It is easy to come across the recommendations that pitch the same recipe to approaching Gen Y. Here is the gist:

First thing that you have to remember – Millennials will not read anything that exceeds the size of a tweet. That is why you recruiting message must fit into 140 characters or no one will bother. At the very least your message has to be split into small pieces (see above) and carefully sprinkled on top of a good deal of entertaining content. Suggestions include: sharing videos showcasing office gaming room, posting group photos of happily laughing employees, bragging about whose number of “Likes” is bigger, etc. Follow these rules and success is inevitable…

It would be funny if these ideas were not gaining momentum lately. Let’s take a moment to think about the implications.

First and foremost, this stereotype is quite unfair to many capable people of the Millennial generation. The popularity of social media simply cannot be used to define the entire social group. Gen Y is as diverse as any other generation and while it’s true that some Millennials are happy not to read anything longer than tweet, the question is: are you really after these people?

Are you really interested in people who made a choice not to make it beyond 140 characters?

I am not. For many obvious reasons, which I am not going to list here. But here’s the catch – because this idea is gaining momentum, Millennials who do not suffer from this new form of self-induced ADD can find themselves at a disadvantage competing in this framework, which will result in lower efficiency of the recruiting efforts. And Millennials will not be to blame for the low signal to noise ratio in your recruiting campaigns. You know, what goes around comes around.

I think this misconception stems from the fact that people fail to realize the difference between the marketing and recruiting environments. Don’t get me wrong: Twitter is a powerful information distribution tool that can be very useful. But let’s avoid “if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail” syndrome.

Effective marketing environment is not the same as effective recruiting environment.

Use the information distribution channels to bring people to the environment that is specifically designed to make your recruiting efforts more efficient, to give capable professionals more reasons to join your team, to interact, to collaborate, and to see beyond resume. The specific choice may depend on your hiring needs and your personal preferences. Just don’t do recruiting in a marketing channel – use each tool for what it was designed for.

With all the talk about social recruiting and how it’s going to change everything the simple truth is that social media were not designed to be a recruiting platform. And as soon as you accept it you will be able to use them much more effectively in your recruiting strategies rather than wasting your time trying to fit your recruiting message into 140 characters.

Vitaly Latush is a founder of BrightMesh – the knowledge network with naturally integrated recruiting tools creating a dynamic, collaborative hiring environment. Feel free to contact Vitaly if you are interested in innovations in this field.

JobSpeek’s inventor is Chris Russell, a veteran of the online recruiting space and widely considered by many in the industry to be the “mad scientist of online recruiting.” He wanted to create a new kind of job listing, one that uses the features of the device itself to make a better job description. “Recruiters can now create a compelling job ad that differentiates their company and syndicates the job in one click,” he says proudly.

The app also syncs with social media accounts on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. As more employers begin to adopt social media in their recruiting strategy, JobSpeek makes it easy to spread the word that “we are hiring.”

Features of the app include:

• ability to record 60-second audio “hiring message” to describe the job
• upload a picture of your business or office environment
• free distribution to 10+ million job seekers through sites such as SimplyHired
• ability to manage/edit/add listings quickly and easily
• social media integration

How It Works

Enter a few basic details, add a picture and record your audio message. Each time you post a job through the JobSpeek app, it gets posted immediately to our website at http://jobspeek.com. The job is then syndicated to the job search engines within 24 hours. You tell the job seeker how to apply via email, URL, phone or fax.

JobSpeek is available for free in the iTunes app store today. Download it here: http://tinyurl.com/jobspeek2

Go to http://jobspeek.com to learn more and listen to the current job listings.

Contact:

Chris Russell
800-399-6651

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

When we last off, UPS said that the candidates who were coming its way via Facebook and Twitter were more likely to convert to actual hires than were any old candidates. But the sample was small: in other words, social media recruiting seemed to pay off in terms of ROI, but not in any large volume.

Things are different now. 

As 2010 progressed, TMP’s Mike Vangel says that UPS wanted to know: “What was the ability to scale? Would we be able to continue at the same rate of growth? Would it plateau, or would it accelerate?” 

So far: no plateau. UPS attributes 955 hires in 2010 to the social media efforts, breaking down like this: 45 from Twitter (out of 681 people who arrived via Twitter and created applications); 226 from Facebook (out of 3,926 people who created applications); 84 from text-messaging (out of 1,004 who created applications); and 600 from people (out of 7,919 creating applications) going to UPS’s mobile-friendly careers page from a mobile device. That mobile-friendly site had about 510,000 page views in the last 4-5 months of 2010, with people averaging about a minute and a half each on the site. 

