SmashFly Intern Blog

Updates from morganevesmith RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  morganevesmith 1:54 pm on April 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook ( 2 ), intern ( 8 ), recruiting ( 4 ), Recruitment Marketing ( 22 ), social media ( 5 ), Social Recruiting ( 9 ), talent network ( 5 )   

  BranchOut Your Social Recruiting 

  While researching social recruiting last week, I came across BranchOut, a website that turns Facebook into a professional recruitment tool.

  BranchOut gives you the power to:

  • Leverage Facebook’s over 600 million members to create a career network
  • Use it as a recruiter, job seeker, or fancy Facebook-stalker to see where friends are working
  • Get endorsements from people in your network
  • Find out who are the “most connected” people you know
  • Do targeted searches through the 3 million jobs & 15,000 internships posted

  For me, a professional site like LinkedIn is a great tool, but most of my people use Facebook. So this soon-to-be graduate gave it a try for its job seeking and networking capabilities. I immediately got a badge for being a “Super Connector Graduate”. That made me feel special.

  The warm feelings went away when I realized that out of the almost 700 friends I have (go me), only 1 of them was using BranchOut. The almost 2,500 second degree connections on BranchOut are good though. I suppose that’s what BranchOut is really about. Whether or not your friends are using this Facebook App, you can still broaden your network.

  For businesses, I highly recommend this tool in addition to your other social media. Giving your business a professional presence on Facebook is essential as social media become the tool for social recruiting. In addition to having a company page, you can use BranchOut to:

  • Build your Talent Network
  • Strengthen your brand
  • Effectively reach passive candidates

  While my personal experience with BranchOut was not a huge success, it could work wonders as an addition to your business’s recruitment strategy.
   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  

  Notify me of follow-up comments via email.

• 

  morganevesmith 2:48 pm on March 30, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cell phone, intern ( 8 ), Internship ( 3 ), iphone, market recruiting, Mobile Recruiting ( 3 ), recruiting ( 4 ), Smartphone ( 2 )   

  For Market Recruiting, Smartphones Change Everything, Again 

  

  An estimated 80 million more smartphones will be activated by 2012

  With over 60 million smartphones active in the US, it seems as though everything is changing. And just when you thought you were getting the hang of mobile recruiting by updating your candidates via text and connecting instantly.

  You were on the cutting edge, but now it looks as though the newly old ways are on the chopping block. The move towards smartphones could easily bring a premature death to traditional (and by traditional, I mean yesterday’s methods) mobile recruiting.

  Texting may still be a good tool to use for recruitment marketing. At the same time, as smartphones become the standard, better recruitment tools will take advantage of candidates’ abilities to check their mail and browse the web on the go. This means that savvy constant contact strategies will become more vital than ever. How you can keep your head above water and keep from drowning in obsoletism? Here are some tips, along with facts gathered by the CITA, The Wireless Association, in 2010:

  • Create concise but informative posts to email candidates
  • Make a mobile version of your site- over 89% of handsets can browse the web
  • Create a mobile app for your company- last year, over 8 million apps were downloaded. Make one of them yours!

  So does this mean stop SMS-ing? No. Since 79% of cell phone users have feature phones, texting can still be an effective tool. Because these numbers are projected to decrease by the end of the year, your company should come up with a plan to wean off of texting. Combine this strategy with the above tips, and your business should stay on the recruiting edge in recruitment marketing.
   
• 

  morganevesmith 3:38 pm on March 9, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: intern ( 8 ), intership, LinkedIn, recruiting ( 4 ), recruitment technology, resume sourcing, social networking, talent network ( 5 )   

  Talent Network: If You Build It, They Will Come 

  

  "If You Build It, They Will Come"

  Your Talent Network is that field of dream candidates who are waiting for you to harvest them. Now that the field’s grown to an virtual series of tubes, getting your hands on the latest recruitment technology seems like the only option. While it’s important to get that edge, it’s just as vital to use what you already have. Your company is filled (hopefully) with excellent employees who probably know your next, perfect hire. So how do you make that connection?

  While researching recruitment marketing companies, I came across JobVite, whose partnership with LinkedIn allows them to search your employees’ connections to find potential hires. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this kind of partnership is just about impossible to replicate. Fortunately, it may not be necessary.

  Instead of going through companies like LinkedIn, go through your staff. Type up a targeted message for them to send to qualified candidates they know. They can go through their social networking sites, email, and other sources to deliver your next hire with a personal recommendation.

