I have attended two recruitment in social media events recently and although I thought I was fairly social media savvy – I definitely learned some interesting new stuff showing that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks!

The first was the UK Recruiter and  HB RIDA Directors’ Networking Event. The first presentation was from Sophie Relf the Head of Marketing Strategy at Guardian Jobs.  While I didn’t actually agree with a lot of her comments (‘social media is a walled garden, for example’ – don’t get Andy Headworth started on that!), there was one phrase she did use which really struck a chord and that was “mobile is the remote control of people’s lives.”
This was a theme that Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting picked up when he asked “How many of you have a mobile website”? The answer of course was everyone– it’s just that most look crap!  Andy then went on to (in his own words) take down the wall brick by brick and gave some great examples of how powerful the platforms have become.

Next up was Steve Evans of NetNatives who gave some really interesting insights into how Facebook pages are changing.  Likes will no longer be the be all and endall – but visitors will able to ‘recommend’ or say ‘I work here’ – think aboutthe potential branding for a temps recruiter around that!

Will Winch of Mishcon de Reya scared everyone to death (only joking Will) by giving the legal perspectives around data protection, data theft and cyber bullying

The other event was #RTSM11 run hosted by Recruitment International.  Andy Headworth (yes him again) talked about how Facebook is a content management platform – not a social network and so your content has to be relevant interactive and interesting – not just a page of jobs!  He also told us that Google+ is now the fastest growing social network in history and there are certainly some really interesting applications for recruiters.

Patrick Traynor from LinkedIn highlighted the new company status update function and pointed out how few organisations were using the free
products and services tab on company profiles. And a really interesting nugget – mobile searching on Linked In is up 400% year on year!!

Jorgen Sundberg from Link Humans gave his top five tips on putting together a strategy for your content marketing while Dave Martin from Brave New
Talent told us that mobile will overtake desktops and laptops by 2013 and gave us a brand new buzzword – SoLoMo ( Social, Local Mobile).

Steve Ward from Cloud Nine shared a great story about his social media journey and then Oracle occupied the graveyard slot by aptly telling all
the recruiters how they recruit everything in house through social media !

All in all two great events – and I learned a lot !

Q: Why do you use PR?

 A: We use PR to reach our three main audiences – clients, candidates and potential employees, Without having a PR strategy in place we simply wouldn’t get ourselves in front of the right people in the right way. PR has been instrumental to our success not only in winning new business, but also in reaching specialist candidates because the coverage we have gained has positioned us as real experts in our field.

Q: How do you measure a ROI?

A:  The biggest ROI we have seen is winning a new client by ensuring that we use our press coverage as an inherent part of our pitch. We took a piece of coverage to a client meeting which featured us talking about the energy trading space in a commodities publication. That really differentiated us from our competitors and won us the assignment. We also monitor our website traffic following blog posts, and the increase in Twitter followers over each quarter.

Q: What advice would you give to recruitment businesses considering PR?

A:  Remember that the effect of your PR efforts may take some time to show, and it needs a sustained approach.  It might take a couple of months before the phone starts ringing following an article you have written, but be patient and remember to use the coverage gained in your own marketing to clients.

This got me thinking about a conversation I was having with a friend recently – an HR Manager at a company in the West End. She is currently recruiting for a graduate HR administrator role and here at BlueSky we are recruiting for a graduate level account executive so we were comparing recruiting techniques and candidate experiences.

Facebook was one of the first channels mentioned by my friend – not because they had advertised on there but what it had revealed about a candidate that had reached the final stages of the recruitment process. The candidate had undergone an initial telephone interview, had come in for a face to face interview and to have a look around the office and meet the rest of the team. Everything was great – my friend was relieved that she was to soon have some much needed support in the HR department, and it would be the end to what had been a very long recruitment process.

