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I fear I've been neglecting a very important part of blogging. A part of blogging so fundamental, so important, and so substantial that I shudder to think how upset with me you must be, dear reader. I have been neglecting to write holiday-themed posts. For this, I am sorry. But hear me out: I've been living overseas,and the holidays here are, quite literally, foreign to me. Usually, they involve a lot of the color orange, and toast covered in celebratory sprinkles. Check out Stuff Dutch People Like and you'll see what I'm talking about! All of that changes today! Today, I will write a themed post about one of the most meaningful holidays that man has ever known. Saint Patrick's Day. In honor of this glorious celebration of drunken mischief and debauchery, we're going to tackle a very meaty issue. How to prevent a recruiting hangover. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. We all know the stats on failed hires (46% of hires fail within 18 months). I'm talking about those hires that cause you nothing but a throbbing headache, nausea, and an overwhelming feeling of regret. And it's all because you didn't take the necessary preventative steps when sourcing, recruiting, and on-boarding these candidates. Unlike the kind of hangover that is synonymous with the day after St. Patrick’s Day, an aspirin, pancakes, and spending the day in bed won't help cure recruiting hangovers. Although it couldn't hurt! Instead, try implementing these three tricks to insure that you keep recruitment regrets to a minimum.

1 - Look Beyond the Resume

Sure a candidate's resume might be top-notch, but if they are stubborn, refuse to take direction, or have no passion for the work that you're hiring them to do, all the credentials in the world won't make them a quality hire. I'm not saying that you should ignore resumes. They are an important way to assess your potential hire's hard skills. What I am saying is that you need to read between the lines in order to get a better idea of what their soft skills are. This is a great argument for checking out a potential candidate's LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles – you may just find a diamond in the rough, or rule out a hangover in the making!  2. Interview with Fit in Mind

By the time the face-to-face interview stage comes along, you should have a pretty good idea of a potential candidate's technical skills. Use this time to get a better understanding of whether or not your candidate possesses the personality traits that will make them succeed at your company 85% of candidate failure is due to attitudinal shortcomings, so one of the best ways to curb your failure rate is to assess a candidate’s temperament, motivation, emotional intelligence, social skills, and coach-ability. Ask your interviewee to describe workplace experiences that will give you insight into these aspects of their personality. You can also bring members of the team they will potentially work with into the interview process. Your current employees have a pretty good idea of what characteristics make for a good co-worker. I mean, honestly, no one wants to work with a jerk!  3. Measure, Assess, Progress

Record the questions you ask, the answers your candidate gives, and as many other details about your hiring process that you can. Look back over all of this information every six months or so, with the success of those candidates you have hired in mind. You can then get an idea of what questions work the best, what kinds of answers should set off alarms bells, where your best candidates found you, or where you found them, and much, much more. This data will allow you to make informed decisions about the future of your hiring process. I feel much better now... Could one of you guys please remind me to write an Easter Bunny post? May your Saint Patrick's Day be a lucky one, and well worth the unpleasant aftermath! For more great tips about preventing recruiting-induced headaches, sign up for our newsletter!

It’s that time again!

Time to scour the internet in search of wonderful articles, and blog posts to share with you, our lovely readers.

I’m actually lying a little bit… Just a touch of hyperbole really, it’s just that I no longer technically scour the internet when crafting these Link Love’s.

Nope, no more scouring because I now have a zillion incredible tools that help me find awesome content. In fact, it’s become exceedingly easy to find useful, interesting, and, when I’m feeling silly, silly blog posts and articles to share.

One of the newest tools I’m using is called Swayy. Swayy is a wonderful new content aggregation and sharing tool. It uses information gathered from your social networks to recommend content your community will enjoy most! It also allows users to share schedule and share posts, and track important metrics.

The folks at Swayy assured me you would like a post featuring them… I’m totally kidding, but they should probably start doing that!

Another article Swayy is sure you’ll love shares 9 unexpected hacks to improve your hiring. I’m pretty sure they’re right about this one, who doesn’t love a good hack after-all?

