Scott Allen guest blogged at Six Degrees from Dave the other day about 15 Creative Ways Recruiters Can Use Professional Networking Sites.

The way I see it, any hack can figure out how to type a few keywords and do a search — where it gets really interesting is in all the other things you can use the tools for to grow your business, attract more candidates and differentiate yourself from the thousands of other recruiters out there.

I’m happy that someone is turning the conversation about social networking away from “Does it have better candidates than Monster?” discussions, and its close cousin “How can I use Social networks as background checks?”. I tried 3 years ago to articulate what recruiting would be like when online professional networks became commonplace. I wasn’t smart enough at the time to predict exactly how Linkedin, Facebook, etc could change the dynamic within the recruiting process.

Unfortunately, the media messages and recruitment industry discussion of social networking sites often support these simple questions.

• Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting
• New goldmines of candidates are popping up on the Web
• Get Dirt on Candidates: The Use of Social Networking Sites to Pre-Screen

I’m interested in the use of social networking to provide maximum value to candidates. Along those lines, I support the following:

1. Recruiter profiles should be detailed and specific. The ‘mystery recruiter’ will be increasingly unable to compete against those who have made public their professional and personal credentials. Within the first 5 seconds of any recruiter call, you have already been Googled. If you’ve been hiding from Social Networks, you’ll get the big **click**.
2. Recruiters should prep candidates. Scott points out that you can send your candidates the profiles of hiring managers. Amen to that. If hiring managers want to know so much about candidates, the least they can do is let them peak into their backgrounds
3. Recruiters should friend candidates when the time is right. Having a Friending protocol to determine when they should invite candidates to connect will be important. I personally think that right time is after an in-person interview, or a second phone screen. Of course open networkers think differently. Whatever the case, an invitation to a recruiter’s personal network after some rapport has been built is a nice way to say I value you.
4. Recruiters should spread at least a little knowledge. Candidates should become incrementally smarter as a result of their relationship with a recruiter. A simple way to do this is for recruiters to share what they are learning about with candidates. They can use Del.icio.us or other social bookmarking tools instead of Internet Explorer favorites to save each everything they are reading about their industry. Then they can invite candidates to follow their feed. It’s not a blog, or actively maintained Facebook presence (which is far more time consuming) but at least candidates are deriving value from being connected online.

The time is definitely right to move recruitment away from using online social networks as purely another resume database, or sourcing engine. It is a game changer in bringing networking relationships to the forefront of people’s professional life.

Matthew Grant over at Aquent offers an introspective look at the voice he uses while blogging on behalf of his firm.

What are the characteristics of the “corporate voice”? It is essentially educated, relatively formal (no cursing/minimal slang), and thoughtfully diplomatic. More significantly, the topics it discusses are “safe.” Aside from being relevant to the business of the corporation itself, in my case, “marketing staffing,” it shies away from topics that could potentially offend any of my more or less anonymous, more or less accidental readers. That means: no direct discussion of political or religious issues (to the extent that the two can be separated in the United States), no commentary on the actions of our current or potential clients, and, naturally, no criticism of the staffing industry or particular staffing firms.

This gray area of corporate transparency that distinguishes an individual blogger’s views, style and approach from the corporation’s (especially a public one) seems to be getting in the way of his voice. Matt goes on to mention:

But what if using the “corporate voice” was not in the best interest of this blog? What if the blog would be more popular if I spoke in a voice closer, if not equivalent, to my own?

This is a really timely topic for me as I think about the tone and structure of the Hudson voice in the blogoshere. The point of blogging for a corporation (as opposed to the more formal marketing website) is to bring your own voice to the matter. I doubt anyone is going to hang out very long at a blog if it lacks the author’s true voice. I’ve always read Matt’s content as authoritative, if perhaps only a little dry. Sure, it reflects very well on the Aquent brand as does the design of their website, and the other authoritative video content they put out there. Aquent comes across as knowing their stuff in marketing for sure! I think perhaps the only mistake Matt is making is that he’s the ONLY voice. Tim Donelly’s But Less About Me, a blog written more in his own voice, functions very separately from Matt’s. I have no clue who is getting more traffic, but I’d bet Tim is. The corporate voice of Aquent is the sum of the talent they’ve chosen to retain. Why not bring the two closer visually and architecturally so that both blogs serve to support the corporation. And why not invite more Aquenters into the mix?

Another interesting staffing voice is the Manpower Blawg. I have no doubt that Mark Toth is using a voice other than the corporate one of Manpower. It seems to be a bit off kilter to me from a corporate branding perspective, yet at the same time his blog is a very targeted and engaging read. Surely not everyone at Manpower is an employment law expert, yet the fact that a high ranking employee of the company is using his voice does say something about the company and its corporate culture. Similar to Matt at Aquent, I do think that more voices from Manpower need to join the conversation for it to become a meaningful corporate communications vehicle.