  It’s resume sourcing made easy (and cheaply)!

  Of course, giving them incentive to find quality, rather than a mass quantity, of candidates is a must. Offer a prize for employees who connect you to job seekers with the most credentials. Have a company event where your staff can bring their connections along. This is also a great way to introduce new hires to your company culture and boost morale.

  In addition, you can try on-going tactics that get your staff involved in your recruiting efforts. Give your employees the chance to talk about what it’s like to work for your company. You can do this on:

  • Your career and recruiting site
  • Staff blogs
  • Twitter or Facebook Page

  Best of all, this will strengthen your brand recognition, not only as a great business, but a great business to work for!
   
• 

  morganevesmith 9:27 pm on March 2, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: direct text, job seekers, Mobile Recruiting ( 3 ), recruiters, Recruitment Marketing ( 22 ), Smartphone ( 2 ), talent network ( 5 ), technology, text, texting, tools ( 2 )   

  Mobile Recruiting: SPAM or the New Frontier? 

  

  Do direct texts go directly in the trash?

  As a job seeker who is physically attached to her cell phone, I can see why mobile recruiting is such an attractive option for recruiters. According to Job Board Doctor’s February 2011 survey on this topic, 63% of those who participated in the study use this technology primarily because it is “always on.” This is a great way to directly contact your Talent Network. But what’s the flip side?

  These days, people communicate more through a device than in person. I’m guilty of texting someone who was in the same room! However, I only talk to people I know, not companies.

  Even if I got a text from a business I wanted to work for, I would probably think it was spam, and ignore it. While my cell connects me to people I want to talk to, it also connects me to companies who bombard me with unwanted texts. Job Doctor’s survey shows that direct SMS to the candidate is the most common use of mobile recruiting.

  Of course, you are not one of these businesses, but are you appearing that way to candidates? Is my reaction uncommon or the example?

  I searched for evidence that showed whether or not candidates are responsive to mobile recruiting. I discovered no such data. The closest I got was that 46.4% of respondents found direct texts effective. Maybe something better is coming along.

  This exciting technology could be going out as quickly as it came. With the growing popularity of Smartphones, candidates can check their email on the go and therefore, may not need direct texts. Recruiters may find that emails send a better message by using their company’s graphics and sharing more information than a text’s character count allows. But recruiters should know this already, only 11.8% of them use a standard feature phone.

  What should recruiters do? Without a survey on how candidates respond to direct texts, it’s hard to argue that you should toss it out. What you can do, however, is devise a plan that revolves around the top three most effective uses of mobile recruiting:

  1. Direct Texting
  2. Texting Job Alerts
  3. Mobile Version of Career Site

  Together, these techniques create a Trifecta of Mobile Recruiting that keeps you in immediate contact with your Talent Network. In the meantime, I’ll search for data on mobile recruiting from the candidate’s perspective.

  For Market Recruiting, Smartphones Change Everything, Again « SmashFly Intern Blog is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
• 

  morganevesmith 10:25 pm on February 16, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  The Eye of the Prince: The Best Seat for SEO 

  In Renaissance Italian Theatre, the prince had the best seat in the house so he could see everything. Since sets at that time used perspective, the latest technique, any seat that wasn’t in the l’oeil du prince spot got a skewed view of the action.

  Nowadays, the Internet acts as our stage and the best seat is in front of a computer, smart phone, or any other device. The action takes place on the first page, and Google shines the spotlight. So how does your company get front and center?

  Getting on the first page of a Google search can make or break your business. 65% of users will click on the Top 3 listings, while 75% will check out the top 5. Page 2? Who cares?

  For recruitment marketing this becomes especially important. No one will know about your groundbreaking technology, excellent customer service, or guarantee of capturing qualified candidates if you’re hiding in the wings.

  Unfortunately, breaking Google’s antilogarithm is 99% impossible. However, there are tricks that can keep close to, if not in, the limelight, like choosing strong keywords, getting other sites to link to you, and avoiding “click here” hypertext.

  While interning for SmashFly.com, I hope to find more specific answers to this giant question. In the process, I’ll upgrade my marketing skills from promoting my improv troupe and spoken word group at Boston University, to promoting this innovative recruitment marketing company. I’ll also probably make some clever references gathered from my Film Production and Theater Arts studies in college. Until then, I’ll be sitting in my l’oeil du prince, searching for the next step in taking recruitment marking to the next level.