Blog

What would recruitment be without technology? Rewind fifteen years and we were accepting faxed and mailed resumes, posting job adverts in the paper, filing thousands of applications and manually calling applicants. Fast forward to 2011 and the rules of the game have dramatically changed for both in-house and agency recruiters alike. Same for candidates. Once upon a time they were printing off copies of their resume (or typing them!) and doing whatever they could to get them in the hands of their targeted company. The internet has changed all of that! First came the job board to link candidates and hiring managers and then Web 2.0 took us even further. Today job seekers and recruiters alike just need to log on to start connecting. Every day we hear about a new app being created or how the power of the cloud will make the latest technology and software even more accessible. So will these advancements actually make it easier for candidates and hiring managers to connect? Will recruitment actually benefit? Let’s first take a look at social media. Based on research done by TNS, it is estimated that 46 per cent of the world’s population access social media sites at least once a day. In Canada or any western country, it is safe to say that this figure is even higher. Whether young or old, social media has changed the way we communicate. People are spending an increasing amount of their daily lives online and the ability for recruiters to connect with these individuals -- many of whom are not actively job hunting -- is essential. The challenge for many recruiters is the sheer volume of potential candidates plus the large number of social media channels available. It is therefore important to not just use technology for technology’s sake, but to use it wisely and productively. Using a third party application like Jobcast can therefore simplify efforts and facilitate the process. The most successful social media recruitment initiatives are those that imitate real-life scenarios. Think about how people like to connect and interact and extend that logic online. People want to see the face behind the brand and are conducting online audits of potential companies prior to and during the recruitment process. It is important to take stock and integrate your company’s digital footprint to ensure that you are presenting your desired corporate brand to potential candidates. Another trend is the rise of the mobile app and how that is affecting the way candidates conduct their job hunt. More and more individuals are relying on mobile internet for its conveniences as well as its accessibility. The cost of mobile internet has dropped significantly in recent years and it is likely that many individuals no longer have access to a computer at home, opting for their mobile device instead. As a result, the way potential job seekers view employment opportunities at your company has changed and apps or mobile-friendly websites are on the rise. It is important to find out how job seekers are looking for your company and then make it as easy as possible for them to find what they’re looking for. Cloud computing will also change how companies hire employees. For smaller businesses, advanced software and databases were often cost prohibitive as they did not have the budget to purchase the technology nor the onsite capabilities to manage the programs. The rise of the cloud is making it easier for companies to leverage advancements in technology and it’s likely that we’ll see many more companies harness the power in their recruitment efforts. With so many advancements, it can be challenging to stay up-to-date, so the winners will be those who can concurrently stay ahead of the curve while also effectively and efficiently use available technology. It is about finding the business use and how it can simplify and enhance your existing program, not simply using technology for the sake of it. In so doing your recruitment program should be enhanced resulting in more efficient in-house selection or agency placements. And to the victor goes the spoils.

I recently shared my thoughts on Zappos corporate culture and how it can help both business development and recruitment. A success story, pre, during and post recession, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for a reported 1.2 billion USD. In 2010 the company received over 38,000 applications for employment and in 2011, expect to hire 2,000 employees. Evidently they’re doing something right! Zappos credits much of its success from its loyalty and relationship marketing strategy as well as its corporate culture. They believe that happiness at work equates happiness at home and a focus on customer service results in repeat business. As such, the company does not have a social media policy. CEO Tony Hsieh just wants staff to “Be real and use [their] best judgment”. As such, employees are allowed to access their social media accounts at work as long as the customer comes first. Zappos therefore encourages employees to include company information and opinions on their Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs in addition to their LinkedIn profile. The company even has a Twitter aggregate (http://twitter.zappos.com) of all employee twitter feeds. This serves as an excellent word-of-mouth platform for marketing as well as recruitment. As Zappos’ culture embraces both a personal and professional outlook, Facebook is a perfect medium to attract potential employees. Their corporate Facebook page is far from corporate as it includes posts highlighting their company culture, photos from employee events, their merchandise catalog and of course, a list of their current job vacancies. If you’re trying to promote your brand as a great place to work, what better way to do so that combining your marketing efforts with recruitment? After all, customers can make great employees. Zappos’ recruitment strategy is to provide a ‘wow’ service to every candidate and this is partly achieved by thinking of every employee as a mini recruiter. The combined social networks are extensive and the company’s aim is to make an authentic connection with everyone they interact with. They believe in achieving one-on-one relationships through this medium and not just ‘building a network’. They also encourage staff to post videos and links about the company. Not only does this promote the corporate and employer brand, it also serves as a great team building and connecting piece. As the company grows, it allows employees to stay in touch. Social media for recruitment is the new reality and the numbers speak for themselves. While only 9% of Zappos’ employee applications come from referrals (including employees’ personal social media promotion), 29% of those individuals get hired. This also doesn’t account for the ‘halo effect’, where someone might first see reference to Zappos through individuals’ social media, but subsequently conducts additional research and applies through the website. By having an increased presence on blogs, chat, RSS, social networks, message boards, podcasts and video/photosharing, Zappos has integrated its corporate and employer brand, resulting in increased candidate flow and incomparable corporate culture. After all, any company who can get 38,000 applications in a single year must be doing something right!

