Jobs in Pods Blog

Did you realize that Facebook is a great sourcing tool? We did. Here’s how you can find candidates, message them and engage them on their turf. One company we know gets a 60-70% response rate for contacting candidates via Facebook.

Click the ‘Search‘ link underneath the Facebook logo.

There are 2 search features that are relevant to employers. Coworkers and Profile search.

Coworkers are a great way to source people from your competitors. Many Facebook users are being more thorough when adding content about their work experience and thats good news for sourcers. Just type in a company and you’ll instantly be connected to many of their current employees.

Profile Search allows you to search actual job titles that people have entered. (Use the ‘Position’ field towards the bottom) Unfortunately you cant search the entire Facebook database. Rather, you are limited to your friends or those inside your regional network. (Remember you can only belong to one regional network at a time). A quick search in our regional network for ‘RNs‘ yields 31 people from over 54,000 in that network. A search for ‘Sales‘ yields over 500 results in our network.

Once you identify particular candidates, you can send them a message introducing yourself, your company and your jobs. Good luck!

For recruitiers on Facebook its getting even easier to connect with candidates. According to the ReadWriteWeb blog:

Facebook Chat will be slowly rolled out this week. The announcement, made via The Facebook Blog, says that the rollout will be slow, but, unlike MySpaceIM, there won’t be anything for you to install when it arrives in your profile - you’ll just have a new “Chat Bar” at the bottom of your browser. On the one hand, Facebook needed to launch chat in order to compete with the News Corp giant, but on the other, we have to wonder, do we need another IM?

Facebook IM takes a page out of Gmail’s GTalk, mimicking the way that browser-based IM functions - it even offers a way to pop-out your conversation window, so you can continue browsing Facebook without losing track of your chat session.

In addition to the pop-out feature, Facebook chat, like any IM program, lets you appear “offline” if you don’t want to chat. The conversations are private, and the chat sessions history is saved from page to page and between login sessions, but not permanently. You can also clear the chat history at any time using a provided link in the conversation window to do so.

Live chat is something every company should be integrating into their own corporate career sites. Facebook’s announcement will now let you try it out for those employers who are establishing a presence on the social network. Use it to answer prospective candidates questions about your company. Its just another tool in the Facebook recruiting toolbox.

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Kudos to a member of the Sprint recruiting team who has made several hires from her social network profile. Read about it here.

Ernst and Yong’s Facebook group is up over 13,000 members. An impressive number. But I found this quote from their director of recruiting about why it works:

Dan Black, director of recruiting for Ernst & Young used Facebook to connect with students. But he did so in a different way. Lots of questions were asked on E&Y’s wall, and he wrote back in a very personal tone. Realized that this was one of the few channels to have a direct conversation with students.

E&Y definitely gets this social media thing. Its about establishing relationships above all else.

eMarketer is out with the top 10 sites among college kids. No surprise Facebook is #1.

Obviously if they are hanging out there so should your recruiters. Here are some tips to do that.

My Company’s Hiring is another Facebook application that you can use to display available job positions in you organization. For each recruiter you have on Facebook, have them add this app to their profile.

For the rest of the tip series, click here.

Tip: enable your Workplace

Workplace networks on Facebook are closed networks for individual companies. Think of them as a ‘company intranet’. Only employees with a company sponsored email address can join and participate.

Creating your own Workplace is a hybrid recruiting/retention tool.

It’s a retention tool in that it acts as a benefit to your existing employees, especially the younger ones who have made Facebook part of their daily life. Consider these stats for a moment.

• Facebook is the #1 site for people ages 17-25
• 50% of users return daily
• 25-35 yr olds are fastest growing audience among users

So the next college grad you hire is most likely a heavy facebook user. If you encourage your employees to communicate with each other using Facebook, it becomes a retention tool. Some companies are actually banning employees from accessing social networks, but we say you should embrace them. Just look at what Serena Software did. They started “Facebook Fridays” where they encourage all employees to use the site on friday afternoons as a way to build camaraderie among colleagues. Their CEO “believes that colleagues who get to know one another on a more personal level will work together better.”

How refreshing.

This is also a recruiting tool because you can promote this feature as a BENEFIT to potential college grads. Imagine a candidate who has to decide between two companies. The benefits and salary are basically the same, but one offers things like Facebook fridays. Which one do you think has an edge?

Don’t forget to join the Jobs in Pods Facebook group.

