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Tag >> social networking

Leading entry-level recruitment outsourcing provider GradWeb, has been selected to provide branding and creative design plus recruitment services including recruitment advertising, online recruitment system, candidate management and application screening for the ‘Track and Train’ internship scheme.

The Track & Train scheme is designed to give up to 100 graduates employment experience and training to help further their careers. It’s a nationwide scheme funded by Network Rail and supported by 28 companies across the rail sector and aimed at people who have graduated from university in the last 2 years. The entire programme lasts for 18 months, and is structured to give graduates an insight into each of the main elements of the rail industry. Successful candidates will start their first placement in April 2012.

 

Effective Recruitment Advertising

The branding and recruitment advertising campaign designed to promote Track & Train and to attract candidates to enrol for the scheme has been devised and created by GradWeb’s Intelligent Attraction team. The first part of this process was to develop the Track & Train brand. As an entirely new entity that represents 27 companies across the rail sector, GradWeb developed the creative concept for the Track & Train name, logo, and branding for the campaign to be used across all marketing vehicles.


I have been thinking a lot about job boards recently, as both a customer and a jobseeker.   In these socially enabled times, it strikes me that the job board user experience should be something like this:

Jobs are displayed in easy on the eye tag clouds, instead of ordered lists we know are manipulated by the recruitment organisations who post them.  Jobs are highlighted to me by other job seekers and I can rank them by most viewed, highest rated or user defined tags.  It’s a visual experience, not a data driven one.

I can tag each job myself, just like I can currently tag the rest of my social life – my pictures, my bookmarks and so on – knowing that all my fellow jobseekers are doing the same.  This rich user tagging is doing a way better job of delivering me relevant jobs than the job board search facility can.

What's more, I can connect with my social friends on the site, directly, along with other job seekers whom I don't know. Yet.  The feature that flags the profiles of people who are also looking for a job in my specialism or area takes care of that.

It introduces me to others in the community who also happen to be looking for a job in the same area as me. We can swap notes, compare opportunities, give advice and extend our job-seeking network.  And of course, make some life long friends along the way.




10 days to go before I get on the big bird to Chicago and then a bus to Madison to join the TruCrew and a great line-up of track leaders  and participants to share knowledge at TruUsa .  I am leading some tracks (Job Board 2020, Culture Clash, JIT Sourcing)  and hope to pile into many others while there.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the future of traditional conferences, the Unconference movement and the more ad hoc ‘conferences' that we have on social media gatherings on Twitter with #hashtags like #TNL. Check out the radio show that Tru co-founder Bill Boorman and I conducted on Tuesday this week on hashtags and a range of Twitter tips from #mrbill

I was one of 3 speakers at a ‘traditional' event today, hosted by Recruitment Consultant Magazine , in Manchester (that is England, not New Hampshire). We ran the same event a couple of weeks ago in London (England, not Ontario) Recruitment Conference IT and Technology 2010 #recconfit2010  You might have seen my exciting effort at breaking the ice with audience in London.

Targert audience for both events was professional recruitment consultants (agencies), along with a smattering of technology suppliers and media types.  

I had the pleasure of leading off with a presentation on Social Media (a recurring theme, as I had the same slot at this conference a year ago). Raymond Pennie (@rpennie) of Kamanchi followed talking about creating effective strategies (with some focus on the impact of technology) and Felix Wetzel (@FelixWetzel) of Jobsite (a major #TruLondon sponsor) discussed candidate and advertiser behaviours (now and future) along with sharing some interesting research

Why do I bring this up when I am supposed to be writing about #TruUsa?  In one word: Engagement

I have spoken at, chaired or led more than 200 conferences, workshops or events over the last 10 years or so.  Which ones have given me the most buzz, the most satisfaction?  Other than Global Recruitment Conference 2008 , which I organised and chaired in Amsterdam, with an outstanding group of global thought leaders and delegates, I have to say that it has been those events where I set up or ran workshops/breakout groups. Why? Because in that environment, you get the engagement of every delegate/attendee - either with you as a session leader or with the others in the room.

