Whether you like it or not, hirers are using social networks to screen job applicants. This video infographic from Reppler sheds some light on how recruiters are using social media today to screen prospective employees.
Reppler spoke to 300 hiring professionals to map out their behavior on social networking. The results were that more than 90% of employers and recruiters have visited a potential candidate’s profile on a social network as part of the screening process.
Are you using the internet to try and recruit staff? Or perhaps you are simply looking to research the competition? In today’s economy everyone is clamouring for recognition online be it through a Twitter account, using Facebook, LinkedIn, or through search databases. It is much easier for you as an employer to get the dirt…
I will assume that you have already crafted a personal brand statement and you may even have used it a few times. Before you spray every social media outpost with it, take a few minutes to go through this checklist to make sure it does you justice.
Here are seven hallmarks of an effective personal brand statement:
1. The length of one out-breath
You should be able to take a deep breath and then comfortably deliver your statement. If it’s any longer than this, you risk not making that impact you were looking for so chop it down.
2. The WOW-factor
Just like any performance, your personal brand statement should be received with a mixture of surprise and delight. If this isn’t the case, you are probably saying something very similar to your peers. Make it unique and you’ll evoke the WOW on people’s faces.
3. An eight-year-old understands it
Or a four-year-old if you are really tough on yourself. Your statement should never contain any technical terms or jargon, it should be in plain English and touching on the lowest common denominator. Test it on your children and see how you fare, can they tell you exactly what benefit and value you add?
4. Yours and only yours
Can you be sure that your statement is unique? Well and easy way to test that is by asking colleagues, peers and competitors what they use. Or you can go to an industry event and do some eavesdropping to see what NOT to say. If you find that your statement is similar to others, try harder to really make it stand out by examining exactly what you do uniquely and how to present this.
5. Delivered with confidence
The delivery is equally important to the content. You must be able to put on your best story telling voice and really mesmerize your new found acquaintant. Great delivery comes with practice so get in front of your mirror and get rehearsing today.
6. Leaves them wanting more
A classic trick in show business is to dazzle the audience and have them begging for more. By only giving out a teaser that is interesting enough, you are likely to be asked to elaborate and that’s when you go into selling mode.
7. Catchy, memorable and repeatable
To cover a lot of ground you are going to need others to spread your statement via word-of-mouth marketing. In order for them to do this, you have to stay punchy and memorable enough to get repeated over and over.
Final thought
Remember that your personal brand statement will always be a work in progress and you should update it as your career or business changes over time. Revisiting the statement every now and then is great for introspection and give you great direction in your professional life.
Personal branding keeps growing in importance, you can barely go online without reading about it. We are now at a stage where most professionals and business owners really need to dedicate time and effort to strengthen their own brands as a part of their daily routine.
With business being ever more competitive, your best way of staying ahead of the pack is to stand out and have a unique brand amongst peers. In the end, it’s all about what you are known for. Others should be able to say what your unique promise of value is once they see you or your name.
Here are 5 great reasons for creating and building your personal brand:
1. Grow your network (expand your business horizons)
Expanding your network is hugely important to business success, it opens up avenues you never thought of. When you have a strong brand you will notice that people want to know you and help out any way they can. Your personal brand works like a magnet and it attracts like minded people which can be very useful for your business or career, just like you can be useful to them. Networking is all about karma, help others and they will help you.
2. Attract opportunities (inbound marketing)
As a result of your expanded network and you having a strong presence online, not only will people help you but some will actually have relevant opportunities for you. This could be a customer referral, a joint venture, co-writing a book, a new job or an investment in your business. Your personal brand demonstrates success and that is what others will be looking to tap in to.
3. Establish credibility (be the expert)
Your personal brand is your unique promise of value and as long as you add this value to others on a consistent basis, you are gaining trust and credibility. This trust will be your best and cheapest promotional activity, as word travels fast when you do great work. Let your customers be your fans and become your brand ambassadors.
