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How do you convince cynical executives to fund a social network recruiting effort?

It’s hard to argue against the statement that social networking (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) is an extremely hot topic in business. But I have yet to find a single CFO or senior executive willing to fully fund a comprehensive social network recruiting strategy based merely on the fact that it’s a hot concept.

Even when budget is made available, most organizations need to develop measures to help direct spending into the right efforts that will provide them with the highest recruiting impact and ROI. There is no escaping it: making a compelling business case must become a priority for social network recruiting champions.

In this article, I’ll provide an outline of the four basic business case steps covering how to secure funding during these tight economic times.

Business Case Step #1: Identify the Potential Benefits of Social Network Recruiting

Provide targeted executives with a list of potential benefits and then simply have them select the ones that (if proven) would be compelling enough to positively influence their decision. Have them eliminate benefits that, whether true or not, wouldn’t influence their decision.

With that guidance in hand, design a process that focuses on proving only those benefits that were selected as highly compelling.

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When Dr. John Sullivan said last week that employers have lost control of their brand, he likely wasn’t thinking of Sidewiki. Why should he? When the article was published Monday Sidewiki was not even three weeks old; Google launched it on Sept. 23rd.

But Sidewiki’s potential for deconstructing a brand is enormous. Unlike all the networking sites, Twitter posts, and job board forums where the disaffected go to vent their anger, Sidewiki makes it possible to post these comments directly to your site.

Just imagine the mischief a disgruntled job seeker or employee can wreak by posting their story directly to your site. Side by side with your video of happy employees talking about the fun and interesting work they do is a post — or multiple posts — from current and former workers denouncing your message as bogus.

If Sidewiki were to catch on and gain even a percentage of the users that Twitter has, the impact is easy enough to see.

Says Mark Hornung, senior vice president, strategy, at Bernard Hodes, “What that means for corporate employment sites is that they need to be monitored much more aggressively.” keep reading…

Social networks are so hyped right now among recruiters that it is hard to separate their real value and purpose from often overblown marketing promises. By creating a social network specifically for your organization, you can differentiate yourself from the crowd, build your brand, and find most of the candidates you need without any other sourcing techniques. keep reading…

For more than a decade, I have worked tirelessly to maintain my status as a recognized global expert on employer branding. I have advised numerous firms; developed positioning methodologies now in use by many HR consultancies and recruitment marketing firms; given dozens of employer branding presentations; and have even written a book on the topic.

Despite many successes, it’s time to admit that a major employer branding principle is no longer true: that corporations can own or control their employer brand image.

The premise was that corporations could proactively put together a plan to win awards as excellent places to work, secure mention in news pieces and editorials, participate in case studies, and be talked about at industry events. Because corporations were coordinating nearly all of the information that made them visible, it was possible to heavily influence how they were perceived.

It was a practice that made firms like Google, Starbucks, GE, IBM, Microsoft, and HP famous as great places to work. However, that was then and this is now.

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How are you communicating with prospects? If you’re still using email, The Wall Street Journal says you are so last year.

The 1,800 word article begins, “Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.” It goes on to argue that alternatives like Twitter, social media, texting, and other communications forms are eating into email’s dominance.

The most telling point in the article comes from Jeff Teper, a Microsoft VP, who says that email was overused in the past. “Now, people can use the right tool for the right task,” he says.

To put it another way, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Recruiters, however, should be wary of too quickly abandoning email. No less an authority than Nielsen, the user analytics company, says social media usage appears to actually increase email usage. Hitwise, another analytics and business intelligence firm, says Twitter’s usage may have hit a wall. Though it can’t count the number of Tweets being sent, indicators such as accesses to Twitter profile pages and on-site searches suggest the site “Twitter appears to have hit a resistance point as of April 2009.”

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U.S. EEOC Assistant Legal Counsel Carol Miaskoff brought up a few points in her Florida presentation (see video, below) that raised questions among ERE members.

I caught up with her on the phone to go over a few of those questions. Mary Kay Mauren, senior attorney advisor, was also on the call. keep reading…

Many aspects of a recruiter’s job remain the same as in the past, before the arrival of social media. We all review resumes, assess the matches, interview on the phone, and meet prospects in person. Social media has added and keeps adding new options on how to get there. To remain competitive and productive we must figure out and start using social media in recruiting. I’d like to highlight some aspect of how it can work for us.

