#SMIR 2009 Social Media in Recruitment 2009

It's been a little while since I posted on here as I have been ridiculously busy chasing new work as much as possible and building my own personal pitch, more on that in another post..

I just wanted a say a couple of words on Mike Taylor at Web Based Recruitment's Social Media in Recruitment conference yesterday. It was really great to see a new event put together in a pretty tough market that turned out to be such a success, I believe Mike had 149 in attendance and a great turnout from the corporate recruiter and recruitment agency side of the industry. They are the guys that NEED to be at events like this because a vast number of them simply don't get what is going on in the recruitment space and are not prepared for the changes that are happening in the industry. Right now they are inundated with candidates and are, in many cases, not prepared for the changing recruitment market once the economy is back on an even keel.

The worry is always that people go to these events and then make a half hearted stab at social media and decide they can't be bothered to keep it up or they don't see immediate results so they abandon it. The trick really is not to do everything at once or if you really MUST do tha then get someone in who knows how to build and implement it.

I'm going to try and get copies of the presentations and, if Mike and the presenters are OK with it I'll host those I can on here and make some specific comments.

Social recruitment and referral networks do they really work and can anyone do anything really new?

I met with 2 guys yesterday, they've decideed to enter the world of online recruitment with a new referral and networking model, they ran through what it offers and there were some neat little tweaks and variations on a theme that's already becoming established but the whole thing left me thinking.. are we on the verge of another brief dotcom boom and bust for the social media and referral industry?

The world and his dog wants to do something with social networking and referrals (for christ's sake I even toyed with it!). There is not a day goes by without soemone telling me they are launching a shiny new facebook, myspace, secondlife, bebo, whatever application or explaining a clever new way for referrals to empower candidates...

There are some great sites out there but all these social applications? I'm yet to see any stats from anyone telling me how much their app is used, how much traffic it generated and whether they recovered the costs of building it. With more and more people entering the market how long before the consumer says "enough is enough, I came here to network and meet people not find a job". To me it's a little like the equivalent of going to the pub and having a recruiment consultant constantly interfere with your conversation by suggesting job hunting tips or trying to get you to register (which has on more than one occasion happened to me).

Referrals? How well is the referral market going, again it's not something NORAS is going to start showing stats for equally Hitwise and Comscore can only show us traffic, how well are these sites doing and how satisfied are the clients that use them?

This all sounds horribly negative but I think people in the industry have to be aware that there are market leaders out there for a reason; careful planning, good market knowledge, an understanding of their audience, good looking, well optimised sites run by people who have been in the industry for a while and who understand it's pitfalls and above all; investment. Try and do it on a shoe string and it'll die quicker than Posh Spice's self esteem.

Have a look at zubka Jobtonic and Jobster to get an idea of what the market leaders are up to, if you think you can do soemthing as well and make it work then good luck, give me a call, I'd love to have a look around it and offer any (hopefully) constructive criticism if you'd like it.

Facebook for recruiters

Just thought I'd share soem feedback on the Facebook marketplace job listings.. Wow, it's an interesting world out there, we've all, I'm sure seen the somewhat "dodgy" Work From Home- Earn a Fortune! ads.. they seem to have cropped up on facebook much like they have anywhere else (note to regional print owners... please stop putting these ads in your publications, your print offering is dying and this really doesn't help your cause!)
Anyway a colleague at our parent company's office posted a genuine ad on Facebook for sales staff and strangley appears to have had a couple of candidates come through with decent CVs, I have to say I was surprised. If he recruits through a site like facebook then great maybe social network recruiting does work and my scepticism is unfounded, I somehow doubt it but there you go, I'm an old cynic at heart!
On the flip side some of the nutters who have applied and tried to engage in some form of dialogue are out of this world, one particular guy wanted to abandon his business selling wigs in order to work in the conference sales world but he wanted £6K more than advertised to justify him leaving his business behind, I may even post up the diatribe of abuse he felt appropriate for a job applications on here, it really beggars belief!
It's nice to know that no matter what the medium is that's used there will always be a few deranged idiots using it to waste recruiters time.