StlRecruiting

Four Truths About Hiring Social Media Types

Over at SocialMediaHeadhunter, my new recruiting site for hiring social media types, I write about four truths I've picked up if you're looking to hire someone who knows Facebook, Twitter, Bebu, Sphere, etc.

My favorite Truth is #2, and I imagine it will warm the heart of Michael Kelemen, who probably will be the only one to get the joke. It's full of truthiness.

Truth #2:  Most Social Media Types Are Communists

Okay, communists isn't the right term (although it's eye-catching), but if you're looking for someone with social media experience to help you make money, make sure you ask the social media candidate what experience they have in making money with social media.  They may or may not have dollar figures, but if they have never thought about using social media as a tool to make money, they're probably not a good fit.

This isn't to say that there's anything wrong with using social media for fun or to build  up your brand.  It's great for consultants and small businesses who want to improve their online profile. Corporations usually want more, and vague goals like "communicating with your customers" are usually a sign that the candidate is an excellent social networker, but maybe not someone you want running your department. 

You're paying for results.  The right candidate will be able to tell you how to achieve results with social media.

If you're looking for someone to do your Social Media Recruiting, ask the recruiter who knows social media (that's me.)

Looking For A Business Analyst in St Louis

Kristina Wilson, a Technisource recruiter, is looking for a business analyst in St Louis.  Details below the fold.

A Chance To Buy StlRecruiter.com

This site is called StlRecruiting.com.  It's focus is the overall employment and staffing marketplace in St Louis.  What's been interesting is the number of people over the last three years that call this the StlRecruitER blog.  Time and again, people verbally called it stlrecruiter, and then I found out that people were linking stlrecruitER, so I did the obvious.  I went out and bought the domain name.

So now I own StlRecruiting.com and StlRecruiter, and recruiter forwards to recruiting.

I'm going to continue using this blog to help headhunters, staffing firms, and corporations learn how to use social media to hire, but StlRecruiter should be used by someone actively recruiting in St Louis.  If you're interested in purchasing the domain name, or in purchasing it and learning how to make money with it, contact me at jdurbin@durbinmedia.com.

This offer is only open to active recruiters, staffing firms, and company careers sites.  I don't want to sell the site to someone who will put up ads on it or make it a job board.

Beware The Boss Button

If you read ESPN, or any other number of sites, there's often "button" on the screen that you can press to take you to an innocuous spread sheet, or some other kind of random screen that won't show you fawning over the prospective Rams draft picks (or worse, if you're on CNNSI).

I was at CollegeHumor.com today, and saw a Boss Button from CareerBuilder.  It was an advertisement, but I'm always curious, so I clicked it.

OMG.  If you're playing the video, it doesn't stop the video.  It Instead overlays this onto your screen.

Crossbows and Mustaches: Episode 1

Half of what I currently do is focused on marketing, separate from recruiting.  So this post is about a new video series that's being launched at MySpace TV.  It's called Crossbows and Mustaches, and it's a parody of crime dramas. The content has language and adult situations, so it's not safe for the corporate workplace, but it's funnier than anything Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan ever did.

How's that for a recommendation?  The video is below the fold.

Hanging Out At The Social Media Club St Louis

The Social Media Club is meeting here at Kaldi's in Kirkwood.  So far we've covered Utterz, Jot, Seismic (sp), Twitter, and of course the different blogs. Below is a list of the people who were there.

Jim Durbin:  Brandstorming.com (me)
Franki Durbin:  Life In A Venti Cup
Tanner Hobin: TannerHobin
Andrew Nagy:  Andrewofnagy.net
Kurt Greenbaum - stltoday.com/vstl
Kristen Munson - socialmediamom.com
Justin Schmidt - justinspeak.com
Lisa Young - jedimom.net
Melody Cissell - news-bitch.com
Todd Jordan - toddjordan.wordpress.com
Reem Abeidoh - www.reemabeidoh.com
Don Krutewicz - donkrutewicz
Angeline Soon - twitter.com/s00nami
Ryan Suther
Howard McAuliffe- StlDevelops.com

Also check out the new site, MidwestBlogs.

Hiring Through The Cell Phone: AJb4U2 :0 lol

Two years ago, a few (possibly apocryphal) stories were running about recruiters hiring candidates through the use of text messages.  One story came from Steven Rothberg, who talked about using text messaging to improve your college recruiting.

Well, it's anecdotal, but I just heard about a person getting a multi-million dollar job offer through a text message.  And they don't work for Google.