Let’s talk about the very interesting phenomena of communicating with potential candidates in ways that have not been there before. For years, we have been discussing whether to call first or email first. Some gurus suggest that you first send a detailed email, then leave a phone message, and then send a short email mentioning that you had called. Fine, but here are your other options today: keep reading…

Entice Labs, the Provo, Utah, company that set out to create a better recruitment marketing system, is suddenly getting industry buzz.

Earlier this year, John Sumser described the company as a “game changer.” In June, Susan Burns, president of Talent Synchronicity, said the company’s TalentSeekr product is “a sleek and effective approach to targeted employment brand positioning.”

Now, TechCrunch has said of the company, “it still beats hiring a headhunter.” OK, so that’s not as scintillating an endorsement as either Sumser’s or Burns’, but then TechCrunch is a site for geeks, not recruiters. But you gotta figure that a product that wows both techies and recruiters is worth taking a look at. keep reading…

The hot stuff in HR technology these days is all to do with social networking. Recruiters are flocking to social media with the energy of a bull let loose in a pasture full of lonely cows during mating season. All that effort does produce some results — candidates (or calves; depending on what you’re thinking right now) — but they’re inconsistent (in both cases). And there are plenty of skeptics that question the value of social networking as a scalable recruiting solution. Social media has its place in the recruiting universe, but the buzz around it is overshadowing other interesting technologies. Two in particular that I’d like to highlight may not be as exciting, but address fundamental needs for recruiters. keep reading…

… and nobody follows him, then was it written? Any discussion around Twitter raises a lot of questions from the sublime to ridiculous. And so it should be: Twitter is an interesting product, and there aren’t a lot of those in recruiting. My last article on social networking criticized Twitter, so I’ll start this one by accentuating the positive and discussing the merits of Twitter. keep reading…

“Apply or Goodbye” is a great metaphor for a transactional recruiting process. Sadly, “apply or goodbye” seems to be the end result with most recruiting processes. Everything seems to be about a transaction—filling the open requisition. If a prospect is qualified and interested, then they are moved through the process. If they are not qualified, then at best, they receive a letter of rejection. If a prospect is not ready to apply to do a job, we usually do not know about them. We have de facto told them “goodbye.” And given the prospect-to-candidate falloff rate (research projects application non-completion rates as high as 70-80%), a great number of prospects get lost because of the transactional nature of recruiting technology.

In a moment of frustration (or epiphany) I quipped that candidates were seeking relationships and our recruiting technology offers them the equivalent of a one-night stand (or more accurately a chance to complete an application). Looking past the potential off-color nature of the comment, the truth is there is a gap between what people in this world of Web 2.0 desire and what a typical recruiting operation allows. That gap is the williness on the part of recruiting to have a conversation with you unless you are part of the chosen few that meets with requirements of a specific job. keep reading…

A select group of interns, dubbed with unfortunate corniness FUNterns, are putting in 15 hours a week with Nestle as ambassadors for the Butterfinger brand while working full-time jobs or keeping busy elsewhere.

It’s an innovative program which kills two Nestle birds with one stone: using social media (online user-generated videos) to market candy, and providing job experience that potential employees may not get elsewhere. keep reading…

If a startup can land $3 million in angel investment in a market like this, it’s a company worth watching even if it is a close DNA relative to Facebook and LinkedIn and only a gene or two removed from what Jobster once hoped to be. keep reading…

Like prospectors during the gold rush, recruiters everywhere are flocking to social networks in search of hires. But like the experience of many during the gold rush, getting results in not easy. Reaping the benefits of social networking requires engaging with those networks. There’s plenty being written about how to do so, but to know if what you’re doing is working, consider the following metric:

EE = (1-N) X (R/P)

Where:

EE = Effectiveness of Engagement, expressed as a percentage

Engagement, in this context, means getting ready access to employees’ networks, regardless of the mechanism for doing so. Virtually 100% of employees have social networks and connect to them using different means (networking sites are not the only way to do so), but only a certain proportion of employees may be willing to give an employer access, by either making the contacts available or agreeing to forward job postings to them.

N = The proportion (%) of employee networks that an employer or recruiter has engaged with.
R = The average number of qualified referrals received per month per employee
P = The average number of postings accepted by employees to their networks per month

So if an employer is engaged with 10% (N) of employees’ social networks, and on average each employee accepts 3 (P) postings per month, and produces 2 (R) qualified referrals:

EE = (1-10%) X (2/3) = 60%

If the same results are achieved by engaging with 50% of employee networks, EE = 33%

Engagement is more effective the larger the number of qualified referrals received for the same proportion of employee networks an employer is engaged with. However, this is not a bottomless pit. Research shows that beyond a certain threshold of postings, the volume of qualified referrals starts to flatten out and even reduce.

