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  • Tim Martinez 12:18 am on November 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Generation Y, Hiring Discrimination, , , , Web 2.0   

    Generational Gaps in Social Recruiting 

    Recently I’ve been thinking and writing a good deal about recruitment marketing in our web 2.0 world, and I realized that I often come up with more questions than I have suggestions regarding social recruiting.  Some remain skeptical about the actual utility derived from social recruiting, but I believe its benefits are clear when used correctly (see my last post).  For the first time recruiters can build unique, ongoing, informative relationships through career Twitter accounts, company Facebook pages etc, ultimately reaching out to more people than ever possible before.  I do, however, recognize that there are likely limitations behind these relatively new recruiting tools, and the glaring one seems to be the limited type of candidates a recruiter can target.  By ‘type’ of candidates, as you’ve probably guessed, I mean particularly young candidates.  Although I have no statistical information to back my claims, I think that we can agree that there is a general consensus that younger people consist of the greatest and most active demographic on social media and networking sites.  This has spawned a number of questions dealing with the potential of a generational split in recruiting.

    How do recruiters handle the generational implications of social recruiting?

    If recruiters even recognize this split, I’m curious to know whether or not that changes how they go about utilizing social recruiting strategies.  This could potentially change the way recruiters present their employer brand, employment messaging, and available jobs.  If your audience is, on average, on the younger side, this could even change what types of positions recruiters try to predominantly market.

    Are recruiters effectively reaching upper level, senior level candidates in their fields using social recruiting?

    If social media is full of young adults and Generation Y, I feel that it could become much more difficult to reach the senior level candidates considering they might be less likely to use social media so extensively due to their age.  It is possible this isn’t even an issue for such experienced candidates, as they might leverage their personal networks and connections they’ve collected much more effectively. So, the question ends up being, how is the scope of recruiters efforts affected when using social recruiting, and how do their strategies evolve in light of this understanding?

    Does this imply any sort of discrimination in hiring practices?

    While talking to my mother over the phone, she mentioned her frustration over the “countless” web sites that she suddenly felt she needed to use in order stay competitive and knowledgeable about job opportunities.  My mother is extremely bright, but the tools she now faced were simply conceptually and fundamentally foreign to her.  Many people, she expressed, feel as though they are being left out at best, and purposefully filtered out at worst through social recruiting.  Social recruiting in some cases is seen as a way to target younger, less costly, entry-level to mid-level candidates.  The ‘discrimination’ here doesn’t seem to be  based so much on legal grounds as much ethical grounds.

    So, recruiters and HR professionals, do you find these concerns and questions valid or relevant? Do recruiters find social recruiting worthwhile, and how do you implement, if at all, your understanding of the generational split when creating your social recruiting strategy?



     

  • Tim Martinez 1:02 am on October 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: brand, branding, candidate, crm, employer, , engagement, media, , social,   

    Engaging the Passive Candidate 

    As we all know, a significant portion of candidates viewing your available jobs will not fully commit to applying – even if they are at least somewhat interested.  It could just be that some people aren’t in a position to make a major career decision whether it’s because they don’t feel qualified yet or that they simply aren’t willing to leave the safety of their current job.  There are countless reasons for being a passive candidate, but these people can certainly use a little encouragement and nudging.  Sure, there will always be passive candidates, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t take certain measures to produce more applications while establishing a relationship with these types of candidates.  Several factors come into play when dealing with passive candidates including your employer brand, CRM, and candidate engagement strategy, but I’d like to focus particularly on how social media can be utilized to create a dialogue around your employment opportunities and messaging.   What makes the social media aspect of your recruitment marketing efforts so unique is that you can simultaneously engage candidates who have varying levels of interest in your company, including the passive candidates.

    Social media allows for lasting and accessible relationships

    In many cases, a passive candidate will perhaps glance at your job post or click apply and never finish the application.  After this occurs, it’s likely that the candidate will forget about this experience and move on, hoping that maybe later there will be another open position from the same company.  For this reason, whenever you are able to catch a candidate’s attention, a link or image should be provided directing the candidate to the company social media page or pages (which I would hope the company has).  Being a college student, I hear from job seeking seniors all the time who follow various company pages that they are interested in.  Social media is already an integral aspect of millions of people lives.  The fact that social media is used everyday means that candidates can easily and consistently view up-to-date information about your company’s opportunities and work culture.  The idea here is that you keep candidates interested where it is most easy for them to maintain interest, instead of them having to remember and seek you out.

