How Companies use Social Media for Recruiting

Are you as a company on trend in using social media to find the perfect candidate to join your team? Find out what your competition is using!



Credit: Mashable - http://on.mash.to/mXWPGR

Students: Building Your Personal Brand For A Career In Sales And Marketing

Marketing and sales students – this post is just for you!

With leaves changing to fall colours, many companies have been hitting campus with gusto to find the best seniors for upcoming internships and new grad jobs.

The competition on campus between employers is getting hot as the economy picks up and companies’ hiring numbers increase. A shift is starting, where students will have more power as the number of jobs available increases; however, we aren’t quite there yet. As a student, it is important to play a lead role in choosing your first job out of school and selling yourself to your employer(s) of choice.

Your personal brand

You need to build your personal brand as a sales and marketing student because potential employers want to see that you can apply the basic principles of marketing. If you can’t sell or market yourself, why should they trust you to market or sell their products and services?

First, do a branding exercise to understand your unique value to a future employer. Think about how you present yourself both in person at company campus recruiting events or interviews, and in online spaces.

Things you should evaluate include:

·         How you dress

·         The language you use

·         How you can showcase specific accomplishments

·         How you come across to employers – do you seem credible/real?

Your personal brand - online

Your online personality should mirror how you come across in person. Ensure that, if your future employer seeks you out on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, there is consistency in the things you say you are knowledgeable about or roles you played in extra-curricular activities.

Things like LinkedIn recommendations are very valuable, especially with LinkedIn launching a new student profile option.

In sales and marketing, future employers will likely perform a social media search on their top candidates – think of this as a “reference check.” Make sure that you hide information that future employers don’t need to see (e.g., Facebook photos) and remember that social media is PERMANENT. 

Your personal brand – in person

For in in-person events, network and showcase your personality as well as your interests and skills.

Marketing and sales is a lot about a “fit” in being personable, believable and coachable. When I interview for entry-level marketing roles, I look more for a strong personal impression than wide sales/marketing experience – I can teach you how to be successful, but I can’t teach you how to think critically or have personal credibility.

I want you to highlight your interests, where you think the industry is going, recent highlights at my specific company, and why you believe you fit the company culture. Show you spent some time researching my company online, even talking to past interns or employees, and understanding our culture.

Don’t treat every networking session, interview or online application the same. Most recruiters are very open to telling you the unique parts of their company, so talk to them and ask for a follow-up prep call prior to an interview.

If you don’t meet a recruiter on campus, reach out to them via LinkedIn. Recruiters will highlight great candidates’ applications if you wow them. Consider this reach-out like dating – you only have one opportunity to make that perfect impression that might lead to a relationship (or in this case, a fantastic career)!

Students: As I am now a regular contributor to TalentEgg.ca (Canada's leading job site and career resource for students and new graduates), I will be featuring monthly articles written specifically for students on my blog. I would love your thoughts on what you want to hear about! Please comment below to drive future articles.

Steve Jobs = Apple's Employment Brand

Steve Jobs’ death rocked the world this past week. He dropped out of college after only 1 year & co-created one of the most innovative brands in his parent’s garage in his mere 20s. He followed his heart & focused on what inspired him versus fumbling his way through what he “should do.” Not only was a he a leader that people fought to follow but he created an atmosphere of innovation and doing things differently at Apple. Steve Jobs personified Apple and its employer brand of innovation, leadership, and credibility.  Apple’s employment brand is strong yet they barely publicize what working at the company is like versus some of their major competitors like Google or Microsoft.

Jobs was not a perfect leader. He had his ups and downs and was so headstrong that he was actually fired from Apple, the company he co-created, in 1985. After his very public banishment, he subsequently founded NeXT (a computer platform) that Apple actually purchased in 1996 and brought Jobs to his role as CEO. Jobs was not afraid of the lime light or telling his career stories including the good, bad & the ugly. He drove trust in Apple as a visionary through his innovative thinking and delivery of consistently doing things differently.  With Jobs’ heroic lose to cancer, Apple needs to build on this legacy and expand their employment brand to overcome the loss of their powerful CEO. Time will tell how they do on this mission.

As a reminder of all of the wonderful things Jobs lead & the things he stood for, please see the below quote about allowing innovation to lead your path to great things. If you haven’t yet also watched Jobs’ 1995 commencement address at Stanford, do so here:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
~ Steve Jobs

My Final Thoughts: Do you have an inspirational leader within your company? Do you use them to lead your employment branding efforts & set the tone for greatness within your company culture?