4. Increase your online clout (yes, it’s spelt that way)
As you build your personal brand, you will notice that you get a loyal following online. This following will put you in a position of influence, as others listen to what you have to say. You can turn your clout into business as long as you do it in an authentic and trustworthy manner.
5. Securing work (gigs, projects, assignments, jobs)
A magnetic brand will ensure that you keep busy. You and your services will always be in demand, as long as you live up to your personal brand. This is a good comfort in case your workplace is facing downsizing, or one of your biggest clients are in financial distress. There is little you can do about external factors but you can rest assured that your strong brand will help you attract other opportunities instead.
Bottom line
Your name is your greatest asset and will stay with you for the rest of your life. Transforming it into a personal brand that others will recognize and appreciate is your best strategy for long-term success in business. By standing out from the crowd and showing the world how unique you are, you will be equipped to tell your customers why they should choose you instead of the competition. Remember, the stronger your personal brand, the more likely you will be to have a great demand for your services and you will be in a position to charge a premium for it.
The Swedes are brilliant recruiters. Even when they are down under and use an advertising agency. In this case The Monkeys (agency) helped the Sydney, Australia IKEA store recruit new employees with an innovative method.
The concept
Career instructions were printed and placed inside the famous IKEA flat packs. Customers literally delivered the mailer to themselves. They could then also share it with friends and family. Not only did it talk directly to those who love the brand, it created a whole new media channel â the flat packs themselves.
The results
The result was no less than 4285 applications filled with 280 of those hired, all the while the project incurred no cost of its own. Very clever idea and on top of the new hires, it certainly got IKEA and their agency lots of free exposure. A very good recruitment case study in other words. Perhaps something for Home Depot, B&Q, Homebase and Brico Depot to emulate?
So you’ve read lots of articles about how companies recruit using LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter. But how does one go about and start? Our good friends at Bullhorn Reach have put a useful social recruiting presentation together for any company that is dipping its toes in recruitment via social media tools. And when your CFO…
LinkedIn operates a bit like Google did 10 years ago, the more keywords the better ranking you will get for a while. The algorithm of the search rankings are that you will be bumped up and if people actually take action – click on your profile in the search results – that tells LinkedIn you are relevant for those search terms. IF users don’t click on you, you will be sent down to page 16 in no time and classed a spammer by the LinkedIn search engine.
To get better ranking make sure to insert relevant keywords in your headline, in your job title and in your summary. Use keywords such as industry, location, company names (if that’s allowed), and even names of people. Bring it down to a micro level with versions of software and even post codes.
2. How to use advanced X-Ray searches to find anyone on LinkedIn?
On LinkedIn, you can only see the people that are three degrees away from you or members of the same group.
One of the worst kept secrets on LinkedIn is that you are able to see every public profile via search engines such as Google. LinkedIn make sure these profiles are indexed in Google as they want to be the first search results for people’s names.
You can use this by entering a Boolean search string searching every LinkedIn user, this typically renders quite a lot of results so throw in more keywords in the search to narrow it down to a nice shortlist.
Anyone can advertise on LinkedIn but it comes at a price.
One way of doing it for free is of course your status update; another way is to post it into groups. These are in theory good ways but the trouble is that most people see those updates as adverts and tend to ignore them.
One more creative way is to use a SlideShare or Google presentation where you put your presentation on, integrate this on your LinkedIn profile and share it with your network. This will actually get clicks and if it’s done well it could go viral.
The events section is one of the most underutilized sections of LinkedIn. We all attend events, and so do your customers. Search for these events on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see who is coming, so that you can plan your conversations way ahead of the event. The attendee list is sometimes a great place for identifying buyers, if ten people are attending a LinkedIn meetup – I would expect a few of them to be interested in some training.
Whether it’s your breakfast briefing on new regulations or networking drinks you are hosting – be sure to list these in the LinkedIn Events section.
When you list an event, your entire network gets notified. You can then share it again to anyone in your network by LinkedIn messages. Every time someone clicks ‘attending’ or ‘interested’ – their networks get notified as well.
