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Highest Rated CEOs in 2014: Did Yours Make The List?

Glassdoor is excited to reveal the 2014 50 Highest Rated CEOs at large companies and new this year, the 25 Highest Rated CEOs at small & mid-Sized companies, honoring top bosses across the U.S. who have gained the approval of their employees.

Based entirely on employee feedback shared over the past 12 months,

LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner takes the top spot on the large company list (1,000 employees or more) with a perfect 100% approval rating, followed by Ford Motor’s Alan Mulally (97% approval) and Edelman’s Richard Edelman (97%).

CEO approval ratings are calculated similar to Presidential approval ratings; employees are asked: Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?

The technology sector leads the small & mid-sized list (fewer than 1,000 employees) with the top three CEOs at the helm of companies that provide software services for businesses. Number one CEO is Intacct Corporation’s Robert Reid (100% approval), followed by Applied Predictive Technologies’ Anthony Bruce (100% approval) and Paylocity’s Steve Beauchamp (100% approval).

Curious who else made the cut (and who didn’t)? Click here to check out the complete results.

Plus, see which UK leaders are highest rated among employees with a new Glassdoor report for 2014, the 10 Highest Rated CEOs in the UK.

Read more at Glassdoor

Why Aren’t You Making It Easier For Me To Apply For Your Jobs?

As a shopper have you ever seen an advert for a great deal on a product the day after it finished? How annoying is that!

Or have you ever seen an advert for a great deal on a product but you can’t make a purchase because you can’t access the website? How annoying is that as well!

But wait a minute, aren’t job seekers also shoppers, as in shopping around for a new job? And if you are a recruiter then I guess that makes you a retailer (of jobs and career opportunities)

So in your role as a retailer how easy are you making it for shoppers to do business with you by way of searching and applying for jobs?

If they are searching for jobs at home (or dare I say at work) on a desktop or laptop then they are probably okay. However, shoppers like to get out and about and they spend a lot of time on their mobile, especially when commuting every day.

The Mobile Experience

So how easy is it for those shoppers to search and apply for your jobs on their mobile? Do they land on your perfectly formed mobile-enabled website or are you expecting them to pinch and zoom across the desktop version on their small screen to try and find the jobs section?

And even when they find the jobs section do they then have to fill out a long online form? And even worse (and to complete their misery) are they then asked to attach their CV or Resume (which of course they can’t do!)

And what about the emails you send out informing job seekers about your new jobs? If they read those emails on their mobile (the majority probably do) will they have the same painful experience as described above?

Make It Easy For People To Do Business With You

Every retail business should be making it as easy as possible for shoppers to do business with them. After all, with no customers there typically are no businesses.

Think about retailers like Amazon and Zappos and how easy it is to shop with them on a mobile? They have clearly thought through the process and made it as easy and simple as possible for shoppers to do business with them because they value their shoppers.

Step Into Their Shoes

Are you doing the same for your shoppers? How easy is it to apply for a job at your company? Put yourself in their shoes, get your mobile out and try! Then ask yourself “am I making it easy for job seekers to apply for a job at our company?”

Remember a question from the first paragraph… “have you ever seen an advert for a great deal on a product but you can’t make a purchase because you can’t access the website? “ Well simply switch the word “product” for “jobs” and you have exactly the same situation. How annoying is that!

As a shopper have you ever seen an advert for a great deal on a product the day after it finished? How annoying is that!

Or have you ever seen an advert for a great deal on a product but you can’t make a purchase because you can’t access the website? How annoying is that as well!

But wait a minute, aren’t job seekers also shoppers, as in shopping around for a new job? And if you are a recruiter then I guess that makes you a retailer (of jobs and career opportunities)

So in your role as a retailer how easy are you making it for shoppers to do business with you by way of searching and applying for jobs? If they are searching for jobs at home (or dare I say at work) on a desktop or laptop then they are probably okay. However, shoppers like to get out and about and they spend a lot of time on their mobile, especially when commuting every day.

The Mobile Experience

Make It Easy For People To Do Business With You

Every retail business should be making it as easy as possible for shoppers to do business with them. After all, with no customers there typically are no businesses.

Step Into Their Shoes

Read more at Web Based Recruitment

Written by Mike Taylor from Web Based Recruitment.

Mike is running the Mobile Recruiting Strategies on the 27th March 2014, a Free Online Event which will include speakers from LinkedIn, Google and Accenture.

Meet Betty: Recruitment Scheduling Made Simple (No, Really)

For all the advances we’ve made when it comes to recruitment technology and systems integration, for some reason, one of the most critical business needs for talent acquisition has largely gone ignored by emerging startups and established players: scheduling.

The HR technology conversation has moved on from core workflow processes to somewhat specious, often speculative topics like social media, mobile enablement and the amorphous concept of “big data,” which while decidedly more sexy than scheduling, also strike most practitioners as a bit specious.

But as anyone who’s ever tried to lock down a time with a candidate or coordinate complex onsite interviews knows, too much of our daily recruiting lives are spent devoted to the seemingly simple, completely transactional task of scheduling. Coordinating calendars is a professional pain point, but it’s a necessary evil for anyone in talent acquisition; in fact, many large corporate talent organizations have dedicated headcount for coordinators whose entire job consists of scheduling screens and on-site interviews. The bad news for them, but the good news for recruiters, is that those roles might soon be rendered obsolete.

Enter Betty. Betty is the rare technology where the recruitment related business case is implicit and obvious as soon as you use the tool, and one that once you try, you’re likely to adopt as a core component of your recruiting technology toolbox. The user experience is intuitive, streamlined and simple, and best of all, it’s free, which is a pretty easy price point for ensuring ROI.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to TryBetty.com in Chrome & download/enable the extension:

2. Open GMail; the Betty plug-in will appear as an additional field when sending e-mails:

3. Enter the recipient’s name in the subject field and click the Betty icon to view your availability:

4. Select proposed meeting times; these will automatically populate in the e-mail:

5. Hit “Send.”

It’s really that easy. Recipients will be able to view their own availability and accept a time without opening their calendar, whether or not they have Betty installed themselves. Once the recipient selects a proposed time directly in the body of the e-mail and replies, Betty will automatically create the calendar appointment and instantly put it on each user’s calendar without the need to then also accept the invitation, since it’s already confirmed by both participants. A link to the meeting information on Betty is automatically appended to the e-mail, allowing either party to reschedule directly from their mailboxes if needed.

In the movie “Clueless,” Cher (played by Alicia Silverstone) refers to beautiful people as being a “total Betty,” but she might as well have been describing this promising new recruiting tool. Because it’s pretty sexy – at least when it comes to something as ugly as scheduling.

