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The best thing about New Years' day? French toast.

The second best thing is pouring yourself a nice cup of coffee and reading through all the great prediction, best of, and yearly round-up articles that flood the blogosphere this time of year.

There are always amazing posts that you've somehow missed, cool social media hacks, and hilarious corporate branding blunders to be found. And, for some reason, it seems like a lot of bloggers are in top form when writing that last article of the year.

Today’s Link Love is a round-up of social media and recruiting-related blog posts looking back at 2013, and articles making predictions about HR, social, and branding for 2014.

Enjoy!

Predictions, always entertaining, often risky, are my favorite kind of year-end content. In this piece for Social Media Examiner, Cindy King asks 12 social marketing pros to make predictions about what 2014 will bring to social media marketing.

Learning is fun. I think that will be my 2014 mantra. That and ‘suck it up buttercup’. Those two combined pretty much cover every situation that could possibly arise... right?! When it comes to social, the best way to learn is by example, which makes Jennifer Beese's post, "What Big Brands Taught us in 2013", a fantastic resource for anyone looking to improve their social media branding, marketing, and recruiting.

More predictions! This time we have an article that is more specific to employers and recruiters by Dave Zielinski. In his article, Dave proposes 5 trends in HR tech that you need to watch for in 2014.

Best Facebook Hacks of 2013. How could we not link to this post? It's definitely cheesy, but very fun to look back over all the cool features Facebook's hackathons have led to.

I'd like to end this Link Love with an article that really inspired me. In it, Rayanne Thorn writes about shifting the way she approached the New Year. She encourages us to forget about making resolutions, and instead focus on this moment as a time for renewal. Ray Anne says that she now views New Years "like everything has expired and I need to decide if I want to renew or not, kind of like a magazine subscription". It's a really wonderful article, check it out!

Have a very happy New Year, and Link Lovin'.

So apparently 2013 is practically over.

Did this year go by super fast or what?

It’s probably all the exciting and cool social media innovations that make it feel this way. Vine Video, Upgraded Facebook Ads, the introduction of Facebook Skills, Tinder… The list goes on, and on, and on! It’s been an incredible year for social recruiting, and for all of us at Jobcast.

The Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App went completely mobile, we released our first white paper (a how-to guide for Facebook Recruiting), filmed a Vine recruiting video, co-hosted an awesome webinar with Indeed, were featured on the cover of HR Insights magazine, and our talented CEO, Ryan St. Germaine, gave an inspiring talk at Six:Forty.

It’s been a very good year.

No one wants to read about what’s already happened though. Predictions are where it’s at. In fact, our most popular blog post to date was our social recruiting trends for 2013. And, I hate to brag (that is a bold faced lie!), but ALL of our predictions totally held up.

I could skip the whole prediction thing and stick with a year-end review… You know, play it safe to keep my batting average one for one, but I prefer to live life on the edge.

It’s time for the Social Recruiting Trends 2014 predictions to begin, and I’m going to start with a risky one.

Facebook Goes Professional

Facebook is losing some traction as a means of connecting with close friends and being social in a personal way, but its user base just keeps growing. I predict that many of these users will use Facebook to connect with potential employers, companies, and peers in their field of work.

The introduction of Facebook skills, and the huge rise in the number of companies that are using Facebook to recruit, makes this shift seem more than just possible — almost inevitable.

This prediction is purely my own. I have no data to back me up, other than observing job seekers and my peers, but risky predictions are the most exciting. Let’s see what happens!

Mobile-Optimization or Death

Last year we predicted the rise of mobile recruiting, and we were right. 1 in 6 Facebook users access the network exclusively through mobile. Over 60% of job seekers are using mobile to look for work, and 40% of potential candidates will abandon the application process if it is not mobile-friendly.

Which brings us to our prediction: Mobile friction will become the main deterrent to candidates completing the application process. Failing to have a fully-mobile career site and application process is NOT an option in 2014. Your social recruiting must go mobile.

Niche Recruiting

Gone are the days of simply sending out job posts, and praying that they get seen by candidates who fit your company’s needs, instead of just 12-year-olds and cat ladies with nothing else to do but hang out on the internet.

With all of the data that employers now have access to, and the improved ability to target these candidates based on that information (thank you Facebook Graph Search), social recruiting will become more about reaching a very specific group of candidates.

Recruiters and Employers can use HR Tech to mine data in order to determine exactly what they should be looking for in a potential hire, and then use social networks to find candidates that match that. Equipped with this knowledge they can use Facebook as a tool to find, engage and attract those niche candidates.

Facebook Ads, especially after their recent updates, allow you to reach these candidates easily, as you can get very specific about the audience that they target. This means you can use them to direct job posts to the eyes of those potential hires you most want to reach.

Facebook’s introduction of professional skills to users’ profiles, and they way that they encourage them to connect with others with similar skills by pushing them to related groups and Pages, also gives you a great “in” with specific groups of candidates. You can seek out passive candidates based on the skills they’ve entered and either make contact directly, or you can join groups related to the skills you are looking for in future employees, and engage with users that way.

Facebook just keeps getting better for social recruiting!

Oh, and last but not least:

The Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App will take over the world (of social recruiting). That one is definitely true.

Happy New Years’ from the Jobcast Team. May 2014 see all of your recruiting dreams come true!

