Samara Parker

Okay. It's time. They've been playing Christmas carols in the mall for almost a month now, there's weird tasting fruit cake at the grocery store, and my favorite YouTube fitness expert has taken to wearing a Santa hat whilst answering questions about power lifting.

If they can force holiday cheer upon me, then I can force it upon you!

Today's links are going to get you feeling festive, prepare you for all of the legal issues that make this time of year so terrifying for HR pros, and hopefully have you laughing out loud!

Speaking of legal issues, post-holiday party harassment suits are a real problem for employers and their staff. Employment and Labor Law lawyer, Michael Kass shares some simple ways employers can reduce the threat of post holiday party lawsuits.

Far more devastating to one's career than office party idiocy: giving your boss a terrible gift. Technically you do not have to give your boss a gift at all, but if your co-workers are all going to, then you kind of have to follow suit. And, let's face it, buying gifts is hard work. Well, not if your employer is a gen-Xer, thanks to Laurie Ruettimann's blogpost on what to buy your Gen-X boss!

I'll tell you a secret: as social as I am, and I am very social, I hate holiday staff parties. I hate them. Don't know why, just do. That's why this next link appealed to me so very much. Heather Bussing shares the most straightforward employer's guide to the holidays I have ever read. She holds back not one single punch, including the suggestion that employers forgo holiday parties all-together, and I love her for it!

Let's face it, more than cheer, more than parties, more than lawsuits even, the holidays are about advertising. Sprout Insights shares a great Infographic that explains why companies should use more than one social platform to advertise during the holidays, and possibly all times of year.

Here is the LOL I promised you: How to tell your kids there is no Santa. You should watch it even if you do not have children. Laughter is good for relieving stress, which is good for productivity. Everybody wins!

Happy Holiday Link Lovin'!

Being small is tough. When it comes to recruiting, the big guys have a lot going for them: established branding, greater reach, and just more resources at their fingertips in general. But, being small also has its advantages; you just need to know how to leverage them!

I am an extremely tiny person myself. I am also quite athletic. These things are often at odds with each other, so no one would ever think to pick me first for their basketball team! So, instead of crying over poor genetics, I've found sports that are better suited to my stature. I don't play volleyball, sport of the amazons, but I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which is perfectly suited to those of us with small levers!

When it comes to recruiting, I suggest small businesses do the same.

Smaller companies can beat the big guys. They just have to pick the right game, choose their playing field wisely, and employ a few ninja-like social recruiting tricks while they're at it!

The Game:

Social Recruiting

TV ads, billboards, job fairs, and networking events are very expensive. Social recruiting is not. Big companies also outshine smaller companies in these non-social areas because they have easily recognizable branding, established reputations, and more manpower!

When you use social to recruit, you level the playing field. You simply do not need a large staff to run hiring campaigns when using Facebook  or Twitter. You can grow your employer brand while you recruit, and, let's face it, Facebook Ads are much more budget-friendly than career fair booths!

The Playing Field:

Facebook

I'm not going to dwell on the commonly-used reasons given for picking Facebook to recruit with.

• 1 Billion Reach

• Graph Search's ability to access passive candidates

• Mobile-friendly

• Amazing candidate targeting

All of those things are gold for recruiting, but they are equally beneficial to big businesses as they are to small ones. And we're talking about how you can edge out the big guys. There are two notable benefits to being a small business when it comes to Facebook Recruiting.

First, big businesses aren't using Facebook for recruiting at nearly the same rate that they are using Linked in. Most of them include the network in their strategies, but aren't consistently focused on building Facebook talent communities. This means less competition for small businesses trying to recruit.

Second, Facebook is all about "authentic interactions". The term authentic gets thrown around a lot these days, and often it's just marketing fluff, but when it comes to engaging on a social network like Facebook, it has actual meaning and value. Facebook is built on friends connecting with friends, and users still see the network this way, even though over 70% of them have used Facebook to look for work... just sayin'!

As a small business you can work this angle to your benefit. You aren't some huge corporation, sending out email blasts, using bots, and posting repetitive content. You are human: personal, and engaged. Embrace your smallness. It makes you more relatable.

