Link Love

We've been talking a lot about content strategy on the blog lately. Our most recent post was about three kinds of content that are effective for social recruiting. Today's Link Love is a perfect example of one of the types of content we suggested in that post: the shout-out. There are so many awesome bloggers and writers sharing their knowledge of recruiting, employer branding, and social media on the web. They work hard to provide us with free content to learn from. I don't know about you, but I think they deserve a little love (if not a lot!), and one of the best ways to give them the love that they deserve is to shout them out in a blog post. Link Loves are one of my all time favorite forms of content because they give credit to those who deserve it, spread knowledge to those who need it, and facilitate connection and discovery, which is pretty much what social media is all about.

Here are 5 articles to help make your content strategy even better

• Content is King in Recruitment Marketing - By Courtney McGann

• Align Your Social Media and Recruiting Strategies - By Hillary Wolfmann

• Are You Breaking Walter's Rule When Sharing Your Content on Social Media? - By Andy Headworth (This one is both informative and HILARIOUS!)

• 20 Best Content Distribution Platforms- By Heidi "Queen of Content" Cohen

• How to Make Your Website a Party People Want to Attend - By Jerrod Morris

I'm off to try and get this website party started! Happy Link Loving :D

I may not work in human resources, but having grown up with both parents working in HR I feel like I can very safely say: HR is tough. From navigating finicky policy to navigating finicky staff, from trying to make everyone happy to trying to find awesome new employees… who you will then have to make happy, it just plain tough! That's why it’s important to stay motivated. Otherwise you'll just burn out, or worse, have a social media meltdown! But how can you stay inspired? Life coaches are expensive, and motivational posters are pretty dorky… So instead, check out these cool articles for some totally free, and un-dorky HR inspiration: We’ll start with the most inspiring dude on the internet; Seth Godin. This guy just inspires the heck out of people, every time!

Check out this blog post about creating a wowday. Okay, so that’s probably as dorky as a motivational poster, but reading this blog post is far less conspicuous, so at least no one will know! Looking outside the box when recruiting can help you stay motivated and help you find better candidates. This article suggests three unexpected sources of candidates who could make great sourcers! In order to stay motivated it’s super important to feel like you’re making a positive change through the work that you do. This article is all about how to make sure HR is adding value. Some people are just insanely awesome motivators. Rayanne Thorn is one of those people. Her blog posts are always inspirational and whip smart. In this post she shares some great thoughts about multitasking and shares some great advice to get you motivated and ready to face the day! I’ll leave you with her 6 edges of success: 1. Risk 2.  Motivation 3.  Center 4.  Balance 5.  Focus

6.  Act, as in DO!

Couldn’t have said it better, wouldn’t even try! Happy social recruiting :D

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!

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!

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.)

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!

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!

Passive candidates, you want 'em... the social graph has got 'em! So, how do you use the data the graph provides to find a bunch of awesome talent, grow your company, and become the world's happiest employer? Getting yourself branded Facebook Career Page is a pretty great start because it gives your employer brand a mobile friendly social presence. This is important as the first thing the passive candidates are going to after you reach out to them is Google your organization. A well branded, mobile optimized Facebook Career Site makes for an excellent first impression. But, you still have to get out there and source those candidates!

Today we're featuring 5 great articles that will help you understand what it takes to use social for sourcing.

One thing a successful social sourcing strategy definitely needs is a person to plan and carry out the sourcing. Until we have robots to do it for us, this article by Victor Alberts will help you determine who should be in charge of social sourcing and recruiting for your company. As much as I love Facebook for every aspect of social recruiting, it's important to use multiple platforms, if you want to get the most out of your social strategy. Here's a great little guide from Sprout Social about using multiple social networks to source passive candidates. Speaking of import social platforms, Twitter makes for an excellent sourcing tool, especially when combined with another platform that allows for more than 140 character conversations. Here's Suzanne Lucas's take on why when it comes to engaging with passive candidates Twitter is your friend! Now I'm going to break with tradition and share two articles from the same blog. I know, I know, it's not very fair of me, but hey, life's not fair buttercup! And, when it comes to sourcing, Glen Cathey is the man. His article on searching for candidates with Facebook still holds up 4 years later. In the land of social media that's basically an eternity. Glen's more recent post, 100 free sourcing and recruiting guides and resources, is even more awesome, hence the double share. This is as close to a social recruiting reference library as you're going to get! I highly suggest you check it out, and then leave Glen many, many thank yous. Before we go, I’d just like to give a quick shout to HR maven, Jessica Miller-Merrell and everyone over at Blogging4Jobs. They recently did a total redesign of their blog and it looks incredible, check it out! Enjoy these links, and happy social recruiting!