Enter Rachel Bilson, one of the stars of the O.C., who is re-emerging in the new film, Jumper.  Reports from SMS Text News are saying she was hired through a text message.  The report is originally from the TImes of India, and it says:

She says, “I was at my cousin’s wedding in Tennessee and I got a text message. I guess it’s the new way to cast someone in a movie — the director just text messages you. It’s not bad, I wouldn’t mind if it happened more often. Doug sent me a text message and asked me what I was doing. I went, ‘Literally, right now?

I’m at my cousin’s wedding.’ And he messaged, ‘Well, what are you doing this autumn? Are you gonna come be in my movie?’ I was like, ‘I’m going to have to talk to some people about that. Hopefully it will work out.’ And it did.”

Now that Hollywood is on the bandwagon, can corporate HR be far behind? Put away those stuff envelopes with your formal letters. If you can't say you hired in 160 characters or less, you're not going to get the top talent.

Thank You For Attending The HCI Webinar

If you have any further questions or want to contact me, please leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at jdurbin@durbinmedia.com.  Feel free to connect to me on LinkedIn.

And if you want to see the video I was talking about (the candidate left alone), head on over to Flektor.

Thanks for listening. I have another webinar coming in March with Shally Steckerl and Margaret Graziano on Future Trends In Recruiting. Hope to see you there!

The Numbers Still Matter (Just Make Sure It's The Right Numbers)

I'm a big fan of social media.  When pitching a program to a client, I discuss the benefits of blogging, but focus in on the money you can make blogging in excess of what you're currently making. In my view, if you're not hiring more people or making more placements with your blog, then you have no business spending working hours on your blog.

Of course, this is also true for meetings, paperwork, hour and a half long interviews with bad candidates, RFP's, reading ESPN at work, checking your e-mail, and talking about quality initiatives with your boss.  The truth is that if you're not making money, most of what you do is a waste anyway.

So when I'm training, and someone asks me how long they should spend blogging a week - I tell them 3-5 hours.  That's a big chunk of time, and the only people it makes sense for are those who already tightly manage their time.  One of the first lessons I had in recruiting was the idea that planning was the most important consideration in my success. I had to plan my day, and then execute it.  I had to know how many phone calls, interviews, submittals, sendouts, meetings and starts I needed to make quota.  And over time, I saw that when you didn't hit your numbers, you didn't make your placements.

Screening Your Staffing Agencies

Hiring a staffing agency is easy.  Simply let the market know you have open positions, and account managers from staffing firms will call you to tell you they can fill you jobs with the best people.

Like most corporate decisions, the time-crunched decision maker is forced to rely on salespeople to decide who is the best fit for the company.  That process isn't going to change, but one that might is the questions that staffing firms are asked before they are given open positions.

Rob Neelbauer of Job Matchbox writes on the subject of questioning your staffing firm before giving them open reqs, and as a former recruiter and current hiring manager/owner, he has a unique perspective.

For example, in my recent interviews of recruiters I spoke with recruiters who represented that they knew all about different things in the tech world.  So I asked them questions that were telling.  I asked them if they used Facebook.  If they said no then I asked them if they knew what Web 2.0.  You would not believe what kinds of answers I got back.  My personal favorite has been the recruiter that doesn’t use Facebook but knows how to recruit Facebook developers.  The bottom line here if you don’t ask then you will not receive.

Now to be fair, salespeople don't have to be on Facebook to recruit Facebook developers.  They have recruiters to do that, and the ability to code Facebook Apps can be found by recruiters with no knowledge of the site.  It is possible, but is it likely?  Robert as a business owner has to make a decision whether to use a recruiter. His cost is his time.  Should he give his time away to a salesperson who doesn't even have  a passing acquaintance with the industry Robert works in?

A good recruiter can find anyone, and I don't buy into the idea that you have to know how to code Java to be a good Java recruiter.  But you do have to know something about software development to be able to screen people effectively.  So Robert passed on those recruiters.

The real question is what is the best method for screening recruiters?  What are the criteria for establishing a good relationship with a firm.  My hunch is that our "hunches" about what makes a good recruiter are dead wrong.  I wonder if anyone has done benchmarking on the actual effectiveness of staffing firms.  What make a strong recruiting fit?

Update:  Rob has further thoughts on Q&A for your Staffing firm.

Webinar Numbers Over 250

Well I'm just pleased as punch to find out that over 250 of you are registered for my HCI event on how to use Social Media to Recruit next week.  I promise you, you'll walk away with some bonafide social media recruiting tips.  This is hot stuff, and will not be available anywhere but in my webinars.