Global Campus Recruiting Best Practices

As I’m working internationally this week in Europe, I was inspired to share information about campus recruiting at a global level. As many of my readers know, my specialty is building campus programs & I have developed & successfully run campus recruiting programs in over 12 countries from North America to Asia to Western Europe and Eastern Europe. It may shock you that students around the world essentially want the same things – enjoyment of work, development opportunities, exposure to leadership, work/life balance. Though the cultures of each country influence the practices/students, best practices in student recruiting essentially do work globally. Building the right programming is important to find that perfect new hire!

Though many global companies build management trainee or global recruiting principles, there are some things to keep in mind that work globally & some things to consider in tweaking your programming for each individual market. Read on to find out more!

From my experience, here are some best practices for building campus recruiting programs in multiple countries:

-     Strong employment branding website with information about a day in the life at your company. Remember, your website should ENGAGE with students. Think blogs, twitter feeds, YouTube videos of your office, testimonials etc

-     Key messaging/job offerings that speak to students. Knowing what students want & ensuring your offering speaks to these categories is important. Look to local/nation surveys on student values to build out your messages

-     Campus Ambassadors, students who work a set number of hours per work promoting job opportunities with your company, helping to build your brand on campus & generate referrals.  I have seen this program work around the world. The key factors are training them, have ongoing management & KPI’s (key performance indicators) that they are rewarded for meeting.

-     Referral based programming works! Track referrals to applications & reward based on results.

-     Campus events are so important for building up your brand on campus and recognition among students. Job fairs, information sessions, company presentations, case competitions etc are a great way to engage students.

-     Relationships with Career Centers – Career Centers can make or break your experience on campus. Getting to know your contacts and  educating them on your company’s offering is very important as they will help market your campus events, promote your company to influential students & help you gain access to deans & professors

-     Relationships with Deans/Professors are very important. Guest lecturing in class rooms, supporting with real business cases to supplement curriculum and seeking referrals from influential professors will help gain traction with the right students.

-     Supporting student groups. Find those groups that are part of your target market and work to be a key advisor/support. Do not just provide sponsorship dollars but instead work to provide the group mentors, internships, and/or business advice as this will be a better use of your sponsorship dollars. By spending time with these groups you will get to know the top students you want to recruit for your company.

-     Giveaways are not a key part of a campus program. They are supplementary to educate students on your EVP (employer value proposition) but a cool giveaway is not going to sell a student on applying to your company

 Things to tweak on a country by country basis:

-     Consider Internet Access

o   Some countries outside of Western Europe & North America have limited internet access or slow speeds. Having a length application process that relies heavily on internet access/online testing may decrease your applicants and candidate engagement in some countries. Consider this access to technology when tailoring the application for each country.

-     On Campus activities really differ per campus. Some schools allow for class presentations by other students and some don’t. Know what’s allowed in your country & per campus to meet your KPI’s.  Work with your career center to understand what works best on their campus. Tailor this metric not only by country but also by school.

-     Postering/handouts – many schools internally have different rules about what is allowed on posters or if posters are even allowed to be hung on campus property. Ensure that you allow local offices to determine these nuances before ordering global quantities with a set design.

-     Timing – even within a continent, the countries may have very different calendar years. Your recruiting season in England and Germany are very different as German students don’t go back to school until October versus August/Sept in England. Thus, your timing for applications, interviews and job offers will be sensitive to each country.
-     Social media sites/usage varies per country. Ask your recent new hires what social media sites you should be using!

I hope these tips help you understand what global recruiting best practices work on a global level & what needs to be tweaked locally. Cheers & happy recruiting!

Thursday News Day: Employment Branding

As I’m currently consulting in Europe for clients, I was inspired to discuss global campus recruiting in this week’s articles. Despite my BEST goggle searches, I didn’t find any relevant articles about global employment branding or campus recruiting … this of course inspired next week’s post about campus recruiting and global best practices. For this week’s article (as it is Thursday News Day!) I have included a good piece about employment branding as knowing the basic principles in building your EVP (employee value proposition) will help set you up for understanding global best practices for campus recruiting.

Employment Branding:

 “Employment Branding: The only long term Recruitment Strategy”

-          Featured on: www.ere.net

-          Writer:  Dr. John Sullivan

-          Publishing date: Jan 7, 2008

-          Link: http://bit.ly/Wfj0a

Though this article is a couple of years old, it really highlights the basic principles of employment branding and those principles haven’t changed. The way you execute on your brand has evolved but this is a good introductory read to the key components of and long term benefits of employment branding. The author quotes that typically companies only spend 5% of their budgets on employment branding… which camp do you fall into?