We now offer you the ability to only show job details to those users who have "liked" your Facebook Page. You may want to enable this to boost the number of "likes" on your Facebook Page, but be warned that if users are reluctant to "like" your Page, then fewer users will see your jobs.  To enable this feature, go do "Admin Options" and change your "Like Button Settings" as shown below:

Once enabled, users will still see a list of your published jobs, but viewing job details will require them to "like" your Page first:

Similarly, jobs will still be visible on your Facebook Page's Wall, but once users request details, they will be asked to "Like" the Page:

I hope you find this useful.  If you have any feedback or comments, please send us a note or add a comment.

After operating as Syndicruit.com for the past few months, we came to the realization that the name wasn't a good fit. The response we got to our name varied from "Syndi what???" to, "Is that an oil company?" So, for the past two months we've been working on a new name for Syndicruit that better reflects where we're going as a company. After much deliberation our brilliant designer Leif Parker hit on what we think is a winner, Jobcast.net!

Why Jobcast?

Many of you know us for our Facebook job app that we launched a few months ago. What you may not know is that this is just the beginning of what we plan to offer. In the very near future, we will be launching a platform for broadcasting jobs to many other social sites, classified sites and job boards. Hence the name Jobcast.net!

So, stay tuned for the official launch of our new web application coming this summer.

Our first release will include a job micro-site for employers and the ability to broadcast jobs to:

• Social Networks: Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin

• Job Sites: Indeed.com and Simplyhired.com

With micro-sites, employers will be able to:

• Customize a career page with their company logo and branding

• Create their own branded sub-domain on our system

• Publish and manage their jobs from an admin panel

To get the latest information on our upcoming launch, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter. Thanks for your support over the past few months. We're confident that the best is yet to come!

When the Jobcast.net Facebook App was launched in February, we didn’t offer customers the ability to delete jobs.  Jobs could be archived (either manually or automatically when the expiry period passed) and while these archived jobs were no longer publicly visible, you could still view the job applicants and any statistics associated with those jobs from the Admin Panel:

With archiving in place, we didn’t think it would be important for customers to be able to delete jobs. Besides, why would you want to lose valuable statistics about your job? Well, it turns out that we were wrong. We received a number of requests for a delete option and here are the reasons:

• When a lot of our customers first install our Facebook App, they often test it by creating sample job postings. These postings serve no purpose other than to test our App, so having them sitting in the Archived list clutters the list.

• Some of our customers have more than 100 archived jobs. With so many jobs that are archived, it becomes difficult to manage the list and an occasional purge is necessary.

We now offer you the ability to delete your jobs.  Deleting is permanent, so we didn’t want it to be so easy that you could do it inadvertently, but we also didn’t want to make it so burdening that it impacts the user experience. You will be asked to confirm your action whenever you performed a ‘delete’, but hopefully in a non-intrusive way.  Here are some examples:

Deleting a single job from your list:

Deleting multiple jobs:

I hope you find this feature useful.  If you have any feedback (on this topic or any other), please drop us a note.

Last Friday (on May 13th), the 1000th job was published using our Facebook Job App! We ‘re really excited by the amazing growth that we’ve experienced since launching our App in February of this year and we’d like to thank you (our customers) for this growth. You early adopters have provided us with great feedback that has proved invaluable! As we add more features and reveal new services, we’re happy to have you all on-board as our valued partners!