Events is one of the best places to build up some buzz around your company.
5. How to categorize connections and send group emails?
Another very underutilized feature of LinkedIn is the ability to tag people. This means you can categorize your connections according to company, position, location, where you met or whatever you choose.
When doing some sales calls, you can tag everyone you speak to. When your next sales session comes up you’ll have an instant shortlist and you are able to send a group email to everyone in that category (let’s say HR managers in Liverpool) to get it out quickly.
Another worst kept secret on LinkedIn is that Groups normally allow you contact and connect with anyone direct on LinkedIn. Sometimes you find a perfect prospect but have no way of contacting them, what you can do is see what groups they are a member of and join one of these. From there you can either invite the person to your network direct or you can look them up in the group and send a message.
Note that users are able to turn this off, it’s enabled by default but if someone gets spammed they are likely to opt out of these contact settings.
7. Who should you connect with on LinkedIn (and who shouldn’t you)?
LinkedIn is all about connections, the more you have the better visibility your profile will have and more people you will be able to search for. But it’s also about quality connections, it’s worth identifying the so called ‘super connectors’ in your field and start connecting with them – if they have 1000 relevant connections that will save you a lot of leg work.
In general, connect with business contacts of all levels. Juniors become seniors within companies, they move companies and remember you…
Don’t connect with your competitors unless you know they have more useful connections than you do. Yes you can hide them from browsing your connections but your connections will still come up in search results so be wary of connecting with competitors.
If you tweet, or if your company tweets, you might want to integrate Twitter and LinkedIn. This is done through an application called Tweets. It’s fairly straightforward to install (see how here) but the important thing here are the settings.
We have all seen users with more than ten updates on LinkedIn per day, these updates typically come from Twitter and probably do more harm to your brand than anything else. The setting you want to use is to only share tweets on LinkedIn when you use the hashtag #in inside Twitter. This allows you to selectively share on LinkedIn as opposed to blanket bombing your network with conversational updates.
The recommendation engine on LinkedIn is one of the keys to LinkedIn’s success. Whereas you used to get recommendations on a CV or a website, these recommendations are fully transparent and people can click their way through to actually scrutinize who wrote the recommendation (and event check that person’s recommendations).
Given that people check out the recommender, don’t get recommendations from your mates, don’t do back-to-back recommendations and don’t get recommendations from people who are obviously indebted to you (that graduate candidate you placed on an internship). Instead focus on quality recommendations from C-level executives and former bosses. Just get one from each company and don’t get more that 5-10 recommendations in total – any more defeats the purpose. If you are in the US, the norm is to have double that.
10. How do you detect that a friend is on the job hunt?
Recruiters are very keen on finding out when anyone goes from being a ‘passive’ to an ‘active’ candidate on LinkedIn. If you are a bit nosy and or want to help your network you can do what they do and look out for the signs. We all know the very obvious people who actually post “I’m looking for a job” in their status updates. But how can you figure out the stealth job seekers who might just need your help?
Look for any of these signs: a number of new recommendations on the profile, tinkering with the headline, the summary or even a new picture. Contact details in the open and crucially, the LinkedIn email address changed to their webmail from work email.
Go ahead an contact these people but do it in a subtle way, as they are obviously a bit jumpy and wouldn’t want anyone to know they are on the hunt. See how you can help them and they will remember your kind assistance when your turn comes to explore opportunities.
11. How do I remove annoying users from my homefeed?
Whether someone is plugging their own services every day or tweet on LinkedIn a bit too much, you can easily hide these people from your home feed. Just to the right of their update there is a little grey text reading “Hide” – click that and you won’t see this person on your feed again. You can un-hide them later if you so please.
If someone is even more annoying, you can remove them as a connection altogether on the My Contacts page and click ‘remove connections’. They will not be notified that you have deleted them from your network.
See this post for more about removing connections on LinkedIn.
