Social media, blah blah blah. Sick of hearing about it, but it’s not going away. To me, social media is about building relationships and community, simple. I use Twitter, but I was stupid and wasn’t as picky as I should’ve been initially about who I follow. And I haven’t been as diligent about setting up lists and weeding out the stuff I don’t want, or the people I don’t at least know a little (again, need time to do that). There’s still some good stuff out there, but my feed is overloaded with a lot of junk.

This is where Buzz comes in. I follow people on Buzz I really want to keep up with on Twitter or in my Google Reader (because you tie your Twitter account and Reader into Buzz). You’re not limited to 140 characters and you look at those selected tweets whenever you want, on your time, without needing Twitter lists or feeds or whatever. Check out my Gmail account below. Buzz is just another part of your inbox, and tells you how much activity is in your “Buzz”. If you get a response on a “Buzz” that is yours or that you commented on, you’ll get an email notification. Obviously, the caveat here is that you need a Gmail account, which not everyone has. But most people do, especially in IT.

As you can see from the 2nd screenshot below, and as mentioned above, you can connect up to 6 sites (at this time). Picasa, Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, your Google chat status, etc. And you can see (from my buddy Lyle’s recent Buzz) the types of conversations you can have. It’s much more user friendly than Twitter, and a bit more collaborative.

Personally, I’m in Gmail quite a bit, so it’s right there without having to go to another app. As I’ve stated, time is short these days, and as you can see with some of the screenshots, I have so many applications popping up stuff, how do I keep track of everything? If they figure out how to really integrate Twitter (so tweets can come from Buzz or Gmail or whatever), and add Facebook and LinkedIn functionality, I’ll never leave Gmail. Anyways, I’m a rookie to Buzz, but I’m excited to see what else they come up with. So far, I like it a lot and feel I’ve had some really good conversations with some of my fellow Buzzers.

A few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity). Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”

Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ½ of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.

Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.

Social Media Communities – It’s Not a Waste of Time

In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;

• Finding candidates
• Building relationships with potential candidates
• Enhancing your employment brand

I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?

Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:

• Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates.
• Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
• Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.

Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.

At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.

Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I’d love to hear what’s working and not working for you!

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

I know I say this A LOT, but I’m not perfect. I’ve made these same mistakes, but I make a diligent effort to help people out, no matter what the circumstance. After seeing people struggle to find jobs, it’s made me realize how much it hurts and how difficult that process can be, especially nowadays. If you’re a recruiter, please, please, please, make this one little effort. Respond to the candidates that you have interviewed or that have interviewed at your employer. I don’t care how big of a company you are and how busy you are, that is just simply common courtesy. I was a little disappointed to learn just how common this is. Simply ridiculous if you ask me, and something that takes so little time to do. If you’re afraid of hurting feelings, it hurts more by not responding.

Twitter/Hootsuite

I’ll start by saying I think Twitter is great. I was a skeptic, but I’ve learned a ton from the people I’m following, and I’ve really worked hard to share valuable information to the people that keep an eye on me. Problem is, I can’t keep an eye on Twitter all day, it distracts me too much that it takes aways from the tasks I have on my plate at work. Granted, Twitter relates to work. But, it’s a small part and I have more important tasks to get accomplished most of the time. I know Twitter is a two way street, you have to interact with your tweeples. But how can you do that consistently when you’re following hundreds? It’s tough. I’m slowly using Twitter less. I have to, and I think I’ve gotten less and less out of it as time has gone by. I think it’s true as most things, you get out of it what you put in. The less you put in, the less you get out.

But in order to at least try and keep up with Twitter, I researched a lot of 3rd party apps to help me try and automate some of my tasks……some. I have my personal twitter account, and one for the company I work for so I needed an app that allows for multiple accounts. After a bunch of research, I found Hootsuite. At this point, it’s great….that can obviously change but it has some really cool features (it just needs an iPhone app). I’m still in the infancy for that app and for the corporate twitter page. But scheduling tweets, an RSS feed function, groups (with 2.0 release), and so many other features, it’s awesome. So for an hour in the early morning before I get to work, or for a bit late at night, I go through my google reader and read blogs and sites with relevant information for my industry. If I find some posts/stories that are worthwhile, I schedule those tweets throughout the day and week. So I’m kind of done with my sharing. I also use that time to see what the people I’m following are up to and try and RT anything that I’ve read and enjoy and think would benefit the people following me. I’m VERY picky who I follow, make sure you’re going to get something from following them. Since I have been picky, I’ve really learned a ton….I’m following some really smart people and not getting bogged down by all the crap out there. So by scheduling these tweets, it leaves me more time to interact with my tweeples throughout the day.

