SocialBro – Cool Twitter Analytics Tool

 

The last two weeks of the year are great.  Before the January rush, you should be doing some winter clearing and cleaning to your social media tools.  I decided to take my friend and colleague, Chris Hoyt’s (@therecruiterguy) advice to streamline my social network so I can have a better social imprint and build better talent communities.  So as I was strolling through the Google Chrome App Store, I came across a great tool called SocialBro.  Now I may be a little late to the party but this is the first time I have been able to come up for air.  I think its a stroke of analytics genius.

SocialBro allows you to manage your twitter feeds as well as serves as a strong analytics tool to get a good overview ROI on twitter.  If any of you are looking to build a Talent Community, SocialBro will allow you to do so effectively.  No just to be clear, I am not on twitter as much as I should be, but this tool tells me when the best time to post, what my followers are tweeting about, when I get more RT and what resonates the most.  Here is an example of my analytics report.  It is a great report card for me to see where I need to build my social influence and my target talent pools.  I see the best time to post this for me will be tomorrow morning at 11 AM CST.  I am going to post it now, but publish to my network tomorrow at precisely 11 AM CST.

This tool also gives me an Insights Report that tells me where I need to improve and how my potential candidate pools look. I also liked the feature which allows you to perform a keyword search that pulls from the Bio section.  Once I have that list up, I can either do a one off DM or send a post or link about something our company is doing by mass.  The recipient sees it as if you were sending directly to them.

There a quite a few of these Twitter clean up tools out there, but I have found that Social Bro seems to provide me the analytics I need to build a better social recruiting world.

Have a Happy, Safe and Healthy New Year.  

Building Your Recrubulary (re’ -crue -bue -larry)

#TNL Chicago was held yesterday at the JSTN studios in Aurora IL.  We had over 100 people in attendance and there were great networking opportunities to meet with some of the top recruiting leaders from all over the country.  Topics focused on Sourcing Tools and Strategies, Candidate Engagement, Social Influence, and Mobile Recruiting.  It never ceases to amaze me what an incredible and intelligent network of people I have engaged in the last 10 years.   But I have started noticing a trend of word combinations as tag words.  Let’s examine a few below

The Talent Industry is moving faster and faster.  As you know, Talent Acquisition provides us the ability to be creative and have social recruiting opportunities to have great conversations about the talent communities we exist in – “Convermunity”.  Last night over dinner after TNL, the word convermunity was coined and trademarked by myself and a few of my very talented talent acquisitionists/linguists -@mverver, @marenhogan, @mattcharney, and @thiislars.  Funny, is this what is has come down to?  The speed at which we must move to find the best talent forces us to shorten words, put them together?  The answer is yes.

Bruce Morton of Allegis Group Services opened the presentation yesterday at the TNL Chicago event.  One mind blowing stat he covered was that we will undergo 20,000 years of change in the next 100 years. One way to create change in the TA world –“wormbinations” or word combinations Morton’s wormbination…. “Talentsumer” – talent (candidates) shopping companies before they decide to join companies…like a consumer of brands..talentsumers are shopping the companies before deciding to work for them based on their technology, resources available, level of talent and the similarities they are to the talentsumer.

Are our brains ready for a condensing of words?  How much of that information will we be able to retain?  Are you ready for that?  You will need to be if you want to win the proverbial war on talent and keep your tweets to 140 characters or less.  We started shorting expressions in our texts going from Oh My Goodness to OMG or WTF or Why The Face (Modern Family Reference) a few years ago.

Here are some other words I would like to propose we use in the talent acquisition community.  Sounds crazy, but let’s have some fun. I propose the following words to use in our Recrubulary or recruiting vocabulary starting in 2012:

Socruiting- n.  Social Recruiting     Sentence:  I was talking to my friend @fishdogs who is a huge believer in socruiting.

Twitinface- v. or n. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook (we could mix it all kinds of ways) Sentence:  Recruiters like to use Twitinface as their main source of connecting with potential candidates and creating convermunities.