The Tricks:

Play up your smallness

Engage with people one on one, showcase the that staff you do have on a personal level, emphasize just how small you are, and how that impacts your team positively (i.e. they are a name, not just a number.) Show potential candidates that yours is a company they can grow with. You can do this by sharing content about your company's growth, both past and projected, its history, how you got started and why, as well as posting employee profiles that introduce your staff.

(Here's how to create employee profiles to boost your employer brand)

Go on the hunt

Facebook is the perfect place to seek out passive candidates to grow your talent pools. You can search for potential hires through Facebook's directory, and check out Pages and groups that are relevant to your job openings. More and more, users are sharing their employment histories and professional skills, so you can use Facebook Graph Search to seek them out based on this information.

Be consistent

Many employers only post to their Career Page when they have a position to fill. This simply doesn't work. If you want to build a great employer brand, grow your talent communities, and connect with potential hires, you must share varied content, and do so consistently.

Employee profiles, pics of staff parties, recruiting videos, links to relevant blog posts, and questions, are all great things to post on your Page. I highly recommend checking out Earls Restaurant's Facebook Career Page if you want to see a great example of Facebook employer branding. KLM Airlines also has an amazing content strategy, worthy of imitation.

Most importantly, just get started! The sooner you take the plunge into Facebook recruiting, the sooner you can start growing your talent communities, and attracting qualified candidates!

Oh, and did I mention that the Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App is a super easy way to get started with social recruiting?

Oh hi!

How are you? Are you feeling festive yet?

I don't know about where you live, but I can no longer exit my home without a barrage of tinsel, sparkles, and choral singing. This has actually been going on since mid-November, but I've been trying to refrain from using the word Christmas on this blog until at least the first of December. And do not fear, there will be no holiday tips, or seasonal posts, until the tenth at the very earliest. Besides, I like New Years inspired blog posts best anyway!

This week's links are all about Facebook. Mostly because of the recent gift they have given employers and recruiters, but also because Jobcast is a Facebook Recruiting App, and this is our blog!

What is this gift I speak of? Easier access to passive candidates of course! Facebook is now prompting users to share if they are looking for work. This is awesome, especially considering more people are using Facebook to search for work than LinkedIn. There are also more recruiters using LinkedIn than there are on Facebook (according to Jobvite’s Social Recruiting Survey). More candidates and less competition — what could be better?

Facebook is also updating the algorithm it uses to select content to display on users’ Timelines. The new Facebook algorithm will favour ‘high quality’ content over memes. This update could either hurt, or help, employers in their Facebook recruiting efforts, depending on what kinds of content they choose to post.

Posting original content that includes images or video is a great way to capitalize on Facebook’s Timeline aggregation. May I suggest you check out this tutorial on how to create employee profiles to grow your employer brand?

I would also highly recommend checking out these 4 steps to prepare for the future of your workplace, by Mike Haberman over at Blogging4jobs. He may not directly say "get on the Facebook recruiting bandwagon", but really, we all know social is the future of recruiting!

UK Recruiter’s ‘600 Interesting and Useful Things for Recruiters’ series has rounded up tons of great articles for employers, in honor of their 600th issue, including 10 simple tips for Facebook Recruiting that get results.

That should keep your social recruiting task list full for at least a week!

Happy link lovin’.

Happy employees are an employer brand’s best friend.

According to LinkedIn and TNS enthusiastic and engaged employees are potentially a company’s greatest asset when it comes to branding.

Sadly for us, and by us I mean you and employers everywhere, it can be pretty tough to get employees engaged with your social media efforts. There are lots of ways to encourage your team to engage, but unless you are Lululemon, and have a staff made up of selfie posting, fitness obsessed, Instagram loving young people, getting your employees to create and share content for your brand can be a hard sell.

I have a solution!

Create that content for them.

At Jobcast our head honchos are pretty darn cool. Johnny could bike across Canada without breaking a sweat, has some of the most adorable kids you’ll ever see, and is incredibly passionate about tech, design and user experience. Ryan is a ninja, like actually a ninja, has a gorgeous wife, who is an extremely popular blogger and book author, he also has over ten years experience when it comes to social recruiting, an in-depth understanding of what employers want, and knows exactly what employers need to be successful with social recruiting.

