Social Media Headhunter

Social Media Tools You Should Get To Know As A Recruiter

Fistful of Talent is a group HR blog that represents the same kind of zeitgest Recruiting.com brought to the recruiting world.  It's fun, informative and most of all, it's building a rabid readership that tries to implement what they've learned.

Jennifer McClure lays out her vision for social media recruiting, and as luck would have it, she lists five topics that are all covered in the Social Media Headhunter cafe.  Great minds and all.  I committed the Great Sin of comment spam on the post, but figured since I know most of those guys, it might be okay this once.  Her list:

1. Meet them where they live - candidates online
2. LinkedIn Really Using It to Find Candidates
3. RSS
4. Twitter as a Sourcing Tool
5. Facebook Recruiting

 It seems that recruiting training is being cut, but what's one DVD (or five) you can use over and over?

Social Media Has Rules, And You Know Them

Are you rude in person? Do you ignore people who speak to you when in public, or only speak to those who can somehow benefit you?  Do you post signs in people's yards without their permission, or take their work and pass it off as your own?

If you're rude in real life (meatspace, as it's known), then you'll probably never be successful in social media.  That's a given, with the exception of the flaming trainwrecks and gossip hounds we follow in moments of weakness (yes, Wonkette, I'm talking to you).  And their success is the success of Tila Tequila.  Fleeting and somewhat sad.  

I expect to find the clueless and the a**holes in social media. They're everywhere else, and the strategies for ignoring and punishing them are the same.  What baffles me is how kind, otherwise normal people can go online, and turn into rapacious trolls, content thiefs, and SEO comment spammers without a hint of personal remorse.

Much of it has to stem from ignorance.  They don't value social media, and thus they have no concerns about peeing in the social network pool and littering on the Information SuperHighway.

Guest Post At Standout Jobs

Ben, who has a great company in Standout Jobs suggested I make a guest post over at his blog.  His audience is primarily corporate recruiters, so I wrote about the importance of landing pages for corporate recruiters. 

Stop laughing.  I'm serious - internal recruiters have a harder time building an online profile, but if they incorporate landing pages for specific jobs, they can funnel candidates and still look like heroes. And the corporation benefits.

Head on over there to read it for yourself -and leave some comments!

Social Media Headhunter Cafe Launches

It's up, and it's spectacular.  Our training series for recruiters on using social media to hire candidates is live, and can be found at http://store.socialmediaheadhunter.com

Affiliates are signing up at ShareASale.com.  If you are a website or publisher watching advertising revenues fall, I'd suggest you look at some products that complement your industry.  

Email and internet marketing kicks off tomorrow.  And of course, we're fortunate to have many good friends around the interweb helping me out with stories, posts, and links.

The products are 60-90 minute training DVD's mixing screencasts with voice over, walking through strategy, software, and online applications by category.

The first three are:

LinkedIn: Recruiting Companion
Web 2.0 Tools for Recruiting
SEO for Recruiters

Facebook Seminar and MySpace Seminar will be available December 20th and December 30th, but are in pre-sale form right now. 

And if you're in social media, and curious about your training - that store is coming.

Ghost Blogging Not Cool

I've ghost blogged.  It's only fair to admit it, but it's not something I do anymore.  When I first started social media consulting, I helped clients write posts as a way to get them started, but I quickly found out that once you start a service like that, they want you to keep going.

So I raised my prices far past what any person would pay for it, and switched over to training people instead. The problem with Ghost blogging is two-fold.  One, it's dishonest.  If you're just using social media as a content management tool, there's no need to use your name to push out content.  If you're pretending to engage in conversations, well, just pray the other person doesn't really ever meet you.

The real problem is with the client.  If you're doing the writing and connecting, you're getting all of the value.  Short of the SEO advantages (which don't mitigate the risk of getting found out), ghost blogging robs the client of what they most need - introspection on their business and industry.

I think it happens by accident.  Companies want a blog, but don't want to do it themselves, so they turn to agencies and PR firms to do it for them.  The outsourced firms like money, and so they agree.  I don't see it lasting.  Most of the engagements I've seen, heard, recognized as ghost blogs fall off the map pretty quick.  Blogging takes more than just writing - you can get copywriters for that, but the interaction can't be faked long.  And when it is, it brings little value, that the company stops paying for.

For a stronger opinion, check out Sean Bohan, who if I may paraphrase him, says ghost bloggers should be doused in boiling pitch and set ablaze with printed copies of their blogposts.  I think I summarized that correctly. Let's let him do it.

Strategists, “gurus” and agencies need to stop treating their clients like junkies and acting as crack dealers. They need to stop “blogging for”, “communicating for” and “using social media” for their clients and work with the clients to develop a real sustainable culture within the communications (marketing and PR and events) teams of DOING THIS THEMSELVES.

Remember kiddies, just because a client will pay you for it, doesn't make it a good idea. 

Talent Management Blog Power Rankings

I should have mentioned this last week, but Kris Dunn's Fistful of Talent group blog came out with the power rankings for the recruitosphere, and I'm on the list at number 25.

Cheezhead took number 1 and Jim Stroud # 3, both well deserved - and there are a lot of other good names on the list.  The wildest part is that a lot of the names are new, or newish.  Heck, even SMH is new in comparison to my other recruiting blogs, and it does go to show you how fluid fame is.

I appreciate the kind words, and suggest you head on over to it, and especially check out Dan Schwabel's blog on Personal Branding.

BarCamp St Louis: December 13th at the City Museum

Todd Jordan and Ryan Keeter are setting up a St Louis barcamp at the City Museum on December 13th to bring together the coolest folks in the 'Lou.

What is a BarCamp?  uh, it's an unconference.  Which is an unscripted meeting of people designed to get you thinking about what you most want to do instead of the more traditional conferences you go to with tracks, set pieces, and the occasional happy hour.

The best part is they tend to bring in very high-power creative types looking to connect with other creative types in a creative explosion of creativity, or something like that.

In all seriousness, St Louis has been working on a number of conferences mimicking the best around the country.  Interplay, the AUX, Idea Market, tweetups and a social media club all had varying degrees of success, but as more people get involved, that core grows.  Todd Jordan, Matt Homann, Marianne Richmond, and others will show.  Will you?

Join Twitter and contact Ryan Keeter, whose employer, Network Solutions  (formerly Monster Commerce), is a sponsor.  Or head here to the barcamp website to read more.

by the way, if you're on Twitter, are you following me?  Twitter.com/smheadhunter