Betty: Executive Summary

The Company: Betty was developed by Jonathan Woolf, who has experience in the recruiting & staffing industries as an early employee at Jigsaw, a contact sharing platform since acquired by Salesforce that was, when launched, infinitely more effective (and populated) than LinkedIn, and was one of the first online destinations for lead and candidate sharing. Woolf realized in speaking with recruiters, as well as in his own experience having to set up pitches, demos and marketing meetings, that scheduling was a significant pain point – and significant market opportunity for any technology that could simplify this completely manual, time intensive process. Hence, the idea for Betty was born.

Betty is still very early in development and right now seems focused on getting the word out about the product to drive signups and expand active users while exploring opportunities like ATS integration & open APIs to become an integral component of the recruiting & HR workflow.

The Good: It’s free, it solves a real recruiting problem and offers a unique solution that has little to no competition on the market. Since Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, inexplicably purchased and discontinued Tungle.me, which was a similar application for social calendaring, there have been no entries into this space, which is a shame for anyone who quickly became dependent on Tungle, then despondent about returning to having to use .ics and other traditional tools. Unlike Tungle, however, Betty works directly from your inbox without having to go to a third party platform or external site, which is a definitive improvement and huge time saver.

The Bad: As yet, Betty only works with Chrome and for GMail users, somewhat limiting its potential adoption for recruiters, who remain largely reliant on applications like Office and browsers like Internet Explorer as their core calendaring and browser technologies. But the good news is that Betty is actively working to build integrations with Office and Apple Mail, which remain the significant factors preempting Betty from being a blockbuster. It’s also relatively new, and Woolf seems to still be figuring out the market and monetization for this promising platform.

Rating: 4.5/5: Download this now; it’s a no brainer that once you install, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

Recruitment Marketing Lessons from Mitch Hedberg

I was listening to a well-known comedian on my iPad this past weekend and had boisterous laugh as it immediately turned my recruiter brain on after a moderately humors segment.

The comedian, Mitch Hedburg, was talking about one of his first jobs as a kid. He said, “I had a paper route when I was a kid. I was supposed to go to 2,000 houses; or, two dumpsters.”

To which the crowd laughed, as it is a story that hits home for many. Those laughs got me thinking.

Was Mitch lazy, or was he fixed on a number that was so inconceivable, he stopped trying? Hundreds, if not thousands of kids were given the same assignments and were able to deliver on their promise and please their bosses.

Maybe it was an anecdote for easy laughs, but if not, Mitch was being lazy. The delivery of drive by news was always a well-received aspect of the American tradition, and he had chosen to fail.

The news had something to offer every reader so it was eagerly anticipated. Why then, are so many messages from recruiters not being met with such anticipation? With a passive candidate base that has such a huge number of candidates that are open to hearing about new opportunities, passive candidates should be waiting at their inbox tor receive our good news.

According to the 2014 Job Seeker National Report put out by Jobvite earlier this year, 51% of employed workers are either actively seeking, or open to a new job:

We are in an industry that can leverage that statistic and strategically target candidates with well thought out messages that demand attention. We are at a point where we must adapt our strategy, or remind ourselves of the importance of initial and continued engagement. Last month, at SourceCon in Atlanta, “drive by messaging” was a hot topic. Why, like the lazy paperboy, do we throw our messages in the dumpster? 51% is a big number. So where is the engagement?

In an outstanding think piece posted on TLNT earlier this month titled, “The “War” for Talent: Real Shortage, or Employer Propaganda,” the article stated:

“…I have seen is great talent who are no longer passive but now actively open to any and all conversations surrounding new opportunities. I see those top performers as ready to have conversations about their next move, but employers being ill-equipped to receive them.”

Taking that a step further, and considering it from a day to day recruiting and messaging standpoint, we have ill-planning when considering our outreach. From a historic standpoint, our industry has focused on tools, techniques and channels to produce more and more candidates. Today, right now, and moving forward, what really matters is the small group of qualified candidates that we engage and are interested in talking to us.

3 Recruitment Marketing Strategies for Candidate Engagement Success

Here is a very short, effective, and proven list of suggestions provided by some of the sourcing elite at this year’s edition of SourceCon. Consider these strategies, make them your own, or simply use them as a reminder of what you are already doing that is so effective.

1. Competitive advantage comes from creating remarkable and intriguing initial candidate interactions. There are three key advantages to this practice. Right out of the gate you need to be willing to:

Gain attention
Earn trust
Build a relationship

2. You cannot even begin to have an advantage unless you get your message opened. In order to gain attention, earn trust and build a relationship, you have to break through the clutter. You have to make it past the few seconds that it takes for someone to consider keeping or deleting a message. These seconds are crucial. So take them seriously. Tips to make it through:

Be unique
Focus on the reader
Be succinct
Demonstrate an immediate benefit
Ask a question
Use “your” or “you”
- Your experience at XYZ Company
- You have an interesting background

3. Once your message is opened, you still have time working against you, so be concise. Keep it short, to the point, and easy to read. Respect the candidates time. Tips to keep your message engaging include the following:

Front-load the message
- Put the most important information at the beginning of the message, or paragraph
- Have a call to action
  - Do you want them to apply, call, or simply take your message into consideration?
  - Know where you are directing them, and guide them in that direction
- Include your full signature
  - Full name
  - Email address
  - Phone number – direct number if possible

Messaging is important. Drive by messaging is prominent. When considering drive by messaging in recruiting, I am considering this as a pattern of lazy delivery.

If you are going to pepper the inboxes of candidates, you will not break through the clutter. You are throwing your prospects, like Mitch’s newspapers, in the dumpster. Mitch Hedberg was a comedian known for his unconventional delivery, and surreal humor. When he greeted the crowd for the stand-up show that I was listening to, the first thing that he said was, “Welcome to my half-hour special. Does anyone know who I am?”

The crowd fell next to silent, but they had all prepaid to see his show, so they were locked in. Because Mitch was a master of featured, short, and one lined jokes, it wasn’t long before he won the audience. As a recruiter, you are no comedian, but maybe you can take a lesson from Mitch’s messaging. Get your recruitment messaging across fast, quickly draw in your candidates, and continue to build on that initial interaction.

Don’t just take your newspapers straight to the dumpster, rebuild on your brand and use that speed as an advantage in recruitment marketing.

This, in Mitch’s case was the one liner. What will be yours?

About the Author: Justin Dunn is a talent acquisition professional who spent the past few years as cross-functional member of a strategic recruiting team with a focus on hiring engineering talent.

