Category: Focus on Recruitment

Onboarding Online: Twitter Edition

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Although the buzz on popular news outlets would suggest otherwise, Twitter is still a newcomer to the social media scene. It’s radically different (read: there’s a 140-character limit), so companies and individuals alike are still learning to use it. Today at Buyer Advertising, we’re focusing on one of the ways that Twitter benefit your organization: as a recruitment tool.

To maximize your time effectiveness online, there are some essential elements you should be hitting every time you hop online to post about an open position. Here are some basics to get your started.

Provide a clear call to action. It’s great to promote job openings at your organization, but unless you tell casual Twitter surfers what to do next, they’ll be stymied. Get a link in that describes the open position in more detail while qualifying yourself as a reputable workplace. Don’t forget to include a website link where they can apply online once you’ve piqued their interest.

Fill out your profile completely. 140 characters isn’t much when it comes to qualifying you as the best place to work in town. Although you may get responses, you want responses from exemplary candidates—and that means they need to learn about your company before applying. Fill out your Twitter profile; it’s a good way to make the case for your company without bumping into character limits.

Link to your career site. Often. Always remember: Twitter is a portal service, not a content distribution site. It’s a good idea to have a landing page built specifically for Twitter leads that describes your organization, culture, and career opportunities before getting into the nitty-gritty of job descriptions. Remember your audience, however: keep sections colorful, focused, and brief so Twitter’ers don’t suffer from Web-shock.

Make Way for Mobile Recruitment

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s more than Facebook: the upcoming trend known as mobile recruitment allows both you and employees-to-be access to send and receive information about job openings. Simply stated, mobile recruitment uses mobile phone technology to update a variety of social networks and involve potential recruits in a much more personal way, including the ability to ask and receive answers of their own.

One essential element of mobile recruitment is the job seekers’ ability to learn about your company. Smart phone technology is a must. Oftentimes, mobile job recruiters will advertise open positions, and include a link or a way to access special, mobile-optimized landing sites where they can learn about the position in detail through prose, pictures, and multi-media.

Another role mobile recruitment satisfies is the desire for affordability. Instead of job boards, billboards, and costly—through expansive—campaigns, reaching out and responding using mobile devices is an effective, soft-spoken way to reach results. Through mobile technology, recruiters are already seeing results at a much lower cost-per-hire. Get involved!
Until next time,

www.buyeradvertising.com

Beyond the Job Board

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It was the 20th century, and job boards were all the rage. Sites like www.monster.com sprung into being, linking beleaguered career-seekers with more opportunities than the classified section of their Sunday newspaper could provide. Since then, aggregators and site scrappers have snagged and deposited job listings and descriptions in centralized locations site for complete ease of access.

Of course, times change. What seemed like the pinnacle of online recruitment is changing as employees-to-be spend less time on traditional websites, and more time on social networking webpages.

Facebook remains the go-to source for social networking, and combined with the raw mass of human beings logging in every day, and excellent way to talk about jobs. And that’s the trick with social media: it isn’t simply listing positions your company needs to fill—it’s just as important to start a dialog with people. Friends recommending friends for open positions. Answering questions about your work environment. Sites like Twitter offer quick, popcorn glimpses into your workplace, while LinkedIn perfects the art of connecting people with positions in a way that’s more personal than “click-n-apply”.

The switch to social media is exciting, but it can also be confusing. Sometimes it takes months to plan the right strategy. Agencies like Buyer Advertising help.

www.buyeradvertising.com

Tweeting for Jobs

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s a simple task, yes? Simply boot up Twitter, log in with your company account information, and soon you’ll be uploading a 140-character job description for every position you have to fill. Easy! But hold on there. Before you go flooding your followers’ logs with line after line of spam, there’s one important realization you need to make: Twitter isn’t a job board. It’s a social tool.

Most people who log into Twitter aren’t looking for jobs—yes, even with today’s economy—they are human beings looking for recreation or searching for information (or both). To present your company in the best light possible and attract the most qualified candidates, you need to reach out in a human way. One way to approach Twitter is to think about helping other people—not yourself. Instead of focusing on the positions you need to fill, invite questions about your workplace. When commenting your answers, be specific, and answer honestly. Offer insight into your company day.

If there’s a golden rule in the Twitterverse, it’s this: connect. Find your niche, and interact with your followers. For some, reaching people is all about humor (think of the Old Spice guy and his recent campaign of individualized, video responses to questions). To others, connecting is all about opening the door to a play-by-play of their Friday afternoon Foosball match. How you go about it is up to you. Just remember to be kind, gracious, and human.

Your Recruitment Strategy: Play Ball!

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Every time you invest capital into your recruitment efforts, you’re stepping up to the plate. Like the best baseball teams in the nation (as to exactly which ones, we’ll leave that up to debate), you obviously want the most effective players on your side. Not only the top performers, but candidates who would best suit the environment of your offices and your culture. Let’s round the bases with a few coaching tips.

Keep your eye on the ball. Oftentimes, as strategies grow more elaborate, the goal is lost, having given way to packing in as much flash and pizzazz as possible. Even award-winning campaigns are still failures if you’re not attracting the population you want to hire. Gathering attention is great, but don’t forget to plainly state the type of candidate you’re looking for, and what they can exact as your employee.

Cover your bases. An extensive recruitment campaign brings to mind subway posters, giant billboards, and magazine inserts aplenty, but it doesn’t cover where America is spending most of their time: online. Most job seekers, especially young ones, spend more time logged into their personal computer than ever before. Don’t forget to post job opportunities and promote your employer brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, through blogs, and on your company site.

Swing as hard as you can. Carry campaigns into other mediums. Have mailers than send recipients to your website, and have mailing sign-ups on your site.  The more candidates you can gather, the smarter, more effective workforce you’re find yourself working beside.

