by Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

This is in response to a LinkedIn Q&A answer I gave to the question, “What’s the best way to auto-distribute jobs content on a limited basis using Twitter? Not too much, not a firehose, just select ones?” I also presented similar information to #recruitcamp on “Should Recruiters Be Twittering?” in which I talked about the same theme, using this open-platform tool to generate your job openings across the internet. Many Recruiters and HR professionals are leveraging these tools more and more as the way we post jobs, find top talent and interact with the internet has continued to evolve with the ever changing World of Work.

I have tried many options in this space (twitter-land) and still continue to experiment, but by far the best gizmo I have found is a tool called Hootsuite. I would go for the $9.99 per month pro-plan to be able to both manage when and how often your tweets go out as well as the analytics or metrics on this ROI for your time and employment branding. Hootsuite is great as you can upgrade to add other team members so the content and messaging are all coming from one “brand” or Twitter handle, Facebook Fan page, LinkedIn profile, etc. The other nice option is that you can have it go to all your social media accounts with one step, on a timed or calendared schedule then review the analytics to see the click through results! Hootsuite has also upgraded to add in LinkedIn groups with your messaging blasts, direct to those “open” groups so less time on all social platforms and a better shot at a mass dispersing of your job opening. The site for this is www.hootsuite.com. You can use it on a smart phone, i-pad, tablet, or any computer as Hootsuite is browser based when not utilized in app-mode.

The second option is to see if your current ATS or HRIS system has a social media blast tool. Some good example of this are BullhornReach and Top Echelon’s BigBiller with the Job Javelin add-on. While Bullhorn is still working through the advancement of the core tool’s code to bring it up to (modern) speed, the BullhornReach program is great! Best of all is that you do not have to be a Bullhorn client to use the tool (this may have changed since I gave this response). What is nice with BullhornReach is that you can again load all social media accounts then choose the frequency, but not the exact timing, of sending that job out to selected profiles. The tool also hits the job aggregates (where the true gold in recruitment is right now) such as Indeed.com and SimplyHired. **Keep in mind this is a for profit company, the tool is Bullhorn owned and they do collect data from people who click through, some OFCCP or EEOC potential issues possibly. I have had applicants tell me Bullhorn has sent them follow-up messages after registering with the site/tool.

The other options are Tweetdeck which I have referenced many times before, and some newer tweeter feeders most trying to build a service and not mainstream just yet. Tweetdeck has added a timing component to the tool, still not as robust as Hootsuite and a major memory hog on your computer. Tweetdeck is more of a social media and content monitoring tool than a message management tool, but I still like the tool and the ability to group and follow lists. For this it is the best social media monitoring tool out right now in my opinion, but not my top choice for job post dispersing.

I did not mention in my response, but Monster and other jobs boards are seeing, and feeling, a major shift from their platforms to social media and are scurrying to develop “me-too” plug-ins to their services. “BeKnown” seems to work ok, but is more geared to Facebook vs twitter and the others, even with their apps, just are not at the same operational and effectiveness level as the tools named above. Could we see a Monster or CareerBuilder buying Hootsuite? Probably not, but it would make for an awesome business solution and put some major distance to the competition!

Links:

• http://www.hootsuite.com
• http://www.bullhornreach.com
• http://www.tweetdeck.com

Good luck with using Twitter for pushing out your job openings!

Chris    @therecruitinguy

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com. 

Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

This is a line we either hear every day or we ask each other jokingly here at The Wellington Group. See we get this question from various clients we are calling or those who reach out to us for help with their talent search needs. We also seem to be asking this a lot of both other recruiters and VARIOUS vendors that want us to lock into some over-priced contract to attain more “resume traffic flow.”

So, Human Resources and company Hiring Managers or Executives ask all the time now, “Do you really have candidates?” This is for good reason, in two parts. The first, they have exhausted their own candidate pool and resume flow or the flip side is happening and they are just too overwhelmed to go through all the applicants! The second part to this question involves all the countless one-time callers from various recruitment firms, staffing companies, mom and pops firms, or recruiting professionals who see their needs and are looking for new clients. Well why then would they (HR and Hiring Managers) continually ask this question if they need the help? Easy, too many recruiters who call and say, “We have the people for this job,” and a few days later…nothing, nada, zilpo, zilch. Not in their niche, did not truly have the candidates or was the sales person for the recruiting company and they are now trying to sell the recruitment team on this new client…crazy!

“Mr. Wellington, this is Jack from ABC Recruitmentpros, Inc and we have people to meet your needs…” Calls I get, or my staff does, daily from another firm or from those in our recruiting networks who seem to have people…not really. Again, what we get is either NOTHING or they send us people who have a few keywords and no true sound interview details as the recruiter/firms has not honestly read the job description off our website. “Jack, we don’t need a 30 year career Scientist for a Jr level Chemist job.” Extreme example, perhaps but nonetheless it’s true. Just looking to move some paper and not truly looking for that ideal career match for their candidate.

Finally it’s the vendors we get massive calls from, or in my consulting I hear about all the time from clients. Yes the product or service sounds great, but is it? What can they guarantee? What, no guarantees in the job board, job posting, job anything space…nope! You get a contract and service, can’t find what you need here (like I said you would in my sales pitch) then on to my next potential client while you burn up valuable time using our tool in hopes to find some, any relevant talent.

So what can you learn from this…it depends? What side of the desk or phone are you sitting on? If you are on the HR or hiring side, ask for references from current clients, search their site to see if they really have other similar candidates or current talent searches (no matter what vendor), heck even look at their LinkedIn profile for details about their recruitment expertise. But, what you should be doing is negotiating a way out, if in a short amount of time the service or tool is not performing. If in fact you are making that call into a client, good. Just ensure the database, network or tool you are trying to push is what the client needs and wants. Are you in their niche? How many similar clients has your firm / tool serviced? What is the count of those types of people in your database, tool or network? Will your recruiters truly engage and help your new client find this person?

It floors me that clients will ask many of these questions of our firm or expect us to layout why a person is an exact fit with painstaking detail but turn around and take anyone on who “may” have a solution but “has” no clue to these answers. Maybe I can just start saying, “I don’t know.” Not a chance. Do your homework and make sure your call into HR, a Hiring Manager or a fellow recruiter is advantageous and not a time waster. After all, time has become even more precious in the changing World of Work as we are all doing a lot more with a lot less.

Do you really have candidates? Great, well let’s get them to work and get this economy moving!

Chris

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.