While speaking at a recent HR conference in Las Vegas, I had occasion to meet Jane McGonigal, game designer, speaker, author, and probably the world’s biggest advocate for gamification, the idea of adding game incentives like points and prizes to non-game activities.
While within the HR community gamification is still catching on (I find a number of my clients don’t even know recognize the word) gaming, in all forms, is incredibly popular. When the latest Call of Duty video game was released in November, one in four workers planned to call in sick. Look at it from a productivity standpoint: The amount of hours it took to create all of Wikipedia’s content in 12 years … is spent every three weeks playing Angry Birds.
During Jane’s keynote speech, she cited the 2012 Gallup study that found that 71% of American employees aren’t fully engaged in their work, making it “impossible to innovate” and costing $30 billion in lost productivity annually.
It’s no surprise that she believes gamification can help. Evidently she’s not alone. A study by gamification company Gigya showed that gamification increases website engagement by 29 percent, website commenting by 13 percent, and social media sharing by 22 percent. Here are some recent employee gamification success stories. keep reading…
As major brands like Goldman Sachs and Zynga have stumbled into PR crises, I thought it might be useful to help your company avoid the most common employer branding mistakes.
Three suggestions: keep reading…
It appears that social recruiting is here to stay. The social recruiting site options are growing in number (I pity the person managing a global social recruiting campaign) and the expectations for a great candidate experience are mounting.
While most of the surveys, statistics, and comments I’ve read from Jobvite, CareerXroads and ERE (there are already 18 articles this year with the tag social recruiting) seem to indicate that the jury is still out on its effectiveness, one thing’s for sure. To do it well takes a passion, a strategy, and a lot of time. And time is a commodity.
There are many lucky companies who have dedicated support people to manage the process, but most of the corporate recruiters in my network either squeeze it in among other tasks, or assign it to their latest intern. In either of those two cases, strategy may fall to the wayside.
As you plan budgets and headcounts, here are two very compelling arguments that you might be able to present to your CFO to get some dollars to support your social efforts. keep reading…
We’re all familiar with the funny image that goes by various names, but is basically “Social media explained with donuts.” As a reminder, the full list is here.
Companies, including my own, use the “Donut List” to simplify the major social sites to novices. But as these sites add features and move to our mobile devices, the differences aren’t all that clear. keep reading…
working from home — a lost luxury?
Telecommuting has been all over the news this week and many of us think it has been blown out of proportion.
First, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer changed the company’s policy that allowed employees to work (sometimes entirely) from home. Yahoo tried to put the story in perspective with a press release that said, “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo right now.”
Just a few days later, Best Buy announced that it would eliminate its renowned Results-Only Work Environment, a program that allowed corporate employees to work when and were they chose, as long as the quality of the work met the company’s standards. Like Yahoo’s change, it’s not a total ban, but corporate employees are now expected to work 40 hours a week and come into the office “as much as possible.” Best Buy spokesperson Matt Furman said, “Bottom line, it’s ‘all hands on deck’ at Best Buy and that means having employees in the office as much as possible to collaborate and connect on ways to improve our business.”
So — bored or not — do you think Yahoo and Best Buy doing the right thing? I do. keep reading…
Since the beginning, Twitter users, including me, have at times been stymied and frustrated by Twitter’s seemingly arbitrary character limit, which redefined social media.
Now Twitter aims to shift the paradigm for visual sharing as well with Vine, an app for sharing six-second videos. Is it the perfect balance between Instagram’s single images and YouTube’s long videos? Is it the best of both sites? The worst?
For me, the bigger question is: How much shorter can our content get? keep reading…
Employer branding is the new black.
According to George Anders’ recent article on Forbes.com, LinkedIn is spreading the word about the significance of having a strong employer brand, and at the same time providing more tools and resources to help companies promote one on their platform.
This is great news for talent acquisition professionals who are on the front lines of trying to win the hearts and minds of top talent everywhere. And while there are many who question the economic recovery, U.S. unemployment levels have dropped to a three-year low and in the IT sector, many companies are offering employees up to $10,000 in referral bonuses. The message is clear: it’s time to look at your employer brand.
So you’re not Apple, Amazon, Deloitte, or Disney. Don’t despair. That doesn’t mean you can’t have an employer brand or employer value proposition of your own.
Here are four things to tell your boss when you’re putting it into your 2013 budget. keep reading…
Monetize, optimize, reciprocity, and even, yes, engagement. Ever come out of a social media marketing planning session with your head spinning? This new frontier has created all kinds of vague buzzwords.
Surely posting 140 characters isn’t as complicated as all those words imply?
Don’t let the jargon throw you. Marketing, branding, and selling on social media boils down to three basic questions:
Loews Hotels’ award-winning mobile site
Based on a recent study by Mongoose Metrics, only 9% of all the websites in the world are optimized for mobile devices. And yet more and more people are viewing sites on smartphones and tablets. That means your site is probably failing a large part of your audience.
So you need to make your site mobile-ready. It’s not easy. You have to rethink everything.
Rethink Design
A lot of clients I speak to think that “mobile optimization” means just shrinking their site to fit on a smaller screen. There’s much more to it. Because of the different needs of a mobile user and the different experience of a phone, the entire design has to change. This means bringing in your creative director to craft a new look and feel for the site, while keeping your branding. Seem like a big step? It’s only the beginning.