So why aren’t their faces plastered all over the internet? Well, for one, they are both insanely busy trying to make Jobcast better, and for two, they are both pretty humble guys. Your employees are probably pretty busy too, and maybe they don’t feel comfortable talking about themselves, or even know where to start! That’s where you come in, or, in the case of Jobcast, that’s where I come in.

I’m going to create employee profiles for my employers Ryan and Johnny, and in doing so, show you…

How to Create Employee Profiles to Improve Your Employer Brand

Step 1

Photos! You need a really good photo as the main focus for your employee profile. Image-based content is king. Photos and videos get more shares, likes, comments, and general engagement than any other kind of content shared via social media.

We took some professional photos, because we wanted to be able to use these images for any other projects that may come up in the future. You don’t need to invest that much, a good quality smart phone can almost always take high resolution photos, that are perfect for your needs. If your photo taking skills aren’t the best, just try for natural lighting, make sure your subject has a nice smile going on, and if all else fails, use a filter to enhance the picture.

Here are some more great tips for taking awesome photos with your phone.

Step 2

Write a short bio about your employee that includes what they do and why they love working for your company.

Example 1:

Johnny Oshika, CTO, co-founder and technical wizard behind Jobcast is driven, highly analytical, and has all of the technical skills required to create and manage the development of the Jobcast Facebook Recruiting Application.

Johnny loves solving problems, and improving user experience for Jobcast. Striving to perfect the Jobcast app keeps him engaged and excited about his job.

Example 2:

Ryan is the CEO, co-founder, and face of  Jobcast. He has tons of experience with social recruiting, understands what employers need, and how to attract candidates.

Ryan is always happy to share his knowledge with others, whether it’s via webinar, or face to face. That’s what makes him so good at working with employers to make their social recruiting the best it can be.

Step 3

Show everyone, and their mom. Now that you have the content share it on all of the social networks you use. Make sure that you tag the employee in the image so that they see it, and so do all of their connections, this will increase shares, comments and likes. Encourage all of your employees to share the post on their own social networks. You can even write a post on your company blog about employee profiles and how cool they are.

Happy social recruiting!

I like to pretend that I am a superhero. Mostly at the gym, but sometimes at work as well!

In order to help make me feel more like a caped crusader, every week I embark on a (not so) secret mission to make the world of social recruiting a better place. In other words: I scour the internet searching for super cool new blog posts, important social network updates, and pretty much anything that can help you improve your recruiting.

This past week brought us quite a few cool blog posts. Like this one on how your employer brand can help you with holiday staffing and retention! Okay, so it's not the most exciting topic, but it's important so get reading.

Oooooh, now here's an exciting one. Kris Dunn revisits the always controversial, and in my own opinion, totally played out topic of woman vs woman drama in the workplace. Honestly, I've never really found this to be a huge issue in my own experience, but I would love to know your opinions on how women's professional interactions with each other differ from those between men, and those between men and women. Tell me what you really think... just try to keep it safe for work!

Back to the boring, but relevant and much more useful information. Eugen Oprea share 6 great new Google Analytics features that you can use to improve your social recruiting. I know, I know, nobody enjoys tracking metrics, but, like eating your veggies, it's necessary for success in pretty much all aspects of your life!

My new favorite recruiting/HR blog, HR Nasty, provided us with an article that is hilarious, informative, and infuriating all at the same time. Nasty shares his thoughts on how an employee was (rightfully) fired for wearing one of the most disturbingly offensive costumes imaginable to work for Halloween.

Nisha at Your HR Buddy is another of my favorite bloggers of late. Her post about the importance of storytelling for business is a lovely read. It will leave you feeling informed and inspired, which will hopefully make up for how infuriating the previous article was!

Happy link loving, and do share your thoughts in the comments!

Being busy has become a badge of honor. We complain / brag about waking up at 5 A.M. to head into the office, where we will be greeted by stacks on stacks on stacks of work that we have to tackle before the day is through. We buzz around, clutching giant-sized coffees, and constantly checking our smart phones for updates to our already overloaded schedules.

Being busy is a way of life. So much so, that we’re often unsure of how to handle it when life slows down.

Often, we just fill any downtime we may get with busy-work, and continue on our stressed-out way. But what if I told you there was a better, less stressed-out way?!