As mentioned above, there’s a neat feature of Hootsuite, it basically has twitterfeed (RSS) functionality built right in. Our corporate site is based on WordPress, so everything is an RSS feed. New blog posts, new news and events, and new job opportunities are all fed automatically into the corporate Twitter page (and some on my personal page). Again, this leaves me more time to interact, which I’ll admit hasn’t been my strong suit. I also have this set up for my personal blog, whenever I post something new, it posts into my personal Twitter account.

Digsby

I use Digsby for my chat client and for “popping up” recent tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn updates. If something pops up that I’m interested in, I want to jump on it right away, and a little box that pops up in the lower corner of my laptop is much better than sitting on Twitter/Hootsuite all day. It’s a solid tool, but I use it mostly for my chat client (which works great).

Blogging

Speaking of blogging, I suck at it. I’m still not sure why I started a blog, but I’m trying (so you have to at least give that to me). This has been tough to find time to do, because this is not done on work hours as well. So, this means personal/family time has to suffer. If you have kids, you know how crazy things are when you get home from work. It’s great, I love it. But, there’s no way anything productive is going to happen when they’re awake. The only reading I’m doing is frickin’ Dora the Explorer books. So, I find an hour every so often after my kids are sleeping and I try and put something semi-intelligent on my blog. I then refine it the next night. I typically try and throw ideas and post topics out out on WordPress whenever I think of something, and then build on those ideas slowly. WordPress has a solid iPhone app that lets me do that when I’m on the go, so I don’t forget. My rule on my blog is no more than 1 post per week, no less than 1 per month. So far I haven’t lived up to that, but we have a newborn at home so give me a break.

Facebook

I use Facebook a little differently, but I’m still open for suggestion here. I don’t have all my tweets posted automatically to Facebook. The friends that follow me are typically closer than my tweeples. So I post select posts/stories to my news feed and update my status a bit more “personal”. I also have a corporate fan page setup, that I have mostly automated with RSS-Connect, but I do post pictures and some other odds and ends manually. I don’t spend a ton of time on Facebook during work time, it’s more for the later hours after my daughter goes to bed. I think it’s an extremely under-rated recruiting tool, and much more effective than Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has apps now, so my profile gets updated with new blog posts whenever I post something new. Hootsuite also has Ping.fm integration, so I set up a trigger to update my LinkedIn status from Hootsuite. Since it does have Ping.fm integration, you can update all the available accounts with Ping…which is a lot. But for me, I want Facebook to stay different and Friendfeed is already linked up with Twitter anyways (for now).

OK, holy crap. That seems complex. I’d really like to know how others handle the craziness of Twitter and other social networks. What applications are used the most, how much time do you really devote to Twitter and Facebook? I’ve talked to a few professionals out there, but want to hear from more. Please pass this on, let’s see how everyone is accomplishing this.

For you golfers out there (true golfers), you know how the game gets in your blood. It can be downright addicting correct? It’s even more so addicting in MN that any other state. Did you know that MN has more golfers per capita than any other state? Well, there comes a point when you become addicted, but how? Addiction is defined as being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming. But we become addicted generally after experiencing some kind of high or euphoria. In golf, things change quickly. One day could be the best day of golf ever, the next can be downright miserable. But what keeps you coming back is that one day or even that one shot that was perfect. So how is that different from recruiting? It’s not really. I always laugh and say how being a recruiter is the most bi-polar profession out there. One day the moon, stars, and sun align and things fall into perfect place. The next day, those same candidates that accepted your job offer decide to decline your offer or fail a drug test or something out of your hands. All we can do is try out best to practice or learn more about the mistakes we made to keep us coming back for more punishment.

Mentally golf is the most demanding game ever. Crazy how much focus and mental stability it takes to play. I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to break a club over my knee. Usually at least once every few rounds. But, in order to really be good at it, you have to overcome all of those negative emotions and focus on the next shot, no matter how bad the last one was. It really is the same with recruiting. We’re getting pulled in every direction these days, with a never ending list of tasks on our plate. I think it’s more critical these days than ever to remain calm, focused, and maintain a positive attitude towards your job. I’ve also wanted to break something after a day of recruiting, but we have to learn to forget about the past and move onto the next task/shot. I can tell you from experience, if you don’t you’ll go nutty (that’s why I am).