    Don’t limit your most informative employment content to the career website

    When utilizing social recruiting strategies, make sure your social media pages function as relationship builders not job boards.  Candidates don’t and won’t follow your pages if all they contain is the same information seen in your job posts.  Also, assume that passive candidates won’t check you career site often, if ever.  With this in mind, try to pass on interesting and helpful information regarding employment opportunities through your social media pages even if it’s already included on the career site.  This can be done by posting short facts about the company, employment, and current employees – or you can post short title descriptions and post links to different pages of the career site.

    Involve employees in social media

    Only very rarely have I seen social media recruiting strategies incorporate employee stories, posts, or other content.  Candidates love to see how current employees perceive their company and describe their jobs.  In my opinion, the communication of employee satisfaction is the most crucial and genuinely believable aspect of employment branding.  Why not include, for instance, employee posts on your company or recruitment Twitter page?  Use your social media pages to create several different modes of communication, don’t limit its function and breadth.

    Passive candidates are often passive because they don’t know enough and aren’t active enough to find out more by continuously and periodically checking on the companies opportunities and employment information.  Social media makes it easier and less time consuming for candidates to learn about the company, while incrementally building and incubating the passive candidate relationship.  What do recruiters think about this?  How do you think employees could get involved with social media for recruiting purposes?

     

    • Dave Hennessy 7:11 pm on November 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Great post Tim!

      It’s very true that employee satisfaction is the most crucial part of employment branding. When all is said and done, at the end of the day, a company’s employees are what reflect the image of a brand. Being familiar with and favorable toward a company’s surface or online image is one thing, but knowing a company’s employees are happy and satisfied with their workplace and the work they produce is a huge hook for job-seeking candidates.

  • Ariel 1:07 pm on October 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Investment Strategy for Recruitment Marketing 

    Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important factors to consider when building a website nowadays. Essentially, SEO marketing is what gives the website “face time” on the web. When creating a website for your business, you are basically investing in your marketing strategy, therefore it is vital that you get the most kick back for your dollar.

    SEO marketing is the best investment strategy in recruitment marketing; it gives the business the ability to rank high on search results list. By using keywords in the URL and heading of your site and tagging them, the business has a better opportunity to be found on the web. When creating content, use keywords to attract customers (or in the case of recruitment, job seekers). This is the most essential part of the process. With today’ job market, the poor economy, and job seekers flooding their resumes into every possible job search, it is difficult for companies to find and hire the correct ones. Job seekers today have access to a lot of information and can better prepare themselves for interviews through looking at the website and criteria of a company.

    Effective Recruitment Marketing therefore is essential to making quality hire. Not only does is target the right candidate, but it does so using effective means. SEO is vital here, it gets the job ads put in front of the right people at the right time. Further, recruitment-marketing channels build a relationship with job seekers through social media portals such as facebook and blogging. Not only does it give accurate information to the potential job seeker, but it also always for everyone looking to know where to and the best way to apply.

    In conclusion, with so many job seekers out there today, recruitment marketing and the use of SEO marketing is one of the best ways to go about hiring in HR today. It is not about getting the most applicants on the web, it is about building touch point relationships, getting qualified candidates, and ultimately hiring the right person.

     

  • Tim Martinez 7:29 pm on October 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Advertising, , , , ,   

    Since I was introduced to some of the competitive aspects of various recruitment marketing companies, I’ve been curious about the advertising and marketing efforts that are being used on the internet.  This, in turn, led me to think about what SmashFly can do to enhance its presence, especially since many of the advertising/marketing campaign efforts in this industry overlap in style and purpose.  So, I’ll attempt to provide a bit of my own analysis here.  First I’d like to note what seems to be ubiquitous throughout the recruitment marketing industry:

    • After taking a look at a handful of competitors, what recruitment marketing and metrics companies do most commonly is blog on relevant HR and recruiting sites.  However, it should be noted that these efforts range anywhere from constructive conversation builders to blatant, and probably annoying advertisements.  As far as I can tell, SmashFly’s approach to blogging appears to be the most useful in that we attempt to contribute knowledgeable information concerning a range of topics.  Other recruitment metrics oriented companies will provide interesting content, but it almost exclusively relates to their niche industry.  The conversation concerning metrics and recruitment marketing is essential, but it’s also important that HR and recruiting professionals perceive you as helpful and not just self serving.
    • Whether posted on Youtube or directly on the company website, everyone utilizes videos to some degree, but yet again the effectiveness and comprehensiveness of  these efforts vary.  Thankfully, everyone has a demo video of their product, and these all appear to be relatively similar and well explained.  Some videos come across like a typical advertisement, or the CEO will be discussing the advantages of their product. For the most part, these videos are very similar and don’t necessarily distinguish companies from one another.  I saw a couple of examples, however, that struck me as particularly effective and unique in their own right (posted below).  Jobvite was able to utilize the media to discuss the hiring numbers in the current market while also discussing their approach as a company.  Jobvite’s CEO discussed a relevant subject while also utilizing valuable time to discuss topics directly relating to his company.  In another example, Broadbean has a series of videos interviewing different satisfied clients.  This brings in both the aspects of case study and impartiality that I think are so necessary and compelling in an industry that can seem so homogeneous.

