Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space, Twitter, Blogs, the list goes on and on.  Getting your arms around all of these tools (and using them) can be challenging.  Finding the time to recruit passive candidates form them is even more challenging. 

I came across a great video interview with Shannon Seery Gude from Bill Vick’s xtremerecruiting site – check it out when you have a few minutes.  In the video, Shannon talks about her thoughts with the adoption of social media in the HR and Recruiting space – as well as advantages small companies have over larger ones in this space.  She also talks about how to get started with the various sites.

It’s that time again! I came across a great article yesterday on establishing the applicant experience upfront (and how simple statistics can end applicant frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and anger).  A great read for any hiring manager, HR professional, or recruiter.

Recruiting passive candidates takes skill.  Get inside their mind in an article titled "You Had Me at Hello:  How to Get Passive Candidates Interested".

And last but not least a post that contains priceless tips for sourcing from social networking sites.

Cheers!

I recently received a question from a Client on what makes a strong posting for a variety of sites – including page rankings on job boards, search engines, and various job aggregator sites.  While there are many factors, the biggest issue we’ve encountered is postings are not always written in the format a candidate may search for them.  When posting your next position online, keep the following tips in mind:

• The job title is critical.  Think of how candidates may search job sites or search engines for positions.  A majority of job seekers would likely not search a job site or search engine for a "Member Service Representative II".  Refer to the title as your target market would refer to it.  More keywords can help.
• As with the first point, avoid using too much internal language that is irrelevant to the average candidate.
• Be careful with acronyms.  We always recommend including them, but also expanding on them.  Job seekers search with a variety of terms – be sure to include them.  If you are recruiting for a CFO, be sure to include the term Chief Financial Officer in your posting too.  You might lose prospects if you do not include both.
• Use wise headers.  Again, depending on your ATS you may have flexibility or control.  Most job sites today include the title and location in the page header for you.
• Use keywords in multiple ways throughout your posting.  As an example, if you are recruiting for a role and potential prospects might have retail, customer service, call center, or other experiences, include these terms.
• Research.  Spend a few minutes looking at various sites to see how others – and competitors are advertising their opportunities.
• While this is obvious, your posting is should "sell" your organization and opportunity.  If you are simply cutting and pasting the job description into the posting your results will be impacted! Especially with more passive candidates as job descritions are typically written for internal purposes, not sales documents.

Spending a few extra minutes up front before posting positions on top job sites is worthwile and should be worth the return in additional exposure to prospects or their referrals you may be missing out on.

The CUhire blog post every Wednesday is about delivering recruiting news and hot topics from other sites, newsletters and blogs.  Some great information caught my attention recently!

First, for Recruiting, Research and Sourcing professionals (if you’re not you can still learn something too) I came across a post this morning that has some valuable search techniques – from a site called GoogleGuide.

And, with all of the talk about social media and networking be sure to check out "Social Recruiting:  Corporate Adoption of Social Media for Recruiting and Retention".

If you consider competitive intelligence important in researching organizations and passive candidates, LinkedIn released some new features on their site that have a tremendous amount of value for a variety of users.  Check out the video for an overview.  Of course, if you haven’t had the chance to join the CUhire Credit Union professionals group on LinkedIn, check it out and join.

There is a lot of conversation about the competitive labor market, and the importance of creating an engaging experience for candidates.  As noted in a recent CUhire Press Release, one quick, easy and FREE way to do this is through the partnership CUhire created with Standout Jobs.

With the Reception service from Standout Jobs, you are able to give candidates the information and interactivity they have come to expect.  Key benefits to the Reception service include:

• Creating a career site to showcase your culture and team
• Managing the hiring process more efficiently
• Marketing and tracking jobs
• Building on-going relationships and finding great talent

To showcase the Reception product, CUhire created the following Credit Union Jobs page to reinforce the overall ease of use and effectiveness.  Besides the fact the product is FREE through the partnership, you do not need to have IT expertise to get your own site up and running…  Ours took about 20 minutes, take a look here:

We’d like to challenge you to create a more engaging and interactive career site for your candidates! The first Credit Union to create their site through Standout Jobs will receive a free "platinum" job posting on CUhire’s Credit Union job board.  Just post a comment on this blog post once it is completed.

A FREE job site, FREE job posting, and a more engaging experience for your candidates.  There is no catch, it’s a win-win.

Take networking to a new level - join the free and premier Credit Union networking group on LinkedIn!  Speaking of LinkedIn, I just came across an interesting topic that is posted on their Q&A module, on automated interviewing.

The question was around the effectiveness of automated interviewing, and the post stated the following:

There is sufficient curiosity surrounding the concept of automated job interviewing. After speaking with the recruiters that have used it, there was no doubt that it saves time, is more convenient for both applicants (especially passive job seekers) & recruiters, and is gaining steam in lower-level jobs recruitment.  Will automated interviewing be to the recruitment industry what ATM’s became to the banking industry? Initially, ATM’s were thought too impersonal but obviously proved that people were more than willing to bank thru a machine rather than stand on long teller lines.

Interesting concept, yet most research shows the highest effectiveness with the initial screening for high volume and entry level jobs.  In the end, most organizations still post and advertise jobs to active candidates.  Whether a company considers an automated interview process the key still lies within sourcing the right talent to begin with – and not pre-screening and sifting through unqualified stacks of Resume’s.  You can’t forget about the candidate experience, and human element…

On the flip side of automated interviewing is our Talent Sourcing – On Demand Service which IS automated for you, and is a great alternative to posting and advertising positions and hoping someone qualified applies!  The focus of this service is for us to seek out qualified candidates, at a fraction of the cost of typical job board postings and resume database passwords for you.