The Recruiting Blog | People First Recruiting

Today's blog post is brought to you by our Information Technology Recruiter, Marny Barnes.

I am sure you have heard the cliché, “War for Talent”. I hate to give wind to that sail but it is true. There is a war for talent and in the growing world of information technology it is made even harder by this digital, web-connected world we live in.

There are LOTS of recruiters out there doing the same thing I am doing day in and day out - directly headhunting potential technologically talented candidates straight off the internet.  I have heard from many of these candidates that they get a number of calls on a daily basis.  What I don’t hear often is that the calls are relevant or anything less than a nuisance.  Not only are they receiving multiple calls weekly and even daily, they are receiving calls that are sometimes not appropriate to what they are currently doing. Too often I hear that the roles are way too junior, too senior and in some cases, not related to their current job description at all! I have been told by these same candidates that they have minimized their online presence to be “harder to find” specifically to reduce the number of calls from recruiters.  So how could I be different?

Four years ago when I first started recruiting for Information Technology, I realized just how important it was to make sure I had a strong online brand and presence.  I knew that I wanted to be the recruiter that my candidates and clients could trust, engage with, relate to and “know” before we have even met.  I was in a meeting with a client that had gone pretty well but it was not outstanding by any means.  At the end of the meeting the client asked if I was the photographer by the same name that he had found online.  I hesitantly confirmed that this was true.  The client smiled and started asking all kinds of technically related questions; what camera did I use, how did I come up with this or that idea.  The conversation went on for about another half hour and at the end I felt we had truly connected – and I left with a new IT search.

The situation with the client above helped me come to the realization that in order to best connect with the IT community, I needed to be where they were.  They are online and so I need to be too.  Why shouldn’t I be giving them the opportunity to get to know me before I need them and more importantly before they need me?  It was very apparent that I needed to focus on building a transparent brand that allowed my network to really understand what I do and to share with them just how excited I am to work with them. One of the most important parts of being a recruiter is getting talented candidates to open up so I can help them find the right job FOR THEM. Building a strong online presence as an IT Recruiter became a priority.  I wanted to offer others the opportunity to learn enough about me, to talk with me, so that when we sat down in an interview, there was already a relationship formed.  I wanted to offer common ground, similar interests and a relaxed open atmosphere.

Thanks to the online community I have been connecting with, my network of IT candidates is thriving.  I love finally meeting clients that I have been conversing with online and I enjoy meeting IT candidates that know as much about me as I know about them.  I am excited to be a part of the way we do business in this ever changing market.  What makes my job incredible is the opportunity to share what I love about technology with these candidates and more importantly to learn as much as I can about what makes them tick!  What are they passionate and excited about?  What about their jobs makes and keeps them happy?  As a recruiter, it is so important to me that both candidates and clients get exactly what they are looking for out of working with me; “The Perfect Fit”!  I love my job and I want to help you love your job too.

This network is also a huge benefit to my clients.  When I advertise a new career opportunity, my network has been integral to helping me spread the word.  Twitter retweets and LinkedIn shares have brought me some of the most amazing clients and candidates I’ve had the pleasure of working with. From Skullspace to the Secret Handshake Society, Twitter to LinkedIn, I have been learning the best places where I can contribute and make connections.  I understand the power of targeted recruiting but I now also understand the power of being visible, of sharing information, of engaging in conversations and the power of digital relationships.

There is no one magic formula to recruiting.  It is a constantly changing recipe of targeted calls, networking and just being present in all the right places; physical or virtual.  And speaking of virtual, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter @MarnyBarnes or LinkedIn.

~ Marny Barnes

I am still very surprised to come across people tasked with hiring and recruiting who have not caught on to how beneficial the social media world is to recruit talent from and to promote a company brand through.  We have been using LinkedIn for the last 6 years and have been more active in other social media platforms for about a year and a half now and I can comfortably say we are realizing our return on investment.

This next comment will come as no surprise to many of the companies that I have had the opportunity to work with – traditional recruitment methods no longer work.  On their own. 

Yes, paper advertising still has its place, as do online job boards, but if you are not using tools liked LinkedIn then you are missing out on a very affordable and highly effective method of social recruitment.

How do I define social recruitment?  It is many things.  It’s candidate attraction, it’s brand awareness and it’s listening.  Social recruiting isn’t just about reaching out to candidates and recruiting them.  It’s where you can literally spend about an hour a day promoting why your organization is a great place to work or to promote the new job opportunities you have.  The reality is social recruiting takes patience and effort and is not an immediate result type investment.  It takes time to build awareness in the online social world but eventually you will start to see more people visiting your web or career site, or reaching out to you and asking questions.

Another fabulous tool in our social recruiting arsenal, (of which there really is an art to) is the position job profiles – the ones you write up and publish to the world.  When we create a job profile for our clients, we tell them that this is our attraction tool.  It is the marketing piece we use to excite candidates about that amazing career opportunity. It’s not enough to get them to stop for just a second to click open that document and read it.  They need to understand what’s in it for them, they need to get excited about the role and so if you can get as clear and creative as possible in your job profiles, then you will have a better chance at attracting the right type of candidates. 