3 Commandments for LinkedIn

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s a great resource for job seekers. It’s also an invaluable tool for job recruiters. Since its inception, LinkedIn has been the go-to hub for everything career related. And why not? Not only can this sensation site allow prospective candidates to share recruitment leads and help build their own career-boosting community, employers can view credentials of potential employees with only a few clicks of the mouse. But how can employers promote themselves the most effectively? Read on for some quick fixes and important tips.

Fill out EVERYTHING. Every piece of information you transcribe into LinkedIn—no matter how small—is fodder for helping your SEO rankings and providing critical data for employees-to-be. It may seem tedious, but list every piece of information you can as an employer as LinkedIn requests. Even if that includes size and location of your organization and hours of operation.

Lend a helping hand. Get proactive about your presence. Offer recommendations to former employees and send messages to like-minded companies. The more you grow your circle of contacts, the more attention you’ll gather.

Plug it in. Connect your LinkedIn site to your existing assets—think blog, Facebook, Twitter, and webpage. Not only will you provide a resource to those candidates casually learning more about you, you’ll also provide at-a-glance information that helps you disseminate critical information—information that helps a candidate base make better, more informed decisions.

Your Two Brands: Part 2

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Last week, we had the chance to discuss your two brands: your company and your employer brand. This week, we’d like to unpack it all and offer some practical advice for moving forward developing your reputation as an employer.

After reading our last entry (you did read it, didn’t you?), you understand the importance of developing your employer brand. Let the information you gathered from your research step help direct your advertising and marketing recruitment efforts. If you have dissatisfied workers in your ranks, launch employee rewards programs, incentive programs, and specialized internal advertising to bolster the sagging morale. Likewise, if people just don’t know much about you as an employer, that’s an indication to hit the magazines with some advertising, start a social media presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and use other media to get the word out about why working at your organization is a great idea.

In any case, take the time to develop tangible assets like your Employee Value Proposition. And plan, plan, plan. That’s why experts like us at Buyer Advertising exist—to maximize the effectiveness of your employer brand and deliver the talent needed to make your business succeed.

Until next time,
www.buyerads.com

4 Tips for Tweets

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

You’re turning to Twitter to update your customers and let them know what’s going on behind the scenes. You’re also using tweets to promote job openings—landing you the largest applicant pool you can, helping your HR department to recruit top talent. It’s a smart move. As more ‘net surfers turn to Twitter for news, information, and—let’s face it—recreation, maintaining a presence is just good business sense. Here are a few tips to make your tweets go from peeps to hoots.

Make it diverse. By changing up the tone and subject matter of your posts, you’re proving that there’s an actual human behind your machines. That’s a good thing.

Keep it to 140 characters. No, really. Short-linking makes it very easy to gush about your latest product or service, but people read Twitter because they like brevity. Give the people what they want.

Re-tweeting isn’t cheating. While your Twitter account shouldn’t be a directory of other people’s offerings, don’t be afraid to re-tweet the latest buzz from another source.

Be interesting. Seems easy, but the art of pushing out interesting content for users to consume is, well, an art. Some companies never get it right. The ones that do enjoy more online sales and better candidate pools.
Visit our own Twitter and Facebook from our website: www.buyerads.com

New Methods for New Media

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The face of recruitment is changing. There’s already been in shift in how your organization hires employees, and social media is responsible. Where job seekers used to open the classified section of their newspapers, where they once logged into Monster.com, now their method of choice for securing a new position is to turn first to their social networks. That’s where you come in. To recruit top talent, you need to put yourself at the front lines. But it isn’t as simple as building a site on Facebook, as Tweeting out your jobs every morning. Tackling recruitment using social media has to be effective—not just cost-effective. It requires a new strategy.

To reach the maximum number of hires, talk to the client in a more personal way. If your approach comes across as too business-like, you’re going to scare potential recruits away. Answer questions as they arise on your networks. If you prove to a there’s a human on the other end of the keyboard and that your social media site isn’t simply Job Board 2.0 or a bullhorn that’s an afterthought to your hiring practices, you’re going to have more interest in your open positions.

Another approach to consider is building a place for social media promotion into your traditional marketing. Update your website with links to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Build job promotional details into your current materials and job marketing efforts. The more people would follow your lead, the larger the pool of quality of employees you’ll have.

Managing Negative Facebook Feedback

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You’re a business, and that means you’ve got a Facebook account. As the nation’s consumers and potential hires continue to toss out the newspaper, delete their links to monster.com, and instead log onto social media, crafting a Facebook presence is a good idea. But what happens when good ideas go bad? If there’s one inevitable in life, it’s that you’re going to run into conflict. People will badmouth you. On Facebook, this takes the form of negative and sometimes downright nasty comments, justified or not, on your Facebook Wall—right where it’s viewable to all who visit. What should you do? Here’s some advice.

Stay positive. Facebook is still so new, and it’s all too easy to confuse the personal nature of the medium and reply in a personal manner. When you respond to negative comments, don’t get defensive. After all, you’re representing your business, and as a rule, businesses have thicker skin. If you decide to write back, remain calm, courteous, and professional.

Engage your detractors. Oftentimes, a person will make a big splash to get noticed. Barring profanity, try and find out what they’re after. If you turn an unhappy customer, that’s positive PR that lives on your wall for at least a few weeks. Nice!

Don’t be afraid to hit “delete”. Should the conversation go from productive to public spectacle, you need to take action. Delete the thread. Some folks are just out to do a little mud-flinging, and Facebook empowers you to nip that in the bud. If your online assailant uses profanity and verbiage of an adult nature, get it out of there. You don’t want other (and possible younger) consumers exposed to that.