I hope you read over this solid employment branding article so that in my next few posts about campus recruiting & global recruiting, you understand the benefit of having a EVP prior to hitting campus. Shockingly, I found very few other articles about campus recruiting unless they were tied to a company as a pitch document. Looks like I found a new wealth of things to write about! Stay posted over the next few weeks for posts on campus recruiting & global student behaviours.

Brands: Finding Your Online Voice

Choosing the right voice for your brand is a very important step in your brand identity and building your social media efforts.

I recently spoke at a conference to an audience of University employees who are responsible for recruitment, enrollment, and student engagement in student services. I was speaking about how universities can use social media sites to boost their recruitment and engagement efforts. I started the presentation asking how many universities, by show of hands, had a social media policy. I was honestly shocked to see that only approximately 10% of 58 major colleges and universities had a policy as 100% of them were on social media sites!  Without a policy that creates a plan on your use of social media websites and helps define your values, purpose & voice, these universities are showcasing multiple personalities online as many different functions/teams within the campus are using these sites with no overall alignment.

Universities (or companies) wanting to use social media sites, must first go through an exercise of defining your brand voice.  Think of a playwright, building a character, you must think through things like Persona, Tone, Language & Purpose.

Here is a great article on Social Media Explorer by Stephanie Schwab that walks you through building your voice through the above 4 characteristics:  http://bit.ly/gTsbTS 

I hope my thoughts & the above resource help. I always love sharing a great article/resource. Don’t forget that your online voice must be a work in progress & you should visit it often to make sure you are adhering to your plan and having a consistent voice across multiple online mediums (i.e.: Facebook, twitter, blogs etc)

Social Media Recruitment & Engagement Tips for Universities

Being on social media sites for student enrolment/recruitment and then engaging students in your university services is not enough – you have to use the sites in the RIGHT way! I recently spoke at a conference (see the last post) on this topic and to prepare, I completed a quick and dirty audit of the 52 university/colleges that would be present. I found that though most were on social media sites, they weren’t using them the RIGHT way! Here are my quick tips on usage for student recruitment & engagement in student services with the 4 main social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & FourSquare.

Everyone knows Facebook is important but few Universities are using it to create engagement & conversation. Instead, very PR messaging is used. Below are a few tips to make better use of your Facebook page:

Facebook Student Recruitment

-    GOAL: Help make my life on campus easier (calendars of events, tips/tricks, photos, etc)

-    Have a page with a Community Manager from career services

-    Get rid of the PR style messaging

-    Every message (even official) are conversational

-    Answer/create dialogue

Facebook Student Engagement:

-    GOAL: Adds to campus life. Making student life more fun & connecting me with other like    minded students

-    Separate pages based on interest/audience

-    Teams

-    Faculties

-    Not services – community management sits inside career or community services

-    Community Manager for each page but create a hierarchy of managers/auditing. (Create conversation, contests, photos, events etc)

Though twitter is still growing among the student population, it is important to have a presence on this medium. Get in now, make mistakes and learn while your students aren’t all on it! Here are some good tips for its use:

Twitter Student Recruitment:

-    GOAL: Have information available to help perspective students make important decisions & showcase student life on your campus

-    Have an account with a dedicated Community Manager

-    Be available to answer questions

-    Showcase “real” life at your campus

-    Tweet important information via a content calendar to highlight important events/deadlines etc

Twitter Student Engagement:

-    GOAL: Create conversation & showcase Q&A

-    Ask Us (twitter widget) on homepage of website to showcase Q&A from students

-    The vehicle for ongoing student support

-    Student says: “Where do I go to get my student card renewed?”

-    Manager tweets answer with link to YouTube video.

-    50% listening to students, 10-20% messages about University, 30-40% engaging

-    No PR style messaging; this is a conversational method

You Tube is an absolutely fantastic medium for having your current student population help you with recruitment. Give them a voice and answer WIIFT (What’s in it for me) by creating contesting on Why They Love XX school and give tuition credits. Then feature these videos on your Prospective Student/Admissions homepage so students can see why your current student’s love your campus.

YouTube Student Recruitment:

-    GOAL: Showcasing life at your campus

-    Have a YouTube Channel

-    Showcase videos on “admissions” home page

-    Contesting about why you love XXX campus or want to become a student at XXX

-    Give rewards that are inspiring & make them go viral; driving WOM

-    Video tours of campus

-    Engage influential students  & have them build “day in the life” videos that are unscripted

YouTube Student Engagement:

-    GOAL:  Create school pride & have the message go viral

-    Contesting

-    Challenges within relevant departments

-    Be comfortable with user generated content versus only professionally cut & scripted videos

-    Relevant prizes (ie: tuition credits!)