Reality Meets Hype keep reading…

Facebook’s 250 million members would be a recruiter’s gold mine except for one thing: there’s a bouncer at every entrance and there are 250 million entrances.

The analogy doesn’t hold up perfectly because friend collecting is a Facebook pastime, and if you ask around you can almost always find someone to let you into any network. But it’s still not recruiter friendly. Unlike LinkedIn, where the search tools were designed with recruiters in mind, Facebook’s tools seem intended to discourage sourcing.

Yet those millions of Facebook members are too tempting a target to resist. Since the beginning of the year Appirio and Jobvite have both come up with applications that connect HR tech systems of their own or their partners with Facebook. Both however, are intended for corporate recruiters using either Salesforce or Jobvite’s recruitment system. Both focus on referrals.

InSide Job is different. It’s a Facebook application that individual users choose to deploy, making them searchable and findable to other InSide Job users.

The idea came to Lorne Epstein, a career recruiter, as he tried to get contacts out of LinkedIn for free.

Says Epstein, “They charge $10 for an email (there are corporate accounts, but he’s talking about an individual search) and there’s 40 million profiles. Facebook has 250 million and it’s only getting bigger.”

So Epstein, author of You’re Hired! Interview Skills to Get the Job, came up with a simple way to connect recruiters with Facebook users, and job seekers with the people who might be able to help them get a job. keep reading…

Control freaks hate community. And most recruiters are control freaks. Ergo, recruiters hate community. Perhaps my deduction is a little harsh (and purposely attention-grabbing). Maybe a better way to describe how many recruiters feel about community is that they are suspicious, or at the very least skeptical.

To suggest that recruiters are control freaks is not an epiphany or an “ah-ha moment,” as being controlling is one of the traits that make recruiters good at our jobs.  We are managers of a set of projects called search assignments or requisitions and are required to direct a volume that easily reaches the double digits. And we need to control as much as possible to be successful.

Recruiters like the idea of community and having a relationship with prospects and/or candidates. But when recruiters take a deeper dive, they begin to understand that some of the conversations that transpire in community are outside of their control, they lose some enthusiasm. So why advocate community if one cannot control the outcome?

In my upcoming Fall 2009 ERE presentation, I am weaving five topics/questions/discussion points into the storyline. One discussion point is “Web 2.0 solutions proclaim that this is the new way to pipeline candidates into a private talent community. What is a talent community and how do I build one? In this article, I will deal with the “why” of talent communities.  And if you are in Florida in September, I will discuss the “how to” at length. keep reading…

There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty about social networking and its role in recruiting. Conferences and seminars are everywhere. ERE recently held a conference on social media at Google, and there are dozens of articles here on ERE and elsewhere that are touting the benefits of social networks. There are hundreds of social media blogs and websites as well, and an expanding number of social media applications and tools.

But the big questions for many are simple: What are social networks, what do they replace, and what makes them useful? keep reading…

The interviewee queried the Microsoft Hardware Interviewer: “What is Microsoft’s commitment to hardware?” The applicant continued: “While, Microsoft is known for software, what is your vision for the hardware business?“

This scene played out over and over. Sometimes the candidate would even be looking over the interviewer’s shoulder without noticing the poster proudly displayed behind the Microsoft hiring manager. Yes, after 25 years, we were still getting those questions.

That was two years ago. Since then, we have changed the perception of Microsoft Hardware. We have changed the brand Hardware@Microsoft. Hardware@Microsoft has become a profession. The average “person on the street” may not know anything about Hardware@Microsoft. But a target audience of engineers who work in hardware will know about the importance of hardware in terms of Microsoft’s business vision.

ERE acknowledged our work with a “Most Strategic Use of Technology Award” and industry thought leaders like Dr. John Sullivan called our work “pioneering.” (In fairness, this award was shared by a talented group of colleagues who created View My World and incidentally just launched a new careers site.) While being recognized by one’s industry is flattering, the real success of our work was in solving a business need in our division.

The story of making Hardware@Microsoft a profession was an answer to a critical business issue.

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A woman in Boston picks up a glass of red wine. She puts her nose into the glass and breathes in deeply. She takes of sip of the wine and a slight smile crosses her face. She gently sets down the glass and types a few words on her computer. She watches the screen intently for a reply. A friend in Los Angeles responds to her comments. A few moments later, a comment comes in from a woman in Sydney. The comments continue to flow in from Hong Kong, from Tokyo, and finally Berlin chimes in.

