You’re on LinkedIn – congratulations!
So, how big is your network?
Without going into a rant on quality vs. quantity (who says we can’t have BOTH?), let’s take a different angle on the size of your LinkedIn network…at your current company, where do you rank in terms of number of connections?
Do you know off the top of your head? Why not?
If you don’t know where you rank at your current company in terms of LinkedIn network connections, here’s how to find out: Continue reading
After recently writing about moving beyond the hype of social media and recruiting, I took some time to reflect quite a bit on the topic, and focused a critical eye on exactly what “Social Recruiting” is.
While there is no shortage of what people think “Social Recruiting” is, quite frankly – I’m not satisfied with any of the definitions and explanations I’ve found – most are too surface level and one-dimensional, as well as inaccurate, in my opinion. It seems that a large portion of what many people seem to be happy to accept as “Social Recruiting” is really nothing more than traditional job posting and employer marketing and branding in a 2.0 environment.
However, I can definitely appreciate the challenge of trying to nail down an accurate and concise definition of “Social Recruiting” – it’s quite the slippery fish. So rather than trying to answer the question of “What is Social Recruiting?,” I’m going to tell you what I think Social Recruiting is NOT. Continue reading
I’m very much an anti-hype, anti-bandwagon person.
I neither like to nor want to get caught in the undertow of the emotional rush associated with being excited about something that nearly everyone else seems to be excited about, where everyone celebrates the new and “cool factor” with little-to-no critical thought.
When that next bright and shiny object comes along, it’s all too easy to be blinded by it.
Rest assured I have not been blinded by #socialrecruiting. I’ve been using social media for a little while now (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogging), purposefully remaining calm and collected on the subject – choosing to explore the true potential rather than get caught up in the hype.
So whether you’re a social recruiting evangelist, hater or n00b (I’ve been all 3, not necessarily in that order), you’ll find some value in this post because I am going to strip away all of the hype surrounding social recruiting, demystify it, and cut straight to the heart of the real opportunities associated with using social media for sourcing and recruiting. Continue reading
Do you ever use social networks to such as LinkedIn to search for people with experience in a specific industry?
If you do, I can almost guarantee you that you are not finding everyone you’re looking for.
How?
There are intrinsic issues associated with any user generated content, especially when it comes to how users of social media identify themselves, and they can actually prevent you from finding the people you’re looking for. Continue reading
With the rise in companies effectively leveraging SEM (Search Engine Marketing)/SEO (Search Engine Optimization), vertical job search engines such as Indeed and SimplyHired, and social media campaigns, it seems as if many feel that the ROI of posting jobs on the major job boards has steadily declined. Perhaps this is where the strong anti-job board sentiment comes from within the recruiting and staffing industry.
However, there is another side to the job board coin – the resume databases. Personally, when I think of the job boards, I think of their resume databases – not job posting. Job posting is job posting – whether it’s on a corporate website, paid job board, a free board, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Indeed. While it can definitely work, it’s a passive and reactive technique that has a low ROI in most cases with many respondents who do not meet the basic qualificiations of the position posted.
As the positive buzz surrounding social media and social networking sites continues to build and the negative buzz surrounding the major job boards seems to rise, I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the major job boards stepped out of the proverbial box and took an evolutionary step forward. Continue reading
At least for now, statistics appear to support that job boards are either more widely used to find jobs, or simply more effective at landing people jobs than social networking sites.
According to a recent LinkedIn poll, 4310 people responded and 22% of the respondents used a major (Monster, Careerbuilder, ec.) or niche job board (Dice, The Ladders, etc.) to find their last job vs. 6% who indicated that they landed their last job through the use of a social networking site (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.).
I follow a number of recruiting blogs as well as many sourcers and recruiters on Twitter and I see a growing trend of job board bashing – typically comparing them (very) unfavorably to social networking sites and applications.
I love and leverage social networking as much as the the next recruiting professional, but I refuse to just blindly follow the crowd or jump on the bandwagon when it comes to anything. With all of the buzz about social media and so many people running away from and disparaging the job boards, I am going to step out of the crowd and try to figure out where this perspective that job boards = old/bad, social networking = new/good comes from, because to me, some of the reasoning doesn’t add up.
JOB BOARDS: JOB POSTING vs RESUME DATABASES
First, let me say that when I think of the job boards, I think of their resume databases – not job posting. Job posting is job posting – whether it’s on a paid job board, a free board, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Indeed. While it can definitely work, it’s a passive and reactive technique that has a low ROI in most cases with many respondents who do not meet the basic qualificiations of the position posted.
I ACTUALLY USE BOTH JOB BOARDS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
One thing I want to make clear is that I actually have access to and use major paid job board resume databases, and I also use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It is very important to realize that some people who speak negatively about the major job boards actually don’t use them. I am not really sure how someone can review or form an opinion of a product they don’t use. I’ll leave that for you to figure out.
EXCELLENT BLOG POST
This well-presented post was brought to my attention via Twitter recently: Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Recruit Thru Social Networks, and I agree with most of the points made and reasons presented. However, because there is an undertone of job boards = old/bad and social networks = new/good, it offers a good platform to me to offer some counterpoints. Continue reading