My friend decided, on the spur of the moment to type the candidate’s name into Facebook – she had never done this before but something made her do so this time!  No problem finding said candidate but what popped up shocked my friend somewhat. The candidate had a fan page with well over 2000 fans and what was it for? She was a rather provocative lingerie model and the pictures that were on the page were hardly daytime viewing!

So that put a prompt stop to the candidate’s chances of a job at the company. Why? Not because she was a lingerie model (and not because the largely male dominated company would probably have a significant reduction in productivity had she joined!!) but because this information was in the public domain, easy to be found by staff members but also clients!  So the HR Manager is back to square one in the candidate hunt.

Now a lot of people may say that the process of rejecting a candidate on the grounds of what can be found on social media channels is unfair but surely it is a common occurrence? What’s more, shouldn’t candidates be more careful about what they post in the public domain given the increased reliance by some companies on social media in recruitment? After all there are privacy settings on sites to protect certain areas.

Here at BlueSky we have not had any shocking discoveries like this, but that’s not to say we have not had our fair share of odd individuals looking to work here!  What’s your experience?

There was a good mix of recruitment agencies and in house recruiters – a clear indication that both are really utilising social media in their recruitment strategies – just what us social media fans like to see! The day was split into different sessions and after some initial problems with the WIFI at the British Library the first session began – Facebook run by Peter.  Prior to the workshop, my thoughts were that in house recruiters – particularly from large corporates – would not see the benefits of using Facebook and that it was not taken as a serious tool. Furthermore it may have been overshadowed by a perception that employees misuse it and there were not enough resources to regulate it. However I was proved wrong – a large proportion of the audience had Facebook pages already and those that didn’t were actually setting them up at the workshop!

We then heard from Paul Vernon & Alex Hens on career site optimisation and optimising the visitor experience. I have to admit some of this went completely over my head but it was interesting to see how simple things can really make a difference, e.g. short concise copy on your website and ensuring your website is Google indexed.

The afternoon consisted of legal issues surrounding social media presented by Kevin Barrow which was particularly interesting followed by tips on LinkedIn by Mr LinkedIn himself (Mark Williams) – I found this great and judging by the delegate reaction on my table so did they!  We were encouraged to search for ourselves and see how effective our keywords were in our profiles – I came half way down the page so not bad really!  The final session in the in house recruiter track was on Twitter and was presented by Andy Headworth – this was my favourite session and even though I had heard Andy present at the recent Social Media in Recruitment Conference I still managed to learn more here – in particular the use of followerwonk.com – giving you the ability to search bios on Twitter and twollow.com – twitter’s yellow pages!

At the end of the day my head was buzzing with information – a great day and well organised. Thanks to Peter for organising it and letting me attend!!

Twitter – it’s like Marmite. It seems that you either love it or you hate it; or maybe more accurately you either use and benefit from it or you’re confused / uninterested / sceptical (perhaps all three.) I have certainly come across people from both camps, however the majority of recruitment professionals that I meet and talk to about Twitter give me that ‘look’ as if to say “I’m not convinced by your ‘Gen Y’ ways”. They just can’t see the value in using a tool made famous by Stephen Fry and Lily Allen in a viable way for business.  I was probably one of these sceptics, as recent as a year ago, because I didn’t really know what Twitter could do. But earlier this year I bit the bullet and started tweeting, and am seeing the real benefits unfold.

Now I realise that to an extent I am preaching to the converted here, as a lot of readers are fellow tweeters, but I thought I would share a few success stories that we’ve had – both for ourselves and for our clients – thanks to the power of Twitter.

• New clients: Through tweeting interesting and sector specific links, and re-tweeting other industry experts, we’ve had meetings with potential clients – an example being Greg Savage, who we met in the “Twittosphere” despite him being on the other side of the world!
• New candidates: Whilst looking through the followers of one client that we tweet for, we noticed a follower who had tweeted about struggling to find a job *alarm bells!* All it took was a friendly message suggesting they talk to the nearby office of the recruiter and voila, she’s now a candidate.
• New exposure: Through engaging with people on Twitter, we have secured high profile guest blogs for two clients in just two months. We’ve also gained new journalist contacts leading to a number of articles and press coverage. With over 600 followers between us, Tracey and I have also boosted our reputation in the industry even further.
• New contacts: OK so this doesn’t directly equate to new business but it could in the future. Twitter has been a great way to talk to journalists, recruiters and other people who provide useful information and who could be useful contacts in the future. And then there’s other people who probably won’t…but who are entertaining!