Tip: Advertise.

At a recruiting conference recently we heard that Ernst & Young inked a 1 year deal to advertise their jobs on Facebook. The cost? $1.2 million. For that they get their own company profile page and premium ad space inside Facebook users pages.

But you don’t have to spend that much to get your jobs exposure inside the network. Their are a couple of ways you can get started for as little as $5. Ads com in two flavors: Social Ads and Facebook pages.

Facebook pages

These are basically your own “profile page” inside of Facebook.  Any business can create one. Features include;

• Communicate directly with fans.
• Display rich media in a flexible layout.
• Users’ interactions with your Page spread naturally to their friends

Creating a page is free but you’re going to need to advertise to pick up “fans” which are Facebook users who like what you have to say. There is currently no directory of pages on Facebook, so people will only discover it through perhaps keyword search or other friends. Thats why advertising it, is the only way to go. This is how Facebook describes the service;

Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining other fans in discussion groups. You can send updates to your fans regularly — or just with special news or offers. Add applications to your Page and engage your users with videos, reviews, flash content, and more. 

Once you create your page you can promote it. Here are the ways you can target the page. Notice the field that says ‘Workplaces’. Here you can type in your competitors Workplace networks (which we’ll talk about later in tip #5) and target the people who work there!

Social Ads

These ads work very similar in terms of setup and options. The big difference is that they are designed exclusively for send users to a web site outside of Facebook. So as an employer you can send users to your company career page to promote your jobs.

Creating an ad on Facebook is easy and quick. Use it to advertisie your jobs and promote your employment brand.

Coming Up tip #5 on thursday.

Don’t forget to join the Jobs in Pods Facebook group.

Tip: tap the regional networks

Facebook is made of of 4 types of networks: Regional, Workplaces, Colleges and High Schools. As an employer you can take advantage of all but the High Schools. Workplaces, Colleges and HS are ‘closed networks‘, meaning you cant join them unless you belong to that organization. But the Regional networks are open to anyone.

The one caveat about the Regionals however is that you can only join one network per user.

So employers should assign their recruiters to a specific network. If you have offices in Birmingham, Bangor and Eugene, then have one of your recruiters join those networks.

Once joined you can take advantage of the following network features to promote your jobs and hiring efforts.

1. Post jobs to the Marketplace. Job postings are free. Have your recruiters consistently post and you will attract applicants from the region.

2. Add Events. Have an upcoming job fair? Add it to the network’s calendar. Add other related career related events that may be in your area.

Most networks have thousands of members. And guess what? They all live in that region. Talk about local targeting!

Each network also has ‘Discussion Areas‘ and something called ‘The Wall‘.

These 2 areas allow you to post links. Links back to your company career site. Links to specific job postings. Links to job opportunities.

PLUS you can do things like this:

On the discussion board you could have your recruiter start a discussion like: “My company is hiring! Find out why!“. Then you could engage the members of that community by listing reasons why its a great place to work or why you are growing. You can post news items about your firm. In short, promote yourself!

The Wall gives your recruiter a chance to introduce themselves to the network. Have them write a hello, and give out their contact information. Open up to the network and participate. Make friends, offer job search advice, answer questions about the job market or region.

Don’t go overboard by just posting links to your jobs or being too ’spammy’. The point is to get involved in the network and contribute to it. This is how your recruiter can gain credibility and make a good name for your firm.

Next tuesday, look for tip #4

PS…are you already on Facebook? Join the Jobs in Pods Facebook Group

Tip: target ‘boomerangs‘ or ex-employees by courting them with a Facebook group. The group section of the popular social networking site is filled with groups of former company alumni.

Have your recruiting team (or an actual alumni) start a group. Call it “Ex-company name” or “Company name Alumni“. Promote the group among your current employees and encourage them to tell former employees that they are still in touch with. The group will slowly start to populate itself.

I belong to a group called Gartner Alumni.

The group allows you to post links, photos, video and have discussions. I started one called “Where are we now?“. Use the link section to drive traffic back to your company career site. List new and exciting jobs asking for referrals. The admin (you can have multiple admins) of the group has the ability to send out broadcast emails so the group itself becomes a marketing tool for your recruiting team. You can also upload your company logo for branding purposes.

FYI: Admins can delete anything that is posted so dont worry about losing control over the groups content.

Stay tuned Thursday for tip #3