During his time in the industry, he has supported multiple verticals while growing his client credibility across the industry. Justin is an avid advocate of a work hard, play hard mentality. Spending countless hours crafting his skills, he also takes time off to travel the globe.

Follow Justin on Twitter @JustDunn10 or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Sun Never Sets: Staffing, Strategy & Social Recruiting in the UK

While we’re several centuries out from the Columbian contact, hiring professionals from the US can be forgiven if their first impressions of the talent acquisition landscape across the pond can be construed as travelling to the Old World – and it’s clear that the UK seems somewhat resistant, even today, to American revolutions. Particularly when it comes to recruiting.

After all, staffing firms and third party agencies still represent a staggering share of source of hire; specializing in a function as narrowly defined as sourcing or social recruiting is nearly unheard of, and building a strategic pipeline often takes a backseat to making a just-in-time placement.

Data privacy and safe harbour laws limit access to many sourcing & profile aggregation tools Stateside sourcing practitioners take for granted (like Spokeo or Pipl), and social media lags decidedly behind – for example, Facebook has not yet given default access of Open Graph Search, for example, to UK users.

While recruitment best practices, policies and even technologies may seem superficially anachronistic, however, the truth is that in today’s world of work, the gap between US & UK recruiters and the employers they represent is quickly closing.

I recently spoke with Lisa Jones, a Director of Barclay Jones, a consulting firm which specializes in working with agency recruiters on their talent technology and social media strategies, to get a first hand look at the current state of UK staffing – and a look ahead at some of the trends, tools and technologies shaping the future of recruitment across the world of work.

Because, while the locations for which we’re hiring might necessitate different strategies and approaches for different markets, the ultimate goal of hiring the right talent at the right time for the right jobs is something all staffing & recruiting pros have in common.

What are some of the major talking points or recurring themes you hear when talking to recruiters about emerging technologies and tools?

Lisa Jones – Director, Barclay Jones: “Cool tools” drives me nuts. The coolest tool should be the CRM. Instead there are 100s of bit of tech designed to speed up process, which often result in the circumvention of the CRM and this creates risk and complication to what should be a simple process.

Yes, I’m a tech geek – I love technology, but I feel that the current recruitment tech market needs to mature. While tech is free, it makes it too attractive – cost becomes the main criteria for how useful it is. I think that recruiters need to mature, too and BUY technology which works and adds value – not allow their workforce to download every app, extension and plugin in the vain hope that a candidate will be placed.

What are some of the most common myths or misperceptions you hear regarding social or brand strategy from employers in the UK? What are some of the persistent talent acquisition challenges or recurring resistance from recruiters?

Some recruiters have an issue with marketing themselves and seem to feel that being the biggest, longest running etc is a USP. They specialise in markets that they don’t actively engage in online and thus their online behaviour demonstrates a lack of specialism (but oh, they have a great copywriter!)

Myths and misconceptions? I’d say a big one is this thought that “Facebook is the devil!” Or, “candidates don’t want to be approached on Facebook” – I’m not they want to be approached anywhere. What we need to remember is that it’s the message, not the channel, that’s key. And Twitter is pointless! And “what’s Google +?”

The main challenge I see in the recruitment agency market right now is the myth of the 360 recruiter. I’m not convinced it works and I’m not convinced that they use technology effectively to recruit. Plus, the older the C suite in recruitment is getting, the more disconnected this level is from the true recruitment process which is common in many agencies.

The volume of data and systems available to the average recruiter is distracting and can create process-creep. Plus it is not being used to self-sustain – in simple terms candidates rarely become clients once placed. Perhaps the term “roller coaster recruiting” is where we are at and the speed which we feel we need to work means that everything is a blur and obvious opportunities are missed.

What advice do you have for employers looking to get started on social media? Any lessons learned or words of wisdom?

Look at your process and document it. Then look at the tools out there that can speed it up and even replace some of the admin. Document the new process – then train the hell out of everyone, including yourself. Don’t be afraid to spend money on tools. Don’t give your keys the business away to the “younger” ones because you assume their comfort with tech translates to strategic use of it!

Don’t be afraid to start relationships online – many candidates and clients are really comfortable with that (and why would a passive come in for a meeting???).

Make sure that data collected online is stored within your own asset like a CRM or ATS – but don’t have unsustainable policies which assume that if I blink at someone on LinkedIn they belong to the company. Have grown up, practical policies which assume that connecting with people is a good thing, and it is encouraged, and that the business only owns the candidate/client once KPI-related activity kicks in. Then I would vigorously ensure that these contacts and their related correspondence are stored within my own systems. I think that’s a fair and sustainable model.

There are some obvious global best practices, but what do multinationals or companies just starting recruiting in the UK need to know that’s unique about recruiting and hiring in that particular market? Like, what the heck does resourcing mean, for starters…

The UK model is very 360, meaning that many recruiters do the entire process. I think that this in unsustainable and needs reworking. I feel strongly that the model needs breaking down (sourcing, advert writing are 2 areas that I feel needs specialists). The argument I often hear though is that recruitment agencies will find it hard to reward these roles. I think that the UK market needs to get over that and get on with it.

Looking at recruiting and social technologies, what low cost or high value tools should recruiters need to know about? Which couldn’t you live without?

LinkedIn Recruiter is an assumed expense, but my clients who use it renew with a smile and can’t do without it. Do I think that all recruiters need this license? No, but I do think that some sectors need to wisen up and look at paid for tools to make them more competitive.

Buffer is a big favourite – in the very least it should help recruiters gauge the effectiveness of their broadcasts and help them choose which will work.

Cloud-based CRM (no names mentioned here!) Recruiters who are growing need flexibility, mobility, plug and play, visible and easy workflows and consistency. A few of the leaders in cloud CRM have this nailed.

What are some of the biggest changes have you seen in the way people look for jobs or companies look for talent over the past 5 years? What do you expect recruiting to look like five years in the future?

Clearly LinkedIn became the de facto, theoretical ‘silver bullet’ for recruiters. I hope (but don’t necessarily expect) that recruiters will wise up to a more blended approach to the internet estate that their passive and active talent and clients live in and go where the party is at and not see LinkedIn as the candidate place of choice. The candidate place of choice is where the candidate is, not where the recruiter is. I’m not sure we have a candidate shortage – I think we have an “interested” candidate shortage. The irony is that face to face recruiters can be intelligent, compelling, responsive creatures, but they are not so online.

What companies in the UK are getting social recruiting right, and what can other companies learn from them for their own social media initiatives?