The truth is that no-one knows if Twitter is a one-minute wonder, or if it’s going to last the duration. But what is clear is that at the moment it’s huge and it shows no signs of going away. If you meet any Twitter-doubters, share this link with them and they may just change their mind! Do you have any Twitter success stories to add? Please share!

I look at loads of recruitment websites – and loads of recruitment brochures. And most of them are deadly dull. Now I know, as someone who has a lot of involvement in producing content for such things, that’s a pretty controversial statement. But it’s true.  And it’s mainly because a lot of recruiters all say the same thing. Leaders in our field, passionate about client service, yadda yadda yadda.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong but recruitment is and always has been a people business. And we all know that people buy from people, and, to coin yet another over used phrase,  that people are your greatest asset. But because of the paranoia surrounding staff poaching, recruitment websites rarely talk about the people who work there.  And then I saw Aquent’s website. What a breath of fresh air – at last a recruiter who bases their own image around their own people.

It may not be to everyone’s taste – but it’s different and fresh and innovative – and no – I haven’t had anything to do with it (more’s the pity).

And what of brochures? I’ve written copy for many over the years but have they had their day? I’d love some feedback here. Do you use them? Do your clients read them? And what’s the most important thing about them? Is an on line pdf enough or do clients want something they can touch and feel. Comments please!!

A decade ago, online matching technology was seen as a huge threat to the traditional agency model. Did they all go out of business? No! But what did happen was that once that ubiquitous war for talent reared its head, lazy recruiters thought they could source a CV from a job board’s CV database; send it to a client, place that candidate and claim a fee. That’s not recruitment – that’s taking the proverbial.

In my view, the recession has , quite rightly, hit those ’recruiters’ who thought that it was ok to just press a few buttons and if technology is going to threaten any recruitment model then lets hope it’s that one.  What really makes my blood boil is that some of the real recruiters – the professionals in our sector – get tarred with the same brush.

So embrace all the technology at your disposal and add it to your toolkit. But don’t forget that ‘added value’ that all your clients will be looking for. It’s what they have always wanted – and more importantly it’s what they always will want!

To any innocent eavesdropper it would have sounded like an episode of grumpy old men/woman. You see Alan and I are from the old school of recruiters – before technology, before faxes – hell even before electronic typewriters. But during the last twenty odd years one thing has remained constant – the complaint from candidates about the candidate experience.

So why haven’t we learned? And there really is no excuse, as technology has made it easier than ever before to engage. But still we have the problem of candidates applying for jobs online and, at best, getting some impersonal auto reply. I know that we have a huge pool of candidates at the moment – and okay – many of then may not be suitable. But how difficult is it, on that auto reply, to point them to something that may help – a careers guidance area on your website for example with downloads on networking advice, coping with redundancy, the benefits of temping, upskilling etc etc .  Because when the war for talent comes back – and having worked through three recessions I can tell you it surely will, which recruiters will those candidates remember? A recruiters reputation can succeed or fail on something as simple as this so isn’t it time at last to try and get it right?  Here are my three  favourite anecdotes from my conversation with Alan:

• The candidate who received an e-mail to say your details  look exactly right so we will be putting you forward for the job and will contact you shortly.  The candidate then never heard anything.
• The recruitment firm that sent an auto reply after two weeks.
• The candidate who, having uploaded her CV as requested was then sent a form asking for two referees

There were lots more but it is too depressing! Technology is a great tool but you can’t e-mail a handshake! What are you doing to engage?