Social Media Recruitingfor

Brenda Dumont Consulting April 2010

The Wikipedia version of Brenda

• 33 years of recruitment, 9 years at Drake Personnel/Office Overload, 24 years of retail recruitment. 5 years of corporate recruitment (Woodward’s Stores), 10 years owning a recruitment firm for the retail industry in Canada, 5 years of owning Canada’s only retail-specific job board and 4 years working with CanWest who bought canadianretail.com.

Agenda

• The Philosophy of Social Media as it relates specifically to recruiting

• LinkedIn Overview

• Twitter Overview

• Facebook Overview

• Recruitment Developments – mobile, SEO, online everything.

Social Media is much more than Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – but we’ll focus on those today

The philosophy of Social Media centers on ‘sharing’ – a concept not usually associated with recruiting techniques.

New terms like ‘hiring hubs’ and ‘talent pools’ have entered our recruiting conversations replacing ‘our latest hire’

Social Media Recruiting – five truths

• Results will take time. Contacts, connections, fans or whatever take time to build.

• Social Media recruiting is not just posting jobs on LinkedIn or Twitter or blasting job postings to your ‘fans’.

• Choosing which Social Media program is key to success• It is simply another tool in your recruiting toolbox. • To be most effective, you can’t take the ‘social’ out of Social

Media.• No one is an expert on this and wow! opinions vary.

Social Media as it relates to recruiting is still social

The Social Media Starfish

• A brief description of the many ‘arms’ of social media:• - Images – YouTube, Flickr• - Aggregators – Indeed, SimplyHired• - Blogs – blogspot, Wordpress• - Ning – niche social networks – Zoomers• - Online Job Fairs• - SEO Services – jobs2web• - Podcasts – Jobs in Pods

Let’s start with:

Who uses LinkedIn? Total users? Hold onto your hats….. 50 million users in October, 2009 and now adding one million users every 12 days.

• Average Age: 43• Male / Female: 54% / 46% • Average Household Income: $107,278• Average Household Income $100k+    51.8% | 6,467,000• Average Household Income $150k+    23.1% | 2,888,000

– Senior-Level Management: – EVP/SVP/VP 6.2% 770k – Senior Management: 14.1% 1.76m – Middle Management: 32.1% 4.01m– Over 450 million page views per month – Over 560,000 professionals visit the LinkedIn homepage on a typical day – 42 page views per member per week – 1 new signup per second.

• Like all Social Media, recruiting results on LinkedIn are best achieved over time.

• For recruiting purposes – connections should be developed with both the job seeker and the recruiter in mind.

• Operating LinkedIn is pretty easy and the ‘Help’ section is really easy.

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LinkedIn is not just for recruiting, but its VERY GOOD for recruiting at certain l levels. LOTS of very innovative features and choices:

• LinkedIn has its own Job Board, every group has its own Job Board, and there are Groups that are just Job Boards plus there is ‘Sharing’ jobs. Which to use?

• www.linkedin.com/search yields stronger results than postings jobs on their job board.

• Both the job board on LinkedIn and the reverse look-up feature (faceted search) operate better than most job boards with better information, navigation, and intuition.

• The one-click feature from LinkedIn jobs to All jobs on SimplyHired is golden. SimplyHired scrapes all Monster, Workopolis, ITjobs, CareerBeacon, Canada IT, etc. etc.

• GROUPS

• Suggested Groups to get started• Canadian Retail Professional Network Group• Canadian Multi-Unit Retail Management• Job Openings, Job Leads, and Job

Connections• Job Postings and Job Boards• Social Media Recruiting Group

nWays to search for candidates on LinkedIn (in order of effectiveness)

1. In your “Share” space. Not just a job title and a location, but something appealing. It’s easy to have the LinkedIn update also appear on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

Dustin Low Calling all recruiters! 'Green' recruiting role in Vancouver. Message me for details. 2 hours ago Reply privately - Add comment

2. As a ‘topic’ to your applicable groups. Again, group selection is important. Study the members………. And don’t do what the Group ‘Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting does.

