Recruitalicious

Last week, I drove all the way from Lombardy Road to good ol’ Lombard, Illinois for the Chicago Talent Acquisition Summit.  Though I’d prefer to withhold this useful information & remain more knowledgeable than the rest, my experience dictates that I share my words of wisdom (or lack thereof).

• Just because it was okay to wear jeans to ERE’s Social Recruiting Summit in NY, does not mean jeans are standard dress code at every somewhat-social-media-related conference.  Oops!
• Jobs2Web is about company branding, getting your jobs out on the web and search engine optimization. I’d advocate learning more about them, stealing some of their ideas, and partnering with your webmaster to implement those fancy whozits and whatzits on your website ASAP.
• Beware of your surroundings before setting down a filled-to-the-brim, metal water jug or you might knock someone’s coffee off the table and onto their laptop.  Double oops. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to pose a question: how do you use  LinkedIn to source candidates? If you’re like me, you use the “Relevance” option to sort your search results. And while I thought this was a great way to help me find the best candidates, after reading a recent Boolean Black Belt blog post, I realized that I’ve ignored a large part of what LinkedIn has to offer.

My long-held assumption was that “Relevance” only returns results based on the words I enter. However, sorting by “Relevance” is the default value. Duh, why didn’t I know that?  I thought it was awesome that my computer knew me so well that it automatically went to “Relevance” to sort my search results (apparently, that’s not the case).

According to the post, when you sort by this value, you’re getting results based on what LinkedIn thinks is relevant, which differs greatly from how other source sites like Google, Twitter and Applicant Tracking Systems work. These sites sort according to what keywords are entered. LinkedIn sorts by a combination of factors– this includes what you searched for, but also your “social graph” (1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree connections).

About a year ago, LinkedIn launched a new search platform. It explained that the relevance of search results is affected by each person’s professional network on the site. Relationship is key. That means that LinkedIn tries to personalize the relevance, placing professionals that are most likely to be of interest to the one executing the search at the top of the first search results page. Read the rest of this entry »

It took me awhile to find something to write about for this week. I wanted an idea that was a little more specific than social networking sites in general. So, I decided to focus on Twitter, and Twitter alone. Twitter serves as a virtual conversation, a way to pass along ideas, see what everyone’s talking about, and learn some new information along the way. But, like physical conversations, Twitter can be overcrowded and noisy. And when you’re a recruiter, you’re on a social networking site for a specific purpose, and you want to be noticed among all the other talk happening at the same time. A CruiterTalk.com article discussed four ways for recruiters to creatively use Twitter. I found the article to be very interesting, and wanted to share some of the insight it contained:

1. Creating a Twitter account for one specific purpose helps to keep the conversation noise to a minimum, and therefore be able to hear what you want. For example, recruiters can refer to a database of people they’ve found elsewhere, either from résumés sent to you or e-mail addresses. Then, you can find these people on Twitter and follow them. That way, your account follows only those you want to see for a particular job. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you having a hard time coming up with ways to find top notch talent?  Check out the Boolean Black Belt website.  This site offers information on the latest ways to source for candidates on LinkedIn, Twitter and more.  I use this site often to learn new ways to search for candidates or to see how others are using the latest technology.  There is an archive to view past postings.  It is free to sign up and receive their email which usually includes a lot of information.  I have found this site to be very reliable and hope others will as well!

Image by tcmhitchhiker