More from Matt at – http://recruitingfuture.com/2011/01/21/by-grads-for-grads-social-recruiting-from-unilever/

Job boards must connect with two core audiences: job seekers and employers. Both audiences are using social media for a variety of reasons, such as personal or professional networking, research, and entertainment. Rather than rushing willy-nilly into social media, a job site should first understand the two audiences. Where do they live? What do they do? What do they watch, listen to, read, etc.? In other words, what does the target audience look like? Until you can answer this question, you simply can’t make a decision about which social media tools or channels you should use.

Example: your job site caters to mid-career professionals in accounting. LinkedIn may be a better choice than Facebook (if an accountant is on Facebook, most likely he/she is using it for entertainment and family). But an even better choice may be an accounting-specific networking site like HubStreet. Remember: the audience determines the channel!

Once you’ve analyzed your audience and identified the best channels (and I would probably include Twitter and LinkedIn for all job sites – they have the right general career demographics and size), you need to set up a map of the messages you’ll use and their frequency. No, I’m not talking about just setting your job listings to auto-Tweet (although that is useful and should be done). Instead, think about your audience (again): what do they want? what are they interested in?…and what can you offer them?

Example: Going back to our fictional accounting folks, they no doubt would love to knowwhich metro areas pay the most for accountants. So gather up some data and get it out there! For example, you could Tweet about different cities and pay – and link back to the relevant part of your site. Then go to LinkedIn and start a Question about the same thing. Then run over to HubStreet and start a discussion. Notice what’s happening here? You are thinking like your audience, giving them information they want – and engaging them.

Last – but absolutely not least – measure what you are doing. There are numerous free and paid tools out there, such as SocialMention, Radian6, and SproutSocial. You can even use Google Analytics – just create a profile exclusively for social media. The bottom line, however, is that you must measure or you won’t know which social media channels are working – and which aren’t.

The bottom line? You’ll see more job seekers AND employers on your site – and that’s a good thing!

Source: www.check4jobs.com

Several Mondays ago, I watched a National Geographic documentary called Restrepo. Restrepo is a feature-length documentary from National Geographic that chronicles the one-year deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in one of the most dangerous and remote locations on earth, the Korengal Valley. Named “Restrepo” after PFC Juan Restrepo, who died on a hillside 7,000 miles from home on July 22, 2007 the Korengal Valley was a Taliban-infested death trap where nearly 50 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in five years of conflict, according to the Miami Herald.

This was one of the most gripping and moving war documentaries I have ever watched. The documentary followed the daily lives of the platoon members assigned to the valley outpost. By now, you are probably asking yourself what in the heck does this have to do with corporate recruiting? The answer is EVERYTHING. U.S. Military recruiters SELL.

Watching and analyzing Restrepo made me think back on my time in the military — perhaps I had gotten a little bit lucky during my tour as our country was not involved in any conflicts like we are now. The location, the lifestyle, the battles, the pure hell these soldiers were put through on a daily basis made the selfish side of me think “I’m glad that’s not me.” In the days that passed, I would reflect on my time in service and on the men I saw in the documentary, and a thought crossed my mind: “Who and why in their right mind would want to go to that place?”

The military may not be for everyone, I understand that, but it is a company nevertheless, an employer; one of the largest employers in the world in fact, with its own culture, mission, pain points, and recruiting and retention needs. Looking back and examining the U.S. Army’s recruiting numbers over the past couple of years, this is what we find (numbers provided by U.S. Army Recruiting Command):

FY10 Mission Accomplishments

FY09 Mission Accomplishments

In fact, going back and analyzing the recruiting numbers from FY03 Mission Recap to present, the U.S. Army had only fell short one year in its recruitment needs. We are not talking about an organization that needs to recruit 20 individuals or even a few hundred; this is an organization that year after year needs to recruit upward of 60,000 individuals for dangerous assignments. Reviewing the recruiting numbers with thoughts of the Korengal Valley fresh in my mind, the recruiting success of the military astonished me.

So the question persists: How can the U.S. Military sell an individual into giving up their regular lifestyle, travel halfway around the world, be gone for months at a time, and risk life and limb while working in a hostile environment? Easy: the military sells the benefits of its opportunities and lifestyle, pays bonuses, and is aggressive. As dangerous as it can be, there are benefits in every opportunity. In my experience, corporate recruiters and hiring managers seek out every reason why an individual IS NOT qualified for a position — while military recruiters look for every reason why the individual IS qualified for a position. Another important selling factor is pure opportunity; everyone regardless of their background can be eligible for career fields such as HR, Finance, Aviation, Communications, Logistics, Nuclear Power, Combat Arms, Healthcare and many more fields. Everyone is given the opportunity to succeed.

People want to join the military for various reasons, just as they would like to find an opportunity within your organization. It’s important to outline the benefits, to be aggressive, provide future growth and training, to sell the applicant on the company and as to why an individual would want to work at your company — an important application I call “employment branding.” Moreover, the military is smart — it partners with trusted organizations to help build, market, and deliver the respective employment brand — rather than trying to do it on its own. In speaking with several former military recruiters, the group consensus on what makes military recruiters successful is the following: meaningful and productive activity, being personable and friendly, ability to outline benefits and long term goals, ability to relate to the applicant, and provide constant and consistent communication.