If you like what you hear, consider signing up for the March 6th and 7th Webinars, where I'll be with Shally Steckerl and Margaret Graziano discussing Upcoming Recruiting Trends.  That's a paid webinar - but if you are a staffing firm owner or a Human Resources executive, you cannot miss it.

If we are going into a recession, or if you plan to be in business 5 years from now, this is what's coming.
To sign up, head on over to Margaret Graziano's Keen Hire blog, or Shally's JobMachine site.

Cost is $89.97 per participant. 

Will A Recession Impact The Talent War?

As salaries rise and the difficulty of finding new employees increases, I have a feeling some managers are actually looking forward to a recession.  Maybe not consciously, but the last recession gave companies reasons to rein back on information technology salaries, and brought some sanity back to the hiring process.

Of course, many companies took their cuts and pay cuts too far, but that's a management issue, not a structural one.  When your employees are able to demand $10,000 and $20,000 raises, or when you see people leave taking jobs for twice what you pay them, it's only natural to hope for some wage relief.

Like a thunderstorm that cools off a hot summer afternoon, a brief deluge can give you some breathing room in your budget.  There's just one problem.

There's no rain in sight.

According to the Hodes QTrac blog, demographics and the skills needed aren't going to be favorable for companies if there is indeed a recession.

It’s also important to remember that as unemployment data hits the market, it doesn’t represent the “educated” workforce (Bachelor’s degree and above) but overall unemployment. So BLS reports overall unemployment is at 4.7%, but “educated” workforce unemployment is less than 3%.

While most HR/staffing professionals may hope a mild recession will help with labor shortages, they need to realize that the labor deficit is a demographic structural problem, not an economic cyclical problem.

The truth is there are more jobs available then there are candidates, and even the rise unemployment affects mainly low-skilled workers.  College-educated unemployment is at 3%, easily below the structural unemployment rate known as full employment, and that means that even massive layoffs at your competitor aren't going to help you that much.

The good news is that jobs are out there.  If you're a job-seeker that is struggling, that means the key to employment is doing a better job search.  The bad news is that companies that try to profit from an economic slowdown are going to find there's very little reward in squeezing wages or recruiting. 

Privacy SmackDown: Jigsaw Versus Privacy Expert

Dennis Smith is one cool dude.  In addition to writing the wirelessjobs blog, he flys around the country doing good wherever he an.  I'm not saying he's Superman, but I don't know anyone who can honestly say they've seen Dennis in the same room with the Man of Steel (I'd note that nobody reports Michael Kelemen being in the same room as Aquaman, either).

Where's Dennis to be found this Spring?  The ERExpo in San Diego, of course.  Dennis, the voice of reason and moderation, is, uh, moderating a debate between the CEO of Jigsaw and a Privacy Expert.  The debate will focus on Jigsaw's use of business information, which is highly valuable to salespeople, with the desire of some people to remain private.  Jigsaw says information is available everywhere - they're just aggregating it.  The privacy expert will undoubtedly say that Jigsaw is profiting off information "owned" by other people.

So the question that's out there.  Can we hide our information, or are we just fooling ourselves.  A reporter decided to try and live for just a week without giving out his private information, and the reports aren't good. 

Does information yearn to be free?  And do we have an expectation of privacy?

Does The Way You Interview Prevent You From Hiring The Best Candidate?

I was reading through John Sullivan's mullings about Notchup, the service that pays candidates to interview, and a paragraph leaped out at me. 

My experience and research has found that as much as 50% of the reasons that top candidates refuse to consider firms' job opportunities are directly related to the design of the recruiting strategy and the hiring process itself. Any combination of weak employment branding, negative comments found on the Internet, neutral or negative comments by current employees, a weak corporate jobs website, requiring multiple interviews, and a slow hiring decision will scare away up to 50% of the most qualified candidates.

John has real data to back up those assertions, which means that for companies that lack strong branding and employment processes, the pool of the best available candidates starts out at half strength.  And human nature being what it is, these companies don't even know they're missing out.

You can't measure what you don't see.  If your recruiting process and your employment brand turns off candidates, you don't even get the chance to interview them.  This can only lead to a disastrous misreading of the employee marketplace.

If your hiring managers and human resources executives are telling you there's a talent war going on, and you're constantly struggling to hire top people, it could be that the problem is not the marketplace, but you.  That would certainly explain the surveys of companies with multiple critical jobs to fill, who can't seem to find the right people.  Maybe the people are there, but they won't come interview with your company.

If that's the case, it's time to bring in outside help.

