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The Internet makes talent communities inevitable

In recent weeks we’ve seen a lot of outpouring of grief over the now dead SOPA legislation. The law’s critics claim that, if passed, the law would end the Internet as we know it, threaten our way of life, and confirm the Mayans were right. We periodically experience this type of mass hysteria, whenever something seems to threaten the “promise of the Internet” — the last time was over net neutrality. That so-called promise has to do with the perceived “free” flow of information: articles, stories, videos, songs, or content. What’s gotten lost in this noise is that that nothing is free. The current business model of the Internet has simply shifted dollars from content creators to content aggregators. Advertisers sponsor content so users can pretend it is “free.”

A long time ago, about the time the last ice age ended, there was something called AOL. It seems like eons have passed, but those who remember that era may recall that after we returned from foraging for food we would turn on our dial-up modems and connect to AOL, having paid a monthly fee for access to all the content that was available, the forums, the news, etc. Connection speeds were 1,200 bits per minute — you could almost count those bits coming in. Now we do the same with Facebook and Google, which we experience as free. Perceptually, we ignore the ads — targeted ads based on all the information collected by the sites — ads tailored to our habits, our behavior, and interactions. AOL charged a fee and had no ads; Facebook doesn’t charge a fee but has ads. There is no free lunch. keep reading…

When Glassdoor launched its Facebook connection a few minutes ago, the company that’s the Yelp of employment jumped full-on into the scramble for dominance in the world of careers social networking.

Among the players already in the ring are BranchOut, the first to build a business networking presence on Facebook, Monster’s BeKnown, and LinkedIn, the reining leader. (Facebook had its own big news Wednesday, filing for its much anticipated IPO.)

Like BranchOut and BeKnown, Glassdoor leverages a user’s Facebook data to find connections at companies in which they have an interest. These can then help provide a direct line to the recruiter or hiring manager. It works simply by using your Facebook login.

Setting Glassdoor apart is the wealth of information it has collected about tens of thousands of companies that’s hard or even impossible to find anywhere else. From its beginning as a place where workers could review their company (or former company) with sometimes no-holds-barred bluntness, Glassdoor has broadened its scope, providing just the kind of information job seekers want: job listings, salaries, interview questions, company background, those unvarnished opinions — both pro and con — and now, who among a person’s Facebook connections has an in. keep reading…

Facebook did today what everyone expected: It filed for an IPO.

In the paperwork submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it expects to raise $5 billion from the public sale of its stock. That’s based on the registration fee it paid. The New York Times says it could end up raising much more.

Facebook reported in its S-1 filing that it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, most of it coming from advertising. It reported having 845 million monthly active users as of the end of the year, a 39 percent increase over the year before. In the U.S., Facebook saw a 16 percent bump over 2010, ending last year with 161 million monthly average users, or about half the country’s total population.

Its average daily user count is 483 million, meaning more than half those who visit the site in a month do so every day. The company also reported 425 million monthly mobile users, a number it expects will grow with some of it replacing PC access. keep reading…

Has anyone asked you “what’s your Klout score?” If you are on the leading edge of corporate recruiting and you are constantly on the lookout for new tools and approaches, one of the emerging tools that you should be aware of is social media analytics that measure online influence.

In a business world that is increasingly dominated by social media, it simply makes sense to hire individuals with extensive social networks and the ability to communicate with and influence others. keep reading…

Gen Yers aren’t specifically using Facebook for business, but with an average of 700 “friends” and a propensity to change jobs after two years, the lines between social and business are so blurred they aren’t even aware it’s happening.

Data out this morning from a study of Facebook’s Gen Y members (18-29) shows that, on average, each has 16 co-workers as friends. While the average is skewed by those who have many more, the study found that half have more than five workers as Facebook friends.

What’s the significance? keep reading…

With unemployment rates hovering in the 9% range in the U.S., there are plenty of people for most every job. Actually, scratch that. It’s not quite true for Siemens, where it’s tough to find engineers and others with the skills it needs.

The German company has about 336,000 employees, 1,640 locations, and about 60,000 people, and growing, in the U.S.

Rachel Romaszewski, who recruits for Siemens’ energy business, and I talk about the skills shortage and what’s being done about it. She tells me (out of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) which social media site is working well, which one works less well, and which one’s hit or miss.

“We are just growing like crazy,” she says, in the seven-minute video, below. keep reading…

The New Year is an opportune time to “raise the bar” by doing something strategic in talent management. In many corporations, new plans and budgets take effect at the first of the year, so the holiday period preceding the New Year is an ideal time to review the potential strategic actions to put in front of your team. Unfortunately, many talent management leaders are risk adverse, and although they constantly talk about the need to “be more strategic” they all-too-frequently find excuses that indefinitely postpone those dramatic and strategic actions.