I’m not convinced that any of them are (massive sweeping statement!) And I don’t have a massive problem with that right now. If we are talking true social recruiting (using social media for the recruitment process), then it’s fair to say that the majority of recruiters only tackle part of the process (broadcast and fish) using social tools. Engagement with passives is extremely hard when the traditional process of the average 360 recruiter in the UK does not allow time (and does not reward) for nurturing candidate relationships. I’ve yet to meet a recruitment agency with KPIs around candidate satisfaction and consultant-candidate relationships. I must stress, I get why this is – I’m not criticising. We are going through an evolution where recruiter practice (and sometimes lack of it) is now exposed online for all to see and I think it’ll take a while for the tech which is now prolific in the process to adapt and fully support what a social recruiter. Plus don’t get me started on the “average” recruitment director assuming that tech create bottle necks and distractions, and dims relationships…

Talent Community: Fact or fiction? Why?

Fiction. They’re an invisible and unquantifiable talent dump.

What’s the most important advice you’d give to someone just starting out a career in recruiting in the UK?

Get a process that works and is self-sustaining (candidates becoming clients – yippee!), then blend in appropriate tech to help with speed and volume – rinse and repeat. Just because a tool is “cool” doesn’t mean it’s going to improve your speed, candidate experience or bottom line.

How do you measure success (or failure) of social recruiting strategies. Is it possible, too early to tell or tilting at windmills?

Again, I think it’s all about process. Certain metrics can be measured (but currently aren’t widely) – speed of placement, candidate experience/satisfaction – all of these factors can be improved by the tactical use of social media, however, the main metric which seems to be the favourite is “how many candidates did I get from LinkedIn?”

For more from Lisa, check out “Forget Candidate Experience: What About Recruiter Experience,” follow her @LisaMariJones or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Bullhorn S Release Improves Recruiter Speed, Efficiency

Winning market share in the extremely crowded, hypercompetitive marketplace of applicant tracking system (ATS) providers has become increasingly difficult for emerging and established players alike.

Even as SaaS delivery moves from the margins to the mainstream, ostensibly cutting costs and time associated with system implementation and integration, the battle for ATS customers has created an expensive arms race to offer often specious functionalities or features to check a box on a single client’s RFP, or to offer sales more talking points as ammunition for closing contracts.

The result is that many product updates from ATS providers become more or less meaningless for most customers and clients, whose roadmap is tied more closely to creating revenue opportunities than creating real recruiting value. Which might explain, of course, why most end users abhor their current system.

Bullhorn, however, seems to be bucking this trend with today’s announcement of S Release, a release which radically revamps – and radically improves – the recruiting experience release that’s elegant, efficient and effective. This facelift represents one of the most sweeping updates to an existing software suite to date within the HR technology industry, reimagining and redesigning the complete end user experience for the almost 300,000 recruiters at more than 10,000 clients in 150 countries currently relying on Bullhorn as their core recruitment system.

“I’ve never been prouder of any product we’ve built,” said Art Papas, founder and CEO of Bullhorn. “It’s the fastest, most sophisticated end-to-end recruiting software solution on the market. S release is about our customers’ speed, their performance, and their success.”

With a client base consisting almost exclusively of third party agencies and staffing firms, S Release offers an enterprise grade recruiting system that seems easily competitive with any established corporate HCM or ATS system. This is significant because, given the inextricable intertwining of technology and recruitment in talent acquisition today, S Release seems poised to narrow the growing gap in capabilities between enterprise and third party systems.

Bullhorn has built an impressive business case behind S Release, which seems poised to level the playing field for contingency staffing and executive search firms in recruitment technology, given the company’s ubiquity in the third party space.

“S Release makes Bullhorn faster and easier to use, and answers a lot of the biggest pain points for Bullhorn customers,” said Bryan Roy, UX Team Lead at Bullhorn. “It’s unlocked Bullhorn to be cross browser – previously, we only worked in Internet Explorer – and it’s also really increased the speed of the application while optimizing the user experience.”

Roy pointed to the redesigned candidate list, with a new interface “built from the ground up,” as an example of one of the best examples of this dedication to user experience – and one of the best received features, allowing inline editing of associated statuses, tags and notes without having to preview a candidate’s record or open their profile.

The candidate list (pictured) also integrates with social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, enabling visibility into a candidate’s social footprint from the candidate record, a feature which largely negates the need for end users to acquire a point solution for profile aggregation by offering this functionality directly within their ATS.

Bullhorn S Release also allows users to drag and configure columns, resize and filter displays and searches from list views, and offers the enhanced ability to create and manage tasks within the system’s workflow.

“What we’ve done is build something that’s very robust and flexible, allowing users to see the right data at the right time so that they can take the right action,” Roy said. “We’ve tried to make it incredibly easy for users to customize their experience, export data and do ad-hoc reporting, and design a user experience which minimizes clicks while maximizing workflow and efficiency.”

S Release has been in active beta for the past 3-4 months, according to Roy, having released an early version to Bullhorn clients who were interested in test driving the product’s new look and feel. “Our philosophy was to put S Release in front of real users and get as much feedback as possible so we could iterate quickly,” Roy said. “And that feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”

According to Aravinda Rao, Sr. Marketing Manager at Bullhorn, S Release represents the culmination of nearly two years of effort since the company acquired Maxhire and Sendouts in November of 2012 and created a combined engineering team to “take the elements of the best technology from all the suites to create the best recruiting software we could offer.”

Rao noted that S Release is the new consolidated roadmap for all three systems, and this “next generation” software will be the focus of future updates and product iterations for users of all three products, although Sendouts and Maxhire will continue to have dedicated customer service and support teams.

While Bullhorn will not force users to switch systems, however, it should be a no brainer for clients looking to take their recruitment technology to the next level, a huge step up for even the most diehard Maxhire or Sendouts customer.

“For Maxhire users who are on the fence about switching to Bullhorn S Release, I’m telling you to think about your user experience. Think about hiring recruiters in the future,” said Jason Chagnon, CEO & President of Masiello Employment Services. “As technology constantly changes, you want a platform your recruiters can turn on, watch a video and instantly learn how to user the system. You want a system that can actually teach your new hires to be better recruiters, and you have that with Bullhorn. You don’t have that with Maxhire.”

Bullhorn will offer Maxhire and Sendouts users the opportunity to migrate their data to S Release for free. Enhancing the business case for switching to the new version are some very impressive numbers: in the beta test, Bullhorn users eliminated approximately 40% of required clicks within the system, as well increasing recruiter activity by an average of more than 50% and up to a 43% increase in placements since switching to S Release. And that last metric, at least for staffing professionals, is pretty much the bottom line – and an impressive testament to the company’s strategy.