Talemunities - v.  Talent Communities    Sentence:  @Marenhogan’s specialty is helping her clients build talemunities.

Sourgoo – v.  Sourcing on Google     Sentence:  The Recruiting Bar developed by @ryanleary provides you search strings to sourgoo all day long.

Cangagement n. – Candidate Engagement

Sentence:  It is very important to measure cangagement as part of your metrics.

Sofluence - n.  Social Influence    Sentence:  Am I really having sofluence on anyone by writing this blog post? OR I listened to a panel yesterday on sofluence in which @TheOneCrystal raised many interesting points.

Mocruit(ing) - v or n.  Mobile Recruiting     Sentence:  @joelcheezman spoke on mocruiting yesteday at #TNL stating that more companies need to use mocruiting as a medium to attract candidates.

Recruketing n. – Recruitment Marketing    Sentence:  The best recruketing guy I know out there is @therecruiterguy

Yes, its silly, but I wanted to have some fun.  I would like to build a dictionary of recruiting wormbinations, but I need your help.  Put on the creative hats and put it out there.  I will do a TNL Session next time on the new vernacular. J  Who knows?  This could the start of a new recrictionary!

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT ATS

Over the last three months, I have been seeing demo after demo of the best ATS Systems in the world.  I mean they got everything we need-OFCCP Compliance, Excellent Reporting Tools, and my favorite…it is configurable.  I will say we have it down to our top choice who I will keep nameless for the time being, but the road to getting down to the selection has been extremely exhausting.

Five parameters I set at the outset of the search:  Needs to be configurable, easy for our field offices, easy for candidates to apply, easy for the recruiters to use the system and finally, keep us compliant as we are a federal contractor.  Simple, right?  Not exactly.  As our company selects and begins implementation, I will be blogging about the experience and add some helpful hints so when you and/or your company goes through this, you will have some insight.  I will throw out a disclaimer that what works for one company may not be a one size fits all.  As always know your culture, your business partners and your resources available before starting.

Pushing the Easy Button:  I cannot say enough that every time I ask about a certain feature it was always how how easy it for my customers to do X or how easy is it to do Y.  Who are the customers?  Hiring managers who will use the system to review the candidate information, set up requisitions, and find the information they need quickly.   My second customer is my candidate.  How many clicks does it take to get to the candidate portal?  Can they find the job(s) they need to apply to quickly?  Most important, number of clicks it takes to apply for the job.  Ask anyone, the less the number of clicks to apply, the less candidate drop off you will have in the process.  We are in beta with a company who is measuring the analytics around candidate drop off within our site (stay tuned for some results in a future blog).  We will use that data to determine the clicks we want.  My goal is to keep it to three (3) clicks.  Companies with poor career sites beware…if you want candidates to apply, keep them engaged throughout the online profile process so they do not drop off.

The goal in selecting your ATS is to have all questions and can the system do this questions answered before signing on the dotted line.  Do NOT settle for, oh yeah, it can do that.  I have heard too many horror stories over the last few months of 100K later and we are totally unhappy, false promises, poor delivery lead to the assumption that recruiting made poor decision making.  No one wants that kind of egg on their face.   Avoid the mistake by asking “What can’t the system do”, “What are the upcoming updates in the next 3, 6, 9 and 12 months?” Reporting is where the questions need to be asked.  Get sample reports and ask to play in the sandbox.  Test out all screens and get your clients involved when you are in the sandbox.

We believe we have made the right choice and I will be announcing our decision in the coming months.

Stay tuned to my next blog on Project Planning when Implementing an ATS coming soon!

SuperTool: Brupt.com

Here is a great tool that Craig Fisher @fishdogs told the #TNL Conference in Plano last Friday. I wanted to share the tool with you. The tool is www.brupt.com. This tool lets you search specific word, excel, powerpoint, and pdf documents such as resumes and spreadsheets.

These docs contain potential candidate names and user groups that will allow you to strike recruiter gold.