Here is a challenge: next time you find yourself interviewing a candidate, take off your recruiter hat and put on your sales hat. Look for every reason on why the individual is qualified for the position, listen to the applicant’s goals and objectives and match them up accordingly, give them their due time, outline the organizations benefits, sell them on why they should want to work for your company, advise the hiring manager on why you are presenting the individual and most importantly provide consistent communication — even if the answer is no.

Rest in peace PFC Restrepo. 

We’ve learned a lot from the process, and with the benefit of retrospect, I have distilled our ideas and lessons learned into 10 rules that should help any organization confidently launch a social recruiting effort. These 10 elements are crucial to consider when developing your social media recruiting strategy. And they’re applicable across organizations of any size, in any country.

1. It’s Not Just About You and Your Open Positions

Just dumping a list of your open positions into Twitter or Facebook won’t work. At Unisys, we provide information not only about Unisys and our open positions, but also share helpful job hunting information in general. Whether it’s interviewing techniques, job-seeking techniques, or resume writing, we’re sharing our careers expertise with the people we want to connect with. It’s not just the Unisys story. It’s a career-focused information resource that incorporates Unisys principles.

By engaging candidates in this way, we can provide a better sense of who Unisys is and what we do. Prospective candidates are more likely to share what we talk about through social media outlets with their friends through e-mail and other networks. And that ends up promoting and cross-promoting our brand and employment opportunities, as well as generating employee referrals.

2. Conversations Are the Key to Success

You never know where conversations are going to start from or where they’re going to lead. By listening to your Twitter stream, for example, and by being engaging, and posting information you might think is meaningless, your conversation could turn into something important that ends up delivering a valuable contact. For instance, a conversation that starts out as a plug for a new product could lead you to your next hire.

3. Align Your Career Brand with Your Corporate Brand

Search engines love social media. It’s important to realize that everything you say and do on these forums will contribute to your organization’s online brand, just as much (if not more!) as the official company website.

This is one of the reasons our social recruiting efforts have been so successful. We began working very early on, and very closely, with the Unisys corporate communications department in (1) establishing an overall social media strategy for the entire company, and (2) developing a social media recruiting strategy that aligned with the corporate social media strategy.

We spent a great deal of time and effort ensuring that everything we did with social media was branded and worded correctly. The goal was to establish a workable cadence between our corporate brand and our careers brand that represented Unisys well. It continues to be extremely important to us to align what we’re posting with our overall corporate strategy.

For example, if our corporate efforts are focused on cloud computing, then it’s important for the career side to also reinforce that by talking about different cloud opportunities. Actions speak louder than words. Social media amplifies our actions related to hiring and recruiting, and allows them to play a meaningful role in reinforcing our overall corporate branding.

Don’t try to do social recruiting in a vacuum. Join forces with others in your organization to ensure everyone is well-aligned with the corporate brand and that all external messaging is in sync.

4. Go Where Your Audience Is

It might sound simplistic to say that you should focus your social media efforts where your targeted talent is. Yet I continue to see many recruiters focus on the technology rather than the people side of social media.

It’s much easier to attract a large following on a site that already has a large following or user base. But you also have to remember that you want to reach the right people. Constantly evaluate new sites for their recruiting potential. Go to the sites that cater to and attract the sorts of people you want to connect with. Look for quality, not quantity.

For Unisys, services such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter were important, as we wanted to reach several different demographics. It might not be the same for your company, especially if you are not in the U.S. Each of our geographies has sites that are unique and relevant to their region of the world.

5. Remember that Social Recruiting Is Still Evolving

Social media is still a relatively new world for the vast majority of organizations. And it’s also new for most job seekers. There’s a lot of buzz about the use of social media in a job search, but that doesn’t mean everybody is doing it, is comfortable using it, or is effectively using it.

You might not be able to reach your ideal candidate using social networks. And even if they are on a social site, they might not be open to being contacted by a recruiter. Don’t lose faith. That doesn’t mean social media in general isn’t an effective recruiting channel for you. It simply means you need to keep searching and leveraging social media outlets to find the right mix of services and engagement to start networking with your intended audience. The additional effort on the front end might provide you with new effective methods for future searches.

6. Educate Your Team on Best Practices

It is important to educate your team on best practices for using social media, especially in a corporate sense. Authenticity, interactivity, value, and just plain respect can put a human face on your corporate social media efforts. Being too aggressive or insincere in your interactions can doom your efforts. Have your most effective social media users coach your other recruiters and keep track of usage to ensure that you have consistency in your messaging and tone.