12. Why is LinkedIn the best job search tool on social media?
LinkedIn is the place where you can find professionals on social media. Yes, Facebook can be great for graduates and Twitter for media recruitment but LinkedIn reaches people who haven’t got time for every social network under the sun. A lawyer, banker or accountant will check their LinkedIn profile periodically but very seldom would they even have a Twitter account. So from a mere reach perspective LinkedIn is your best bet.
This means most recruiters and HR departments are using LinkedIn to find candidates already. So you can actually be found via one of their searches, or you can actively network your way to opportunities within companies. And you can of course have a look at the Jobs section to make it really easy on yourself.
13. How can you scan what anyone on LinkedIn is saying about a company or topic?
Another virtually unknown feature of LinkedIn is what’s called LinkedIn Signal. It’s basically a search tool for status updates on LinkedIn. You can search for your company name, your field or location or even a combination of them all. LinkedIn will tell you who is talking about the keyword, including people up to 3 degrees away from you. If someone is talking about Java programming on LinkedIn but the profile says ‘consultant’ – chances are they are actually a Java developer with a misleading profile.
Check out this post from LinkedIn about how Signal works.
14. How can you stand out against the other millions of [insert job title here] on LinkedIn?
By being useful to your network, by sharing interesting and valuable information and by not selling your products and services at any given moment. Your network probably knows what you do and they are likely to let you know when they have a referral for you, so it’s better to get mindshare – creating daily awareness and staying visible.
15. What’s a good daily LinkedIn routine?
Most active LinkedIn users I know have a LinkedIn browser window open all day but they mainly use LinkedIn as a database. I would make a habit of sharing an interesting piece of content every day, checking out the events section for relevant networking dos, engaging with other users in Groups and generally keeping an eye on the homefeed to keep my finger on the pulse. This only takes 15 minutes per day but it’s easy to get sidetracked and lose the bigger picture.
16. How do you run a successful group on LinkedIn?
There are over a million groups on LinkedIn, many of these were set up by recruiters. If you look at what makes a group successful it’s all about creating a strong community. When it’s set up it’s ideal to make it ‘exclusive’ in some way – i.e. only open to Java developer in Manchester, this just makes more of them want to join. Assign a team to run the group and to seed conversation, moderate discussions and sharing interesting content.
The number one gripe people have with groups is that they get too much spam emails so make sure you vet all members, only ever send relevant email updates and do not tolerate any blatant promotions from members.
17. How to use your company page to attract customers?
The LinkedIn company page is your company’s number one branding tool on LinkedIn. There are lots of things you can do here such as write up a proper description of the company, add contact details, insert your Twitter feed, link your blog posts to the page, add your products and services, ask for company recommendations and check out the visitor statistics.
Prospective clients are likely to check out your company page so make sure it represents your brand fully.
18. What are the essentials on your LinkedIn profile?
There are four essentials on an individual’s LinkedIn profile; they are the picture, the headline, the summary and the keywords.
Your picture should look professional and reflect your brand, people like dealing with faces as opposed to just text – studies show you get 30% more clicks in search results when you have a picture (see more at How To Choose a Picture for Your Personal Brand).
The headline (along with your name and picture) is what comes up in search results and based on this the user will decide whether to click on you or the competitor. Make sure the headline talks about what you do and not who you are, i.e. you recruit Java developers to top tier consultancies in Manchester and not Consultant and Recruiter X – which means very little (more on headlines at How To Write Your Killer LinkedIn Headline).
Your summary is where people go to see what you are all about and what your track record in the industry is. If you get someone to take their time to check this out you will want to add you contact details at the end and not leave them hanging.
Finally, you have to get the right keywords on your profile or you will not come up in any searches. Yes you might come up in searches for your name but let’s face it if someone already knows your name you already have a foot in the door. It’s better to come up in the search for “Java recruiter Manchester”.
19. How do you connect with people outside of your network?
There are lots of ways of connecting with people outside of your network. You can join the same group as this person which allows you to connect direct (most of the time). You can do an introduction through a common connection, this can take a bit of time but usually works. If you have a premium account you can send an inMail or you can actually buy inMail credits on a free account.