Some things to look for:
1) A high number of interview drop-offs (individuals come in for one interview, but not two).
2) Your employee referrals are under 20%.
3) Your staffing firm only speaks to you in platitudes, and can't offer any suggestions on how to improve).
4) The top account managers for your staffing firms aren't working with you.
5) A quick Google search turns up negative information.

If talent is truly the driving force behind success, are you doing your best to attract talent?

81 People Signed Up For My Webinar

So who wants to be number 82?

I'm doing a free webinar with the Human Capital Institute on how to use social media to recruit.  I'm just finishing up the slides, and this is not one you'll want to miss.

Learn:
How to Use LinkedIn the right way (it's not what you're seeing now)
How to Use Facebook to recruit top talent with employee referrals
How to Use MySpace to improve your sourcing
The care and feeding of blogs as referral sources
The use of cell phones to improve your candidate pool.

And that's it.  It's all the time we'll have.  The link for the program is here, with the corporate explanation, and a link to register 81 people are on board.  I want to break 150, so if you haven't signed up, get to it.  It's noon- 1p.m. CST online, and it's free. 

Legal Questions On Blogs? Turn To St Louis Blawggers

A blawg is a blog written by a lawyer.  Clever, isn't it?  In St Louis, we happen to have several practicing and recovering lawyers who write blogs.  Of the practicing lawyers, I've met two, and I figured I'd give them a shot in the arm today.

Dennis Kennedy:  Dennis is a technology lawyer for Thompson Coburn, and a genuinely nice guy. His entire site is helpful, and he's an excellent networker to find other law blogs.

George's Employment Blawg: George Lenard is an employment lawyer with Harris Dowell & Fisher, and he's been the defacto legal expert for the recruiting blog community.  His site regularly covers matters of employment, hr, compliance, and of course, blogging.  He also aggregates stories from around the legal blogosphere in helpful RSS feeds.  George has been featured in Time Magazine, Fast Company and several other publications.

Both are top notch lawyers with fine blogging credentials. 

Social Media Webinars For Recruiting

I have three webinars coming up in the next month.  The first will be February 19th at 12:00 CST for the Human Capital Institute. The topic I'll be covering is Talent Scouting and Social Networking: The New Employee Referral program.  To register for the 60 minute webinar, click on that link.   

The second event is the Recruiting Tour De Force,  March 6th and 7th, where I'll be presenting with Shally Steckerl and Margaret Graziano  We had a successsful event in San Antonio at the NAPS conference, and we're revisiting the event on the topic of What's Next For Recruiting.  Shally, Margaret and I cover the hot trends in recruiting from the standpoint of practioners.

No dull theory here.  We'll teach you how to make money and hire more people.  The cost of the event is $89.97, and you can sign up at either of the links below, or by sending me an RSVP to jdurbin@durbinmedia.com.

Shally has the event linked for the 6th here, and the 7th here. Margaret writes about it today on her KeenHire blog.

To help us out, link the post or make an annoucement on your own page.  I'll be happy to link back to anyone who advertises the events and sends me a note. 

St Louis Product Manager Site

A group of local product managers, headed by the estimable Jeff Lash of Good Product Manager, have formed a group to help network product managers in St Louis.

It's a good place to learn more from other experts, and can be found at STLPM.org.  From their website:

The St. Louis Product Management Group exists to promote the practice of product management within the St. Louis community; to help product managers and others involved in product development to grow their knowledge and skills; to share experiences and best practices; to help those interested in product management to improve their effectiveness, and to assist those interested in becoming a product manager.

And yes, the site is powered by a blog.  The first meeting is February 13th at the Savvis Center.

College Student Uses Blog To Get Hired

From Secrets of the Job Hunt, we have the exciting story of Andrew Cafourek, a University of Missouri student who used a blog in California to land a job with a marketing firm in St Louis.

Andrew is a regular reader of Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester analyst who covers social media marketing.  I've met Jeremiah, and follow his work closely, as he is one of the people at the forefront of my industry.

Andrew decided to leave  comment at this post, asking for help in his job search.  Lisa Young, an St Louis employee of Outrider (and blogger), saw Andrew's comment and reached out to him.  The result was an interview, a job offer, and an acceptance.   Andrew starts Monday.

This is not that surprising, as it's basically the principles of networking that recruiters use each day.  What's different is that blogs are considered trustworthy sources by candidates and recruiters alike.  Jeremiah's blog is a great place to find people interested in social media marketing.  It's a targeted community, one where you would expect to find social media employees.

And in this case, it just so happens that a California blog helped a Missouri college student land a job in St Louis.  What will your story be?