Everyone needs a proper RSS reader in their life. for this purpose I highly recommend Feedly. Feedly is probably the best reader app out there. I use it every single day to stay on top of new releases from influential HR bloggers, social media innovators, and even our competiors 😉

One of the coolest blogs I follow on Feedly is Blogging4Jobs. This morning I awoke to a fantastic post in my feed from Blogging4Jobs that I think you guys should definitely check out: The #1 Thing You Need to Know About Employer Branding!

With all these newer tools, it would be easy to forget old standbys, like Alltop, but we really shouldn’t. Alltop, as ugly as it is (sorry guys), is still one of the best places to find share worthy content.

Alltop is where I first found out about a lot of my favorite, most informative bloggers, such as Gautam Gosh.

Speaking of Gautam, his recent article, Social Media 101 for Professionals, is a must read!

Well, as Bugs so elegantly put it, that’s all folks. I hope you check out these tools and articles, I think they’ll really help you make the most out of your social media efforts.

If you found this blog post useful, or at least entertaining, you should probably share it with all of your family and friends… Oh, and you should definitely sign-up for our news letter bellow!

Hiring for fit is awesome.

In case that last week’s article wasn’t enough to convince you of this, then how about this:

“50% of hires fail within the first 18 months on the job”

Okay, so that stat doesn’t actually say anything about hiring for fit… But when we look at why those hires typically fail, we see that it’s almost entirely due to the (ex) employee’s inability to mesh with their company’s culture and get along with co-workers and superiors.

In fact, only around ten percent is due to incompetence or lack of skill, while the rest is entirely due to a lack of fit.

Hiring for fit is pretty tricky though. You need to have a solid understanding of your own company: the management style, the culture, and the different personality types that exist within your team already. Bonus points if you can identify some personality types that are missing from your current team dynamic that would improve productivity or moral. Then, you’ll need to figure out what it is that makes employees excel at your company, what makes them fail, and how to find candidates who will fall into the former category.

Exhausting!

Thank goodness for 7 Geese.

Bet you thought I was going to try and tell you how to do all of this myself, didn’t you? No way. That is so not my area of expertise. This article, by the good folks over at 7 Geese, will give you a killer strategy for figuring out how to identify your company’s values and culture, and then how to interview effectively for cultural fit.

What I’m going to try and help you do is use Facebook ads to hire for fit.

Let’s go!

Create a candidate profile

What does your ideal candidate value? What kind of skills do they have? What kind of interests might they have? You can profile your best employees to help you get ideas on this. The same traits that make them so successful, are traits you may want to look for in new employees.

Just be careful not to hire clones of your top performers; Dig deep and figure out an assortment of personality traits that make these employees such a great fit for your company.

For example:

On employee may be a great fit because they are passionate about their job, and they have a communication style that meshes with your clientele. Another employee’s success may be due to their emotional intelligence, organizational skills, and the fact that their personality type fits nicely with the management style of your leaders.

Once you have this information all written out, you can figure how best to target for these traits using Facebook ads.

Appeal with visuals

Start slow. Do this by selecting some images, preferably of your actual staff, that showcase your company culture, specifically the aspects of your culture that will appeal to your ideal candidate.

For example:

If you are looking to find tech-savvy talent, who are always up on the latest gadgets and trends, then use pics that show off some of the awesome technologies that your company has to offer: Imagery, perhaps, of staff working on high quality laptops, showcasing  interactive technologies that facilitate collaboration.

If you have the option, showing a recruiting video, geared specifically to candidates who fit your culture, is one of the best possible tools you can use to boost engagement and, in turn, your reach.

Or, just offer them an iPad mini… Up to you!

Use demonstrative language

Express your company’s values clearly in your ads, and use behavioral terms.  If ambition is a key value that your employees must posses in order to succeed at your organization, use a call to action that conveys this.

For example:

“Are you the kind of person who loves to set lofty goals? More importantly, are you the kind of person who actually reaches them? If so, apply now. We want to work with you!”

Use ALL the tools

Facebook ads allow you to target candidates based on their interests, Likes, and other key personality traits. This is a bit more advanced than the previous options, but according to Facebook’s metrics, narrowly targeted Facebook ads reach the right user 90% of the time. Don’t be afraid to get specific.

