StlRecruiting

Facebook Recruiting: Hiring Inside Facebook

The event is set.  May 21st, I'll be hosting a live webinar on Facebook recruiting through hireability. The session is called,

Facebook Recruiting:  A Live Demonstration of Hiring Inside Facebook by Jim Durbin, the Social Media Headhunter.

The explosion of Facebook as a social networking tool is challenge and a mystery to recruiters.  Unlike LinkedIn Plaxo, Facebook users aren't looking to be contacted in a search for jobs.  They certainly don't want to be headhunted, until they're ready.  Jim Durbin, a social media expert takes a look at Facebook from the eyes of an experienced staffing professional, and provides live, actionable training on how to use Facebook to increase placements.

In a session that combines sourcing, contacting, and referral generation, Mr. Durbin shows recruiters how to navigate the tricky waters of social networking.

The event is a paid webinar - the cost is $89, and it will be 1:30 p.m. EST/10:30 a.m. PST, and will cover sourcing, filtering, connecting, reference checking, and referrals in Facebook.  Most training sessions are full of theory - this webinar will be a walkthrough of screens and search terms on an actual job search.

There'll be Cross-promotion at socialmediaheadhunter and my other recruiting blogs Charlotte, Seattle, and KC Recruiting, as well as the social networks  and social media circles.  If you announce the event on your blog, be sure to send me an e-mail, and I'll link to you from this PR5 blog.

Engineers Can Sell

Got a nice note and a plug from a blogger looking to build a website for sales engineers.  He wrote some nice things about me after a conversation earlier this year.

And his blog is cool - and targeted.  Engineers Can Sell.

When I was pondering starting this blog I talked to as many people as I could. One gentleman that kept coming up as a recommendation was James Durbin of Durbin Media.  I emailed him for a quote on designing and setting up the blog site for me.

We talked on the phone for about an hour and by the end of the conversation James recommended that I take a stab at designing the blog by myself to not only learn the process, but to reduce costs until I was sure that I had a sustainable Web presence - which can take a year to determine. He further offered to have me email him when I had it set up so that he could take a quick peek and offer any suggestions.

One suggestion - where's your name on the blog?  It's important to let people know who you are.  For more advice on candidate niche blogs, go read Good Product Manager.

Social Media Candidates For The SMHeadhunter

I want to talk to you.

If you are looking for a social media job in St Louis in the following areas:

Social Media
SEO
SEM
Web Analytics
Online Marketing
PPC
Blogging

I'm building my database, adding candidates, and actively reaching out to clients with these needs.  Here's the thing - I do what you do, which means you'll be working with a recruiter that understands the technology and the marketing piece of your business.  But it also means that I understand the technology and marketing piece, which means you won't be snowing me with industry jargon.

Some of these jobs are in St Louis - some are elsewhere - I won't be doing relocation for contingency search, but I will work with remote candidates in the right areas, and I have clients on both coasts, north and south.

So if you're in St Louis and want to be in touch with the Social Media Headhunter, e-mail me or subscribe to the blog, socialmediaheadhunter.com.  Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/smheadhunter, or check me out on Skype at smheadhunter.

Right now - if you an SEO consultant, I have some options for you.  So don't be surprised if I call.

Using Blogs To Promote Your Book

The St Louis Publishers' Association is bringing in David Strom from the Strominator to talk about how author can use blogs to promote their books.

It's at the lodge in Des Peres at 6:30 on May 14th.  An excerpt from their site:

A blog is the fastest way to set up your Web site and the easiest method to get the word out about your book and yourself as an author. In this hands-on session, Internet author and professional speaker David Strom will show you how to set up, maintain, and flog your blog for little or no cost. He'll discuss the things that you can do to make your blog more popular in Google searches, without having to hire a "search optimization expert".

We've had a few clients in this arena, but the cost of hiring a professional usually far outweighs what an individual author is willing to do, or what a publisher is willing to pay.  That said, it's crazy for an author not to be online in some capacity, and a blog is the easiest to manage, and most SEO effective way of getting your name out in front of the masses.

It's an excellent chance to learn, but remember this - it's easy to get started, but blogs don't magically bring results.  You have to put yourself out there, and that means more than just writing.  Blogging is about interacting with your community, so if all you want to do is flog your book, chances are you're not going to get far.  If you want to build and communicate with a fan base, blogs are the best, and the cheapest way to do so.

St Louis Small Business Seminar

I was checking Twitter a few weeks ago, and came upon a curious message.  A fellow social media consultant was heading home on a commute, and gave out his cell phone number if someone wanted to call him. I thought so much of the approach that I picked up the phone and rang Shashi Bellamkonda, a consultant with Network Solutions.

Talk about a small world. Shashi had just finished working with Rob Neelbauer, the owner of JobMatchbox, and knew fellow St Louisans Todd Jordan and Susan Isk.

My conversation with Shashi lasted about thirty minutes, and we talked about setting up a small business seminar in St Louis this June or July.