Getting back to basics is always a good idea. Crisp white shirts, steak and potatoes, Facebook recruiting… You simply can’t go wrong! We recently published a blog post about why Facebook trumps print media for recruiting. In that article we also went over how no matter which medium you choose to employ, when it comes to an effective hiring campaign the basic tenants of effective recruiting remain the same. It’s just that when it comes to recruiting, Facebook has the best return on investment! But, that is only true if you make sure to incorporate the essential best practices of Facebook recruiting. So, in this link love we have 5 great articles on the basics of Facebook recruiting: In this article, John Sumser shares 3 fundamentals of recruiting on Facebook. The advice he presents is so simple, but often overlooked. Another aspect of social recruiting that is often overlooked it etiquette. Actually, I don’t know about you, but it seems that etiquette is all too often overlooked in all aspects of life! Well, this Infographic has 19 Facebook etiquette rules for business, with advice from some of the best social media experts on the internet. Once you have the fundamentals and etiquette down, it’s time to get some fans! You must develop your employer brand, and gain a following to get your content seen by Facebook users. The always awesome Amy Porterfield explains how to attract more Facebook fans to your Page. Reach is one of those terms you often hear associated when discussing recruiting. Reach is one of the most important aspects of any recruiting strategy, but it’s also one of the most difficult to master. When it comes to Facebook, reach is basically how many users end up seeing the content you share. This article by Scott Ayres gives you an incredible step-by-step guide to improving Page reach on Facebook.  Scott’s guide is a must read! We saved the best for last: a detailed guide on how to choose which Facebook Ad is right for you, and how much you should spend on Facebook ads. Facebook Ads are hands down the best tool in the social recruiting tool-belt, let this article be your instruction manual! PS You can also download our white paper to learn how to attract candidates with Facebook. Happy social recruiting!

Social recruiting is still just in its infancy, despite having been around for almost a decade. But this isn't really all that surprising. Human beings have a pretty well understood fear of adopting new technologies. When the printing press was invented, concerned biologists urged monarchs to restrict its use, fearing dangerous, and harmful information overload caused by too much reading! Doctors warned against trains, as they were convinced the break-neck speeds (15 miles per hour) of this new mode of transport would cause asphyxia induced deaths. Heck, I am still afraid Google class will lead to a world full of cyborgs that only interact online and only eat Soylent! And yet, employers are slowly but surely adopting social solutions for their recruiting problems. In fact, as of 2013, 72% of companies reported using social networks to find candidates. Even more promisingly, 2 in 3 companies surveyed said that they planned on increasing their social recruiting efforts (and budgets) in 2014. Why are so many companies adopting social as a part of their recruiting strategy? Honestly, I think it's because they fear being left behind by early adopters. Their fear is completely valid, especially considering the growing concern among employers that 2014 marks a return of the "war for talent". Fear is a great motivator, but it's a terrible reason for adopting new technology. It's also a terrible reason for avoiding them! You should adopt new technologies because they work. Because they are effective for solving the problems you need solved. Does social recruiting do this? Absolutely. Those 2 in 3 companies expanding their social recruiting efforts are doing so because it works. Well executed social recruiting has extremely high ROI,  it's an excellent way to reach mobile candidates (over 70% of jobseekers are using mobile in their search), and sourcing passive candidates with social graph data is becoming more and more effective every day. At Jobcast, we obviously favor Facebook for social recruiting, but Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ are all great tools for attracting qualified candidates. None of those platforms offer the targeting or reach Facebook does... But, using several social networks as a part of your recruiting is smart. For example, you can Tweet the jobs you post on your super awesome, fully branded Facebook Career Site! If you still haven't adopted social recruiting as a part of your hiring strategy, the time is now! It's actually pretty easy to get started, especially as I'm going to provide you with some links to how to guides for all the major social platforms that you can use for recruiting, you are most welcome!

Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for employers to use in conjunction with other social media. When you post a job on your career site, share content on your Company Facebook Page, or publish a blog post, you can increase your reach by sharing it on Twitter. You can also use hashtags to keep up with trends in your industry. Natascha Thompson's article, 5 Tips on How to Use Twitter for Recruiting, contains way more than five tips. It gives you all the info you need to get started with using Twitter to hire. Facebook

Facebook has the largest active user base of any social network, it has become an essential part of employer branding, and it allows for much more targeted recruiting with the use of Facebook Ads, these are just three of the reasons we think Facebook is the most effective network for employers. In our free white paper, we provide you with a simple guide to Facebook for recruiting. Google+

I love Google Plus, the way that it is set up makes it very easy to create talent communities, because you can simply create a "circle" for each community you have, and stream targeted content specifically to each circle. What doesn't work so well is how much less "reach" G+ has than other networks. Sure, a lot of people have accounts, but they just don't spend all that much time actually using the network. Likeable has an awesome Google Plus Cheat sheet that will help you understand how G+ works. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great tool for social recruiting. Personally, I struggle with the fact that it isn't very mobile friendly, but it's a network completely dedicated to recruiting, which makes it pretty darn handy. Susan M. Heathfield's simple guide to using LinkedIn for recruiting is a great read for anyone in HR. Hopefully these guides will help you to get started with social recruiting, or at least give you more information about which networks to focus your hiring efforts on (Facebook, cough, Facebook!) Oh, and just to give you all a little more encouragement... I'll admit that my fear of Google Glass is probably unfounded! But Soylent is completely terrifying and makes me sad about the state of the world.