“Bullhorn has historically built a reputation on being innovative. But as the market leader for recruitment software, we never wanted to get a reputation for sitting back on our laurels and not pressing the envelope,” Rao said. “S Release is a love letter to the idea of what you can do when you put your customers first and actually invest in development. Above all, S Release is about creating the most productive workday a recruiter can have. We didn’t just ask what we could do to make recruiters work the most efficiently, but also what our technology could do to make every one of our end users a better recruiter, too.”

Originally posted on RecruitingDaily.com.

For more information on S Release, click here. Disclaimer: Bullhorn is a paid marketing partner of Recruiting Daily (parent company of RecruitingTools). Recruiting Daily maintains an independent editorial function and Bullhorn did not have any feedback into this content, nor did this relationship impact or influence our coverage of this product news.

Bullhorn S Release Hits Bullseye

Winning market share in the extremely crowded, hypercompetitive marketplace of applicant tracking system (ATS) providers has become increasingly difficult for emerging and established players alike.

Bullhorn will offer many Maxhire and Sendouts users the opportunity to migrate their data to S Release for free. Enhancing the business case for switching to the new version are some very impressive numbers: in the beta test, Bullhorn users eliminated approximately 40% of required clicks within the system, as well increasing recruiter activity by an average of more than 50% and up to a 43% increase in placements since switching to S Release. And that last metric, at least for staffing professionals, is pretty much the bottom line – and an impressive testament to the company’s strategy.

For more information on S Release, click here. Disclaimer: Bullhorn is a paid marketing partner of Recruiting Daily. Recruiting Daily maintains an independent editorial function and Bullhorn did not have any feedback into this content, nor did this relationship impact or influence our coverage of this product news.

Solving Challenges With Social Recruiting Solutions That Work

Before you jump into social recruiting, it’s important to understand the strategies that have worked for other companies.

Social recruiting may be the hottest new method of sourcing potential job candidates, but it won’t be effective without a deliberate social recruiting strategy.

With so many social media tools in the recruiter’s toolbox, and new ones emerging almost every day, it can be easy to try everything in a haphazard way.

It can be easy to dive into every new social opportunity that comes along without a clear understanding of what will work for your company, what won’t work and why.

Before you jump into social recruiting just for the sake of social recruiting, it’s important to understand the strategies that have worked for other companies.Before undertaking a social recruiting strategy, determine your goals and the problem you want to solve.

Then consider various strategies that could help solve that problem. For instance, here are some common recruiting challenges and how social recruiting can provide solutions that work:

Challenge: Creating an Authentic Brand. Reading employee feedback is a great way to get a sense of the pros and cons of working at your company, and help you make things better. But that feedback is also contributing to how others view your brand. To make sure this is in accordance with the employer message you’re trying to send, respond to employee feedback publicly so job seekers and your workforce understand how much you appreciate that feedback and want to make your company an even better place to work.

Challenge: Reaching a mobile audience. As workers become increasingly mobile, it is more and more important to be able to reach potential job candidates through their mobile devices. In fact, close to 30 percent of all web traffic comes through mobile devices, according to a Walker Sands Mobile Traffic Report. Companies that don’t have a mobile-friendly web presence and don’t make it easy to search and apply for jobs on a mobile device will lose out on quality candidates. Social recruiting can be used to attract talent through mobile targeting.

Challenge: Increasing candidate quality. Most likely, your current employees know the types of people you want to hire. By utilizing employee networks on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can automatically broadcast position openings to your employees’ friends and acquaintances. Turning every employee into a recruiter can quickly and dramatically increase candidate flow and quality, and it utilizes the power you already have in your social networks.

Challenge: Building relationships with potential candidates. Today’s recruiters need to do more than simply broadcast open positions. They need to cultivate personal relationships and communicate their employer brand to reap the results they want. Social media is made for relationship building, so social recruiting, when carefully planned and initiated, can solve this issue. Recruiters can use their company career blogs, as well as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media to participate in ongoing conversations with job searchers and potential job candidates. Through these relationships, recruiters can learn who the candidates really are, and the candidates learn what their companies are really all about.

Challenge: Streamlining the career application process. Every new recruiting tool needs to seamlessly integrate with existing systems to avoid duplicating data or processes. Social recruiting can offer opportunities to streamline the entire process to make it easier for both recruiter and job applicant. For instance, mobile recruiting can allow candidates to discover and apply for open positions on their phones or other mobile devices. Social recruiting solutions such as prerecorded interviews, available through sites like InterviewStream and Async Interview, allow multiple job candidates to record video responses to a set of questions for a certain job, so recruiters can assess candidates quickly and efficiently and get a more personal candidate experience than a phone interview.

This post originally appeared on the Glassdoor Talent Solutions Blog.

About Glassdoor: Glassdoor is the world’s most transparent career community that is changing the way people find jobs, and companies recruit top talent. Glassdoor holds a growing database of 6 million company reviews, CEO approval ratings, salary reports, interview reviews and questions, office photos and more. Unlike other jobs sites, all of this information is entirely shared by those who know a company best — the employees.

For employers, Glassdoor offers effective recruiting and employer branding solutions via Glassdoor Talent Solutions. We help more than 1,500 employers promote their employer brand to candidates researching them and advertise their jobs to ideal candidates who may not be aware of them. What differentiates Glassdoor from other recruiting channels is the quality of job candidates we deliver and our influence on candidates’ decisions as they research jobs and companies.

How to Compensate Employees Without Money

Do you know how to compensate employees without money? Times are hard but we have tips to make payroll that can help.

Although the Great Recession didn’t hit Canada as hard as it hit America, it still hurt. Case in point?

David Herle notes in an article that “Canadians didn’t have to deal with the collapse in housing prices, and not as many lost their jobs.”

But they still felt pain—up to half a million Canadians lost their jobs during the Great Recession.

Fortunately, the Great Recession is slowly lifting, but some companies found unique ways to get around layoffs and meet their existing payroll’s needs.

If you’re a start-up company and you’re going through the tough times, what can you do?

Here are some tips for how to compensate employees without money:

Arrange work-share

This great idea is uniquely Canadian. If business activity slows down, and it’s beyond your control, make use of work-share. In this scenario, employees have their work temporarily reduced, while Service Canada helps provide income support. Find more details at the Service Canada website.

Ask employees to take unpaid leave

Instead of laying off thousands of employees like so many corporations did during the Great Recession, Honeywell asked them to take furloughs. Honeywell’s CEO noted that the conventional wisdom states it’s better to lay off employees because it spreads the pain to just a few individuals. This compares to furloughs, which cause many people a little pain, but in theory hurt morale more than layoffs.