Well, for those of us whose lives are focused around recruiting, these lull times can be extremely rewarding, without all of the crazy that comes with too much busy-work. When you’re not trying to find the right candidate, or fill diversity requirements, or even fill any particular job post at all, you can focus on improving those aspects of recruiting that are often overlooked when things are busier… And getting more sleep… And reheating that 20 oz. cup of Joe that you’ve been clutching since 6 am.

Here are three helpful recruitment boosters, that employers and recruiters can focus on in the off-season, that will make life less hectic in the on-season.

Get Mobile

1 billion job searches per month are done via mobile. If a job seeker cannot apply for your jobs from their device, then 50% will abandon the application process altogether. Oh, and (well-executed) mobile recruiting has a five to ten times higher conversion rate… just sayin’!

Last time we checked, only 1 in 20 Career Sites were mobile-optimized. So, chances are, your application process isn’t yet fully mobile.

The number one thing you can do to improve your hiring odds is to get mobile with your recruiting. And seeing as you have a little time on your hands… Check out this post about using Facebook to make your application process mobile-friendly 😀

Employer Brand

When you don’t have a million things to do at once, it’s easier to sit back and look at the big picture. Employer branding benefits greatly from this removed vantage point.

Take some time to look back over the last couple months of your social media endeavors. Is your brand message consistent on all of the social networks you employ? Are you responding to your connections in a timely fashion? Does the content you share represent your brand in the way that you want it to?

Answer these questions, then come up with a couple of ways that you can improve your brand. It could be as simple as increasing the frequency of your posts (try using Hootsuite or Buffer to queue content ahead of time), or adding more diverse content. You may need to fix up your logo, ensure that your Facebook Career Page is fully branded, or rethink your overall message.

Stock Content

This one’s super simple. If you have a little extra time to spare, use that downtime to find some relevant images, write some fun, non-time sensitive posts, and put together a few employees profiles that you can trot out later; Perfect for those days when you just don’t have time to create original content. That way, you still have some stuff to share that reads like there’s a person behind the Company Facebook Page and Twitter account, instead of just posting tons and tons of links.

Not that there’s anything wrong with posting links! In fact, I highly suggest that you…

Find, and Set-Up a Content Aggregator  

I use so many; It’s kind of nuts. But content aggregators help you stay on top of relevant topics and trends in your field, as well as providing you with a steady flow of share-able content.

Feedly, Alltop, Reddit, Google Currents, and Prismatic are definitely worth checking out. You can also have a look at this article for some more in-depth tips about finding great social media content.

The downside is it can take a little while to set them up, but once you do, managing your social media content will be so much easier! Another little bonus app you may want to check out is Pocket. Pocket let’s you save, and organize, the content you find from various sites in one place. I use it all the time and highly recommend you give it a try.

All of these strategies take time to implement and are easily overlooked when you have a million positions to fill, and no time to do it in! But the next time you look up and realize that the stack of papers on your desk is unusually low, and that your retention policy has been working like a charm, you’ll know exactly what to do to make life a little easier later. You’ll thank yourself once things have returned to their wonderfully chaotic norm!

You’re savvy. You search the internet for recruiting tips, you read this blog. Let’s face it — when it comes to social recruiting, you’re ahead of most employers already!

But, being as awesome as you are, I’m sure you’re always striving to be just a little bit more awesome with your recruiting. Writing better job posts is a great way to do that.

As with any endeavor, learning by example is one of the best ways to improve your job post writing skills! Researching what fantastic recruiters do, when constructing job posts for their own clients, is an awesome way to pick up some new job post writing hacks.

Check out these links for some great ideas you can use yourself:

“Want to spend three months coding and learning in New York with smart, friendly, and intellectually curious people? Read on...” - The entire Hacker School website is a perfect job post. It’s let’s the candidate know exactly what to expect, what’s expected of them, and delivers both messages in an excited, positive fashion, without ever sounding smarmy or annoying. The force is strong with these guys!

This agency wanted to attract creative people, so instead of just writing a job post, the used a cartoon. The cartoon also acts as a warning to potential candidates about just how motley the crew they are applying to join is; which is a great way to ensure those who do apply are a good cultural fit!