-    Interview style videos/vlogs

Very few universities are yet using location based services (LBS) – be one of the first! Foursquare or Facebook Places are great ways to build campus pride! The graphic above is big as this is the next BIG thing (LBS)!

Foursquare Student Recruitment:

-    GOAL: have information available  for potential students who are into location based sites

-    Check in for campus visits

-    Have reminders in prominent places for visitors to “check in”

-    Add tips to locations where perspective students might be (high schools, malls, transit etc)

Foursquare Student Engagement:

-    GOAL: Build campus pride & provide contextually aware advice

-    Tips at every location on campus from the university

-    Tips on where to eat, history of building, interesting info, profs etc

-    School pride badges

-    Earn badges for checking into multiple sports games etc

-    Encourage use of services & educate on services available

-    Tips at stores, malls etc nearby mall about discounts for students

Hopefully these tips help you understand a few quick and easy ways to use social media for recruitment and student engagement purposes! What universities do you think are doing a great job in using these sites?

Handling Social Media Mishaps - the Good, Bad & the Ugly

A scary part of social media sites dominating communication channels today is that brands no longer have control over their products or the messages surrounding them. There are 2 fantastic examples of brand faux pas’s within social media recently - one the good and one the bad & very very ugly. @BPglobalPR is a twitter account mocking BP through very ‘official like’ messages. This handle has 177, 360 followers and is listed over 8,000 times meaning that the reach and WOM of this handle is out of control and yet BP has no control over the messages released by this handle. On the other hand, there’s the recent Red Cross Twitter faux pas, which is an excellent example of how a brand successful handled an ‘oops’ moment online.

Let’s talk about these examples and hopefully you will learn some things NOT to do with your brand online & then a few tips on what to DO when something goes wrong (which is bound to happen when this many people are talking about you online).

@BPglobalPR is a twitter handle created on May 19, 2010 mocking BP’s handling of the gulf oil crisis. In my opinion, it is the most professional case of newsjacking to date. BP tried to have the account shut down but twitter essentially quoted freedom of speech and took no action. As a result, the account turned up the mock factor by 10 as seen in this response. “BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake account mocking the oil company. Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that’s ruining the ocean.”  BP had no control over its message and the ‘fake’ account soon had greater reach than BP’s official news releases. People were drawn to the satirical comments and the ‘real’ truths being shared mocking BP’s efforts versus the canned message BP was offering. It’s a pretty scary place for a company when a handle is set up on a social media site and you have absolutely no authority to shut it down or influence the message.

Let’s talk about a good example of a brand owning up to a mistake. Recently the @RedCross account mistakenly tweeted something that should have come from the tweeter’s personal account via a mishap on hootsuite. The tweet read:

Oops – not exactly the message you expect from a 130 year old humanitarian organization. What the American Red Cross did well was own the issue, apologize and move forward. The discussions across twitter no longer mocked the mistake but complimented the Red Cross for owning it.  The Red Cross responded on their website with: “We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake:”

They turned this blooper into a powerful social media moment showcasing that the organization is run by “real” people. The twitterverse’s respect only increased for the organization. If only more companies were like the Red Cross and confident to show their human side and have a little laugh at their expense.

Ensure you don’t wait for messages about your brand to go through a thousand and one PR official channels; remember you have to be timely in using social media as if you aren’t someone else will!

Red Cross Twitter Faux Pas: http://bit.ly/dIW65p

@BPglobalPR on Twitter: http://bit.ly/i7tmna

Read more about BP asking twitter to shut down the “fake” BPglobalPR account: http://aol.it/cCDqf3

Interesting article about the man claiming to be behind the @BPglobalPR handle and his motives: http://bit.ly/9HmQot

Series 1: Post 6: Do’s & Don’ts Using YouTube to Find Top Millennials

This is my last post within Series #1 about key tips and tricks in using social media sites to help set you up for success recruiting the RIGHT students/new grads for your company.   Today’s focus is YouTube! Check out some relevant statistics here:

YouTube DO’s:

-     Use it! Create a profile. Video’s fun and it showcases your company culture better than any other medium. You likely have a recruiting video you show on campus & feature on your website. Put all of your recruiting videos on YouTube to extend your reach and get free exposure to YouTube’s millions of users.