His argument was that laying people off and then hiring them again later when the recovery came would cost more than furloughs. Instead, those employees, if on furlough, would be ready to come back when business picked up again.

He doesn’t cite statistics, but he does believe strongly that it was a successful strategy.

Cut your own salary

This could be a huge opportunity to win your employees’ respect—share in their burden. Be willing to lead by example, and take a salary cut. Your employees will know that you have their best interests in mind when you take that sacrifice personally.

What to avoid

It’s a tough blow to your ego to have to admit you can’t make payroll. Fears of being known as a failure run through your head. When you’re so emotional, make sure you don’t try to hide the situation and deal with it at the last minute. That only makes your employees’ lives harder and their reaction more negative.

Instead, be honest and tell them as soon as you know. It may not be pleasant, but they’ll respect you more for doing so. Also, do note you absolutely have to pay. If you don’t, you could face serious lawsuits and tax penalties. Your options at this point:

Hard money lending, which charges high interest rates
Offer payment discounts to vendors who owe you money if they pay today
Close up shop

To keep yourself from ever experiencing this situation, you can manage payroll online, tracking it precisely so you can anticipate potential problems and address them before they happen.

Hopefully you never have to face this situation—but if you do, these tips will help you find a way out.

About the Author: Carol Scott is an entrepreneur, business consultant & amateur podcaster.

Introducing The Recruiting Service Innovation Awards

Learn more about the Recruiting Service Innovation Awards from guest post author, Peter Weddle.

Look, I get it. You’re thinking that the last thing we need in recruiting is another award program. But, bear with me a minute while I explain the rationale for the Recruiting Service Innovation Awards – the ReSIs.

One of the oldest axioms in business, of course, is that “the customer is always right.” Not only about returns and complaints, but also about the way they are treated.

That’s at least part of the reason why the Candidate Experience Awards have gained so much attention so quickly.

But there’s a second business axiom that – though often ignored – is equally as important. Steven Covey put it best: “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” That’s why the ReSIs have been launched.

As Covey implied, you can’t optimize the candidate experience if you don’t first provide the tools for recruiters to perform at their peak. So the Recruiting Service Innovation Awards recognize sourcing and recruiting products and services that “optimize the recruiter’s experience.”

Now, some have said that such an award program is inappropriate because there are so many lousy products and services now being hocked to recruiters. But, that’s exactly why shining a spotlight on the best is so important. Moreover, selecting the best won’t be done by a bunch of pundits, but by recruiters. Winners will be determined by a Selection Committee composed of talent acquisition executives and verified by a survey of the recruiters who have actually used their tools.

Others have opined that such awards are just another way for vendors to “pay to play” – to buy the spotlight for their product or service. Not with the ReSIs. No company that nominates one of its resources can sponsor or in any way provide financial support to the ReSIs program. It is administered by the International Association of Employment Web Sites, and its Selection Committee is a totally independent entity.

But, there’s another reason for launching the ReSIs, and it goes to the heart of the challenges now facing many recruiting teams. You can’t turn on a cable business channel or read the business blogs on HuffingtonPost.com these days and not see some CEO beating his or her chest about how important talent is and how their employees are their most important asset.

But, then what happens? As soon as the camera lights are turned off or the blog has been ghost written, those same CEOs go back to their corner offices and slash the staff and budget of the recruiting team – the very group responsible for acquiring that talent.

So, the ReSIs are also a way of saying to CEOs – No more excuses! The products and services your recruiting team needs to perform at its peak are readily available. Enough with the PR; start walking the talk. Invest in your recruiting team.

For more information on the ReSIs, please visit http://www.employmentwebsites.org/recruiting-innovation-awards.

About the Author: Peter Weddle has been the CEO of three HR consulting companies, a Partner in the Hay Group and the recipient of a Federal award for leadership-related research. Described by The Washington Post as “… a man filled with ingenious ideas,” he has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, National Business Employment Weekly and CNN.com.

His most recent books include A Multitude of Hope: A Novel About Rediscovering the American Dream, The Career Fitness Workbook: How to Find, Win & Hang Onto the Job of Your Dreams, The Career Activist Republic and The Success Matrix: Wisdom from the Web on How to Get Hired & Not Be Fired.

Weddle is also the CEO of WEDDLE’s Research & Publishing, which specializes in employment and workforce issues and the Executive Director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, the trade organization for the global online employment services industry.

An Airborne Ranger, Weddle is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has attended Oxford University and holds advanced degrees from Middlebury College and Harvard University.

How To Tell If You’re Actually Employable

Wondering if you’re employable? Read this checklist from an HR source.

A few of us non-traditional, mold-breaker, non-conformist, square pegs in a land of round holes occasionally jokingly refer to ourselves as unemployable.

And, in certain ways that isn’t far from accurate.

If we look throughout history we find plenty of well-known business and leadership success stories that wouldn’t have been possible if those responsible didn’t push boundaries or shake a big stick in the direction of the status quo.

Yet examples like that tend to be anomalies in modern society.

As much as the concept is glamorized by prominent keynote speeches, in reality there doesn’t seem to be much tolerance for being different or thinking differently.

In the mainstream game we play in order to earn a paycheck to sustain ourselves, only the upper echelon of any given organization structure is permitted that type of behavioral leeway.

So why is it on the one side of the spectrum we celebrate, even worship innovators and brave souls that build, change and create, and on the other end, we force compliance, value complacency and foster a go-along-to-get-along mentality? The former certainly sounds more valuable to society as a whole. However the latter is more of a true reflection of the comfort zone we cling to in our contemporary work world.

That begs the question: beyond having a decent work-ethic and requisite knowledge, skills and abilities within one’s chosen occupation, what else does it take to obtain and maintain employment?

The majority of us would probably agree that most (perhaps all) final hiring decisions are primarily based on subjective criteria. Once the above baseline “qualifications” are established through analysis of objective data, all that remains are intangible factors that we process through our personal filters.

All else being relatively equal among available candidates that cross the initial threshold of proving their job-worthiness through ability, motivation, attitude and aptitude, open jobs eventually go to whoever is deemed the best fit. As in the third part of: who can do the job; who will do the job; and, who will we enjoy/tolerate working with in that job?

While the first two segments correlate to a reasonable assessment of employability, hiring decisions tend to be heavily weighted on the last part which is usually predicated on several ambiguous attributes ascertained through limited exposure.

That being the case, what DOES it mean to be employable?

From RecruitingBlogs.com.