Last year this incredible recruiting campaign threatened imminent brain drain on all European countries! The campaign won several awards and was highly successful. But, it’s Atlassian’s awesome example of a career site I think you should mimic. They've created a slideshow that explains to candidates exactly why they ought to apply in a series of steps.Their descriptions are informative, short and sweet, enticing, funny, and represent the companies values to a tee.

An equally awesome, yet often underutilized technique, is to scour the internet for the WORST job posts ever written. Try to identify anything your own posts may have in common with them, and then expunge those similarities with extreme prejudice (yes, Jerry, I did just quote Apocalypse Now in a blog about recruiting. It isn't called the ‘war for talent’ for nothing!).

Now for some examples of what not to do, EVER. Or I will cry. And give you a look of disappointment that rivals anything your mother has ever thrown your way!

The specific job posting by the Dalkey Archive Press has been removed. This was a very good move on their part considering that the New York Observer called it the “Worst Job Post Ever”. Here’s a little taste:

“The successful applicant will not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.)”

How could any candidate possibly resist?!

This next link is to an article by management today that showcases 10 amazing job ads. Some of them are amazingly good, like the one by Poke London, but we are in the negative example section of this blog post, the job post I want you to check out first, is amazingly bad.

The ad is for a personal assistant to a fellow named William. It does not require the candidate to send a resume, only personal photos. The candidate should be single, with no kids, and be willing to travel with William to romantic locations. The ad includes ten photos of William. TEN. This guy exists.

Oh, and last but not least, there’s this:

It's easy to forget what recruiting is really about. We get caught up in all of the glamorous stuff, like effective strategies, talent pipelines, and outdoing competitors with better branding. Are all of these things important? Heck yes! But they are not THE goal, they are tools towards the goal. The goal is hiring the right candidate. Not a rock star, not top talent, and not superman! The right candidate is the candidate that fits with your team, your company, and the position on offer. This week's links are all about finding those candidates, the ones that actually exist in real life. They may look more like Clark than Superman, but do you really want a candidate who spends an unnerving amount of time hiding in telephone booths and shows up for work with their undies on the outside of their too-tight pants?! We recently celebrated Remembrance Day in Canada, a day that proves all too well that our real heroes often go unnoticed and even ignored. Sadly the skill set vets bring to the table are regularly glossed over by recruiters and employers. In this article Laurie Ruettimann makes a stellar argument for hiring vets as recruiters if you want no BS, results based hiring. Another mistake we often make when imagining our perfect candidate is valuing education over vocational skills. Well, according to this article at HRMagazine, vocational skills are often much more valuable than academic qualifications! Sometimes you find the right candidate, but, on paper, they simply do not possess all of the skills you need them to. If you're hiring a surgeon? Deal breaker! If you're hiring a secretary? It's skill development time!

Development programs can help you bring new hires up to par, and improve upon the fantastic team you already have. Candidates are people too, has been a huge theme of late, not only on our blog, but with recruiters and HR pros all over the internet! Especially over at Blogging4Jobs where they presented an entire week of content focused on candidate experience. Satisfaction with one's job is so important. Satisfied employees are happier, happier candidates are more productive, in better health, and are more likely to stay with your company.

Keep your employees satisfied with this advice from Jessica Miller-Merrell. And no, the occasional pizza is not enough! Oh, and last, but not least, need an example of a job post that will attract candidates, instead of terrifying them? Check out this post by Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist for a job post that balances telling candidates what is needed of them, with what they can expect in return :D Happy Linking!

It’s popular to be Type-A.

Bragging over how full your schedule is, constantly checking your phone for updates, and running around half-dazed, chugging coffee, means you are you are working hard and getting stuff done.

Even when there just isn’t that much that needs doing, we fill those times to the brim with ‘busy work’, still chugging coffee like there’s no tomorrow, running around frantically like mice in one of those spinny-wheel things that I don’t know the name of.

This type of behavior is actually detrimental to productivity. And yet we demand it of candidates every single day.

In job posts, employers describe their ideal candidate as constantly working, proficient every aspect of their field, and as perfectionists who want to get every detail exactly right. This DO-ALL-THE-THINGS attitude may be in high demand, but it’s not going to benefit your company, or recruiting efforts, or your potential hires.