Alignment is key when you’re on the golf course. If your hips are aimed one way, and your shoulders the other, consistency is a struggle. Every single day as a recruiter, you become aware and are involved with proper alignment. The main focus and task of our jobs is to align candidates with the appropriate position/job. It’s essential to master this skill! How do you master that? Get to know the clients you’re working with in detail, and know everything about your candidates. The more you know about both, the easier aligning the proper candidates to the positions get. Be a pain, ask tons of questions.

You can find just any golf course by hopping on the internet and doing a quick search, but in depth research and due diligence will allow you to find the best. As a recruiter, if you just hop on Monster.com or any of the other career sites and do a quick search on keywords, you’re not going to find the best. You might get lucky here and there, but generally it takes time and effort to find the types of candidates that are ideal for your open positions and fit with the culture. Put in the time, do you backdoor references and research, you’ll find better candidates and golf courses!

Probably my biggest weakness in golf is that I’m always enticed into buying some new kind of club that’s going to change the world of golf (at least in my mind). Of course, that never happens. I just spend a bunch of money on the new equipment and end up selling the new stuff I just bought (for half the amount I paid for it) and going back to the old equipment I am used to. Recruiting is similar. There’s always new and exciting stuff out there that entices us to spend money to improve efficiency and performance. Kind of like the new monster.com launch. I’m still yawning over that. The lesson here is stick to the basics and refine the tools you’re currently using. There’s no need to spend mass amounts of money to be a good golfer or recruiter. Stick to things that don’t cost anything. I don’t pay anything for Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. I use my existing network and the people I know to fill the positions I have open. Of course there’s fine line here, some money is wisely spent – the driver I purchased last year is sweet, and our new objectpartners.com website is pretty fancy.

I really have no idea why I wrote this post, sounded like a good idea at the time. If anything, it just made me really want to go golfing….not great when I have recruiting to do and I’m stuck in the office!

Honesty. I was just talking about this with a colleague the other day. We were talking about bill rates, and how some companies don’t tell the candidates they’re working with what they’re billing them out at. Why not? If they have a problem with it, they are rookies in the consulting business and need some hand holding – or just don’t work with them. I always thought it was best to let them know what your margin is, they’re going to find out anyways. If you know certain things about the client or position (even if it’s negative), let the candidate know about it. Trust me, it does more harm than good if you’re trying to wiggle a candidate into a position that he/she wouldn’t normally be interested in. Don’t be one of those “shady” recruiters we all hear about. Be approachable and honest about the hiring process, it will pay off in the long run.

Work More. I hate to say this, because I don’t typically enjoy this anymore. But, when I was REALLY succesful in the recruiting biz, I was working well over 40 hours per week. There really isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. And the best time to get a hold of people is after business hours. When I first got into the biz, I would work Saturdays most every week. And it paid off. I think all the work I did early in my career has really paved the way for me now. I don’t really need to work over 40 hours anymore, but I do when I’m under the gun. I’ve worked with recruiters in my day that were rookies and didn’t think they needed to work more than 35-37 hours per week at most. Wrongo! You can survive for a little while, but you’re not going to be a top producer. Put in that extra effort and hours if you really want to be a rock star recruiter.

Get involved with Sales. In our industry there’s always the sales/recruiting battle. I think it’s always going to be there, but I generally think it’s ridiculous. Recruiters are the heartbeat of the company, without them, sales can’t deliver. Goes both ways though. If you don’t have sales, no need to recruit! I think there also needs to be a solid management team in place that understands both sides of the business. I’ve been in situations where sales management would blame the recruiting staff for EVERYTHING. If submittal numbers were low, we’d get blamed. If someone wasn’t an ideal fit and didn’t get the job, we’d get blamed (I could keep going here, but you get the picture). Unfortunately it usually wasn’t the recruiting that was the issue, he just looked at his little reports and made assumptions. Needless to say, most of that staff turned over in a short amount of time. My advice as a recruiter is to get in really good with the entire sales organization. Go on meetings with them, go to happy hours with them, get to be the “go to” guy. Trust me, if you win the respect of the sales organization, you’ll be far more effective for yourself and the company.