Let me know what you think

Power of Partnership Means Everything

Partnership? What does that mean to you as a Recruiting SME?  Who are your partners? How do you partner with your clients/hiring managers?  As I prepare to speak with fellow tweeterss @sullivanmarkd (Mark Sullivan from Time Warner Cable) and @mverver (Marianthe Verver from Neospire) tomorrow at the #TNL Conference in Plano, I want to expand on the opening questions.

Who are your partners? OK, partnership may sound cliche’ but readers you need to know who they are.  Partners can come in all forms – hiring managers, clients, and peers.  Essentially, hiring managers are your clients, customers, partners, (fill in the blank) but are they different?  My opinion…yes.  Client/customers synonymous -they order or need something, you provide the serve and the relationship ends there.  Partners are those people who we continue to provide service based on understanding your partner, your partner’s needs and all  issues related to talent that keeps them awake at night.  Think of your partners as someone you have a long term relationship with and want to build upon.

Peers and Mentors are your partners too.  I rely on my network, my friends -@therecruiterguy, @fishdogs @ryanleary, and many more who are so knowledgeable to bounce ideas and share strategies.  @Imsosarah wrote a blog the other day – http://is.gd/eFWM0 – on mentors.  Her blog post inspired me to reach out to my mentor and thank him for what he has done.   Learn from them, share with them, and you have established a true partnership.

Creating the Partnership:  Traditionally, recruiters in most organizations are seen as order takers.  We might as well be working in a fast food joint flipping burgers. You have been to this rodeo before – I need a order of AP Clerks, must have AP skills, hold the bean counting and need a little data entry on the side.  Present 10 resumes of AP Clerks who look and sound pretty good to the hiring manager.  “ORDER UP!”

C’mon, really?  You are the recruiting expert.  Your company hired you to find top talent for your company.  Mark, Marianthe, and I believe that in order to be the recruiting partner you can be, you need to understand the business and the position.   How?  Have conversations with your hiring managers/clients BEFORE you start recruiting.  Sit down with them for 30 minutes or over lunch (you buy!) and get to know the hiring manager -what they like, dislike, ask about upcoming projects, find out why key skills are necessary.  The best sales people get to know their clients and take a consultative approach on how they can deliver products and services to their customers.  Another example is to anticipate the needs.  Ask for staffing plans and begin pipelining qualified candidates.  The best feedbeck comes when your client says we are ready to post and you say, here are 5 candidates.  By doing this, you are a step ahead of the client, you have created one less req, and your clients/hiring managers will be seeking you out and singing your praises.

How do I partner? Ask and answer the following questions…

• Do you have a formal recruiting strategy?
• Is it aligned with business?
• Do your clients know that you have a recruitment strategy?
• Are you involved in the workforce planning efforts?
• Do your clients seek your advice about the candidates submitted or do they ask to “see all the resumes?”
• Are you notified of positions before the req is opened or the request for it to be opened?
• Do you know your client’s department and how it impacts the overall business?
• Do you receive unsolicited compliments or praise on how well the process ran, quality of candidates?

Bottom line…Evaluate your relationships with the people you work with and for, get working on your partnerships, and don’t look back.

Let me hear some ways you build partnerships.  Feel free to comment.

#partners #partnerships #recruiting #expert #mentor #tnl #strategy #recruitingstrategy

Talent Net Live Mini-Conference #2 is August 27th in Plano, TX!

I know I have been out of pocket for few weeks but I have been busy.  Have a new superstar recruiter, leading the charge for the American Heart Association’s HeartWalk for our Dallas branches, putting together a project plan for our ATS implementation, and getting totally psyched for the 2nd Annual Talent Net Live mini-Conference (#TNL)!

What is TNL?  TNL was started by the ever so popular @fishdogs (Craig Fisher) a couple of years back so that great minds like you could get together via Twitter to talk about hot recruiting topics, best practices and whatever we felt like tweeting about at the time.  The monthly #twitter event is held the last Wednesday of every month from 8 to 10 PM CST.  If you haven’t attended, you will be impressed and very tired when you are done.  It moves at light speed and your head is spinning by 9.00 at the vast amounts of info being shared.  Just go to #tnl and follow away.