talking headsIn a sense, today confirmed that. We had an excellent group of delegates, professional and committed to their industry and their business, eager to learn from the 3 Talking Heads and the hosts.  All 3 of us tried to engage with the delegates (none of us are what might be considered wallflowers when it comes to speaking to an audience).  We had a few in the audience who were willing to discuss their company, strategy, questions and experiences. Feedback from delegates at the breaks and the post event drinks was excellent, delegates were happy, had learned and gathered real value from the day. The organisers (Jim and Gary) had two successful events and the sponsors/exhibitors did well.  But for Felix, Raymond and I, it felt a bit like an opportunity lost - for the delegates to engage in real debate and discussion with each other throughout the afternoon (although it did happen during the breaks).

Unconference sessionThat brings me full circle to Engagement - the real essence of an Unconference.  Track leaders start a conversation, hoping to guide it a bit and sometimes act as a referee if required.  The participants in the track drive the discussion/debate -its direction may go places other discussions just cannot reach.  In any session, the engagement of individuals - with each other, with a track leader or two (if we are lucky) is exhilarating.  Learning what challenges others have (Hey, look at me, I'm not so far behind) or successes someone is experiencing (Hey, if he/she can do that, we sure can!) - make it worthwhile flying 4,000 miles and taking a 3 hour bus ride to get to Madison. As it was worth it for the North Americans who flew over for #truLondon.

I can't wait. See you all there - or on video feeds on RCEURO, hashtag #TruUsa, twitter posts @rceuro, @alanwhitford or whatever means we come up with to share the experience.

As #mrbill says, it isn't just about the conference, it is about the conversations that happen for weeks leading up to an event and months afterwards. That is what I call: Engagement.

Picking up on the reports from the Milch & Zucker conference , A Journey from Attraction to Selection.  Still have a few to do, and will bring them out over the next few days.  Pictures and video are starting to appear on the M&Z site as well.

Opening up the afternoon sessions, with Miodrag Perin of Bertelsmann, New York office. Met him at dinner and found out he did his graduate degree at my alma mater, SUNY at Binghamton.  More evidence of how small the world really is.
Mio Perrin
This was fun, as Bertelsman has done a lot of interesting things, including setting up a specific Recruitment brand and website. Mio is a dynamic and engaging speaker.

A couple of key concepts if you are going to reach out with Social Media as a recruitment media:

  • What works for marketing also works for us
  • We want to be where the people already are

Tested the idea of video applications, by filming his own team - proving internally how it can work and what actually has to be done.  See the video of Mio on the RCEuro Video section.

Points out that individuals are spending lots of time on the networks (compared to amount of time on a company website), where content and information is relevant.

Create Your Own Career
Inside our thoughts, inside our heads - everyday there are tons of ideas, phrases, concepts that should be shared and used in candidate attraction.

Social Media is no longer a 'nice to have'.  It is a necessity.

What was the Bertelsmann journey?

18 months ago, on Flickr and the business networks like Xing, LinkedIn as individuals, not as company.  

Resistance from internal colleagues 18 months ago:

  • Nobody Twitters
  • What does this have to do with recruiting?
  • What a waste of time
  • We should have our own video player

BUT
We want to be where the candidates are
Decided to integrate sharing tools such as "tell a friend" into website  and
integrate various analytics into the website to deploy and track activities

Developed the tag line and the complete recruitment website:
Create Your Own Career 2.0 by getting inspired.

What has been the result?

  • New career web sites in Germany and internationally
  • 38,000 unique visitors  per month
  • Top results of ranking, No. 1 in US, Europe, CEE
  • (Potential Power Ranking 2009)

What does his social landscape look like today?
Blogs, maps, chat, self assessment, videos of real employees on YouTube, Flickr

Created presence on the major Social Media sites:




























Great shows today

Bill Boorman's online radio show , in its third week had great guests from US and UK. This week's show features a collection of veteran recruiters discussing what clients want from the current market.