About the Author: Leveraging her unique perspective as a progressive thinker with a well-rounded background from diverse corporate settings, Kelly Blokdijk advises members of the business community on targeted human resource, recruiting and organization development initiatives to enhance talent management, talent acquisition, corporate communications and employee engagement programs.

Kelly is an active HR and recruiting industry blogger and regular contributor on RecruitingBlogs.com. She also candidly shares opinions, observations and ideas as a member of RecruitingBlogs’ Editorial Advisory Board. F

ollow Kelly on Twitter @TalentTalks or connect with her on LinkedIn

Keeping It Real: 5 Rules for Social Media Engagement

Read these 5 rules for social media engagement and “keep it real”, yo.

I’m often told, and I’m actually not entirely sure what this means, that I “keep it real.”

While I think that phrase was fresh about the same time as the Prince of Bel Air, I also participated in a panel called “Keeping It Real in HR” at an annual SHRM Young Professionals national conference a few years back, so I’ll pour one out for Uncle Phil and own it.

I hate taking a compliment, particularly since most of what I do is predicated on pissing people off, which makes me feel way more comfortable (and, frankly, fulfilled) than when people say nice stuff.

Which might be why I rarely do, myself.

I was contacted by a friend and fellow recruiting industry observer the other day, who was offended by an anonymous Twitter account which, by all accounts, existed primarily for the purposes of flooding the back channel of an event with vitriolic attacks that, back before social media, used to be called libel.

I won’t do the dignity of acknowledging that account, or the specific circumstances behind it, but it directly addressed perhaps the fundamental problem, and my biggest pet peeve, with this whole social thing, particularly in an industry as insular as online recruiting and HR. It’s the antithesis of keeping it real; it’s more or less content cowardice.

Own your voice.

Don’t hide behind some silly avatar or snarky handle that only pops up once in a while, like digital herpes, to wreck havoc and disappear until the next hashtag rolls around. If you won’t put your name on it, then don’t put it out there on social. Period.

5 Rules for Social Media Engagement

Here are the basic rules of engagement for participating in the online HR and recruiting conversation:

1. Don’t sell your products or services without first adding value.

2. Disclose any or all agendas, and clearly identify whether or not you’re speaking as yourself or on behalf of a company.

3. Don’t make personal attacks – attacking products and sweeping archetypes like, “agency recruiters” or “HR generalists,” however, is OK. But if you ever actually call someone out, make sure you can back it up.

4. Don’t make noise for the sake of being heard.

5. Own everything you do.

That’s not hard. But when you choose to eschew a real byline for some silly persona (which, by the way, I can tell you can be done using an actual identify), then you’re not being a troll. You’re being a douche bag. And for an audience that mostly deals with candidates and hiring managers all day, there’s no need for more of that in this corner of the world of work.

I can think of a dozen people I know who do this crap off the top of my head, and the justification across the board is, “this way, I can say stuff I’d never be allowed to say if I revealed myself.”

That should be your first tip off right there – sure, you can spill the dirt about recruiting in a way that would be highly illegal if you didn’t hide behind an avatar, but if it’s a violation of what your professional ethics – which is implicit in anonymity – then you should probably stop right there.

Because when you go after people who have the cajones to actually use their real identity, you’re not only hurting feelings, you’re hurting livelihoods. I know of another instance where a completely separate fake account on a hashtag being monitored by a potential employer ended up in a candidate not getting a job offer because of what was likely intended as a joke.

But if you think jobs are a joke, and hide in fear of being found out instead of found online and in person, I’d suggest you’re likely in the wrong line of work. You should really consider going into a career in finance.

How To Use Other People’s Online Content

Not sure how to use other people’s online content without copyright infringement? We have your How To.

The Wire did a piece on who owns Ellen’s Oscar Selfie because it was Bradley Cooper, rather than Ellen, who took the picture. Philip Bump did a great job explaining the copyright issues with legal assists from some hot-shot Hollywood entertainment lawyers. But the question is really just for entertainment. It doesn’t matter who owns the Oscar Selfie. But do you know how to use other people’s online content without copyright infringement?

In this case, it has been copied, reproduced, and distributed so widely that if you haven’t seen it yet, you might check to see if you are breathing. So even if you owned it, who would buy it? Everyone already has it in one sense or another.

Second, it was taken to share on Twitter, and was immediately uploaded to the site. Twitter is public. When you post there, you give permission to everyone to retweet, i.e. copy your post. Here’s the specific language from the Twitter Terms of Service

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

While you have some control over who can retweet your posts and what posts can be retweeted, you cannot turn off all retweets on Twitter. So by posting and through your privacy settings (or lack of them), you consent to people copying your tweets.

The only time ownership of social media content really matters is when someone else is making money off your content without your permission. Even then, you usually have to show how it damaged you, not just that someone else used it and made money.

With the Oscar Selfie, everyone involved with it benefitted. Samsung, who made the phone that took the picture, was so delighted it is donating $3M to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and the Human Society ($1.5M each). And the phone wasn’t even in the picture (but the video of the picture being taken also went viral). So lots of kids and animals who had nothing at all to do with the Oscars will benefit. How cool is that?

While lawyers love to argue about who owns what and what rights may or may not be violated, the Oscar Selfie is a great example of when ownership doesn’t matter.

There are lots of things we technically own that don’t matter because nobody wants it, like your stinky socks, or because nobody cares, like the grass in your front yard.

Ownership is not always important, or even interesting.

That said, people do own their content online and just because it’s there, that doesn’t mean you can take it or use it for anything you want. Here is more on that in Social Media, Blogging, and Copyright

And here are my suggestions on how to properly use other people’s online content.

Excerpting a short quote with a mention of the author and a link to her or her original post is the proper way to use another blogger’s material. If you have copied more than about 15%, you’re pushing it. Copying the whole thing is illegal and a clear copyright violation.
Always link back to the original post. It is the proper way to give attribution of the author, and is important for blog traffic, which is what sponsors and advertisers look at in deciding whether to advertise. So if you don’t link back, you are also stealing traffic and advertising dollars.
If you want to use the whole thing, you need to get permission. It never hurts to ask, especially if you can bring an author a new audience or want to say really great things about him.
If you are using someone else’s photograph or image, it’s really hard to excerpt. So you should get permission if it is copyrighted or some copyrights are reserved. This includes Pinterest. The exception is images from catalogs or advertisements where you are essentially offering more exposure and advertisement for a company selling something. It’s still a copyright violation, but you’re actually doing them a favor, so no one is going to complain.

So when you use someone’s work on the internet, always give credit, don’t copy the whole thing, and always link to the original post. If you’re not sure, ask for permission.

This work was originally posted on HRExaminer & appears with express written permission of the author.