We’ve got many things planned over the next several months to improve the recruitment experience on the web by leveraging social media so stay tuned for more updates soon. We can’t wait to share with you!

In the meanwhile, thank you all for helping us hit the first of many milestones to come and for your feedback along the way! If you’d like to share your thoughts with us, feel free to review us on our Facebook Page or leave us a comment below.

Thank you!

I want to share my quick thoughts on the Facebook Application Security issue that has been publicized by Symantec and picked-up by the media in a frenzy.  The Symantec blog post that describes this flaw is here:

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/facebook-applications-accidentally-leaking-access-third-parties

Anyone using the Syndicruit Facebook App is not impacted by the security flaw described by Symantec.  We've been using the OAuth 2.0 authentication system since November of last year, so the "access token" or "spare key" (as Symantec describes it) is never exposed and never at risk.  Also, while Symantec is bringing this security flaw to the forefront now, the problems with the old Facebook authentication system has been well understood and discussed for a while and Facebook has been proactive about addressing it.  Specifically, the two sources of the security problem (as described by Symantec) are:  exposed access tokens in the URL, and information leaking through the referrer HTTP header.  Both of these have already been addressed with Facebook's OAuth 2.0 authentication system.  Unfortunately, older Facebook Apps that are still using the old authentication system are still impacted by this security issue, so I hope they upgrade as soon as possible.  So while the security stories sound doom and gloom for Facebook Apps, all modern Facebook Apps (the Syndicruit Facebook App included) are safe from the problems described by Symantec.  So you can continue to use our app feeling confident that your information is secure. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to send me a note.

This is a quick blog post to let you know that we now allow you to customize the message that gets posted to your Facebook Wall when you publish a new job.  You will find this option under “Admin Options”:

And this is how it will look on your Facebook Wall:

Please note that this “Wall Message” is specific to each Facebook Page. This means that if you have our app installed on multiple Facebook Pages, then you can set a unique “Wall Message” for each one.  This also means that if you have multiple users that administers your Facebook Page, then regardless of who publishes a job, this “Wall Message” will be used.

I’ve had  several customers ask for this feature, so I hope you find it useful.

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the enhancements in our updated Facebook App:

• Facebook Job Recruitment App Redesign (March 8th)

• Applicant Routing (March 10th)

• Customize Your Email and Empty Jobs Tab (March 17th)

We often heard from our customers that it’s sometimes hard to classify a job posting into a single category (e.g. Accounting, Administrative) or type (e.g. Full Time, Part Time). For those times, we now offer you the ability to select multiple categories and types from the “Create Job” or “Edit Job” form:

Also, if you have more than one administrator for your Facebook Page, you can select multiple recipients to receive job applications:

I hope you find this feature useful.  Also, we’re conducting usability tests in an effort to continue improving our Facebook App. If you can participate, please contact us. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the enhancements in our updated Facebook App:

• Facebook Job Recruitment App Redesign (March 8th)

• Applicant Routing (March 10th)

In today’s post, I’m going the cover 2 important enhancements that our customers have been requesting:

• Change the email address where job applications are sent.

• Customize the content of the Jobs tab when you’re not actively recruiting.

Both of these requests are now supported.

Changing Your Primary Email

By default, we use the email address that’s stored in your Facebook account when sending you job applications. This was convenient because this email addresses was pre-approved by Facebook and we didn’t need you to confirm the validity of it. However, we understand that you don’t always want to use the email address stored on Facebook for your professional needs, so we now allow you to customize this email. We still use the email address stored on Facebook by default, but when you first authorize our app, you will be given the opportunity to change this email address.

Also, you can click Admin Options from the Admin Panel at anytime to this change your email.

Please note that after you request your email to be changed, you will still need to confirm the change before it’s finalized. We will send you an email with a confirmation link that you will need to click on to finalize the change. This is to ensure that we don’t inadvertently start sending job applications to an unauthorized email address.

Customize Empty Jobs Tab

There are times when you may not be actively recruiting. For these times, we display a generic message to users in your Jobs tab:

You can now personalize this message as follows:

As always, we welcome your feedback on these changes. And if you’d like to participate in an ongoing usability test that we’re conducting, we’d really like to hear from you. Together, I hope we can continue to improve the recruitment experience on Facebook.