-     Choose a YouTube channel to aggregate your video content. Come on – even the Pope uses YouTube and the Vatican has its own YouTube channel! ... So why aren’t you?

-     Be creative in how you can use it; think training, recruiting, and overall employment branding…

o   I have a friend who interviewed for a company in Asia and she had to make a YouTube video on why they should hire her. Love this as it creates great employment branding as future candidate’s can search out these video and the employers can get to know a candidate’s personality. This is a very creative way about using this channel in the interview process.

-     Candidates want the “real” story so encourage use of video in internal employment engagement campaigns & then post videos on the channel and have a film fest with votes to extend the reach/WOM of the campaign.

o   Deloitte did a great campaign called “My Deloitte” doing just this and made it into a film showcase with voting. Employees created word of mouth and shared their videos with their networks as they were incented to win the film fest. Some of these videos (which cost the company ZERO dollars to make) have over a thousand views – now that’s viral employment branding!

o   Use videos to showcase your company culture & candidate’s potential future colleagues. In the LinkedIn Group I run, I asked the students what their top 3 reasons for choosing a company are and every single one of them mentioned company culture! Give them what they want!

-     Focus your user’s attention and ensure YouTube video is embedded into your own website. You got them to your Facebook page or your employment website – don’t lose them!

-     Remove the “suggest other videos” when embedding YouTube videos into your site as you don’t want candidates to click onto unrelated content and the likely hood of them coming back is small.

-     Listen – see what other’s are doing and take the best ideas and twist them to suit your own culture. See what your competitors are doing out there and then differentiate yourself!

-     Add keyword tags that reflect your video’s content; take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO)

-     Take advantage of YouTube’s analytics. YouTube now provides feedback on uploads by providing statistics on: Views, Popularity, Demographics & Discovery. See if your videos are hitting the right target market & tweak as needed.

DON’Ts:

-     Don’t use it if you are scared of user generated content

-     Don’t Forget to brand it consistently with your other marketing (website, blog etc)

-     Don’t forgot to link your Channel and videos everywhere possible to maximize visibility

-     Don’t build a list via YouTube/build subscribers. When someone views your video on YouTube, a list of “suggested” videos tempts your view away from your content.

-     Don’t create only scripted/staged videos. These have a place but when recruiting millennials they want to see the real deal. Put the camera in your employee’s hands

Are you using YouTube? What companies do you think are doing a great job with this medium?


Link to photo credit/YouTube statistics: http://www.viralblog.com/research/youtube-statistics/


Great employment branding using YouTube - My Deloitte: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=my+deloitte&aq=f

Series 1: Post 1: Social Media - Advertising or Marketing?

Social Media is a great vehicle to communicate a company’s culture as it allows you to share information and build relationships.  Before I start this series I have to first state that social media should not be your ONLY recruiting tactic for millennials. If your company does not have strong on-campus recruiting efforts and a great employment brand you should not be focusing on social media as you have bigger priorities at hand.   If you already have those priorities under control, it is time to get into social media as likely your competitors are already there! There are a couple of techniques for using social media: the first is paid advertising, typically purchasing ads focused on your target market through profile analytics, and the second is marketing, building your online presence and sharing your company culture with perspective candidates.

Advertising can be very experience as you typically pay a cost per click with Facebook or job platforms on a yearly contract basis. For some companies, the use of advertising, like job boards, is the right solution. For the work I do, young adult recruiting, social media marketing is where I need to be these are platforms where students spend time thus, as a recruiter; I need to be on there too! There are so many ways you can use the inherent nature of social media sites to your advantage as they are built to share information and connect with friends or in your case, candidates.

I believe that building your brand through online free social media platforms allows you to target future candidates in a more cost effective manner than just advertising if it supports a strong employment brand and campus recruiting techniques.  Social media (online techniques) should boost your offline/campus activities. The key to using social media sites like Facebook is to first have a strategy on how to use these platforms organically, bring in the right alumni and current employees to build employee engagement and share your culture, which in turn creates a great recruiting tool as candidates see the real story about working at your company. Social media is not about pushing information but is about creating a dialogue – a push/pull – and answering the question “what’s in it for me?” for perspective candidates. Hopefully I can help you understand how to use these sites and build the draw factor that starts off a discussion that hopefully ends in an accepted job offer.

Over the next month, I will be sharing insights on how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare by sharing your culture, creating engaged current employees and excited candidates.  If you have any specific questions about using these sites please post a comment on this blog post so I can tailor my upcoming blogs to meet your needs!