You’re at a social event, catching up with an old friend or meeting someone for the first time, and the conversation turns to your career. You say “I’m a recruiter.” Their response is likely, “Oh, like a headhunter?”

If you are a headhunter, then the conversation moves on and everyone understands each other. But if you are a corporate recruiter, your response is typically “Well, not exactly; I am a recruiter for (Insert Company Name Here). This is typically followed by a quizzical look in the other person’s eye (especially if you don’t work for a company with a household name).

If your initial response was “I’m a sourcer” or “I’m a contract recruiter” or “I’m a recruiting manager,” or something along those lines, then you’ve likely just confused the other person even more.

Sound familiar? keep reading…

I was first exposed to recruiting blogs at the 2005 ERE Expo (and will be leading a free-wheelin’ discussion about blogs and social media recruiting at ERE’s upcoming conference in San Diego). Blogging struck a chord with me, so I started up a personal blog, and a year later a recruiting blog. I kept that one up for a year and a half. From the very beginning, however, I ultimately wanted to create a corporate recruiting blog. In 2005, only a handful of companies had embraced recruiting blogs. I watched how those companies were using recruiting blogs, and saw how blogging enhanced candidate engagement and communications in a real-time, relatively-transparent manner.

For the past decade recruitment marketing has primarily focused on print collateral, career websites, and job boards. To me, a corporate recruiting blog creates a dynamic, digital recruiting “brochure” that can be accessed by anyone, anytime, anywhere. A blog can tell stories, promote opportunities, educate candidates, and provide an inside view into what was happening at an organization. I wanted to peel back the top layer of my company and let candidates see what it was like to work here.

Very little has changed though over the past few years. There are still only a few of organizations with active corporate recruiting blogs, with Microsoft, Sodexo, Rehabcare, and Hyatt serving as excellent examples. One thing did change however this past year: I finally had the opportunity to launch a corporate recruiting blog, “Success starts here,” at my employer.

Why has corporate recruiting been so slow to adopt? I believe it ultimately comes down to a lack of understanding and a lack of trust by the traditionally conservative and risk-averse entities existing in many organizations. These are barriers that can and should be overcome; there has never been a better time for corporate recruiting blogs.

keep reading…

While reading Thomas Friedman’s best-seller, The World Is Flat, this past week, I came across a passage that I found to be very relevant to the recent emergence of new recruiting tools and technology. According to Friedman, “Introducing new technology alone is never enough. The big spurts in productivity come when a new technology is combined with new ways of doing business.” I’m a recruiting technology geek, and have been an early adopter of new and exciting tools such as Jobster, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, Simply Hired, Indeed, and others. For the uninitiated, here’s a rundown of these:

• Jobster: a constantly evolving tool that allows recruiters to deliver job information to targeted audiences via a variety of means. Its job board aggregator allows job seekers to find jobs posted across the Web and use the Jobster service to connect with people they know in Jobster’s client base.

keep reading…