Google Trends is a fun toy to play with if you are trying to figure out whether Paris Hilton or Britney Spears is more popular on Google. There are other interesting comparisons within Marissa Meyer’s Google Trends Tutorial that coincide with an analysis of the hottest searches of 2007. My question is, how can this Google popularity contest be used if you work at a staffing firm?

Competitor Popularity
Google Trends analyzes how many searches have been done for the terms entered. From reviewing Hudson’s own weblogs I know that a LOT of incoming traffic to our website is from users typing our company name into Google and not the browser address bar. I often use this as a gauge of name recognition. A person heard our name someplace and is on the hunt to find us. Let’s have a look at a few staffing firms shall we?

Vendor Popularity
Can we then find out the popularity amongst the general public of our job board and sourcing friends by seeing their relative popularity in Google Search? Try putting in your favorite vendors and see how they’ve been trending over the last few years.

Job Market Popularity
You can get a general sense for the size of different job categories by feeding those into the tool. It is interesting to see that the searches on all of the categories follow a volume pattern that decreases from Q1 through to Q4, except in 2007 when Q3 seems to have more seekers in the market.

Perhaps you can comment with other interesting Google Trends you see that are relevant. Once the impending API for Google Trends gets released, maybe some smart developer can make a website out of Google Trends for recruiting. I would love to see it mimic the “Today’s Hot Trends” list, and make it be Today’s Hot Job Trends.

Ring, Ring…Kris checks the caller ID: ‘jobclicks.net’…he frowns and ignores the call. Kris already knows it is a vendor cold call and not someone important from the office. 15 minutes later, just wanting that voicemail light to stop flashing, he listens to a message so annoying that he wastes 5 good minutes of his life transcribing the call into Notepad for inclusion in this very blog.

Hi Kris,
This is Jason S___. I’m calling with JobClicks.net? Uh…I was giving you a call today to offer you access to candidates seeking employment through our partnered websites emailmyresume.com and resumezapper.com. The service is free to you and can provide the opportunity to receive great candidates to fill your job openings. If you could at your earliest convenience, please return my call. I would like to demonstrate what these sites can do for you. I can be reached at 540-372-3009 xt. ___. Thanks Kris, have a great day.

People who know me well understand that I have a voracious appetite for all that is new on the internet. Most Interactive Marketers at staffing agencies would tell you something similar. So, let me give out some friendly advice to all job board vendors, and other marketing software/service vendors for that matter, on what is wrong with your cold call approach.

1. You Don’t Do Your Homework. Before you even pick up that phone you ought to know that you are calling a centrally based marketing director not a recruiter. You would therefore know that I have no need to find candidates for ‘my openings’. I work for my 150 field recruiters. Somehow you managed to find my name. The least you should do is find something out about me and my company.
2. Your Message Isn’t Targeted. Does anybody need more random, unqualified candidates filling their recruiters’ inboxes? That’s what I hear when someone offers ‘great’ candidates for free. If you had done your homework you would at least know the types of candidates we place by simply looking at our online job board.

   Even saying you have more great IT candidates wouldn’t have gotten a response from me though. If perhaps you had sent an email to me prior to the cold call with some statistics on how many resumes you get in the niches our company serves or sent some example profiles, you might have at least gotten some interest.

3. You Don’t Respect My Time. Do you really think you are the only vendor that calls on me? I average 4 cold calls per week. You first ask me to return your call, and then scare me into thinking that the results of that return call will be a boring demo (which usually average 30 minutes). Both of which disrupt my day. Trust me when I tell you that I enter the demo with the wrong attitude, and leave the demo saying no thanks to any sort of purchase. Now you’ve wasted both of our time.

   Instead, you should already know that anyone buying products or services of any kind today is going to research you online first. So why not acknowledge that? You should only ask me to review your website at my earliest convenience. You should then follow-up 2 times with reminder phone calls to see if I have looked at it. If you still don’t get me to pick up my phone, you can assume that I didn’t like or need what I saw. Move on to another prospect.

I understand that everyone has to put food on the table and I truly don’t consider myself to be an un-responsive professional. But, for my own personal productivity I’ve got to help end the deluge. If you cold call me please try to follow the rules. Otherwise, don’t plan on hearing from me.

original photo by markhillary.

Hot damn this is a good blog post from a staffing firm. Apparently Talent Zoo, has enlisted a recruiter named Michael to write for their candidate-focused blog Wired & Hired. Michael takes his real world creative recruiting experience and wails on the non-website building creative class. Then he tops off the post with the obligatory hideous dog pic. Well-done Michael!

