Social Recruiting

Effective Tips for Social Recruiting

You have already heard this many times before: social media websites are great tools for recruiting and sourcing potential job candidates. Identified, which is a well-known social scoring analytics firm, adds fuel to the fire by estimating that companies that have put social media into use for recruiting have 25% lower hiring costs per year. This estimation sounds too good for you to neglect it.
What happens if your company still hasn’t established its presence in the social media? How can you start recruiting and sourcing effectively? These simple tips will get you started in no time:
1. You already have existing contacts. Import them!
Launching social tools and getting connected to the contacts you already have is the easiest thing. Twitter and Facebook enable you to import your list of contacts, which will help you find people you know on these social tools. These imported contacts will be your foundation that will help you build your recruiting campaign – they will guide you towards people you would like to know and hire.

2. Use the employees that are well-connected on social media
Among your current employees, there are social media “stars” whose contacts you can use to manage and build your network. Make them advocates for your company and you will notice how they attract potential job candidates easily. However, you need to be careful with your approach; you cannot just ask your employees to connect you with every single contact they have. Instead of imposing that demand, you should learn from the way they use social networks. If they managed to create a successful social media presence, you can use their techniques for your own approach.

3. Promote your company through your employees
Most of your employees are already active members of social media communities, so they can help you enhance your recruiting efforts. If the company culture you have established is great, it won’t be a problem for them to promote you. Although the participation of all your employees is welcomed, you should first focus on the “best” ones (the ones who are well-accepted on social media websites and use them actively).

4. Pay attention to the public profile
Your company’s public profile will represent its values and success. Make sure to provide contact information and create a well-written profile with usage of keywords relevant to your business. If you make it easy for potential candidates to reach you, social recruiting will become much easier.

5. Don’t focus your social media presence on sales
If the main purpose of your social media presence is recruiting, you should promote your company as a great place to work. Your presence should be focused on building that brand perception instead of sales.

6. Add a personal approach to your profile
The profile of your company should definitely look professional, but you still need to add a touch of human presence in it without compromising the image of professionalism. Your profile is the first thing potential candidates will look at, so it has to create a strong impression if you want to get their interest.

7. Listen and learn!
Even if creating a social media presence seems easy and you think you know everything, you should still pay attention to the social media monitoring applications and learn from them. This information will give you knowledge about where you can find potential candidates, what topics interest them, and who else is trying to attract them.

8. Stay connected and contribute to the community
If you managed to connect with people from your industry, well done! Now you need to work on building and maintaining your reputation. The key to that is staying connected and hanging out where these people can be found. In order to find the niche network where people from your industry hang out online, you should ask and listen to the social media stars in your company.

9. Focus on one social media website at a time
If you want this campaign to be successful, you should choose one social media site and stick to it until you achieve strong presence. If you try to be successful on all of these websites at once, you will find them overwhelming and you won’t be able to devote your time to all profiles.

10. Share content that will be helpful to others
The right approach towards social recruiting is all about helping people. If you have a genuine wish to help more people with the content you share, your visibility will be improved and you will build your network more easily. You don’t have to develop unique content, although that’s advisable from time to time. Take your time to find and share useful videos and articles that are relevant to your industry and helpful for your followers, and you will soon attract many people that are worth recruiting.

Surprising Facts... Creative managers and Employees

Employees don’t like working for creative managers

Carl Tsukahara is the executive vice president of marketing and product at Evolv, a big data company in San Francisco. For the past 25 years, Tsukahara has held senior marketing executive roles at a number of VC-funded enterprise software companies.

It’s a commonly held workplace belief that employees who succeed in their current roles should be rewarded with the chance to manage other employees. But big data reveals that what might be prized qualities for an employee are not necessarily traits that drive managerial success.

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Managers are the single most important influence on how long an employee stays at her job by a factor of six, which means that effective managers are essential to a healthy and engaged company culture. Attrition and engagement are material concerns for most businesses—employees who are unengaged cost the economy $350 billion yearly, according to a Gallup poll and “corporate directors identified talent management as their single greatest strategic challenge,” according to Harvard Business Review study.

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New data from Evolv reveals which leadership characteristics actually drive performance in an organization. The conclusions go against conventional, intuition-based business school wisdom from academics like Peter Drucker, Michael Porter and Dale Carnegie, perhaps because these luminaries didn’t have to deal with the challenges of today’s globalized and technical workforce.

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Are potentially good managers being overlooked because they don’t exhibit traditionally accepted “good” employee traits? Evolv’s research, conducted in 13 countries, 18 industries and across 500 million data points, debunk two common management myths: 

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Myth: “Managers who are creative are effective.”

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Truth: Employees don’t like working for creative managers. The higher managers test on the innovation and creativity scale, the more likely employees in customer-facing, front line roles are to leave. Idris Mootee recently argued in New York Times that management’s function isn’t about creating, but rather “ensuring that repetitive tasks were completed, improving economic efficiency, maximizing labor and machine productivity. Not a lot of creativity is needed; in fact, it might even be inefficient.”

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Myth: “The more educated my workforce is as a whole, the better employees will do—even in hourly positions.”

Truth: Education and experience do matter for leaders, but not for employees. For managers, having a technical degree, bachelor’s degree, or graduate degree allows managers to retain their employees at a higher rate. But for non-managerial roles, education does not serve as a predictor of performance at all. This finding comes at a time when college costs skyrocket; and the value of college has come into question for every American child.

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Managers matter even more as our workforce becomes more elastic and organization, more flat. Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends 2013 report finds that the single greatest challenge to effective management is managers’ ability to coach employees well. Picking the right people is, at the very least, a good place to start.