Think you don’t need an employer branding strategy? Read on about a few numbers.
It’s true that I’ve publicly predicted its demise. Yet, like the grade-school girl who hits the boy she loves, deep down I really have a crush on LinkedIn.
Obviously, I’m not alone. This professional network is signing on new users at the rate of 2 per second and has a lot of advantages that make it useful to anyone in business or looking to bust in.
Here are my five: keep reading…
About a year ago, I wrote about Facebook overtaking and eventually replacing LinkedIn. Since both social networks have been in the news recently, I thought now would be a good time to look back on that prediction — and how the social media recruiting landscape has changed since then.
image from pammarketingnut.com
In the past few weeks, LinkedIn has announced a doubling of revenue, acquired SlideShare, and crossed the 100-million-user mark. Facebook, meanwhile, had its much-anticipated IPO, which fell far short of optimistic expectations.
When I wrote the blog post back in August, Google+ wasn’t a factor, and no one had heard of Pinterest. But now both sites are being used by big names, from Michael Kors to BWM to Fresh & Easy, for recruiting and employer branding. This means that LinkedIn is facing competition — but not necessarily from Facebook. keep reading…
Bullhorn Reach recently published the results of a survey of more than 35,000 recruiters in its user network, tracking their use of social media. The survey focused on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
The findings are surprising. Only 21% of Bullhorn recruiters are using all three social networks. In fact, 48% are using only LinkedIn! Apparently these recruiters haven’t seen the study from Jobvite that showed that, in 2011, 50% of job-seekers used Facebook to find a job, 25% used Twitter, while only 26% used LinkedIn. Why aren’t recruiters fishing where the fish are? keep reading…
I recently predicted that Facebook will eventually destroy LinkedIn. Today, that prediction came closer to reality as the world’s largest social network announced a partnership with national employment services and the U.S. Department of Labor. According to Facebook’s official statement, the Social Jobs Partnership goal will be “to facilitate employment for America’s jobless through the use of social networks.”
Facebook has launched a page, facebook.com/socialjobs, which features resources and information for job seekers from the coalition’s other partners: The National Association of Colleges and Employers, the DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, along with the Labor Department. Facebook plans to create public service announcements to promote its services in the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, which, according to CNN Money, are Michigan, Rhode Island, California, South Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, and Florida. Included in Facebook’s list of initiatives is this intriguing item: keep reading…
Do you have a Google+ account? Forty million people do, according to Google CEO Larry Page. But are you using it? That’s a very different question. Metrics, trends, and public opinion are all showing that Google’s new social network simply hasn’t caught on.
Let’s look at the numbers. Data analytics company Chitika has shown that, after a huge increase in traffic when Google+ went public on September 20, traffic has since dropped back down to the same level as when the service was available only by invitation. This means that a lot of people activated their account, which was particularly easy for Gmail users, but haven’t gone back to the site since.
Perhaps most telling: keep reading…
In honor of back to school time, let’s check out what’s new on campus. I’ve long-advised clients who desire to keep ahead of the technology curve to follow the trends in campus student enrollment. Now there’s another reason to head back to school.
If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.
Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors? keep reading…
The Wall Street Journal recently published a story by Joe Light that highlighted certain employers, such as Waste Management, finding more recruitment success on Facebook than on LinkedIn.
“Facebook hires account for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making,” Light noted, quoting Jobs2Web’s recent analysis. “But if current growth trends continue, Facebook could rival traditional job boards in 2012.”
But it isn’t just the job boards that should be worried. Facebook will destroy LinkedIn, too. Here’s why: keep reading…
You’ve already created a careers page that’s separate from your main site. You even have a mobile site. You’re posting news and photos on your Facebook careers page and talking to applicants on your Twitter careers profile. You’ve set up your company’s Careers tab on LinkedIn and put videos of your office life on YouTube. What’s next?
Get ready to add AR to your HR. AR stands for augmented reality, an exciting new technology that will change many of our interactions with the world, including job searching. What is it? Applications that use augmented reality overlay links, images, and information onto whatever you’re viewing on your mobile device’s screen. In a way, it’s no different than the scoreboard superimposed over the live broadcast of a baseball game. But in other ways, it’s a whole lot more. keep reading…
Google, Yahoo, and Bing have made great advances in targeted marketing, allowing brands to focus on their most prized demographics. But none of them can yet answer the most important question: does a particular person actually want to buy your product?
That’s where permission marketing comes in. Coined by best-selling marketing guru Seth Godin, it has included opting in for newsletters, requesting catalogs, or signing up for e-mail updates. Now, innovations such as Facebook Connect and Google Buzz have ushered in a new era of permission marketing. These and other emerging services can provide you with additional opportunities to connect with your chosen audience. keep reading…
A close friend of mine landed the job of her dreams last week. Competition was fierce, the testing process was exacting, and the interviewing process connected her with very impressive representatives of the firm.
Yet when the offer package came, there was a significant typo, which could have translated into several thousand dollars of unintentional income to my friend.
Of course my friend pointed out the error, and new docs were drawn up, but something sad happened in the interim.
A bit of tarnish on the brass ring.
(What do you do when the cover letter has a typo? Recruiters are always looking for reasons to dump resumes in the garbage, and when candidates send cover letters with typos, they throw them out — no matter how good the credentials might be.)
There are many phases in the recruiting process, including: keep reading…