Take this job description for example:

“We want someone who doesn’t understand the term ‘office hours’. You’re always online!”

We took this example from LinkedIn Jobs, but I will not name the employer, as I am nice. I guess they also want someone who is operating at at a fraction of their potential, and is at risk of stroke, depression, and serious burn out. <sarcasm> Sounds like a great retention strategy to me! <sarcasm>

It’s like there are two planets: the reality of actual humans, and the irreality of job descriptions. When you ask for a candidate to have all of the skills of Superman, for a job Clark Kent that could do, the only applicants you’re going to attract are the ones with superhero complexes. And more often than not, these candidates will not deliver on what they promise!

I know it’s tempting, when writing up a job post, to envision a perfect employee, who turns everything they touch to gold. An employee who just intuitively knows how to fulfill every task required of them (and how many sugars you like in your coffee), but that candidate does not exist. And if they did, they would probably be off fighting crime somewhere, not checking their Facebook feed for potential job openings!

If that is the employee that your job posts demand, then those job posts are going to intimidate, and even alienate, lots of great candidates. Writing a job description is not just about projecting your expectations and desires, it is also about appealing to potential hires in order to get applications. You’ll get a lot more quality applications by appealing to the Clark Kent side of a candidate in your job posts, then allowing your new employee to reveal their Superman side as they grow into their position.

When you use social recruiting, every job you post builds your employer brand, and projects your corporate culture to the whole world. Those posts can help you craft an identity that makes candidates excited at the prospect of working for you, encourages them to engage, builds strong talent pipelines, and fosters positivity, trust, and growth. Make your job posts a symbol of hope amongst a sea of unrealistic expectations, and you’ll draw candidates in like never before. I mean really. We all know that the S on Superman’s chest stands for the Kryptonian word for hope, and not for our simple earthling ideas about the importance of being “Super”.

Next week, we’ll explore exactly how you can write job posts that will land you a Clark Kent employee!

Happy humpday, I mean that in the nicest possible way!

The HR superstars over at Blogging4Jobs have been running a pretty cool theme week, over on their site, dedicated to candidate experience.

Hopefully you already follow Blogging4Jobs, but just in case you don't, here's the lowdown. During Candidate Experience Week, Blogging4Jobs is publishing original daily content geared towards changing the way candidate experience is perceived. Their goal is to get recruiters and employers thinking about how the way they treat candidates affects their company's bottom line, and really focus on creating a positive experience that benefits both the company and the potential hire.

At Jobcast, we love themes, be it pirate themed water parks, theme rides, or theme parties (especially the waters parks though!) So, we thought we would compile some excellent articles that deal with candidate experience.

Links!

A candidate's experience begins with your company brand, weird huh? Apparently even the look and feel of your job post plays a huge part in a potential hire’s impression of your company. This article over at TLNT, goes so far as to say that your employer brand can make or break a candidate's’ experience.

Next up, the application process! Mobile friction during job applications = very very bad candidate experience. This is something we've already touched on quite a bit in our own blog posts, but it bears repeating because so many Career Sites are not mobile friendly, and so many job applicants abandon the application process because of mobile friction. Just check out this article on Talent HQ for more stats about the importance of a mobile-friendly job application process.

On to the interview, my favorite part of the job hunt! Unfortunately, most candidates don’t enjoy this process very much, many even find being interviewed pretty darn scary. In this lovely article, Jocelyn Aucoin shares 3 things employers can give candidates to improve their interview experience.

We saved the best for last, and by best, I mean silliest! That HR Chick, Stephanie Krieg reminds us all that no candidate wants to work for a stick in the mud, and that fun is an all to oft forgotten aspect of candidate experience. She also shares some of the funniest pictures of HR pros I have ever seen. PS I love her.

Oh, actually, the very last link is a teeny tiny bit of self promotion, but it also has to do with candidate experience and fun, so it's okay right? Here's a link to an article about improving candidate engagement through gamification that I wrote for HR Insights Magazine, it even got a gold badge on the front page! End brag fest.

After you check out all of these links, head over to Twitter and follow the candidate experience conversation with #thecandidate, and more cool articles on Blogging4Jobs.

Happy linking everyone!