3. Post a job on the LinkedIn job board. It works extremely well for certain searches, but not others.

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• Check out the Company Profiles of competitors, past employers of current successful employees. It’s a gold mine.

• Click on Recruiting Solutions on your main LinkedIn page. Phenomenal, complete information.

• On LinkedIn all members of any Group you join are now partially connected.

Bottom Line on LinkedIn:

• The Best currently for middle management recruitment, particularly reverse recruiting.

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• Where every road eventually leads – recruiting on Twitter is highly effective and necessary, but time-consuming.

• Twitter grew 577% in 2009. There are 1 BILLION tweets every second. The company is secretive, but it is estimated there are nearly 1.7 BILLION Twitter accounts.

• Twitter is not like LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, etc. Twitter is like Twitter!

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• Building worthwhile connections is essential to getting results with Twitter.

• It is seriously addicting and undisciplined use will lower or eliminate the ROI.

• To be effective on Twitter, you must be subtle. Just posting jobs with no content over and over is not effective unless you are TweetMyJobs. (even then, not too effective)

• Don’t worry about all those applications! Most of those are for people who make their living using Twitter.

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How to build worthwhile connections

• Every brand should have a Twitter account. Some brands should have two accounts – one for recruiting/employment branding and one for overall brand building. Comark Head Office should have a Twitter account but not a priority.

• Comark is already used by a Niarobi student whose first name is Comark

• Bootlegger is already taken – suggest BootleggerCareers or BootleggerJeans or???

• Ricki’s is available, but not Rickis• Cleo is available but CleoFashion or CleoCareers may be more

effective.

GHow to build worthwhile connections

• ‘Share’ technology and links to your SM accounts should be everywhere, on all postings, websites, business cards, and displayed in prominence.

• Re-Tweet and Hashtags• Lists – build your own or use Twibes – www.twibes.com or Listorious –

www.listorious.com

GWhat is an effective tweet?

• Tweeting must be consistent. How much is consistent?

• A strictly RSS feed of jobs won’t work.

• Must include the right keywords. All tweets are indexed by Google. Keywords and SEO remain crucial.

• Tweeting needs to be done on a scheduled, rotating time of day to capture best results and re-tweets should be incorporated.

• The best tweets include real information done by real people. Do you think Lady Gaga does her own tweets? Ashton Kutcher?

• Tweets need to be a mixture of business and ‘social’ at a ratio of 5 to 1

GAn effective Twitter presence is a mixture of information exchange and

brand building.

@Nordstrom Meet Nordstrom Fashion Director June Rau. Get her take on trends for spring & then build your look in our Fashion Mixer http://bit.ly/797Op0 35 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@Starbucksjobs is at 1000+ followers and we're excited to keep sharing our #jobs and #reasonstoworkatstarbucks

@RootsCanada We recently reached 10,000 fans on Facebook! Thanks so

much to our great fans and followers! http://tinyurl.com/ybm4q7j about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

@RetailCouncil http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-

debit-cards/05visa.html?hp.

GA few Tweetthoughts:

• The big gorilla going forward

• Best for junior to mid management……currently. Following university and celebrities can help…….

• Really needs strict time management and consistency.

• Is over supplied with add-on applications. Basic utilization works just as well

• HooteSuite or Tweetdeck or Nutshellmail?

• Baby steps are best. What is a TwitPro?

• Who to follow? Sodexho, Starbucks, Lululemon, Chris Brogan, Mashable, etc. etc. etc. If you follow, then they often follow you.

• More than 400 million active users

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• More than 55 million status updates posted each day

• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month

• More than 3.5 million events created each month

• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook

• More than 800,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook

• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

• http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

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• An active presence on Facebook for BOTH employment and company branding is essential for any retailer. (maybe every company in any industry?)