Nailing the Job Interview

 Interview is really about one thing: Making the person across the table fall in love with you. Here are a few ideas to help you make that happen.
Don't be a Diva
The single biggest mistake many job candidates make is to walk in with attitude. Even if you think the company would be lucky to have you, and even if – based on your talents and work history – you’re right, no one wants to work with a diva. You’ve been given thirty minutes to impress the interviewer, but the wrong attitude will lose you the job in the first five.
Dress for Success
Another deal-killer is poor aesthetics. You may think you’re the next Mark Zuckerberg, and for all I know you are, but I’m not going to be impressed if you come to see me in a hoodie and torn jeans. We’re pretty casual at RadiumOne – it’s rare to see that many ties in our offices – but if you’re coming in for an interview – remember the importance of a first impression.
Body Language
Body language is also crucial. Be articulate – not boring. Sagging shoulders, slouching, fidgeting – those behaviors make people uncomfortable, and who wants to work with someone that makes them uncomfortable? Be courteous. Smile. Make eye-contact. And treat everyone with respect, including everyone you meet. After all, they may be asked for their opinions after you’ve left the building.
Be Prepared
Another common mistake is to come to the interview unprepared. I think a prospective employee should take the time to do his or her homework, and this will become evident through the quality of his questions. When someone asks who they’re going to be working with, is curious about the specifics of the job, and talks about opportunities for growth, I feel I’m dealing with a person who’s there for the long-haul, and that’s the kind of person I want to invest in.
You should also be prepared to answer the interviewer’s questions, and these tend to be fairly predictable: Why do you want this job? Where do you see yourself in three years? What are your greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses? If you aren’t prepared, and if you’re struggling to formulate answers, that’s not going to impress anyone. Think of the job interview as a test, and try to prepare for it before you come through the door.
Focus
This is a job interview; try to remember that. Small-talk is fine, but this is not the time and place for it. The interviewer doesn’t want to hear about your crazy night at the bar, about the relationship that broke your heart, or about your horrible last boss. Focus on the job, and on yourself as the right person for the job. Be professional. Inappropriate talk and inappropriate behaviors can and will be used against you. And speaking of inappropriate behaviors, remember that everything you post online is viewable to everyone - including an employer. So if you have any embarrassing pictures of yourself, don't post them. Or change your privacy settings. Better yet, change your privacy settings today.
Don't Talk Money
Another common mistake is to talk about compensation. If the interviewer brings up money, fine, but don’t go there unless invited. The money conversation will take place in due course, once you’ve been offered the job. And money shouldn’t be the deciding factor, anyway. If you take the job, you’ll have plenty of chances to show the company what you’re worth. And if you turn out to be a rock star, you’re going to get rock star wages.
Be Yourself
This may be the hardest advice of all. You’re in there to get the job, and you’re worried about blowing it. Plus there’s so much to think about: Don’t be a diva. Be prepared. Dress like you want the job. Watch the small- talk. Don’t discuss compensation.
Still, at the end of the day, you’re human. Your potential new boss wants to see the person they’re hiring, not the person you think you want to see. Don’t sell anyone a phony version of yourself. If you’re there it’s because you impressed them enough to get the interview, and they’re just as eager to get to know you, as you are to get the job. Don’t overthink the situation, and don’t try to sell a manufactured version of yourself. Authenticity always wins out.
The Follow Up
Finally, I am always surprised when people fail to follow up after the interview. All it takes is a short, polite email, in which you thank the interviewer for his time and remind him or her that you are seriously interested in the job. Sometimes a candidate doesn’t do well in the room, but I hear from them later in the day and I decide to have a second look. That call or email tell me two things: The candidate has proper etiquette, and they WANT the job.

GOOD LUCK!

Secret of Success

A young man asked Socrates the secret
to success. Socrates told the young man to meet him near the river the next
morning. They met. Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and ducked him into
the water. The boy struggled to get out
but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue.
Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the young man
did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, 'What did you want the most when you were there?"

The boy replied, "Air." Socrates said, "That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted
the air, then you will get it." There is no other secret.

Moral of the Story

A burning desire is the starting point of
all accomplishment. Just like a small fire cannot give much heat, a weak
desire cannot produce great results..

Harvard Pranks Yale With Hilarious Fake Admissions Tour

Susan Adams, Forbes Staff

After dragging my 16-year-old on 15 college tours since last spring, I was in need of comic relief when my son sent me a link to a Business Insider piece that ran yesterday, showing a hilarious prank played by a Harvard comedy group called On Harvard Time, which produces videos it posts on YouTube. The Harvard kids buy Yale sweatshirts and then march onto the Yale campus where they pose as tour guides.

It’s not clear how they do this without the notice of the Yale admissions staff, but in the video, they attract a group of a half dozen prospective students and their parents and then proceed to give a Spiel that makes Yale sound far inferior to Harvard. “Yale is in many ways Harvard’s little, perhaps less successful sister,”  says one fake guide, who goes on to make fun of the excessive amount of Gothic architecture on campus and the Skull and Bones society. “Yale students are stupider than Harvard students, Yale students are not as successful as Harvard students, Yale students are not as attractive as Harvard students,” he says, while the touring families look on, weirdly unfazed.

The video made me laugh but also cringe, thinking of how numb these tours make you and how the perky guides all start to sound alike after the first couple of tours (“We believe in a holistic approach to admissions. You can take Statistics to satisfy the math distribution requirement.”)

Even though I’ve told my son that he shouldn’t pay undue attention to college rankings, even including the Forbes list, he can’t stop himself, which is why I especially liked a moment in the video when the guide says that Yale’s U.S. News ranking fluctuates from between “three and fifteen.” For the record, at Forbes we rank Yale at No. 4 this year, four slots ahead of Harvard at No. 8.

You can watch the video here