The leadership set aside at least half the day for the team to identify upcoming problems and opportunities and the resulting strategic moves that need to be made. This article is merely a checklist of the strategic talent management actions that I have found that the very best corporations should have on their potential to-do list.

The Top 15 Potential Strategic Actions to Consider in Talent Management

If you’ve decided to stop fighting fires and to do something major with a strategic impact, here is a list of possible programs and actions that you should consider. keep reading…

College hiring is about to ramp up again — and the very best college recruiting organizations would argue it ramped up several months back — so now is an opportune time to conduct an ROI analysis to determine when and where you should hire college grads instead of experienced hires. Understanding the unique competencies and skills that college students bring to a business is important not just in determining the number needed, but where to place them.

As a college professor and someone that advises firms on the design of college recruiting programs, I have come up with a long list of the advantages of hiring recent graduates. keep reading…

As much as we in recruiting enjoy the many benefits of LinkedIn, there is trouble in paradise. I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since the early days, to which my user ID (59572) will attest. Because LinkedIn numbers its members sequentially, if you do the math, you’ll find me counted among the first .06 percent of LinkedIn users. However, lately, I’ve noticed that what began as a business networking site is starting to feel more like a marketing and recruiting site dressed up as a social network.

Others suggest it more resembles the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, a digital beast that devours our contacts and serves them up to large corporate clients willing to pay for what was once our data.

One cannot really blame LinkedIn for monetizing its business model. It does need to generate revenues to keep the lights on. But as it pursues recruiting revenues, as it encourages business professionals to use LinkedIn more as a marketing platform for “brand you,” as it prods users to pay for the privilege of networking and recruiting on LinkedIn, it is fair to wonder what value we get in return for that investment. While LinkedIn may remain a shiny object to which many recruiters feel inextricably drawn, we are in serious need of a reality check. keep reading…

It’s always better to be prepared than surprised.

By definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention. keep reading…

The Role of Recruiters in Social Media

Recruiters often struggle with social media because the medium does not lend itself well to traditional recruiting practices. Recruiting is typically a highly transactional process — the recruiter collects information from a candidates, decides if there is a fit, and moves on to the next step. It’s essentially a one-way street, running from the candidate to the recruiter with little or nothing going the other way. Social media requires two-way communication (the “social” part): conversations, sharing, and engagement. This is how talent communities are created, and the same makes it difficult for recruiters who are accustomed to being gatekeepers and in-control of the process.

The difference between traditional recruiting and using social media is akin to being the captain of a navy ship compared to that of a cruise ship. In the former case, the captain is king. She decides where the ship goes and who does what. The passengers have no say. On a cruise ship the captain has much more limited power and has to behave very differently.

The Cruise Director

Fans of The Love Boat will remember Gavin MacLeod in the role of Captain Stubing. But the more interesting role was that played by Lauren Tewes – the Cruise Director Julie McCoy. She was the one who had to keep everyone happy and having a good time — i.e., engaged.

This is the role the recruiter needs to play when using social media. You can’t act like the captain on a navy ship. The passengers are not going to stay with you for the voyage if you don’t keep them happy. The members of a talent community are largely there because they’re interested in what the community has to offer in terms of content, not because it’s the shortest path to a job. That may happen but it’s not the primary reason that someone joins a talent community. Talent communities are designed to attract the vast majority of people who are not active candidates. If there’s a high level of engagement they will stay there and may be persuaded to consider the jobs you have to offer.

In this situation a recruiter can’t succeed with a transactional approach. A recruiter has to be social — facilitating conversations and fostering interest in the community. It works best if the members interact with each other, since it’s physically impossible for a recruiter to meaningfully interact with all. The pace can’t be forced — it has to be allowed to develop. You can’t very well order people to have conversations and build engagement. keep reading…

Monster is adding some new features to its BeKnown social network, enabling companies to post jobs and creating some 3,500 college pages.

Built on the Facebook platform, BeKnown is a jobs-oriented network that allows users to build career profiles and connections separate from those on Facebook itself. By adding jobs to corporate sites and including colleges, Monster is encouraging users to conduct their job hunting within BeKnown. keep reading…

Intel is working on a flurry of online recruiting activity, with the biggest being a new technology for its recruiters to manage college recruits, a new mobile application for all job candidates, as well as changes to its Facebook pages.

First to college recruiting. Tavish Ledesma is one of the key players on this one. He comes from a software-engineering background, with less than a year on the human resources side. What he found when starting with HR, and going to campuses last spring, was a “laborious process for processing resumes.”

Intel receives 20,000 paper resumes per year in the U.S. “They were were shipped to a Intel shared service center where they were processed,” says Allen Stephens. “The candidate data would not be available in our system for a couple of weeks, resulting in a delay before our candidates would hear back from us.”

Ledesma put together a proposal, with some screen shots, for streamlining that process, and Intel, up to the CIO’s office and the HR VP, bought in.