For example:

If you are looking for candidates who are extremely driven and hard working, try searching for people who “Like” the Pages of like-minded experts, such as Sheryl Sandberg (not to be overly obvious) and have interests that demonstrate drive. Triathlons, for instance.

If you are looking for a team player to fill a creative role, then target candidates who play team sports, and who have chosen to follow creative types, like Seth Godin.

ALLLL the tools!

Check out these resources for more on how to use Facebook ads and on how to target for fit:

• Step-by-step guide to recruiting with Facebook ads

• How to target specific candidates with Facebook ads

• How to choose which Facebook ads are right for you, and how to budget for those Facebook ads

• Complete guide to Facebook ads

• Why hiring for fit matters

• How to hire with fit in mind

• How to interview for cultural fit

I hope these tips help you hire some amazing people who make your company culture even better than it already is!

If you have any tips on hiring for fit, or any topics you’d like to see covered on the blog, let us know in the comments.

And, don’t forget to sign up for our news letter. It makes us all so very happy when you do 🙂

I still don't understand why hiring for fit is so contentious. Well, maybe I do. Instead of discussing hiring for fit done well, bloggers, journalists, and "experts" prefer to sensationalize the concept by conflating hiring for fit with hiring clones. They also enjoy referencing companies who just hire mini versions of their CEOs, or people who have the same haircut. They never actually provide us with any proof that such companies exist though... Not that I am saying they don't. Hello Abercrombie & Fitch! Let's take a look at some companies who make hiring for cultural fit, team fit, and brand fit work. Lululemon does an incredible job of hiring for fit. Literally. All of their staff has a passion for fitness, fashion, and health in line with the company’s culture, even staff members who work in their offices. Lululemon highlights their various employees’ accomplishments on their blog, which is a fantastic example of employer/company branding done right. Here's a great video interview with Jaci Edgeworth, Lululemon Athletica's director of people potential, on how the company manages to hire for cultural fit and keep their employees engaged with that culture. This one is a little out of left field; Lego has made fit a huge priority in their recruiting process. The company shares how they go about determining if a potential candidate fits with the company's culture and five keys for improving how you recruit for cultural fit. My favorite link is also a pretty personal one. No it's not about Jobcast! (But we do rock at hiring for fit.) It's Victory Barbers, a local business based in my old home town of Victoria, BC.

Victory is a great example of hiring for fit done right. Their staff ranges from tattooed punk rock dudes, to adorable blond ladies, but all of their employees are a bit quirky, have a strong sense of personal style, and passion for making their clients look incredible. Victory has impressive retention, many of their staff have been with them since they first opened, and because of this, they have garnered a reputation for being the best team of barbers in the city. The employee profile section of their website is definitely worth a look for getting some employer branding inspiration... Oh, and they kick-box together. Rad. See, hiring for fit can be pretty awesome! Happy Link Loving. This coming Monday we're going to get into how you can use Facebook ads to target candidates who fit with your company culture. You won't want to miss it, so you should probably sign-up for our news letter!

Retention is one of HR’s primary mandates. High turnover costs organizations tons of cash and man-hours, it disrupts team dynamics, and is just plain stressful.

To quote everyone’s favorite meme: Ain’t nobody got time for that!

When most of us discuss retention, we start the conversation post-hire. We look at incentives, engagement, and boosting employee morale. I recently wrote a blog post about creating a culture of retention that discussed exactly these points, but as important as all of those factors are, they don’t address the importance of recruiting.

Recruiting for cultural fit is almost always discussed as a means to maintain company culture and brand. This is why we end up with some articles arguing that hiring for fit leads to a lack of innovation caused by homogeneity. In truth though, hiring for fit has absolutely nothing to do with selecting candidates who are all exactly the same.

Hiring for fit is about finding candidates who:

• Love what your company does

• Have similar values to your organization

• Will get along well with their future coworkers

• Compliment the rest of your team with their skill set

• Have a style of work that meshes with your other employees

• Have similar priorities to your staff and organization

I would argue that these traits matter more than work history, education, and demographics combined.

I’ll use an example to better explain why I think this is true.

A friend of mine recently acquired a new coworker, let’s call him Pickles. Now, Pickles has fantastic credentials: he has a great education, has worked for some impressive companies, and, on paper, he blew all the other candidates out of the water. So, obviously, Pickles got the job.

