have become known as ‘agency friendly’ and at least in terms of the job boards, great print partners as well. Ah, you say, that’s because they’re not numero uno like CareerBuilder. Good point, but how often does the arrogant company hold onto the poll position in a free market? I think of Oracle and Larry Ellison here and that little web company Salesforce.com that is kicking their ass. And what of Google’s entry into web based word processing and spreadsheet products and the potential impact on Microsoft (another company one could argue has been hurt by market arrogance). On that score, what of Monster, who is happily taking some of CareerBuilder’s customers? Well, much like an older sibling, Monster has shared much of the cockiness that CareerBuilder is now acting out. Perhaps, if it wasn’t for CareerBuilder, they still would be. But, things may have changed over at Monster. There is a renewed effort to be ‘agency friendly’ and the best new friend of newspapers who they’ve long vowed to crush. Monster the web 1.0 disruptor, would appear to have newspaper partnerships as a key facet of their web 2.0 disruptor strategy.

How have your experiences with CareerBuilder been over the last year? How would you rate their customer service, business practices, and pricing? How about their product value proposition (expanding, waning, same)? Talk back.

Technorati Tags: CareerBuilder, Career Builder, Monster, Job Boards, Knight Ridder

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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

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]]> http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/26/jobsters-jason-goldberg-and-the-monstercom-user-experience/feed/ 10 http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/19/company-and-employee-sampling-the-way-to-tasty-hires-and-careers/ http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/19/company-and-employee-sampling-the-way-to-tasty-hires-and-careers/#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:57:43 +0000 Julian http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/10/19/company-and-employee-sampling-the-way-to-tasty-hires-and-careers/ a
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Shannon and I were on a shopping pilgramage last Sunday in one of those outlet malls that stretch out like the Amazon River, a seemingly endless procession of brands, window spam, crying babies, hipsters, hoods and grandmas (and the old men waiting for their shopping compadres in front of the stores in a scene stolen right out of a hospital waiting room in Boca Raton Florida).  Like any shopping warrior on a consumer safari there comes a time when your exhaustion reaches a point of desparation and your good senses are replaced by a desire to consume…mall food (gasp). 

So there we were rolling our two rent-a-dinosaur-strollers down the mall food court eyeing the Sbarro pasta for the kids and with Shan and I having all the intent in the world to nibble on a couple of double-decker taco supreme’s at Taco Hell. We were eagerly anticipating this satisfying mix of mexi-simu-muck when
we were propositioned by a mall food native. No, not that kind of
proposition.  They wanted us to sample their village food.

We quickly declined and kept moving towards our Taco Hut, where before we could clear the first site of accostment, we were surreptitiously propositioned by another smiling native with a tooth pick and some unidentified local food substance.  We both began to indicate our desire to refrain from her offering when she dropped the hammer on us and thrust the toothpick in our face as one might a spear. It was clear that she intended to hurt us, with as many toothpicks as it would take, if we dared pass through her village without tasting her cooking.  Shannon and I both looked at each other, considered our representative treatment of natives, the sins of our white conquering fathers, and decided that as ambassadors of our country we should sample the native fare.  We took the offering, hoping to not find ourselves Indiana Jonesing some monkey brains.  Pow!  Our taste buds were set on fiahhhhh with a tantalizing mixture of sodium, MSG, and Teriyaki chicken goodness that had us ordering a plate before we could unroot ourselves from our stunned, immobilized, it-doesn’t-taste-like-chicken-I-don’t-want-Taco-Hell-anymore euphoria.  Just like that, we were sample suckers!

Is our experience unique?

According to an article published Tuesday, October 17 on Promo Magazine (Sampling Reigns as as key method to drive in-store ROI) we had an up close and personal experience with the powerful influence of sampling.  According to Promo:

"Product sampling is the most influential in-store marketing method when it comes to influencing consumer purchase decisions, and is a reliable option for marketers looking to increase ROI.

Some 52.4% of adults 18 and older said they were either "influenced" or "greatly influenced" by in-store product sampling, compared to 43.2% who cited product labels and 39.5% for shelf coupons, according to the recent Simultaneous Media Usage Survey by BIGresearch."

 
So how do we apply this to recruiting?

Well I’d like your feedback on this. The idea of employees ‘trying out a company’ and vice versa is not new but I don’t think the practice is common.  At least in terms of it being an explicit hiring practice.  I think the model is flawed at present and skewed towards the employer and not in the least attractive but to the most self-assured of individuals.   But, I don’t see that it has to be that way. Most offers of employment are truly at-will anyway. Wouldn’t an employment contract with a 6 month minimum with a built in stay/or leave decision at month three be a workable alternative?  That way both employer and employee would have a three month transition to their next life? 

Also from the Promo Magazine Article…

"Whether you’re promotionally oriented or you want to make up your own
mind, sooner or later you have to figure out if you like the taste of
the pizza," said Phil Rist, a researcher at BIGresearch. "It’s at a
point where you can experience the product directly."

While sampling may not be a stated recruiting strategy at most companies most employers have a well tested ‘try before you buy’ hiring model.  It’s called consulting, or freelancing, and desperation, among other things.  With consulting, the employer has all the benefits of the sampling strategy in addition to none of the headaches that hiring full time employees has.  And on the consultant side, as a free agent there isn’t a down side either, because the job is just another contract and consultants/free agents are always working on what there next gig will be.  I bet you’ll recognize the following scenario. 

Company X hires an independent consultant,let’s call her Jane, on a 1 month project. They like the consultant so much they keep her around for another project for four additional months.  At some point during this time they make Jane the consultant an offer to stay as Jane the employee. Consultant Jane and Company X are joined in holy compamony until the next layoff or a better offer comes along.  This isn’t a bad model.  The free agent finds out if they really like the company and the company makes a real sure-thing hire.  So why isn’t this practice more prevalent in today’s talent hungry market where access to the right talent adds up to victory or defeat in the marketplace?

Do you have a tasty toothpick sample ready to wave in front of your next superstar employee? Are you looking for your next full time company mover and shaker in the ever burgeoning free agent talent pool?  Have you had any experiences with sampling as a direct recruitment strategy or in the passive free agent/consulting model I’ve outlined? Sound off would ya?

Technorati Tags: Recruiting, Free Agents, Freelancing, Sample Marketing




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