5 Social Media Tips for Recruiters, a la Obama

I’m not gonna get political here except to say that McCain is old as dirt. He knows nothing about the economy and even if he brings in Romney to be VP, I don’t think he would relinquish much control to the VP office.

As for Obama, his campaign’s been impressive at marketing the candidate but I’m afraid he’s just a bunch of hot air. Sure he gives a great speeches but I could see his lack of experience lead to the reversal of some policies that I believe are keeping us safe at home and my PATH train from blowing up as I commute to NYC every morning.

But I digress… the reason for this post is to point out a move by the Obama campaign to leverage social media to engage voters and drive site traffic; something employers need to better understand as they look to engage talent and drive traffic to their career sites.

If you’re looking for new ways to attract and engage talent and drive that talent to your career site to apply to jobs, watch and video or further engage in your employer brand in some other way, take a tip from the Obama camp. Leverage LinkedIn Answers.

What is Obama doing?
His campaign is asking questions related to their agenda. This is building interest in Obama, engaging voters, attracting them to the campaign’s site and probably generated new fund raising leads. Obama's question is currently featured on LinkedIn users' homepages. It leads to this question which links to this landing page on the Obama site.

What can employers do?
Simple. Here are 5 Social Media Tips for Recruiters looking to leverage LinkedIn Answers.

1. Be active in the LinkedIn Answers community and add value

Being an active member provides credibility. Remember, answering questions often provides better site traffic and branding than asking questions. Don’t ask questions like, ‘Anyone want to work in sales.’ Only answer questions if you can offer a decent answer.

2. Always include a link to your career site or relevant landing page

The Obama camp linked to a landing page with a lead generation for and video. This is a perfect example of what to do.

3. Never pitch.

We know. Your company is a great place to work. I’ll figure that out on my own. Let your answers stand on their own.

4. Try to get your employees involved, measure success and reward

Install analytics on your site so that you can see where you traffic is coming from, when an employee is responsible for answering a question and leading traffic to your career site, compensate him/her. Bonus the employee if he/she achieves an expert rating in any category.

It’s not as hard as you think to put value on career site traffic. Think about it. You can look into your job board stats and payments and figure out what you pay monster, cb or hotjobs per job view or site visitor.

Look into it. Figure out what you’re currently paying per visitor. Set aside some budget, taken from your job boards. Id suggest taking it from monster since hotjobs and cb are beating up on them and are therefore less flexible to day with pricing.

Take that added budget, put it aside for rewarding your employees’ efforts in linkedin answers that drive traffic to your career site. Review traffic at the end of the quarter and compensate those employees whom were most active or whom generated the most traffic.

5. Monitor the LinkedIn Answers RSS feed for terms related to your niche

With rss you can keep tabs on the questions and answers that are most valuable to you and most likely to provide the best return. Subscribe the high value feeds. This will keep you from having to search for topics all the some and sift through the same clutter.

That’s it.

Yahoo! Answers works well too, but I’ve found the LinkedIn audience to be less spammy, more engaged and more qualified.

If you have questions or something to add about your own experience with recruiting with social media and answer service like these, be sure to comment.

You can read the my answers on LinkedIn Answers here.

Frevvo…possibly simple career site heaven

I may have just found the an awesome tool for creating simple but functional career sites and landing pages(a must for employers executing paid search engine marketing campaigns)...frevvo.

...more to come after I check it out completely.

Dice giving away free gas

Monster's sucking wind.

CareerBuilder's giving a thorough ass whipping to the field.

HotJobs plans to release SmartAds for recruitment.

And Dice is giving away free gas.

This was recently forwarded to me...

Want some good news about gasoline prices? You can get TWO MONTHS OF FREE GAS when you buy one year of Dice service.*

We are currently offering a 40% discount on an annual recruitment package for first-time customers. You'll also receive two months of free gas if you sign up by June 13.* This package includes full access to our growing resume database of technology and engineering professionals and five concurrent job posting slots on Dice.com.

Why Dice is the right choice:

• 2 million unique tech professionals visit Dice.com each month
• 71% of candidates have more than five years of experience; 47% have more than 10 years
• 20% increase in online applications over last year

If you're fed up with filling up at the pump, Dice can help ease your strain and connect you with uniquely skilled tech candidates.

Update (June 13)

Chad & Cheezhead covered this topic among others in their most recently published podcast. Joel brought up an interesting issue. Is this legal?

Shally celebrates Arbita merger with dance

Congrats to Don and Shally...

It’s Memorial Day weekend and we’re unprepared.

It’s that time of year but unlike last year my brother and I have not been doing push-ups all week. We’re unprepared.

It looks like this summer both of us will be hoping to not run into anyone we know on the beaches of Belmar, Pt. Pleasant, Ortley and if the summer throws us a curveball…Sleaszside Heights.

The things we’re looking forward to this year are stuffed peppers, fried meatballs, and prosciutto on the beach, crabs at the house, sharing a single bedroom with 7 people, old-school nike's, spending a week’s salary on gas, nj turnpike traffic jams and running into these guys…

Warning: not suitable for work

Recruiter publicly insults young female sales rep, falls flat on glamour shot

* Update: This post has been edited from its original version. The recruiter's name was removed because he responded professionally both on and off-line.