Hello, It is almost Christmas. So, if you celebrate that holiday, hopefully all of your shopping is done. If you celebrate it with gifts that is! My family celebrates with food mostly, but also presents. That is why it was pretty scary to wake up yesterday morning, realize just how close to Christmas it was, and that I had not yet even thought about shopping for gifts, let alone purchased any, and that I was going to have to actually leave my house, and maybe even enter a MALL. Thankfully all of my gifts are now purchased. I did have to venture outside, but luckily I managed to avoid the mall. Life is good! To celebrate, I thought I would give all of you, our awesome readers, a gift as well. It's the kind of gift that employers everywhere dream of: A free white paper about how to use Facebook for recruiting. I know, I know, there are a lot of white papers out there, but this one is full of great tips and tricks, has a really easy get-started guide, and is very thoroughly researched. It even includes real life examples! What's not to love? Check out our free white paper for an awesome guide to Facebook recruiting. Happy (holiday) social recruiting from all of us at Jobcast.

Facebook is the Worlds Most Effective Social Recruiting Platform: Download this White Paper and Start Recruiting with Facebook Today! Facebook has a massive reach, and its over 1 billion user base makes it the largest social talent pool to date. Facebook recruiting is simple, fast, and effective. If you know how to use it! Download this white paper now and you'll get access to:

• Our Step-by-step Facebook recruiting guide

• Important statistics all employers should know about social recruiting

• Research-based methods for recruiting passive candidates

• Field tested content strategies that attract potential hires

If you're not changing, then you're probably dead. That’s morbid, yes, true nonetheless!

To keep your recruiting going strong you’ll need to grow and innovate. I'm not saying that you have to make your HR team bigger, add more networks to your social strategy, or overhaul your branding, but you must be consistently growing your reach in order to connect with new candidates.

We all know the perils of trying to get too big too fast, and this is why small innovations are one of the best ways to keep adding to your talent pool.

What follows are 12 days of simple steps that you can implement to keep your social recruiting alive and well.

Day 1

Re-evaluate your job descriptions

Job descriptions are the most important part of your content strategy. When recruiting with social media, you have fewer words at your disposal to hook candidates, so make them count. Go over your job ads, and make sure they are all short, accurate, and that they include a call to action.

(Here are more tips on writing job descriptions for social recruiting)

Day 2

Share a pretty picture

Image-based content receives the most shares, Likes, and overall engagement. This is true for both Facebook and Twitter. Post a great photo of your team, with a fun description, and tag every staff member you can, so that their connections see your post.

Day 3

Leverage your connections

Reach out to your peers and your current team. Explain what you're trying to do with your social recruiting strategy, and ask for their help.

People actually love helping — it makes them feel really great and useful. Just don't send out some generic plea to all of your Facebook connections and Twitter followers. This doesn't make anyone feel good! Ask in person, with individualized emails, or at the end of staff meetings, and try to do so in a way that conveys genuine appreciation, and excitement.

Day 4

Create employee profiles

Employee profiles are great because they are image-based, they introduce potential candidates to your current team, and they act as social proof.

(This tutorial explains how to create employee profiles to boost engagement)

Day 5

Mix it up

Get yourself a content aggregation tool, and use it to find a mix of great content that you can share. This will help you stay connected with potential hires, even when you have no job openings to post, so that you can better reach them when you do. Basically, consistent posting is a huge part of building a social talent pool.

(This article shares some awesome content aggregation tools for employers)

Day 6

Stock up

Now that you have a tool for finding content, you need a way to save and organize the gems you find. You can use Pinterest, or Delicious... My favorite is Pocket App — it's probably my most used app. Tools like this allow you to save, and tag awesome stuff that you find on the internet. That way you’ll always have a nice little stash of shareable content at your fingertips.

Day 7

Say it with video

You don't have to invest in a flashy recruiting video, heck, we made one using Vine, and it got tons of engagement. Much like photos, video is much more likely to be shared than text-based content or links. Also, candidates are almost twice as likely to apply for a job if they've viewed a recruiting video.

(Here's how to use video to recruit, and here's our Vine recruiting video)

Day 8

Re-share it

Employee profiles, staff party photos, recruiting videos, positive reviews of your company, good press, and posts from your company blog are premium content. As such, you’ll want to leverage them as best you can. It is totally acceptable to re-share this content, so long as it is still relevant. On Twitter you can re-share regularly because of the volume of tweets people receive on the daily. On Facebook and LinkedIn, I recommend waiting at least a couple of weeks before re-sharing.

Day 9

Ask questions

Use your social networks to ask potential candidates questions. This is a great way of getting feedback about how your social strategy is perceived by others, and about who is engaging with your talent pool. Use questions that are open ended, but that still give a lot of guidance. For example "What's your favorite recent tech innovation?" (if you are looking to recruit for tech.) Remember to use hashtags!

Day 10

Post a Facebook Ad

Facebook Ads are awesome for recruiting. They can help you grow your employer brand, get your job posts seen, and reach more passive candidates. They also have killer ROI (and by this I mean that they are cheap, and effective!)

(Check out this post for a tutorial on how to use Facebook Ads for recruiting)

Day 11

Schedule your content

Posting to your various networks consistently is so important. It keeps you on your potential hires’ radar, which is a must when you’re trying to foster an active talent community. There are tons and tons of great apps to keep the content flowing on your Facebook Page, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Check these posts for a list of scheduling apps, and how to set up a social media time schedule.

Day 12

Check your metrics

Go over your Facebook Insights, and any other information you have on hand. This will give you a better idea of what’s working for you, and what isn’t. Maybe posting questions is the best way to engage your talent pool, or maybe it’s video. You'll never know unless you check!

Tune in on Wednesday for our brand new white paper, which details how to improve your Facebook recruiting. It’s full of awesome tips to improve your strategy!

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!