Unfortunately, Pickles is also a know-it-all, who won’t follow directions, is extremely combative with both superiors and peers, and is about as disorganized as they come. He is both an energy and productivity vampire.

Pickles is about to be demoted, while his coworkers are really, really hoping he gets fired. Which makes them feel guilty, which leads to them feel resentful, which further hampers the team’s overall productivity.

Darn you Pickles!

Now, what if the team had hired Mustard? Sure, she went to community college, and she’s only been working for just over a year, but she is passionate about her industry, loves learning new things, and is so organized she doesn’t even need to use the reminder app on her iPhone, but she still does, just in case!

Mustard may have needed a little more specialized training, and taken a little more time to get familiar with industry specific technologies, etc… But, even the most experienced candidates need at least some re-training to work in accordance with company standard. Mustard is a fast learner too, so she would have caught up in no time, and once she had, she would have made a much better employee than Pickles.

In case you couldn’t tell, my friend was really gunning for Mustard!

If you’re with me in your love of Mustard, and candidates like her, then the question becomes: How do we track down the Mustards of this world? How do we find candidates who fit?!

With Facebook, Grasshopper. It always comes back to Facebook.

Using Facebook Ads, you can target candidates that fit with your company culture, and even more importantly, the team you currently have!

LinkedIn makes work history, education, and skills the focus of their profiles; Facebook includes all of these categories, but makes interests, and “Likes”, a priority with their profiles.

Thanks to graph search, you can either use this information to source candidates, or to target them with recruiting ads that take a more comprehensive approach to candidate profiling. An approach that includes a candidate’s interests, hobbies, and any other traits that may give you insight into their character.

Stay tuned next week for a revamp of our guide to Facebook ads, and some more specific ways that you can use Facebook to hire for fit.

Have a fantastic week, and happy social recruiting!

I’m off to make a sandwich. No Pickles.

Millennials are weird. I am one, so I can say that!

Last week we talked about how the rising percentage of Gen Yers in the labor market is shaping recruiting methods. We also talked about how emojis are a very important part of my generation's identity. There's so much incredible information about millennial workers, recruiting Gen Y, and the cultural significance of emojis out there, that we thought we'd share some of it with you!

Let's Link Love it up:

One of the most interesting and detailed resources for better understanding a millennial candidate is the PWC Future of Work Survey. If you want all the info you need to win the hearts and minds of millennial workers, this is the place to start. Millennials want flexibility in the workplace. In fact according to this massive collection of data by oDesk, the only way you can hope to retain millennials is to create a flexible work culture. oDesk provides more information on Gen Y than you could ever hope for, thankfully they've presented it using slide share, so it’s easy to skip over the stuff you don't need to know! Who is the authority on recruiting millennials? No! It’s not me, but thank you for thinking so.

Dan Schawbel is THE expert when it comes to Gen Y candidates; his website is the go to place for both millennial job seekers and those looking to recruit them. Once you understand millennial candidates, it’s time to learn how to real them in! In this article you’ll learn the basics of setting up a recruiting strategy to target Gen Y. Or, if you’re feeling super serious and you have a little extra time on your hands, you can download this media room booklet on how to attract and retain millennials. It makes for some excellent treadmill reading... Unless I am the only person who reads about social recruiting on the treadmill?!? Let me know in the comments. And while you’re at it, sign up for our newsletter. It’s rad! (That is millennial speak for highly informative and interesting.)

Hello, my name is Samara Parker, and I am a millennial.

My generation is entering the workforce en masse; we are basically taking over your office, your break room, and your life. For this, I am sorry. I am sorry for all the #selfies we post, our love of skinny jeans, and our obsession with Portland, Oregon. 

But I am not sorry for how my generation is pushing recruiting into the 21st century. It's about time! Gen Y is forcing recruiting to adopt social media strategies, optimize for mobile, and focus on employer branding. We're like that cute girl you want to date who motivates you to go to the gym, buy new shoes, and brush your teeth after eating garlicky food. What makes us so hot? Well...

