Link Love

Retention. It's important. It keeps the office calm, and happy, and it's great for your bottom line. Let's face it, change is hard, and ain't nobody got time for turn-over! According to HR pros like Tim Sacket, 2014 will be the year that retention returns to HR. In the midst of the recession, retention has been neglected, but with the current economic upswing, HR needs to start worrying about losing candidates to the promise of better jobs with shiny new companies! Our Monday blog post explored how you can use company culture as a part of your retention strategy. In researching that article, we stumbled upon a lot of great advice about retention. So, we thought we'd share that advice with you, our lovely readers! Links to help you improve retention and keep your employees happy: Recruiting "A" quality talent, and creating a culture of respect and trust, are at the heart of Netflix' retention strategy. I have to admit, I'm both surprised and totally impressed by the company's forward-thinking policies. The Evil HR Lady: On the importance of company culture, including some fantastic examples from Sapient on cultivating the kind of culture that employees want to be a part of. With the economic future looking bright, recruiters everywhere are predicting that 2014 will bring a huge increase in employees looking for new work in greener pastures! Here are a few ways you can tighten up your retention strategy to keep your best people from jumping ship. And, if those tips aren't enough, or you just want to be extra careful, Carolyn Douglas shares her top 5 retention strategies. These hugely successful companies also have some of the lowest turn-over rates. What do they credit it to?

Connecting company culture to performance!

These articles all provide fantastic advice for keeping your employees happy, and, well, just keeping them! Just add a decent espresso machine and cookies, and you have an airtight retention strategy. Easy peasy. Happy Link Lovin'

It's Link Love time again.

You know what that means... a silly, rambly intro from yours truly! Then a whole bunch of super useful links of course.

Do you ever feel like there is so much to do that you simply don't know where to start? I do. Almost all the time. Definitely today. But, because I find myself in this position so very often, I've developed a trick for coping with it.

Tidy one small thing from start to finish.

Your desktop, your email inbox, your kitchen sink, it really doesn't matter what, so long as it is a small project, and you finish the job.

Sounds a little silly maybe, but it works. Sitting down at your newly organized desk, opening up your email to find it completely empty, or glancing over at your sparkling sink, will give you a sense of accomplishment that can put a positive spin on your entire day. And even if it doesn't, who doesn't like a clean sink?

Link time!

Experienced recruiters have a lot going for them. Namely: experience! But what about when that usually positive quality becomes a negative? Nancy Park exposes the number one error that experienced recruiters make, and what to do about it.

Gamification, it's still a thing. In fact, it seems to be getting more and more attention lately, especially in the world of recruitment. This article gives a great summary of how gamification is changing HR, and how you can benefit from including it in your workplace. i.e. how you can make HR policies fun... Apparently the impossible is possible in 2014!

PS

Our gamification article, was recently featured on the cover of HR Insights Magazine.

Gamification is usually aimed at millennials, but apparently younger and older generations are coming together like never before. According to this article by Allen King, the workplace generation conflict is just a myth. I agree. I get along just fine with Gen Xers, so long as they keep the Nirvana to a minimum.

Unfortunately, the gender gap in HR is no myth. According to a recent article from XpertHR, the HR profession in the UK in 2014 is three-quarters female, but only two-thirds of UK senior HR professionals are women. Check out Michael Carty's post for more info on the gender profile of HR in the UK.

No matter what demographic you are looking to reach, having a better Facebook landing page will help. Inside Facebook shares an awesome template for improving your Facebook Page template in 2014.

Happy link lovin'!

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'.

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'!

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’.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could any candidate possibly resist?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy linking everyone!

There are a lot of interesting conversations going on about social media education and credentials. Should you pay? What’s the benefit? Do employers care? Does your community care?

Tim Sackett recently wrote an article for SourceCon about how LinkedIn Recruiter certification is bunk. Still, people will pay big bucks for it, in order to get a fancy badge and be part of the LinkedIn ‘tribe’ of Certified Recruiters. Please read his article. Whether you agree with Tim or not, you will LOL, and LOLing is very good for your health. The Jobcast team cares about your health.

There’s also HootSuite University, which internet marketing and SEO pro, Doug Antkowiak, in a scathing review, called “The Clown College for Social Media”. (I secretly still really want to attend… sshhh don’t tell!) If you want a detailed explanation of exactly what HootSuite U has to offer, his post doesn’t hold back, and there are lots of embarrassing screenshots.

I have to say, I am a little bit skeptical of paid social media accreditation. I am also very particular about how I spend my money, as every penny I spend on credentials is money I could have spent on comic books. Comic books which teach me valuable life lessons!

… thank goodness there’s YouTube!

Who needs to pay for accreditation when you can just watch endless social networking tutorials online? Well, to be honest, there are a lot of really, really terrible tutorials out there, and sifting through them can take hours. Trust me I know, because that’s how I just spent my day. All in service of you, dear readers.

So, without further adieu, here are a few of the YouTube best-of-the-best social media tutorials:

I love, love, love yourBusinessChannel! Their tutorials are super cute and fun. They are also wonderfully informative. If you want to know how to attract followers on Twitter, then this is the tutorial for you!

This one is not cute, and it is also long. I suggest snacks and a comfy chair, and possibly a lapcat, which will make up for any lack of cute. Measuring the effectiveness of your social media efforts is probably the least exciting part of networking, but it’s also totally necessary if you want to be successful. This lecture on social media ROI will give you some great advice; it’s well put together and easy to understand.

Google Plus is becoming one of my favorite social networks. It’s really great for promoting actual dialogue, and there are lots of cool groups you can join to keep in touch with others in your industry. If you haven’t hopped on the bandwagon yet, then watch this Google+ tutorial, and learn all the things. Next, add me to your circles! (@samaraparker, and @jobcast, in case you didn’t know!)

Longest Link Love I have ever written; it’s even longer than that tutorial on ROI!

Happy social recruiting.