This is the monthly Friday night (depending where you live in the world) Women’s Wine Club. Like clockwork, the first Friday night of each month these friends taste a new wine and share a conversation about their new discovery. They use Twitter as the means of sharing their wine tasting experience.

This wine tasting Twitter example seems to be becoming very much a part of the fabric of the 21st Century social experience. This is an example of a Virtual Third Place.

Ray Oldenburg coined the phrase — a “third place.” Oldenburg, an urban sociologist, suggested that informal, public gathering places are extremely important to community. He suggested that bars (Cheers), coffee shops (Starbucks), bookstores (Third Place Books) and other establishments are Great Good Places or “third places” (in contrast to the home and the workplace, the first and second places). These third places create space for conversation and creative interaction.

The “third places” of the 20th Century are morphing into the “virtual third places” of the 21st Century. The Twitter wine club is a scene that is being replayed in different stages, but with a common storyline: social encounters are taking place cyberspace. It is a logical extension of a third place. Job and careers are two of the most frequent topics of conversation; many virtual third places are being formed to discuss all the aspects of our respective professions. If there are discussions about careers, there must a role for recruiting in the virtual third places.

So how does a virtual third place fit into a recruiting strategy? Imagine you are a recruiter in Seattle or Portland that recruits recruiters. One virtual third place that you would want to join in the conversation would be the NorthWest Recruiters Association LinkedIn Group. The NWRA is an affinity group of nearly 900 members comprised of corporate and third party recruiters — the ideal target audience for a recruiter of recruiters.

The NWRA as an affinity group is not just a virtual third place, but also creates opportunity for face-to-face conversations. This mix of virtual and face to face conversations seems to be a very effective method of community. I am not suggesting that belonging to affinity group and having conversations with the members outside of a trade show or a meeting is new; it is certainly not. But what is unique about the 21st century model is the transparency of conversations to all the members of the group and an invitation for any member to share their views. That levels the playing field and fosters deeper relationships.

One of the aspects of virtual third places is the natural segmentation that has already occurred by the interest and self-selection of the members. For the sourcer (and I believe sourcing is marketing), as it is with a brand manager in marketing, segmenting the target audience is one of the challenges of the job. In this new world of social media, networking, and Web 2.0, much of segmentation occurs naturally. The challenge of the 21st century isn’t so much finding the community, but more about how we function as a member of the community as a recruiter with requisitions to fill.

How one functions as an effective member of a community is a subject for a different conversation, but there are several avenues available to pursue. If your practice is designed for the longer term, then perhaps becoming a listener and finding your voice in the community can be very effective. Communities tend to have a life of their own, and learning the culture and norms of the group could provide valuable insight. I have noticed the one or two NWRA members who recruit recruiters tend to move behind the scenes. They support the organization, volunteer for events, and are visible, productive members of the community.

A bright shiny new toy creates new words to describe old things. It is not so much that the old needs the “new” associated with it; it is more that a new vocabulary is required to explain the new dimension or new aspects of an older discovery. In the 1980’s I was very comfortable referring to my Rolodex (contacts/prospects) as my network. I referred to the National Association of Accountants or the Oregon Society of CPAs as affinity groups. And I referred to the directories of those affinity groups as money. I attended, networked, and supported those groups. Relationships and reputations grew out of those groups; clients were served and careers were enhanced. Today, I am comfortable describing my network as a database. I am comfortable with describing the affinity groups as a community (as they may have been all along). I join communities; participate in discussions; and give generously back to the community. And I still call the community membership directories money.

At the Fall 2009 ERE event, our talent community pilot will be discussed in the broader context of Web 2.0 Beyond the Social Recruiting Hype: Microsoft’s Approach to Building Talent Pipelines and Communities. While the presentation will be much broader than a discussion of “virtual third places,” this concept is a cornerstone of our community development workstream.

In case you missed the Summit people are talking about up at Google last week, or just want to go back and take another look, here are some videos and recordings Brendan (poor guy had to stand all day) took. We don’t have all of the videos. Also, since this was live, streaming, video, it’s not going to be the picture quality of regular filming.

We’ve got the Fall conference in Florida well stocked with social recruiting sessions, if you missed the event we just had. Marvin Smith of Microsoft will be presenting; there’ll be a couple of legal-related sessions about recruiting using Facebook and other sites; Knowledge Infusion is talking about putting together a social-media strategy; and we’ll be adding another social media session in the coming days. Shoot me an email if there’s specific information on the topic you’d like. In the meantime, a few of the videos are below.

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