Note to bloggers, if you ever post a glamour shot of yourself on your blog and decide to publicly insult a young female sales rep...get your facts straight.

Unfortunately for Bill, this wasn’t the case when he picked on a young hotjobs sales rep in his post, ‘Hotjob’s Failed Attempt to Steal Me from Monster.’

His post fell short of calling the girl an idiot and giving himself a medal for knowing more about job board traffic than she did.

Since the girl, whom I don’t know has no way to defend herself as publicly as she’s been ridiculed. I figured I'd point out a few things that are wrong with Bill’s post.

First: He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

His original post (it has since been changed) quoted Google Analytics as a source for major job board traffic reporting. That’s wrong. Analytics does not track and report major job board traffic.

Second: He didn't admit he was wrong. 
I commented on his original post, pointing out that Analytics does not report on this traffic.

Rather than comment back, he edited the original post; erasing the error, never admitting he was wrong. Weak.

Third: Even his fix is wrong.
His post now references Google Trends as the source of job board traffic reporting.
Wrong again.

Google Trends does not report on traffic to any site, let alone major job boards.

It estimates the number of search queries for a particular term, which is in no way an indication of job board traffic.

My point is this…
If you’re going to insult someone publicly to prove how smart you are, you should

1. Know what you’re talking about
2. Admit when you’re wrong
3. Go after someone who can defend herself just as publicly

5 Simple Ways to Recruit Passive Candidates with Your Career Site

Is your candidate pool looking a bit shallow lately? If you want to recruit more passive candidates, take a good look at your career site. It is possible that a few minor changes could quickly increase your prospects. Below are just five simple ways to boost your employment brand and draw in those highly coveted passive candidates.

1.    Start Recruiting on the Home Page – Don't bury the career section deep within your official company site. You want to appear welcoming to those who otherwise don't realize you are hiring. If you do link to a career section from the homepage, make sure that link is visible and not placed at the bottom on the page in a tiny font size.

2.    Be Transparent – Are you using ambiguous terminology when leading people to the career site? Being clever here could actually hurt you, as people are scanning the page for the words "Job" and "Career." A link that reads, "Become Part of the Crew!" could be easily overlooked.

3.    Avoid Generic Stock Images – Do you have a stock photo of two businesspeople shaking hands on your career page? People are now design-savvy enough to spot a stock image when they see one. It looks insincere and can be a turn-off for candidates. You should use images of happy employees, but go the extra mile and obtain pictures of people who actually work for the company.

4.    Display Job Openings – Don't tease candidates with a career site and then fail to post available job openings. Passive candidates who are casually surfing your site need to be enticed with something tangible. Ensure that this section is regularly updated and does not go stale.

5.    Post Salaries – Never post a job opening without an accompanying salary range. This is quite possibly the best way to entice passive candidates to make a move. Companies often omit this bit of information, perhaps in hopes that they will negotiate for a lower pay scale. However, top professionals demand to know what they are getting into and will often ignore a job posting without a salary.

* This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of becoming a pediatric nurse. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

An interesting perspective on Milennials, a dark one. Or is it?

REVIEW: ERE Expo Spring, 2008

Dave Manaster and team once again put together a great conference.

ERE’s Expos are hands down the best recruiting conferences for a number of reasons. They always have a great mix of people in attendance, engaging content and entertainment.

It consistently has the best ratio of recruiting professionals per vendor. So it’s rich with opportunities for recruiting professionals to network and learn.

For vendors the well attended conference offers opportunities to engage new prospects and win business opportunities. This is contrary to the problem that OnRec faced last year in San Francisco.

CONTENT
Keynote speaker, Dr. Gene Stanaland was great.

The old-timer is an economics professor at Auburn. He speaks with a southern drawl and has a unique way of explaining economics through storytelling. He supports the points he makes with jokes. His presentation was as fun as it was entertaining.

The same can’t be said for the speakers that immediately followed him. Casting Director Miranda Rivers didn’t know her audience. Her speech was more of an insight into what it’s like on a movie set than it was rich with recruiting tips or best practice.

FedEx VP of Talent Acquisition, John Leech successfully acted out an hour long commercial for FedEx. I don't think very many people walked out with a better understanding of how they can build their own employment brands. 

A privacy discussion panel with Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler and privacy activist Deborah Pierce sparked some mildly heated debate. ERE chose well to pit Fowler and his sterling silver puzzle piece cuff-links against the clearly liberal and well informed privacy activist.  I think Deborah got the best of him. The ERE’s expo blog has more on this.

Another cool session was the one on start-ups. The two start-ups that I thought were most likely to succeed were Path101 and VisualCV. JobScore’s CEO was enthusiastic and sweaty which I’m always happy to see in a CEO pitching his early stage venture but ultimately I think the sharing model is flawed.

ENTERTAINMENT
Last but not least…the charity poker tournament was a huge success. ERE raised over $13,000 for charity. Jason Davis and Dave Manaster did a great job pulling this off. I took third place.

Search engine optimization rap video

This is good...