Of course the title of my post is a bit of a misnomer. The Wired & Hired blog is a beacon in the fog of boring staffing firm blog content. Staffing firms that recruit creative and marketing professionals are definitely the most clever. While these firms’ marketing departments have created online publications like the Creative Group’s Ezine, finding recruiters within the business who can blog is a high art. Could it be that they are themselves frustrated creatives who found more dollars sourcing the best talent rather than being the best talent? Hey, whatever it takes. Find me an engineering or IT recruiter that can capture candidate attention and build an audience. I mean it…seriously…no really, ’cause I want to read some of their stuff too.

I found John Sumser’s analysis of Talent Pools today to be easily applicable to staffing firm blogs:

• Talent Pools are not (primarily) ownership vehicles. They are places where value flows from the employer to the potential employee. The potential employee is better off because of their membership in the pool.
• Value is not another word for job listing. Value is better understood as cash or cash equivalents. White Papers, Training, Networking Opportunities, Technical Information, Advancement Aids, Parties, Vacations, Discounts. For a talent pool to work, real value must flow towards the Potential Employee.

If the care and feeding of Talent Pools is on your list of blog goals, then DO NOT put a job listing in the body of a blog posting. That’s just tacky. Put them in a sidebar like on the Aquent Talent Blog, or perhaps a separate bloggy looking page like this one for the MN Headhunter. Candidates will find you and your jobs when they’re good and ready, as long as you’ve provided value.

Value, is the challenge we face when creating a blog within Big Staffing. Just Look at James Durbin’s comments.

If you want a candidate blog, you need a local blog, and the local line recruiter is swamped with too many job orders. The time and effort to create a local recruiting blog, while I believe it will pay off in terms of placements or hires, is not yet regarded as the best use of time.

If you can get your recruiters to provide the insight, technical information, job market pulse, and local humor relevant to the talent pool in the local market via a blog, by John’s definition, there’s real value to the candidate. Would it be better for your recruiters to do it via the phone? No way! You can only scale your company’s expertise if it is available to a much wider audience.

Underlying photo by Giant Ginkgo.

Marketers in almost every industry today are turning to blogs as a channel to augment their interactive marketing strategy. Marketers of staffing firms are no different. We’ve read much of the advice (and hype) on corporate blogging and I’m sure a good majority of us are coming to grips with what that means for our staffing firms. The charter (I think) is to evolve our slick, brochure-ware website approach into content heavy “blogchures” that demonstrate our expertise, build trust with clients and candidates, assist our SEO, and give our companies personality.

There are a few staffing firms giving it a whirl already. They get kudos for entering the fray and learning from their mistakes. I’ve got their feeds nourishing my reader every day with tidbits of advice on resumes, quips on the industry they focus on, and in rare cases insightful new ideas on the Talent ratrace we all live and work in. Over the next few months I will follow the “Staffosphere” closely as I learn from my peers, and attempt to take Hudson into Blogland.

For now, here’s a short list of the staffing firm blogs I’m tracking (also included in my blogroll).

Candidate Focused Blogs

• Aquent Talent Blog
• Spherion Career Blog
• The Recruiter (Yoh)
• Wired & Hired (TalentZoo)
• Volt Insider

Client Focused Blogs

• Hiring Revolution (Talent Zoo)
• Vedior HR Blog

If you have a site to add I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I’ll provide my analysis on some of these sites in the coming days.

I’ve just returned from Maynard, MA where I spent 2 days with my staffing firm competitors listening to and speaking with the team at Monster. I have been to a few of these sessions now and have never really taken the time to reflect on what it has meant for me professionally, or my business as a client of Monster.

Kris being eaten by Trump, Monster’s friendly mascot

Meeting Format
The meetings take place twice per year. This time around there were about 40 of us who comprise the formal Advisory Board. The first day of the program involved a series of presentations by Monster’s Senior Management outlining the state of the business, product strategy, and marketing strategy. Customers were also encouraged to present key issues and opportunities in front of the entire audience. This was a spirited discussion of everything from macro issues like global pricing, to micro issues like user interface design and reporting.

In the afternoon, the group was divided into breakout sessions dividing staffing customers from enterprise ones. In the evening we attended a low-key dinner that allowed for customers to network with one another and with Monster staff. Returning the following day, we spent the entire time within our staffing specific breakout. There, we had presentations from Monster execs on new product developments specifically for staffing. We also were able to discuss key priorities for our individual businesses with regards to what Monster delivers.