    I was hoping to start a conversation about what things SmashFly has in mind for the future, and what everyone thinks should be done in terms of advertising and marketing.  I think we definitely should use case study interviews and not just explanatory examples.  Putting a human face on the value of the product would be a great marketing strategy.  Has SmashFly ever had an appearance on a major news network?  A low expense or cost free opportunity to utilize the media in the way we do blogs by contributing and promoting would also be great.  I imagine this would reach far more viewers as well.  What does everyone think? What are your ideas?

     

  • Ariel 1:21 pm on October 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Networking for Success Using Social Media! 

    At this point in time, social media is the best thing since sliced bread. We use it for virtually everything, uploading pictures, staying connected with old friends, updating our personal information, etc. With all of the wonderful free publicity, why shouldn’t we use it for networking and to possibly be recruited into the workforce? After doing some research, there are three key social media portals to use for job search networking, lets discuss them a bit.

    LinkedIn is the most obvious use of professional networking. I personally was introduced to this site by my dad as a freshman in college. I have only recently learned how to really use it. If you don’t know what LinkedIn is, it is a professional networking site. Similar to facebook in that you upload a picture on your own personal page and have an “about me” section, unlike facebook in that it is really a live resume. With LinkedIn you update your most current position and past positions. Then you build your network by inviting current and previous colleagues, alumni, or other professional connections to yourself. A unique feature is the recommendation section. You can go in and recommend your connections for previous work that you collaborated on and they can do the same for you. This is important because it gives job seekers and recruiters the opportunity to get a little bit of perspective from others on your work. Secondly, join groups. It is simple, search for professional groups and networks that are related to your interests or demographics. Within the groups, answer the posted questions. This gets your name and ideas out there and ultimately will help you create more connections. Finally, if you are truly using the site, consider an upgrade which can better help link you to #recruiters, beware however if you downgrade later on, you will loose all of your connections and need to start over!

    Facebook, although a bit of a controversial site regarding your professional life, could be used a s a tool. Create a business page for yourself outside of your personal page. Use it as a resume and a blog. This page definitely needs to be open to the public and in order to get it out there, request your friends “like” it, hopefully then it will get to potential recruiters or others within your second or third generation networks who could help you develop your career. This page should always be kept strictly professional and show you as a businessperson. You could update it with interesting stories you found on the Internet, or give personal feedback on current news stories.

    Twitter, the quick version of facebook, could be used similarly. Although you do not need to create a business twitter, it can still be useful to use your own. Begin following companies that you are interested in, it will give you good insight into what is going on in the business. If anything strikes you as particularly intriguing, re-tweet the information. Also, instead of re-tweeting, thank the individual or company for posting or give feedback. Finally, use hash tags, which will help group your tweets on twitter and allow others with similar interests to view your posts.

    Finally, something to consider with all of these is using #search engine optimization, use key words that recruiters would use to search for you. The ultimate goal is to be found using social media so be sure to do your research on your industry and use it to your advantage!

     

  • Ariel 6:15 pm on October 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Making your Resume Your Best Friend! 

    As a senior in college, my resume is most likely my best friend for the year. As I will venture into the world of full time jobs in May, I tend to frequently wonder what #recruiters are looking for. After sitting through numerous resume critiques and reading various articles on the Internet, I have been left with very conflicting information. These are the top three conflicting areas of a resume.

    First and foremost, every resume must have an objective statement, or does it? The argument for the objective statement is that it immediately lets the recruiter know what job you are applying for. This is beneficial for niche markets, or when applying at a company where the one job in your objective statement is the only job you would be interesting in. However, as a SmashFly intern, recruitment marketing makes me question this advice. When submitting your information, would you be interested in being contacted about other potential positions that you are qualified for? By not having an objective statement, would it be possible for recruiters to place you instead of you, the objective statement writer, telling them exactly what you want?