Millennials are motivated by challenging work "Unlike other generations – who were simply happy with getting the job done, the younger generation need to feel like they are making a difference and that their contribution in the workplace is meaningful." - Amanda Rose

This means you can hand us all those complicated, frustrating projects you don't have time to delve into. Millennials are up for the challenge! But do make sure to provide a lot of real time positive feedback and explain how these projects benefit the company. Gen Yers respond extremely well to this kind of motivation. Social media is confusing, we can help

We've grown up with Apple products, cell phones, and big data. We understand how Facebook works, and know what Instagram filters are the coolest. And most importantly... We do what we're told!

"41% of millennials do what their managers tell them to do, which is much greater than older generations." - Dan Schawbel All we ask in return is that you use social media to recruit us. Don't make us buy a newspaper. Don't make us look on ugly old job boards! Let us apply for work from the comfort of our favorite social platform; Facebook! 

83% of millennials reported using Facebook to look for work in 2013 (Jobvite). Make sure we can find you; it's surprisingly easy to set up a career section on your company Facebook Page, especially if you use a really awesome recruiting app like Jobcast.

Oh, and not to be demanding or anything, but we'd also really like it if you would make your recruiting as mobile as possible. Millennials generally prefer to look for work on our smart phones, in between exciting games of Flappy Bird. Almost 80% of us used mobile as a major part of our job search in 2013. Well... okay, maybe we are a bit demanding... 40% of us will abandon the application process if it isn't mobile-friendly #sorrynotsorry Lastly, it would be awesome if you started using more emojis in your job descriptions. Many of us have trouble understanding sentences that are not accompanied by fitting emojis. For my generation these simple graphics are what clarify the emotions behind the words. How are we supposed to know if you are being sarcastic, or if you are joking and we cannot tell because you have not included a

 or a

? It scares us. Happy social recruiting 

Stay informed about all things social recruiting, sign up for our news letter!

What's new with social recruiting? A lot of course! But, everyone is always covering the newest, shiniest topics; at Jobcast, we like to take the road less traveled, to boldly go where no social recruiting app has gone before... Well, actually, we mostly just try to cover the topics our readers want covered! That's why today's Link Love is all about the basics of social recruiting. The basic stuff that never changes, no matter how up to date your apps are, or even what social platforms you are using; these key tenants will help you optimize your social recruiting.

Here are 4 essentials of social recruiting and 4 articles that will help you capitalize on them:

You just gotta be you! And that you must appeal to the talent you want to attract. Before you can start engaging with potential candidates, you have to have an employer brand presence that they can engage with, and that they will want to engage with. This article from ERE.net will show you how to create an employer brand that will appeal to the candidates you want to attract. The goal is greater than just filling one job

Social or not, if your recruiting strategy is just focused on filling positions as they open up, you've got a problem. You've got to think long term if you want to increase the ROI on your recruiting efforts. Thinking in terms of talent communities and talent pipelines is a far more effective way to recruit. In this post from Blogging4Jobs, Crystal Miller explains the essential pillars of talent communities.

The emphasis is on the Social, not the Media

No matter what platforms you choose for recruiting, they only work if you are actually social with them. You need to engage with potential candidates, respond to their questions, and share interesting content with them. Here's a great post by Syed Balkhi on how you can create a story with your content to engage candidates through social media. It's still all about the jobs

Speaking of creating engaging content, when it comes to social recruiting the most important content you share is still job posts. Not to brag or anything, but my dad knows more about writing job posts than your dad. This is because he has worked in HR for over 30 years and is married to my mother who has worked in HR for almost as long. Here are their best tips for writing great job posts.  Happy social recruiting!

You are all super savvy about hiring trends, of course you are… you read this blog! So, you all know that mobile is very important when it comes to social recruiting. What you may not know, is that the importance of having a mobile hiring strategy is even greater when it comes to recruiting passive candidates.

Passive candidates choose mobile over desktop, when looking for work, even more frequently than their active counterparts.

This probably has something to do with the fact that they are currently employed, and can’t exactly spend their days researching job posts on their company computers! In fact, many of the candidates you’re looking for don’t have any access to a computer while at their job. Retail workers, for example, spend their days on the store floor, making sales, dusting display units, and checking their Facebook accounts. They are also checking out potential employers on their smart phones.