Last year, Craig Fisher, Dorothy Beach and #DFWTRN put on one awesome conference with speakers from around the Dallas – Fort Worth area and one from London, England (@billboorman) who was phenomenal about where the economy and recruiting industry was headed.  The purpose of this mini-conference was to have people in DFW and cities in Texas attend a local conference for next to nothing dollars especially in the down economy.  We had close to 100 attendees at Frito Lay’s HQ and it was well received.

Well this year has its’ share of great return speakers including Michael Long (@theredrecruiter), Chris Hoyt(@therecruiterguy), and Jenny DeVaughn (@jennydevaughn) just to name a few.  Here is the list of speakers:  http://is.gd/e38kU

The Date is Friday, August 27th from 8 AM to 5 PM with a Tweet-Up to follow.  This is a great way to learn from some of the top names in the industry and many you would recognize if you are on Twitter.  We are back at Frito Lay in Plano, TX so what are you waiting for?  I’ll be there!

There are 36 spots left for $50 and another 50 tickets for $75 after August 21st.

Thanks again to Craig Fisher, Marianthe Verver and Jim Schnyder at Frito Lay for planning the event and I look forward to seeing you there!

Here’s the link to register:  http://is.gd/e38Ft

Hi, I’m Michael Goldberg..You Know…Superrecruiter

In the great love story by Shakespeare, Juliet Capulet asks Romeo Montague, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” implying that a name is meaningless and artificial.  Well @juliecap and @romey, in social media and more specifically in Twitterville, our name describes a lot -brand, skills, style just to name a few.

I was at a social event at #prscamp where I met up some of my favorite tweeps such as @fishdogs, @blogging4jobs, @hotjobs_recrtr, and @jennydevaughn.  As I was being introduced to new great tweeps the introduction would go like this…

Introducer: “Michael Goldberg meet X, X this is Michael Goldberg.”

5 Second Pause trying to figure out who I am

Introducer:“you know @superrecruiter”.

BOOM! Within a millesecond, X would say “Oh, hey! Great to meet you”  So it got me thinking that my @superrecruiter tweets and branding had finally paid off.  I was somebody in the social media and recruiting world.  Now, my twitter name is on everything, even on a t-shirt.    If you are new to the twitter world or an old hat, you want to be sure you pick a tweet name that fits and works.  Many people use their first and last name.  Some people nicknames given early on in his or her life or recent nicknames due to a recent event.

In her book, “Tweet This!  Twitter for Business” @blogging4jobs (real name Jessica Miller-Merrell) recommends following these steps when choosing the name:

Brand Consistency – Select a username and profile that makes YOU uniquely stand out among other tweeters so there is no confusion.

Creativity: use a Twitter name that grabs the reader’s attention that leads them to your profile and entices the reader to engage you.

Stick to it: Stick to your twitter name if at all possible.  You can make changes but it could cause confusion among your followers going forward.

BTW, if you are not following blogging4jobs, you should be…she gets it!  Her book is great and it is a great resource for you or your company to read prior to entering the “Twitterverse”

How did I become @superrecruiter?  Easy…it was a nickname given to me a five years ago given to me by my coworkers and hiring managers for finding great candidates in a tough market.  They even took it a step further one day when I walked into my cube filled with Justice League superheroes plastered all over the place.  It stuck.

@blogging4jobs and I were speaking the other day.  She believes that she should go to the courts and change her given name to “blogging4jobs”.  So, would her child’s  friends call her Mrs Blogging4jobs?   A little extreme, but in 5 years, not so far-fetched as the more people drink the Twitteraid.

Finally, I started thinking about what our Founding Fathers tweet names would have been?  Here’s a few:  Ben Franklin- @specs     George Washington-@firstprez   Gunning Bedford, Jr.- @bigguns,  James Madison, Jr-@jimmymad

So how did you get your twitter name?  Submit a comment and let everyone know.