7. Involve Management

Social recruiting is not just for the recruiting team. Management can play an important role here. Unisys has a new regional recruiting leader in the Asia Pacific region based in Sydney. One of the first things she did was set up meetings with the local management groups trying to hire for some unique positions. She laid out how these hiring managers could use LinkedIn to their advantage. She worked with them to tune their profiles. She encouraged them to regularly add status updates that announced Unisys was seeking talent for a particular role. Publishing that information out to their network of contacts, it helped make the outreach viral.

Educate management on the benefits of LinkedIn for recruiting. Train management on how to tune their LinkedIn profile for recruiting, and build and manage their professional networks. Use their network updates to keep their contacts aware of job opportunities and business activities. Do the same for each of the social networks that your organization is using (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

8. Recognize the Risks

Using social media is a double-edged sword, especially with regard to LinkedIn. If you’re having managers tune their profiles to attract job candidates, they could just as easily attract recruiters who will try to woo them away, especially if they have a unique skill set.

That said, remember that strong candidates with unique skills are likely targets for recruiters anyway, regardless of the quality of their LinkedIn profile. Candidates make their own career choices. You can’t control whether someone will be found by a recruiter, but you can control whether your own organization capitalizes on the power of social recruiting.

Another risk of social recruiting is the permanence of information on the Internet, and the ability for anything to go viral, for good or bad reasons. Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “Unlike love, the Internet is forever.”

Anything you do online is likely to be captured and archived somewhere, free for anyone with access to a search engine to find, even years later. It’s difficult to predict what will make something go viral, but training your people on the best practices for using social media responsibly will minimize the chances that something negative about your company will make the rounds.

9. Use Video, but Don’t Force It

There is great interest in the use of video for social recruiting. Search engines love video, so it can be a great way to gain visibility. Our experience has shown that not everyone is comfortable with video, no matter how enthusiastic they might be about a project. Some people do well on video, and some people don’t.

Don’t force anybody to appear in a video. While it can be a powerful tool, there are other avenues that can deliver similar results. There are also questions about what sort of video is best. Should it be informal and shot from a Flipcam? Should it be done professionally? How much production is too much?

There are implications for choosing one production approach over another, and what that might imply about the style or professionalism of a business. We’ve found a wide difference of opinion throughout the world on what style of video is most appropriate. Align your efforts to these regional preferences.

Video can work well as an element of a social recruiting program, but it needs to be approached judiciously. Try several styles and see what works best in each circumstance. Note the successes, and establish them as your model for future use.

10. Start Small and Grow

Don’t try to do everything at once. Start small, think big, and build on your successes. LinkedIn is a great place to start because it’s accepted as a professional business networking tool, even if someone is not in an active job search. And it’s very easy for recruiters and job seekers to use their LinkedIn account as a first point of contact.

Once you build up to a level of comfort using LinkedIn, begin to expand into other areas of social media. The key is to build trust, add value, and start authentic conversations. It takes time to build trust — about as long as it takes to build a large and active community. The more people who are engaged and interacting on a page, the greater their sense of trust. Scale creates an environment where candidates will seek you out.

The corporate blog has a tremendous ability to build the value and trust essential to social recruiting. Unisys has had great success tying its blogs to its recruiting practice. But blogging is not for everyone, so think carefully before you take it on for your company and have a plan around frequency of posts and line up some back-up posts to fill in any gaps that occur once you begin

If you decide it’s the right move, identify the folks who are open to contributing, because it’s an ongoing and regular commitment. Also, is it right from a strategy perspective to have your own careers blog, or is it better to integrate it along with a corporate strategy? Again, start small with any corporate blogging plan, and expand it as your needs and experience grow.

The End of the Beginning

These are the lessons we learned as we embarked on our social recruiting initiative. The effort continues to deliver results for us and we continue to review and expand our usage of this growing medium. I hope these best practices help you build your social media recruiting strategy. Feel free to comment here or write to me if you have any questions, opinions, ideas, or need more information.

Q. In what industries are you seeing similar changes?

A. Think about the way most companies currently hire. You post a job and then get blind résumés in response. This should be a social experience. If you took everyone and asked them to list everyone they knew, you could create an enormous social graph of several million people. There’s no reason to hire people that we can’t learn something about through some connection of our personal network. There’s no site today that takes advantage of the social graph in this way, yet.

Q. Doesn’t LinkedIn do that?

A. LinkedIn does part of it. It’s a great example of a company that is leveraging the social graph to grow and deliver value.

Q. What is it missing?

A. The site is missing some of the key social features that make Facebook so compelling. The ability to quickly understand someone based on whom they know, what they share and what others think of them, for example. To me, no one has fully cracked the code on social recruiting yet.

To read the rest of the article, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/business/18sbiz.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=lefkofsky&st=cse