• The day that Facebook allowed company profiles is the day the entire platform moved from a ‘entirely social only for teenagers’ site to a huge worldwide social media phenom.

• Facebook is particularly good for attracting store operations individuals and building brand within student and part-time communities. This was, after all, younger persons platform originally!

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oCOMARK ON FACEBOOK TODAY

CLEO – no Facebook page – There is a CLEO magazine in Australia with a similar demographic

BOOTLEGGER – No Facebook Page – There is a Bootlegger Bar, and a rock singer in England named Bootlegger!

RICKIS – 2,517 FANS – An excellent job of selling merchandise with some contests and engagement included. But 2,517 people don’t know if you have any job openings at Rickis and would probably be VERY interested!

ON

o• 18,089 people in Canada who use Facebook are fans of

Reitmans

• 209,614 people in Canada and the US who use Facebook are fans of Urban Outfitters

• 316 people in Canada who use Facebook are fans of Hudson’s Bay Company!!! (no mention on website, on in-store signage, person responsible is very junior etc. etc.)

• 36,115 people in Canada who use Facebook are fans of Talbot’s.

The number of fans and interaction and involvement differ with the quality of ‘responses’ from the company.

o• A few comparisons of who’s on Facebook and who includes

recruiting:

• La Senza has 128,790 fans. Their Facebook page includes both merchandise and recruiting emphasis.

• Zara has worldwide 1,732,998 fans but only leverages that huge asset with merchandise and customer service

• Lululemon has several accounts – they encourage interaction with the ‘fans’ in both merchandise and recruiting per store. Main account has 110,765 – mostly in Canada

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• People who are fans are generally fans of the merchandise, who often become some of the best employees. How better to get to the university students – Margaret Curran example.

• Where else, at a click, can you get the attention of these many people?

• Every banner should have an active Facebook presence with both merchandise information AND recruiting opportunities, and ‘social’ elements (contests). This will involve cooperation between HR and Marketing.

Home Truths about all Social Media

• Whether for recruiting, branding, or customer service – all companies becoming engaged in Social Media require constant monitoring. The only cost attached to Social Media is the time it takes to constantly oversee, refresh, and enliven your Social Media presence. There will be no results otherwise.

• The internet has always demanded ‘fresh’. This requirement is enhanced tenfold with Social Media.

• The whole Social Media phenom is evolving so quickly that there are no ‘experts’.

• Social media can not be ignored. Brenda’s special remembrance trying to sell using a job board 10 years ago.

• Customer expectations – today many Bootlegger customers are wondering why they aren’t on Facebook.

Home Truths about all Social Media

• A different approach to recruiting has to be adopted. The sharing of information between recruiters at all levels is at an all-time high and increasing.

• The Canadian Retail Professional Network is having their second LinkedIn event in Vancouver May 13th at Metrotown. The first event was at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto last October and was WILDLY successful.

• Those who are engaged in positions involving recruitment must be prepared in some social media – LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter - to share a certain amount of personal information.

• Even the largest corporate account on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or others must embrace the fact that there has to be a ‘face’ to their comments to join the exclusive group. The world is moving towards much more ‘social’ interaction. MANY CEOS both Tweet and Share.

Job Boards, Aggregators, and Bears – oh my!

• Boy, do I know Job Boards!

• Unlimited job posting packages are not going to produce the best result. Menu selection makes the most sense and don’t sign with any job board that doesn’t get the SMR connection

• Aggregators are mostly helpful……but

• Information management – how to handle responses from all types of social media.

• How everything online still gets back to keywords (at least for now), SEO

• Everything should START and END with a blog…………

Questions???• To reach me:

• Brenda A. Dumont,• Toll Free:  1-866-442-0044• Direct:  250 743 1638• Fax: 250 743 1639• Blackberry: 604 454 4572• Email:    me@brendadumont.com• Twitter:  http://twitter.com/retailblog• Blog:      http://retailrecruit.wordpress.com• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brendadumont