Social Recruiting, what is happening?

Ever since I started recruiting via Social networks, I was able to measure my ROI on my online activities.

No need to tell again I was working at Nedstat when social recruiting became a new way of finding candidates via web. It was 2005 and Linkedin, Open BC (now Xing), Viadeo and other social networks just started to create a huge pond with names, jobtitles and “resumes”.

At my role back 5 years ago, I was asked to recruit people with various technical backgrounds, like C++ developers, Unix System Admins and Software testers, to work in our office in Amsterdam. Besides the techies I was also in the lead of recruiting Consultants and Salesmen for our offices abroad in Europe, like France, Spain, Germany, UK and Belgium.

Instead of calling lots of agencies in these countries I started finding them myself via all what was to be found online. Regarding the business of Nedstat: Web Analytics Software, we wanted our new hires to be online savy, so if you were not to be found via web… What is your interest in internet?

Back then, it became a sport to report to the manager, who was found via which network or other types of databases.
Which gave me the opportunity to discover even SecondLife in my office workspace.
“Was I still working” the system administrator asked me once, you only seem to play around on the web when I come in.

Social Recruiting, what is happening?

Nowadays Social Recruiting has become on of the “Shouldn’t try that too” channels for recruitment.
And yes I still think you should, but start tracking your results from the minute you start!

At ERE Expo, several cases on “social recruiting” were highlighted, which were fantastic to see, but none of them gave a clear insight in how they keep track of their ROI, which for recruiters in the end should be HIRES.

Where there is a lot data you might want to keep track on, since you as a recruiter try to get the best from everywhere on and offline, here is an overview which Michele Porfilio, Director of Strategic Sourcing at Crowe Horwath LL, currently created and currently uses.

This overview might be very helpful for recruiters who are still struggling getting the right management input. Well I think too, this is what you would like to present your managers to start with:


To get the whole picture follow this link:
sourcing metrics form by Michele Porfilio

To get an overview of your employer brand status in Online Media, will be the next phase to implement in your management report, will be to much to show Michele’s great overview on that topic for now.
Though if you like more on where to start on that one too, you can always contact me or for more info.

Michele thank you for sharing!

Starbucks Case in using Social Media for Recruitment

During the ERE Expo in San Diego, I was fortuned to see one of the better told stories on Recruitment via Social Media. Kat Drum at full power showed us their business case: Starbucks “Using Social Media to Attract & Engage Passive Candidates”

>>by ERE<<
Starbucks is one of the most prolific users of social media. You’ll find out how the employer brand and sourcing teams partner to take advantage of the largest consumer fan base on Facebook and all their Twitter followers. Learn how the employment brand and consumer brands work together to attract and engage passive candidates. Find out the results of Starbucks sourcers and recruiters using widgets and a powerful CRM tool and finally, find out how the company decides where to spend recruitment advertising dollars, and how it measures results.

or watch this video on Starbucks at ERE expo

Now, you might want to follow @starbucksjobs

In the mean time I’ll get another Starbucks 🙂

Social Media Circus #TruLondon

Today the real unconference has started… Matt Alder, Paul Harrison, Jim Stroud are on stage discussing the Social media circus.

About using video
It doesn’t need to be a Hollywood style video….
Using video to attract candidates gives an overview of where they are going to work.
Keep it simple like this one
Paul Harrison comes up with the Jobstory: put that on film
Question from the audience, comments are enabled in video? Yes of course, keep up the interaction

Using Social media for recruitment, again here is the question.. What is ROI? Start measuring, start analyzing, than you can start fishing were the fish are!

still checking if the conversation is on video 🙂