Social Media Headhunter

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.

Feedback On The MySpace Webinar

If you have feedback on the Hireability Webinar on MySpace Recruiting, please leave it here.   I won't delete anything, and want your honest thoughts.

And for those of you who didn't attend, check out these videos I did for TalentDrive.

Resume Madness: TalentFilter Promo

Social Media Headhunter Series: MySpace Recruiting Webinar

On the heels of the wildly successful Facebook Recruiting Webinar, Hireability has set up two more training webinars on social networking.

July 23rd, at 12:30 CST, I'll be presenting through WebEx on building pools of passive candidates in MySpace.  MySpace is the world's largest social networking site, and one of the most trafficked sites on the web.  While social media snobs focus on Facebook, MySpace is not so quietly driving hundreds of millions in revenue, building brands and bands, and increasingly being incorporated into multichannel marketing campaigns to great effect.

As an open platform, MySpace allows you to easily customize your site.  Don't be fooled by what you see on your 13 year-old son's profile - there's gold in them thar hills.

And I'm going to show you how to get it.

We'll be learning profiles, sourcing, searching, and how to market to and from your MySpace page.  And most important, you'll learn how to make more placements from a site that has over 100 million profiles. 

To sign up for this webinar, head on over to Hireability for the Social Media Headhunter Series on Recruiting Using MySpace.

Can Facebook Make You $100,000 Next Year?

The date is Wednesday, May 21st, at 4:00 EST/1:00 PST.

The link to register.

Recruiting Using Facebook: Webinar May 21st

The event is set.  May 21st, I'll be hosting a live webinar on Facebook recruiting through hireability. The session is called,

Facebook Recruiting:  A Live Demonstration of Hiring Inside Facebook by Jim Durbin, the Social Media Headhunter.

The explosion of Facebook as a social networking tool is challenge and a mystery to recruiters.  Unlike LinkedIn Plaxo, Facebook users aren't looking to be contacted in a search for jobs.  They certainly don't want to be headhunted, until they're ready.  Jim Durbin, a social media expert takes a look at Facebook from the eyes of an experienced staffing professional, and provides live, actionable training on how to use Facebook to increase placements.

In a session that combines sourcing, contacting, and referral generation, Mr. Durbin shows recruiters how to navigate the tricky waters of social networking.

The event is a paid webinar - the cost is $89, and it will be 1:30 p.m. EST/10:30 a.m. PST, and will cover sourcing, filtering, connecting, reference checking, and referrals in Facebook.  Most training sessions are full of theory - this webinar will be a walkthrough of screens and search terms on an actual job search.

There'll be Cross-promotion at StlRecruiting and my other recruiting blogs Charlotte, Seattle, and KC Recruiting, as well as the social networks  and social media circles.  If you announce the event on your blog, be sure to send me an e-mail, and I'll link to you from this PR5 blog.

Ning Social Networks To Join

Once you're a part of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, eCademy, and all the rest, it's time to dig deep into niche social networks that serve your industry.

Here are four that are indispensable for social media recruiters.

Recruiting Blogs- Run by Jason Davis for Recruiters
Job Boarders - Run by Chris Russell
Jobs In Social Media Run by Chris Russell
Recruiting Network - Run by Craig Silverman for Independent Recruiters

And when you're done with those, it's time to join the social networks in your industry (to find candidates).  Better keep that Ning ID handy.

Social Media Enabled Salespeople

Salespeople are an interesting breed.  Executives usually come from the ranks of sales.  So do top earners.   In some companies, salespeople make more than the CEO (In some companies).  What makes them so valuable?  Their little black books (of business).  Sales skills include prospecting, negotiation, and client management, so when you look to hire one, your main thrust is often cold-calling, lead generation, and closing.

Or at least it used to be.

This whole social media phenomenon is starting to change the rules for salespeople.  The primary value in a  salesperson is their connections.  The book of business is a pool of clients and contacts that drive business, lead to referrals, and are the lifeblood of every man and woman paid in commission.

It takes time to build trust and reputation, but it takes more time to build up the definitive list of whose who in business.  Who buys? Who wastes your time?   Who is profitable?  Who pinches pennies? Salespeople know this, but as the market changes, with decision makers moving back and forth from companies and positions, keeping track of your top clients isn't always so easy. So what happens when the best and brightest in a job market start making their own connections?  What happens when Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, and blogs start sharing information for free that used to be the sole province of salespeople?  What happens when cold-calling no longer works, as decision makers find themselves overburdened with prospect calls, and start turning to their social networks on Twitter and Plaxo to find information on vendors, products and services? 

Social Media Introduction

I took this from one of my proposal intros.  It's a pretty straight forward take on how I view my business and our industry.

The purpose of any social media campaign is to drive awareness of the product through the use of links, traffic, and reader awareness. To accomplish this, corporate bloggers must first understand the landscape of online communities.  Internet users cluster into groups online, just as people cluster together in the real world.  We join associations, churches, businesses, and political parties and adopt those labels as a way of identifying with groups whose characteristics define us.  It’s human nature to cluster, and to take on the identity of the groups of which we wish to be a part.  When you take this dynamic and apply it to the online world, you gain the additional benefit of participating in an environment that can be easily tracked, organized, and explained. 

The act of joining communities online is a form of self-labeling that is tremendously helpful to marketers and analysts.  There are several categories of self-labels online.  In addition to taking part in communities like Facebook, MySpace, the “blogosphere” and sites like Yahoo and AOL (their online groups and forums), internet users can decorate their online profiles with blogrolls, badges, and other forms of link-sharing to indicate their interests.  And then we track them. 

Sharing In Social Media Ain't What It Used To Be

I posted my original thoughts on Brandstorming, but a couple of episodes this week reinforced the topic of when social media sharing becomes social media stealing.

I'm a consultant.  I've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of social media and online marketing through my company in the form of training, campaigns, and thought leadership.  My clients pay me to understand their marketing and corporate communications and integrate that into the world of social media.  At the same time, I'm the member of several online communities.  I give information away for free because it's important to have a sharing ethic if you want your community to work.

So what happens when your desire to help others comes into direct conflict with your need to charge for your services?  It's not a new question - consultants of all stripes have had to learn to walk the fine line between promotion and giving away your secrets - if you're speaking at a conference, do you want to educate your audience (and also your competitors), or do you play it safe and speak vaguely about all the wonderful things you do?

Using Social Networks To Recruit Locally

Had a very interesting conversation with my regional chamber today.  While talking about an initiative to showcase St Louis as a technology hub (we're great for enterprise-size information technology divisions), it occurred to me that social networks should be focused on regional spaces.

All recruiting is local, and while blogs can give a recruiter an advantage in a niche industry and in a city, a regionally-supported social network would take user-group recruiting to a whole new level.

Building networks isn't as easy as joining one, but if you know how to do it, and you are smart about the population you're going after, you could use the hubs as a lure for large companies.

"Hello, Mr. CEO - every metro areas says they have lots of great technology employees, but here in St Louis, we've built a candidate-centric social network for business analysts and project managers.  We have over 1000 people who are connected to each other through this social network, and we can show you how to communicate to this pool of talent for your hiring needs."

The beauty of it is that there aren't many people who can build a network like this in the recruiting space.  Those that can, like Jason Davis, Dennis Smith, Steven Rothberg, and Dave Mendoza, are busy on their own projects.  That leaves just a few of us with the experience and the contacts to make it work (and I know all four).

In St Louis, Charlotte, Kansas City, and Seattle, I already have SEO-enriched domain names to set the networks up.  All you need is the person to manage it and show you how to recruit talent locally.