Among the goals is to help recruiters collect information from candidates, and shorten the time between when a candidate and recruiter meet, and that candidate gets an email from Intel about applying for a job. keep reading…

Google+ has been moving from just individuals to brands and businesses, and PepsiCo’s Talent Engagement & Marketing Leader Chris Hoyt let us know today that the snack/soft-drink giant is the first to take advantage of this from a careers standpoint, putting up a page for job-seekers with photos and videos.

PepsiCo has for years been an early-adopter when it comes to recruiting with social media, as well as making its recruiting efforts more friendly to candidates using mobile phones.

You can check out the Google+ page here.

And for more on PepsiCo, Here’s Hoyt and colleagues Paul Marchand and Sheila Stygar talking about their talent acquisition department in a video from the last ERE Expo. keep reading…

Facebook is emerging as the leading social network when it comes to job hunting. By a margin approaching 2-to-1, job seekers credit Facebook with helping them get their current job.

LinkedIn ran a distant second, with 46 percent of job seekers attributing their job to that business-oriented network. Twitter, the short messaging network, got a thumbs-up for its job help from 36 percent.

Those are among the findings of Jobvite’s Social Job Seeker Survey 2011 released this morning. The survey doesn’t say how the social networking helped the job-seekers. Other data suggests it may mean seekers researched the companies on social networks, reached out to their contacts for information, got a referral, or were contacted directly. Since most job seekers use more than one social network, the numbers add up to more than 100 percent. keep reading…

Google+ went “Pages” today, opening up its social network to brands and businesses, and others, the way Facebook and LinkedIn have. But one-upping those two social networks, Google+ enables businesses to meet their fans, friends, connections or, in the case of recruiters, prospects face-to-face via the multi-user video feature, Hangouts.

As a blog post announcing the new business pages says, “Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face.” keep reading…

The experience was exceptional.

I was impressed with the high level of professionalism.

Very professional interviews that provided me an environment in which I could be myself.

It made me want to work there even more.

Let’s hope that’s what your candidates are saying about your organization. Let’s hope that’s what they’re saying about your recruiting processes. But they may be saying stuff like this:

The worst and most unprofessional experience I’ve had.

You’ve yet to follow up with me.

The interviewer had absolutely no idea of what the position called for.

The reality is that candidates are probably saying things that cover both ends of the spectrum about your organization. What’s important is whether the first set of statements is more prevalent, or the second set is – and what you are doing about it.

There’s a lot of focus in our industry on finding and engaging passive candidates, developing a strong employment brand, using social media, and building talent communities, but a poor candidate experience can derail and minimize the impact of each of those efforts. My company did something about the problem. keep reading…

If you weren’t at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect last week in Las Vegas (Oct 17-19, 2011) you missed the recruiting event of the year. Since most of the work I do is with SMBs (small to medium size business), I was asked to lead a program on how to create a big brand without the big name. As part of this I introduced a new concept for how companies should benchmark their social media presence and effectiveness: the Social Media Pyramid. I know many of you will be vying for awards at the Spring 2012 ERE Expo, and social media will play a role in quite a few of the awards, so I thought I’d give you my guidelines for using the Social Media Pyramid as guide.

Most companies are using a hodgepodge of social media ideas, trying a little of this and a little of that, in the hope something works. Rather than proceed in such a haphazard manner, I’ve decided to give some structure to the process by creating five levels of social media effectiveness based on currently available technology. keep reading…

Social media gets a lot of press. There seem to be millions of articles offering advice on how to succeed with social media, in business, in fundraising, starting revolutions, and of course, recruiting. A lot of that advice is as useful as a bicycle for a fish — since it’s often anecdotal or the wisdom of some self-styled guru writing about purple sheep or comparing anyone that doesn’t follow their advice to dinosaurs. So it’s great to read something that’s based on data and research, like a recent report from Gallup that has implications for recruiting.

The Medium vs the Message

There’s more going on offline than online. keep reading…

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect conference wound down in Las Vegas today after a three-day run that was equal parts training, trends, product, and showbiz. It was the perfect mix for a city that thrives on spectacle.

After a Tuesday night party worthy of a last century Silicon Valley event, a bleary-eyed audience was brought to its feet by former basketball great and now-successful businessman Magic Johnson. Roaming the cavernous convention hall, he mixed photo ops with motivational lessons from his life, which took him from high school standout to Laker star and now to business success as the CEO of multi-million dollar development companies that work largely in inner city neighborhoods.

He offered up such chestnuts as  ”It’s not enough to deliver … you have to overdeliver”; “losers lose and winners win”; and others as he told his life story. It was an entertaining almost 90 minutes that went into overtime as Johnson took questions, hustling over to each person to make sure they could get a picture of themselves with the NBA legend. keep reading…