Listen to the full broadcaset in our Video/Audio stream: ON AIR - Ready for Lift Off. Or you can follow the link to to the BlogTalkRadio site and listen/download. Check out the first two shows either on our site or on the BlogTalkRadio site.

 

Listen to Billboorman on Blog Talk Radio


 

It's been some time since I last blogged as Alan and I decided that we needed to rebuild and re-brand the Beta of Recruitment Community Europe and at the same time build our Pan European members and marketing database.

This week I was fortunate enough to be a speaker at the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam. It was also great to spend a couple of days at the conference with fellow speaker, Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting, a true thought leader in this space.

The event was put on by Thys Spragers and his team at KREM , one of Holland's leading consultancies in this space. With over 190 attendees in this current climate, it  shows the interest in the topic and also reflected the quality of the speaker line up KERM had put together.

The morning saw two true visionaries in the social media space. The first speaker was Jeremiah Owyang , Senior Analyst at Forrester, blogger and commentator on the sector. Second was Urs Gasser , Executive Director Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.


Wow, interesting series of blogs/articles out there on this topic.

I would love to see our blogging and social network experts like An de Jonghe, Ricardo Risamasu, Peter Gold, Bas van de Haterd all leap into this fray.

Check out: Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watch , who started this off this week relative to a PR 'expert' who advised on the use of Twitter and Facebook.

Then Jason Gorham has picked it up and run with it as it relates to an 'expert' in digital recruitment advertising.

This topic stream could be related to any type of 'expert consulting' in our and other industries. How many of us who do have the expertise from actually using the products/services/strategies have been pushed aside by a client/prospect because we do not come from one of the 'big name' companies?


Bracknell Forest council
Janet Berry

Bummer, just closed the browser window and lost the entire presentation blog

Will try and remember what I already wrote.

Council has Facebook pages and Twitter pages.

On Twitter: 55 following, 87 followers, 210 updates

Both link to the Council career pages

Council has intentionally moved to online, with both their career site and Jobsgopublic.com

Reduced their overall spend on recruitment advertising by moving to direct sourcing. Almost no local press jobs advertising, other than lineage for lower level jobs.

The real key for me of what Janet has done:
She has analysed and researched the existing staff, the potential marketplace for staff and the potential impact of trying to reach the GenY universe.

A great chart mapping:
GenY, GenX, Baby Boomers and Veterans/ mapped against national averages within the employment community.

They analysed what will attract GenY employees
Then analysed what are likely to be barriers to attracting GenY - including internal culture and processes.

Then develop the candidate attraction strategies to match the real requirements.

Challenges of promoting web 2.0 technology
Facebook advertising - only reaching those on Facebook
BFC employees cannot access Facebook at work

Add on ideas
Informal networking
20-30 % of hires by word of mout

Include the messages about Facebook to staff comms, and ask them to add BFC to their personal pages

Future - What will Janet do in 2009?

  • Emphasise and enhance the initiatives already started for Geny
  • Section and team branding
  • Use SEM
  • Influence the Baby Boomer managers
  • Measure and monitor where the jobs are being initially seen

 


 

Josh Smith of Facebook leads off the afternoon session. Lots of stats, so will only give you a few:

  • 150 Million users globally
  • 800 new registrations daily
  • UK has 1 million new users per month
  • 25% of audience is over 35
  • 65% of UK internet population join Facebook
  • 50% of members return daily
  • 25 minutes per day on the site
  • average 2 vists per day
  • 55/45 split between male/female

OK, enough of those statistics :-)

How is Facebook evolving as a recruitment medium?

Targeted marketing is the key.



For sometime I have been wondering when will we, with all the activity and talk about Social Networks, reputation management and "candidate mismanagement", see a "new business" model, the professional on-line reputation career marketer.

 

Michael Arrington and the wonderful Tech Crunch picked up on the fact that Britney Spears is hiring an on-line media manager,

 


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