Know the Technology. Obviously, not all recruiters should know how to program a Java application or anything like that, but at least know enough to talk intelligently to the candidates you’re working with. Want to sound like dumbass? Ask really technical questions you know nothing about. I always find that funny. You should research a candidates profession before meeting them. Know something about what they do, know some good questions to ask that you can comprehend the answers, make an effort. I used to recruit a lot for Business Analysts. So I made an effort to simply meet with a Sr. BA that I had hired and learn all about what he does on a daily basis. Pretty easy to do. He actually went so far as helping me with some general questions that I could ask new candidates. Most consultants (if you have a good relationship with them) will gladly help you understand what they do….just ask. Knowing a little about what your candidates do will help with your validity as a recruiter and will increase the respect you get from any incoming recruits.

Relationships! I mention relationships a lot when talking about recruiting. It’s the single biggest necessity in recruiting. This is a people business, you NEED to get to know the people you’re dealing with. Don’t just get to know them professionally. Get to know them personally, hang out with them outside of work, develop long-standing relationships with them. Back in the day, I’d judge some of my success by the amount of x-mas cards and wedding invitations I got from my candidates. I truly wanted to know them, and I made extra efforts to do so. I’d invite them to my house for a sushi party, I’d go golfing with some of them, I’d invite them to play on my hockey team, and of course I’d have regular lunches with ALL of them (whether they were looking for a position or not). Every year I’d hand write 500+ x-mas cards, and include something personal about my family and whatever I knew about theirs. I guess for me, I really like that part, I truly do. I didn’t just want to be another recruiter to them, I wanted to be “Skippy” or “Ehren” or “Seimer” or whatever other names I was called (I will not mention the bad ones). The great thing about the whole social networking phenomenon is that a lot of the “get to know them” is automated for you. Facebook is sweet because you can see them in their element, outside of work. Because of all of this, the amount of referrals I received were off the charts. And my turnover was lower than others, because they knew me and didn’t want to leave me in a bind. Don’t look at candidates as dollar signs, look at them as potential friends, they’ll open up more.

I guess I could keep going on this subject. There are so many things we all can do better as recruiters. But just remember, you’re dealing with people. Treat them with respect and dignity and they’ll do the same for you. And dole out free lunches and happy hours! Free booze and food make people happy.

I keep in tune with the economy and job market (although I hate the media right now), and I always laugh when people try and make an accurate evaluation of when we’re going to come out of this recession. Like anyone frickin’ knows, c’mon. I keep hearing, Q3, Q4, blah blah blah.

Personally, I really don’t think we’ll see a significant amount of progress until next year. Consumer confidence is absolutely destroyed right now, and companies are taking a “wait and see” approach. The tech field has been relatively stable in the Minneapolis market, but I don’t foresee any growth in the immediate future. I think we’ll see more layoffs and companies turning to consultants to do the work that needs to be done, but it will be hit or miss. Obviously retail and financial companies will be hurt, but the beauty of the Minneapolis job market is the amount of diversification that’s present. Healthcare should do well, the medical device manufacturers should maintain, insurance is doing well. When some industries are down, there’s always something else that picks up the slack.

Also, companies use technology to gain efficiency, and I don’t foresee a big change in that this year. However, they will be very cautious on who they hire or engage for the things they need to get accomplished. My advice, sharpen your skills now more than ever. If there are jobs out there, it will be more competitive than ever! You’ll be facing other applicants more qualified than you at times, and you need to prepare yourself for that challenge. Make sure you don’t forget about personal branding, afterall you’re a product and you need to know how to present yourself as a quantifiable entity.

Keep feelers out there at all times, and don’t burn any bridges. I always laugh at people that get pissed at me because I contact them or email them, what a stupid move. That person will be the one that gets laid off and has NO contacts or opportunities on the horizon, then he/she will post his/her resume on Monster.com and get killed with phone calls from all the staffing companies offshoring their recruiting capabilities to India. Good luck!

So, stay positive right now and remain optimistic, things are on the mend and we will pull through this downturn. But, don’t become complacent about your job and finanical situation….be prepared.

I’ve been a recruiter or in the recruiting industry in some way for over 10 years, so my initial thoughts of starting a blog is to share what I’ve learned with others, and to hopefully have people share with me what they’ve learned as well. It also gives me a chance to come up with topics I know very little about, and research them enough to throw together a semi-intelligent blog post (please keep in mind I said semi-intelligent).

Also, with the current state of the economy, I’d really like to find a way to help people. This is what gets me going. I’m going to try and get ALL my colleagues to post their jobs on my site for free, and then eventually drive enough traffic here to help the unemployed. If anyone has any other ideas of how I can use my network and experience, I’d looooove to hear it…..just be nice.