The job profile serves another purpose though. Think of how you may go about purchasing a new appliance or finding that four star hotel for your next vacation.  Many of us will go right to the internet and enter a string of words, perhaps like this:  ’I want a four star hotel in Barbados’.  What comes up?  A set of fine tuned results.  Now translate that to a candidate searching for a new job.  They will do the same thing when it comes to job hunting online. ’HR Manager jobs in Winnipeg’ might be the words they use.  The more relevant keywords you have in your job profile and the more places online that you have it posted, the more likely that profile will show up in their search results.  A well written job profile is absolutely essential to a well executed recruitment.  Again, it isn’t enough to post a job to a job board with a paragraph that simply says, ‘Looking for a new HR Manager’ and then follow it up with terminology that is only specific to your business.  If someone isn’t familiar with your business, they certainly won’t be familiar with your terminology.  Think about the candidate and put yourself in their shoes.

Social Recruiting is more than just using social media to find candidates, it is about showing why a candidate should work for you in the first place.  Why you are different.  I am not claiming for a second that social media in itself is the end all and be all of recruiting nor have we, ourselves mastered the techniques of recruiting or the art of job profiles.  It is a learning process every moment.  But a couple years ago, after much consideration and discussion, we took the leap into putting our time into social media and thought it was either going to be successful or not.  The results are paying off. 

Now I will finish with some shameless self promotion. On October 23rd and 24th we will be at Connect 2012, The Degree of Difference conference held by the Human Resource Management Association of Manitoba (HRMAM).  It is a two day conference where we have been invited to discuss and share with the members and guests our experience with social recruiting; the ups, the downs and the how to’s.  If you are going to be attending, we would love to share more with you so stop by The Social Recruiting Lounge (booth 36) in the exhibit hall and let’s talk!

And if you can’t be there then talk to us through Twitter with the hashtag #HRConnect2012.

We tweet, we blog and we Facebook (is that a verb now?). 

Karin and I still consider ourselves newbies to this whole social media arena.  Two years ago we decided to take the plunge and immerse ourselves into the social media world with books, webinars and consulting with the experts.  Through the excitement of new ways to reach out to clients and candidates we were on our way but we still felt we were missing something.  Sure we have a Facebook page, but what do we put on it?  Sure, we have Twitter but what do we tweet out?  This was when the realization hit us that there was another world in which social media could not exist without.  Content.  That realization was made when we attended the Content Marketing World conference in 2011.  Create our own content?  Who knew?  We left re-energized, focused and excited – high fiving each other all the way home.

It is now content that we focus our efforts on.  Whether it’s Karin writing her very first whitepaper, pushing out blog posts and putting together ideas for a certain little purple guy, content has been the soothing balm of our social media anxiety.  We have answered the question of “what do we tweet out?” 

Now we just have to answer the question “how do we find the time?”

Well, we are still working on that.  Count yourself lucky if you have one or two people who you can work with on your social media strategies.  Who despite trial and tribulation and fear due to uncertainty will plow through the learning with you.  I am lucky that I have Karin in this regard.  I have a Manager who saw the potential and who got just as excited about it as I did.  With her partnership, mentorship and encouragement I am now fulfilling a role within our recruiting division that is pretty cool.  Along with sourcing candidates, I lead our social media and content strategies and sometimes, when it’s just right, I can do both at the same time. 

We have learned a lot and the most important lesson in my opinion?  Never stop learning.  With the speed at which social media moves we are all students of it, though there are some who have been students just a wee bit longer than most of us and it is those people that we really want to thank.  Karin does a great job of mentioning those people in her Recruiting, meet social media post.  Head on over and read about the people who helped us along the way.

Annette

Blogging, tweeting, Facebook, and LinkedIn are really quite new to me and People First Recruiting.   Yet more often now, we are getting questions and requests for advice about how individuals or firms can begin their own social journey.   I can’t tell you how surprising this is to us given how new we are at this.  Yet maybe, just maybe the hard work and energy we have been putting into this is starting to pay off - because people are noticing.  Besides it’s great that we can help and when it comes to social media, that’s really what it is all about.
In fact, that was one of the first lessons we learned about social media – be helpful to others.  Share and help others with tips, knowledge and at times advice in the business you consider yourself to be good at.  In our case it’s recruiting.  Helping others by sharing information online (for free) is the essence of this fabulous new way of recruiting candidates and growing our recruiting business.

So for this blog I want to give a shout out to a few of the organizations and individuals who have helped us along the way:

• Matthew Shepherd, a Social Media consultant.  He was our first  “live instructor”.  He showed us the way and set us on the path by teaching us about the various social channels and the ones that are the most appropriate for our business; @MatShepSEO
• Colleen Holloway and Colin Whitney at ThinkShift, our creative, energetic partners who helped us bring life and identify to our brand as well as our beloved Purple Squirrel; @twistntoad and @ColinWhitney
• Content Marketing Institute and the Content Marketing World conference in 2011 – this is where Annette Kohut (our Social and Content Leader) and I had our AHA moment.  This place was where the reason for us taking this social journey in the first place all came together;
• Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion.  A passionate business owner that embraced blogging a few years ago.  He was a speaker at a conference I attended and gave me the inspiration I needed to begin blogging myself; @TheSalesLion
• Sociable! A book authored by Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger.  First book I read which put social media and content into perspective for me.

The reality is we are beginners still in training, we’re taking risks and learning through trial and error.   We receive great, and at times not so great feedback and comments yet we remain fiercely committed to this because we believe it is essential to our clients, candidates and our overall business success.  Plus, it’s fun – we wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
One of the most frequent questions asked is “how do you find the time” and honestly we are still working at this every day.  For me though I am lucky I have a fabulous Social and Content Manager who is also our Talent Sourcer, the amazing Annette Kohut.  Take some time to visit her post Newbies on the social recruiting block, about her experience and thoughts.

Karin