But let’s forget the online world for a while, I think the best way to connect is actually outside of LinkedIn. Pick up the phone and ring the person up, or if you don’t have the number you can probably guess the email address and try that. It’s all about being creative and just because you found someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have to approach them through LinkedIn.
20. Do you need to upgrade your LinkedIn account?
It really depends on how you are using LinkedIn, most people don’t use inMails, Profile organizer and require additional search results. If you do pay for an account make sure you make the most of it, paying a monthly fee is not a silver bullet to success – you actually have to understand what you’re doing first.
There’s no question the software industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and with it comes a need for top software talent. As a result, the recruitment industry has grown dramatically, and over time, has come to require more complicated tools (from the likes of LinkedIn and more) that make it easier to track down candidates. Yet this evolution has become a double-edged sword, as it has created an industry plagued by non-technical “headhunters” who rely on “spray and pray” techniques to find the needles in the haystacks.
Sounds peachy right? Well, maybe not for one important side of this equation. Today’s technical talent is faced with a barrage of unsolicited, unpersonalized and poorly targeted emails that seems to be pissing them off. Some report up to 12 emails and voicemails a day, and others are even contacted through their work phones– all by headhunters they have never talked to, and seemingly don’t even take the time to look at their CV.
So while your company may be working with a recruiter, there’s a big question of whether they’re actually attracting or repelling the best talent, all while representing your company. There are however a few like Scott Ruthfield who do seem to get it, “Any success we’ve had recruiting in Seattle has come from building long-term relationships with candidates and companies, doing deep technical and culture-fit dives, and listening closely, not just talking.” The recruiters that seem to attract developers actually cultivate relationships, but they still need better technology because while today the divide between supply and demand is bad, tomorrow it will be worse.
With such a lack of efficiency, it’s not hard to imagine that the recruiting industry could even be largely displaced by 2020 by more effective means. “Social recruiting” is a hot topic today, and many companies focus on media channels such as twitter, facebook, hackathons and blogging. Perhaps more potent is another strategy in this vein where companies reward their employees for actively recruiting talent to their company through their own social channels. The idea that you could pay $3k to an employee for finding that candidate rather than $30k to a recruiter is not lost on companies today, nor is it lost on a few startups actively trying to create structure around this interaction. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s widely known that the best filter for candidates is existing developers, both for their technical and cultural analysis. The trend across the board appears to be that creating environments in which technical talent is actively engaged with the process.
My prediction is that as the signal to noise ratio recruiters and developers face will worsen, and their relationship will continue to degrade unless the talent discovery and targeting software evolves to become more effective. Tomorrow’s recruiting industry will be run by fewer, more efficient recruiters with a personalized touch and technical background. Their discovery and targeting will be powered not through algorithms processing stale information from passive candidates, but by services that talent actively engages with to indicate interest in problem spaces and companies. As for the recruiters sullying your company’s good name and ticking off the talent? They’ll be long gone. Maybe then our developers’ inboxes and phones will finally be safe.
The other day, my colleague told me a crazy story about a candidate who was instructed to log into her Facebook account during an interview so the hiring manager could see it. Surprisingly, the candidate – in relaying her story to my colleague – seemed more concerned with whether or not she would be hired than she was with what many would consider an abuse of power and invasion of privacy.
The whole thing left me wondering: When it comes to using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for recruiting – what we call social recruiting – how far is too far?
With so many nuances, and so many (as yet) unwritten rules, how can recruiters best utilize social media to source quality candidates and assess whether they would be a good fit? Thankfully, there are some best practices emerging to help recruiters know when they’ve pushed the proverbial envelope too far – as happened with my colleague’s friend.
Beyond learning the hard way what works and what doesn’t, hiring professionals are discovering a new line of recruiting applications and tools designed to help them rise above the same old hashtag to better identify, connect with and place viable candidates.