    Secondly, the argument of the length of a resume. Personally, my resume spills over one page. According to the majority of career service representatives I have spoken with at colleges, this is a major faux pas. The major pieces of a resume include contact information, education background, volunteer and leadership experience, and most importantly your previous work experience. Placing all of this into one page can be either doing yourself a favor, or leaving out important information. Initially, I felt that every experience I had was vitally important to put on my resume, now looking at it, some of it I would rather keep off. This is where the recruiters’ advice I got comes into play; customize your resume for the job you are applying for! With a cover letter, you customize it automatically to fit the job description, now do the same with your resume. I now try to only put relevant work experience, but my resume is still spilling over! My best piece of advice here is that, most recruiters will not be offended as long as everything is relevant.

    Finally, does your GPA belong on your resume? I have been told both yes and no. When someone told me no, they said as long as you have the experience to back up your qualifications, your GPA does not matter. This makes sense, work experience is generally a better picture for most people. When I was told yes, there were a few reasons. Firstly, as a student most of your time is spent in school and recruiters want to see how well you did academically. The rule of thumb, if it is above 3.0, it should be on there. One recruiter even told me that she assumes if it isn’t on there than the candidate is hiding something. I have never put my GPA on my resume as I generally feel my experience speaks for itself (even though I have above a 3.0!).

    Wrapping everything up, I still to this day am unsure of the absolute correct way to present my resume! The few things that I am sure of is to make it clean, have proper punctuation and spell check, and to make sure I have my most up to date contact information! Thoughts on these topics are always appreciated! Happy job and intern hunting!

     

  • Tim Martinez 8:45 pm on September 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , employer branding, , job posts, , , , ,   

    Funny, Quirky, Successful – Case Studies in Employer Branding 

    Last week I discussed the costly absence of personality and style in the recruitment marketing process.  In my post I suggested some general solutions to improve the ways recruiters portray the company culture and work environment through their job posts.  The topic of candidate engagement continued to intrigue me, and I felt the need to follow up by providing some real-world context to my suggestions.  Although the examples I’m presenting don’t only pertain to job ads and descriptions, they more generally utilize great yet simple candidate engagement and employer branding  strategies.  So let’s take a brief look at the efforts of two different companies: SCVNGR and EMC.

    SCVNGR is a Google Ventures backed mobile gaming startup company with the goal of creating a game layer “on top of the world.”  The intense, quirky energy of Seth Priebatsch, creator and self-titled Chief Ninja of SCVNGR, clearly shines through in every aspect of the company – creating a great, fun, yet consistent employer brand.  If I were a candidate interested in working for SCVNGR, I would certainly check out their site and about pages.  Click on the ‘Rockstars’ tab, and you will quickly learn that rockstars are employees whose hilarious and unconventional bios fill the page.  Job titles range from names like Chief Rockstar to Professional American.  The word ‘awesome’ is pervasive throughout their website, twitter posts, and job ads – usually in reference to the qualities they look for in a candidate like, “We’re hiring people who will drive up our average level of awesome.”  Their job posts for Cambridge, MA based positions usually refer to the fact that they have bamboo hallways  that they ride scooters through to get from office to office.  Most importantly, their job posts also focus on their expectations of attitude, energy level, and motivation rather than just your typical experience requirements.  They stress the uniqueness of their positions and overall mission, while explaining the progress the company has made – instilling a sense of excitement about the future.

    So why is this so great? In my opinion, this approach to candidate engagement is vastly better at creating not only interest but lasting interest.  If I put myself in the mind of a candidate, I actually had a good time looking at the positions for this company, and I most likely will never forget about SCVNGR. Most job ads are extremely forgettable, which in my view is just bad marketing, but the ‘Rockstar’ approach has a much higher potential of creating a lasting, engaged talent network.  Of course, not every company has the same culture as SCVNGR or the allure of a young up-and-coming startup, but recruiters and companies need to understand that all candidates have a sense of humor and are most likely sociable people.  Some people have argued that professional candidates know how to see past silly words and office gimmicks, which don’t offer any true value.  I strongly disagree with this perspective. Like I stated last week, candidates are concerned with how happy they will be in their new work environment, considering it is where they will be spending a significant chunk of their lives.  The added personality in employer branding is often telling of what employees experience themselves, and only happy employees are enthusiastic and willing enough to help out with these efforts. This topic brings us to our next company.

    EMC, the well known Fortune 500 information infrastructure company, knows precisely how to create the impression that its employees are not only talented but happy.  I have stated previously that recruiters should implement various types media, especially videos that involve employees.  On a YouTube page, EMC features their employees in songs, raps, and product advertisements which all help to enhance their employer brand.  Check out this particularly well done video:

    So hats off to the SCVNGR and EMC employer branding methods, which I deem successful.  I realize that success in this sense has no relation to actual measurements or metrics from the ATS or job ads, especially since I have no way of accessing this data. However, I still stand by the idea that these methods add an entirely new element to the candidate’s perception of the company, in turn creating more interested and appropriate candidates.