Monster’s Strategy
I’m not able to comment specifically on any content within the meeting (what happens at the board stays at the board), or put differently that NDA IS in fact binding. However, I can give my overall personal impressions. I think Monster is back on track. Their restructuring looks to be behind them, and they’ve got a lot of very smart senior executives in key strategy and sales roles. Sal Ianuzzi seems to be a very no nonsense CEO who has the troops believing in a streamlined organization focused on the customer and also focused on the core business before anything else. It was telling to me when Sal himself mentioned the removal of the interstitial from the job search experience. The product strategy from Michael Madden for the first time in my recent memory seems to have a clear roadmap and release schedule. Joan Blackwood has decisively assessed the marketing strategy for Monster in her short tenure. Her next move is critical to the continued attraction of the candidates we pay so dearly to attract. So far, I believe what she’s cooking. I’m excited to see what the manifestation of it is in the coming months.

The most compelling character in leadership is Louis Gagnon. Louis has a firm grasp on the current web market place and is an excellent spokesperson for the newly consolidated innovation group within Monster. I know that he and Neal Bruce (recently obtained from the alliance team) are going to finally get Monster back into a technology leadership position. Monster spent a full 3 years monetizing (NASCAR-izing) their strong innovation from 1999 instead of continuing to develop the next great career experience. This allowed the likes of CareerBuilder, Jobster, LinkedIn, etc to leapfrog Monster’s user experience thereby stealing market share. The only question in my mind is how quickly Louis can turn his innovation into product.

Professional Outcomes
As a marketing person, I think the Customer Advisory Board concept is a brilliant one. It creates strong ties between a company and their existing customer base. I have no doubt that Monster employees leave these Advisory meetings with hundreds of ideas of how to better serve their customers. At the same time I know that one of my key vendors with whom we spend a lot of money has listened to my needs and honestly intends to address them. And if they don’t address them, I’m going to break their customer jar

Since we spend slightly more than what’s in the jar, it’s nice to know Monster is listening

Perhaps the most valuable part of participating on these boards is networking with peers from other firms. I have learned so many best practices from the marketers and operators of my competitors that I come back with a list a mile long of initiatives to undertake – not the least of which is a strong desire to create a Customer Advisory Board for Hudson. While these boards are costly, I am positive the research insight gained from 2 days with our customers would yield incredible ROI.

Catching up on my HR Marketer reading, I found their post, Promoting Solar Toasters which touted this PR Web in Plain English video. It’s not often that my overtaxed brain gets enlightened thrice in one post, but today was such an occasion.

1. HR Marketer’s RSS Feed contained a little video icon next to the post in my Yahoo RSS Reader. I want to know how they did that. It seems to be a function only of the fact that the post had a video linked within it. This certainly caught my eye, and is something I’d like to have with my posts containing embedded video. I’ll have to look into it.

   

2. The lesson within the video of how PR Web works and the best way to spread PR online was enlightening. The fishing in the stream metaphor is brilliant.

   I’m definitely going to forward the video to our PR manager.

3. Which leads me to my third insight – the beauty of the work being created by commoncraft. They are the company behind all of these ‘paperworks‘ videos. Their seemingly simple technique to illustrate complex ideas is very cool. I’m sure this style of video is here to stay, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of them. I predict their viral factor will be inversely related to the number of times the technique is applied. For instance, I appreciate the illustration of new lightbulbs below especially because my wife just made me change over all the bulbs in our house. However, the technique loses impact in comparison to the illustrations of highly complex internet concepts.

Anyway, I consider myself enlightened today by the strong technique of a few good internet marketers. It’s time to go make icons show on my RSS feeds, send Hudson releases to PR Web, and make videos from scraps of paper and hand gestures.

I’m not necessarily big on the “recruito-sphere” as a place for interactive marketers of staffing firms to hang out every minute of their spare time. I prefer to try to find resources from marketers in other industries and apply them to ours. This helps bring a more innovative approach to everything we do. For instance, find out what Coke’s latest technique in loyalty marketing is, and figure out how it could apply to an online consultant retention program within your staffing firm.

On occasion however, I do pull nuggets of value from recruiter-focused blogs. Today, it was a resource on the basics of SEO from RecruitingFly.com. Essentially he took advice from free and paid SEO consulting resources out there, and made them applicable to the savvy recruiting firm marketer. He packaged it nicely into a guide that quite honestly I’m surprised he isn’t asking people to pay for. However, I think RecruitingFly is deriving much more SEO value from making the content free (after all his guide DOES mention that content is king) than he would get from coaxing 25 bucks from people to buy it. I’m going to consume the content and implement some of the recommendations (especially those on link building for recruiting firms) as fast as I can.