The idea is to have a evening networking event for St Louis Small Business and blogger/twitter community. We have an hour of networking and an hour of a keynote speech. The best way to this would be to bring in the local business journal, the local paper, the regional chamber, and maybe even several large companies from St. Louis.

Shashi's company has a local presence (they purchased Monster Commerce in Belleville a few years ago), and their latest push is turnkey websites for small business.  If you're interested in helping set this up, or have ideas for spaces to meet (especially if you already have a place to meet), drop me a line in the comments or on e-mail.   Our goal is to get small business owners and vendors together in downtown St. Louis this summer. 

Talent Drive: Resume Madness

Mashups are easy.  If you've ever thought you had an idea for a commercial, or have  few photos you want to turn into a slideshow, this is the way to go.

Yes, both Flektor and TalentDrive are clients of mine, but the beauty of social media is we all work together to get bigger.

And for those hungry for SEO.  Flektor's internal pages, like those on Twitter and YouTube and a host of other social media sites, are great links for your website.  Search TalentDrive on Google and what do you see?  A reference to the video on the first page, from a third party source (the Flektor site).

If you're curious on how to do this for your company, your staffing firm, or you as a candidate - drop me a line, or just head on over to Flektor yourself.   It's easy.

Jim Stroud Is Giving Away His Book

Jim Stroud's new book, Resume Forensics is going to free to anyone who subscribes to his blog, the recruiters lounge, by e-mail.

Once he hits 5,000 new subscribers, he will give it away to everyone on his list. Shortly thereafter, it will be for sale and no longer free. What's inside.

* How to search Google for free resumes
* How to search Yahoo for free resumes
* How to search Live for free resumes
* How to find additional keywords for your resume searches
* How to create search strings that work on Google, Yahoo and Live
* How to take a job description and create multiple search strings from it. (As an example, I take one job description and create 56 pages of search strings from it.)
* How to automate your resume searches so you can (literally) source resumes while you sleep.

If you would like to get a free copy of it, go to this link below for details: http://tinyurl.com/5qwguj

(It will redirect to you my blog where you will find more instructions.)

yes, this is almost verbatim as everyone else, but I like Jim, and you'd be a fool not to get his book.

St Louis Product Management Group Wiki

Jeff Lash and I were talking the other day about software / tech / web companies in St. Louis and realized that there isn't a great list of these type of companies. Jeff is helping coordinate the St. Louis Product Management Group of like-minded folks and trying to find local companies which might have product managers.

We're not interested big companies (e.g. Microsoft) who have offices in St. Louis, nor companies who have big IT shops doing internal application development (e.g. Edward Jones), nor companies who do software / tech / web consulting (e.g. Perficient).  There's nothing wrong with those companies, but we're looking for something different.

Really, it's about companies based in St. Louis -- or which have a significant amount of product development staff here -- which are building software and products which are their business. We've got a few already, though if you work for one or know of any, please post in the comments below. Or, if you know of a place where such a list exists, post that too.

Sales Trainer In St Louis

A few jobs back, I sat down with my boss for an evaluation, and he told me that he thought I could use some sales training and that he would pay for it.

It infuriated me.  It wasn't the idea of training - it was the idea that he thought I had no formal process, and was just winging it.  Needless to say, our ability to work together was a key reason I'm no longer with the company, but I found it out that I bristled at the mere suggestion that I needed sales training.

It's not that I hadn't gone through it before. I've take over a dozen courses and seminars on sales process, and to be honest, most of the time I felt like I could have accomplished more back at the office on the phone.  Of course, I was young and invulnerable back then - and brute force worked a lot better than it does today when cold-calling.  Not to mention that when you're a commodity (as most salespeople are), you don't care as much about your reputation as you do when you run your own business.

So I'm curious.  In St Louis, what's the best sales training one can take?  Is there an individual who can help you benchmark your processes,  create a plan for your industry, and most important, convince your staff that this is an important part of their employment, and not just a notch in the HR file for the day you don't make quota?

Who offers the best sales training in Saint Louis?  Have you taken the courses?  In what industry?  I'd like to hear from you at jdurbin@durbinmedia.com or in the comments (although comment spam will be deleted).

Talent Drive Commercial

The launch of the Talent Drive Commercial. We'll be doing one a week to showcase their new TalentFilter product.

The Talent Drive blog will have the video as well, and it's built on the Flektor platform.

Recruiting Blogs

I'm more than a little astonished at what Jason is accomplishing over at RecruitingBlogs.com. There are now thousands of recruiters sharing information back and forth. 

What's cool about it, and different than Recruiting.com, is that the editorial control isn't there.  Jason leads the social network, but doesn't run it.  In this case, it's the mob that runs it.  A mob of recruiters.

With Sumser stepping down as editor, it seems that Recruiting.com will lose all of its focus.  It's a real shame, and I wish Jobster would do more with it, but if wishes were gumdrops, we'd all have sugar highs, or something.

It's late, and I blame this rambling post on Twitter, where you can follow me as http://twitter.com/smheadhunter