In a recent survey by Jobvite, 21% of passive candidates admitted to using their smart phones to look for a new position, when at work. Naughty! Those candidates are also looking for work while they wait for the bus, while they wait for their morning muffin, and even while they use the restroom (at least 7% of them!)

So how do you get your job posts onto their smart phones, their iPads, and into their restrooms?

Tweet your job posts

Twitter doesn’t really work as a primary social platform for recruiting. It does, however, make for a top notch second in command. Twitter is a quick easy, way to let people know you’re hiring.

I like to break down effective strategy for using Twitter to improve mobile recruiting into three steps: build it, tweet it, tag it!

Build up your Twitter employer brand by posting images, sharing quick tips, and interacting with other tweeters in your field.

Tweet your jobs. Every time you post a job, tweet it, and then tweet it again! Twitter feeds fill up quickly, so you should tweet the post at least a couple times a day until the position is filled. Just make sure to intersperse those tweets with other valuable content.

Tag everything you post, everything! Use niche hashtags to make your tweets searchable, this will build your brand and talent pool. Tag your job posts with #hiring. Always, always, always #hiring! Mostly because this is the number one hashtag career advice bloggers tell job seekers to look for.

Here are the top 50 hashtags you should use when recruiting with Twitter.

Make your application process mobile friendly

Most career sites are not mobile; in fact, our own survey found that around 90% of career sites were not mobile friendly. This has got to change! But, until it does, there are some ways around it.

Use social networks to share your jobs. Yet another way Twitter can benefit your passive candidates recruiting! Take advantage of the mobile friendliness of apps like Google+, Instagram, and Facebook to get your job posts seen.

You can also create a Facebook career section for your company Page and post your jobs there. Your career section will be viewable to Facebook users via their  mobile app, so all those passive candidates, who really ought to be working, can be looking at your job posts instead! Win-win!

Here’s how you can make your Facebook recruiting mobile friendly

Focus on Facebook over LinkedIn

Yes I am biased. No this is not the (only) reason I am giving you this advice.

84% of job seekers are active on Facebook. Only 36% of them are active on LinkedIn.

Nuff said.

Oh, except that passive candidates are even less likely to use LinkedIn in their job search, or to have up to date LinkedIn profiles (if they have one at all). LinkedIn is still a useful tool for connecting with other professionals and recruiting them, but for reaching the vast majority of passives candidates, hourly workers, and anyone under 35 Facebook is a better bet.

This article does a great job of explaining the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook for recruiting

Hopefully you’ve found some helpful info to help you recruit some passive talent. If you have any questions, or other topics you’d like us to cover, let us know in the comments.

Happy social recruiting!

Passive Candidates, you know why they’re important, you know how to source them, and you know how I think you can recruit them. But what do I know?! Well, a fair bit actually… In fact I would say that social recruiting, with a specific focus on converting passive candidates, is one of the things I know best! It makes me very boring at parties! Anyways, now that I have bragged a bunch at you, I will confess, there are other passive candidate experts out there. In fact, don’t tell my boss, but a lot of those experts know a lot more than me, ssshhhh. Our secret. In return for your silence, I will introduce you to some of those experts.

Here are 5 fantastic articles that will help you recruit passive candidates like a pro!

And a case study that you really ought to check out :) Culture Fit lays down some serious knowledge in their article about deciding when you should look for passive candidates. No, it’s not technically a “how to”, but it’s always nice to know you’re putting your efforts in the right place before you get started. The Undercover Recruiter shares how you can use mobile, social media and video to recruit passive candidates. Apparently this is also called recruitment 3.0… Are we seriously using 3.0? Am I old? David Spark knows social media, he a veteran tech journalist and the founder of Spark Media Solutions, so he’s the perfect person to interview these 20 recruiting experts on how they use social media to recruit passive candidates. Facebook may be our favorite social platform, but we would never deny the greatness of Twitter. In fact, I personally think combining Twitter and Facebook is the best way to tack social recruiting. In this blog post, Social Media Today gives you 5 tips on using Twitter for recruiting. HR & Talent Management recommend using recruiting apps to find passive candidates. I’d like to leave you with this super cool case study on how Earls Restaurant has successfully integrated Facebook into their recruiting strategy. Happy social recruiting!