     

  • Tim Martinez 10:30 pm on September 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ,   

    Candidate Engagement: What Your Job Ad Says – Doesn’t Say – About Your Company 

    As a college student gearing up to graduate in a few months, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time searching job boards and social media sites for job ads and future opportunities.  While perusing through never-ending lists of companies’ job descriptions, expectations, and requirements, I repeatedly experienced an overarching emotion, or perhaps I should say lack of emotion.  Initially I couldn’t pinpoint the culprit of my indifference, but eventually it hit me: almost every job ad says so much while saying nothing at all.

    Less cryptically speaking, job ads are generally great at describing a position and terrible at giving candidates a sense of the company’s culture and personality.  Understandably different companies have different personalities, but these differences can be advantageously addressed through the style of a job ad.  Recruiters should utilize any opportunity to distinguish their company and market their open positions as unique in character.  This in turn tells the right candidate why he or she might be an excellent fit, differentiating your job ad from others.

    Candidates are interested in more than how well their credentials and experience match up; they want to know if they will be happy in their potential new environment.  By tweaking your recruitment marketing strategy to add character to your job ads, you also benefit by creating a more interested and appropriate applicant pool and prospective talent network.  Here are a few considerations for a more successful job ad:

    • Describe the job position in the context of the overall company in order to give candidates an impression of their potential place and value in the larger picture.  This provides a more complete portrayal of the position while indirectly signifying a type of work culture to the candidate
    • Don’t be afraid to discuss what is fun about the office or position.  A candidate shouldn’t have to wonder if the work environment is friendly, so describe the social perks of being a part of the team.  Use current employees’ direct positive feedback to shape the description; this ads a sense of believability and impartiality
    • Instill a more personal tone in your job description by utilizing different forms of media.  Embed a video or include a link to the company website to a page with video descriptions of different positions and employee testimonials if you can.  If you already have these resources, don’t leave it to candidates to find them for themselves, the job ad itself should include this information

    The recruitment process is a competition, and it seems to me that similar job titles across companies translate to similar job ads.  With solid candidate engagement, recruiters have the opportunity to create successful job ads while using the same amount of space it takes to create mundane job ads.  My only question is why don’t recruiters tend include a more personal and personable element to their job ads?  Is there perhaps some aspect of the process I’m unaware of that creates this tendency?

     

  • Ariel 5:41 pm on September 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ariel Callen, , , ,   

    Ariel’s Introduction 

    Hey everyone! My name is Ariel and I am a new fall intern at SmashFly! Before I get started blogging about my experiences here at my internship, I should probably tell you a bit about myself! I am twenty-two years old and a senior at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I am currently a double major in management (concentrations finance and international business) and political science. In my free time on campus, you can generally find me in the student government office! Outside of school I spend a lot of time studying, working, and hanging out with my friends or one of my nine siblings!

    I am very excited to get started with SmashFly this semester! I hope to learn about as much as possible about SmashFly, recruitment marketing, and various other aspects of the industry. This semester I am especially excited to be able to blog about all of my learning experiences as an intern with SmashFly! Tim and I both hope you check in often and learn a thing or two about SmashFly and the recruitment marketing industry with us!

     

  • Tim Martinez 5:00 pm on September 16, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    An Introduction From Tim 

    Hello everyone! I’m excited to start my internship this fall with SmashFly and contribute to the intern blog.  It looks like past interns have done a great job, and I hope to continue the conversation while gaining some valuable experience and insight into internet marketing and the recruitment marketing industry.  I have always had an appreciation for and fascination with marketing in general and how internet marketing is a constantly changing entity with social media being the big game changer in the last 5 years or so.

    So, I’ll give you a little background on myself.  My name is Tim Martinez, and I’m a 21-year-old senior at Boston University.  My major is International Relations, which I love, but my curiosity leads me to many other preoccupations, and I’ll probably never stop striving to learn about different subjects and fields.  I would say I have a hometown, but because of my father’s career, my family moved to a different state every 3 to 4 years.  So in a sense, Boston is my home.  Outside of school and my professional life, one can usually find me exploring new routes of creativity at home or in the city.  Music above all else is my artistic passion, and I’ve played guitar since I was a kid, jumping around from project to project and taste testing disparate genres and styles.  I am particularly interested in intertwining my creative and artistic endeavors with my professional pursuits with marketing and advertising in the years to come.

    I am especially excited about how much I will learn from my internship with SmashFly, and I hope my contributions to the intern blog will help trace my progress and knowledgeability throughout the fall.  So please check in often to see what Ariel and I are up to and thinking!  I’m glad to be on board!

     

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