About the Author: Heather Bussing is an employment attorney and the Editorial Advisory Board editor at HR Examiner. Heather has practiced employment and business law for over 20 years. She has represented employers, unions and employees in every aspect of employment and labor law including contract negotiations, discrimination and wage hour issues. She regularly advises companies on personnel policies and how to navigate employment discipline and termination issues.

Heather also practices in the areas of real estate, torts, construction and business law including business entity formation and corporate governance. Lately, she has been working on projects involving social media law and why companies should treat their employees differently. She also teaches legal research and writing, is an accomplished photographer and walks on the beach whenever she can.

Heather lives with her two sons and partner in Northern California. Follow Heather on Twitter @HeatherBussing or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The Arrogance of Some Internal Recruiters

A story of a special interaction with an internal recruiter who couldn’t keep it real, inspired by #TruLondon.

After last weeks #TRULondon and a really enlightening track led by Matt Charney about blogging and “keeping it real,” I felt the need to share a recent experience with internal recruiters.

It went something like this.

“Isn’t it great when you get a call from someone who’s been recommended to you, from a client you’d like to work with, who has a new job they’d like your help with?”

Especially if they introduce themselves as “being ex agency, so I know how you guys work.”

No.

Not when he…

Makes it clear that he is doing you a favour by offering you the chance to work with him (I think he forgot that he called me).

Has no time to give you a brief but wants “a few CVs as soon as possible.”

Won’t let you talk to the hiring manager because he thinks he’s got to protect his power base.

Wants to talk about terms, but not yet. First he wants to “let’s see what you can do first, after all, any fee is better than no fee at all.”

Yeah, maybe in your world, sunshine.

I work with internal teams a lot. When it works well it’s a great relationship.

It’s great because they value your expertise and market knowledge (because they’ve been on the other side of the fence and done it well) and they want you to help them solve a problem.

They’ll give you all the information you need and encourage you to engage with hiring managers to make sure you understand exactly what’s required. They know that it’s in everyone’s best interests to work as a team. Especially the candidate’s best interests.

I have no doubt that this particular internal recruiter will find someone to work with – someone who’ll be happy to work blind, throw a few CVs around and pocket a fee if he gets lucky. There are plenty of recruiters like that out there – and I suspect the internal recruiter used to work that way himself.

If you’re working agency side, you should be proud, know your value and think about less about where your next fee’s coming from and more about how your next fee is coming in.

If you can’t do that, then maybe try to be an internal recruiter.

For more from Mark, check out his brand new blog.

About the Author: Mark Burton specializes in health, safety and environmental recruiting. He works successfully every day with companies from all industries, whether they’re seeking a graduate for an entry level job or a new Director or Head of HSE with a six figure salary. Mark has been working in health, safety and environmental recruitment for 14 years.

As well as actively recruiting at every level, he is a regular contributor to HSW Magazine, writing their “Ask The Recruitment Expert” column and have previously written and been asked to contribute to other leading journals, including the SHP and specialist environmental publications. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkBurton1973 or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Give Your Talent Attraction Program Some #SelfieEsteem

Oscars host Ellen Degeneres set a record for most retweets during the Oscars telecast. Photo: Twitter.com/TheEllenShow.

It was the “selfie” seen round the world – nearly 3 million RTs in 24 hours and it even temporarily BROKE Twitter. I put “selfie” in quotes because technically, the pic was actually an “usie” (which, by the way, is a “group selfie,” in case you’re tragically uncool or older than 20).

But either way, no matter what you want to call it, I thought it was kind of fantastic. And if you’re in employer branding or culture marketing, it’s something that you need to pay attention to – a reminder that when it comes to creating shareable content, you can’t have a meme without “me.”

I know what you’re thinking, but love them or hate them, you’ve got to face the fact that selfies (and usies) have become an integral part of the way we share and spread our experiences socially – and should be a core component of a well rounded, comprehensive talent attraction strategy.

After all, selfies & usies provide a powerful tool for humanizing your talent brand, offering glimpses into our culture & employees in a fun, relevant way that provides an authentic perspective into what it’s really like to work at a company – and the people who make that company a unique and compelling career destination.

Selfies are a great way to connect with candidates and make your culture brand immediately accessible and imminently transparent – even if this guerrilla style marketing technique is a staged part of a planned strategy. Here’s a bit of the backstory; after all, content only works with context.

Selfies: A Brief History

While the concept is anything but new – those of us old enough to have had to actually print our pictures remember have been setting a timer and running into the framing of our own photo for decades – the term “selfie” itself is a relatively young invention. In fact, the first ever #selfie (hashtag included) was uploaded on January 16, 2011.

Now, users have uploaded an estimated 83 million selfies on Instagram alone, and another 35 million on Twitter, with millions more added every month. There’s even been a #SelfieOlympics (which were actually more interesting than most of Sochi). Take a look at the photo population of these “secondary hashtags” appended to selfies across social networks:

#Selfies: 3,692,570 photos
#SelfieSunday: 2,025,077 photos
#SelfieSaturday: 358,421
#SelfieMonday: 62,395

The “selfie days” these hashtags suggest hold a special interest to me as a talent marketer. While Saturday normally doesn’t have a huge impact on talent attraction and acquisition, Sunday and Monday certainly do. Agency recruiters, after all, have long known that late afternoons on Sunday are one of the best times of the week to connect with potential candidates who, like most of us, are likely dreading going back to work and facing another Monday morning.

Which, of course, is when online and mobile traffic to job postings consistently hits its weekly peak (this actually occurs around 3 AM on Monday mornings, if you want to be specific). The candidate pool – and the likelihood that passive talent will be receptive and responsive to your message – is already high. Capitalizing on the power of selfies in the job search is, like everything else, all in the timing.

How To Use #Selfies In Your Talent Attraction Program

Selfies offer a great form of social proof that add depth and dimension to your existing talent brand assets. Having real employees – not actors, models or company spokespeople – send in selfies of themselves or usies of their colleagues and coworkers allow candidates to get a first person point of view into what it really looks like to work at a company. It allows them to self-identify with potential future co-workers in similar or desired roles and work situations, providing proof that your culture is what your career site copy actually advertises.

Sure, there are the obvious company outings & parties, events and coffee klatches – but giving your employees the freedom to snap their own pictures at their own desks or in common areas like a company gym or meeting room sends a powerful message about your company’s transparency and technology adoption, too – even if those aren’t the obvious subjects inherent to a #selfie.

Here are a few other tips for boosting your talent attraction program’s #SelfieEsteem:

1.Pass along helpful tips on how to take good pics to your employee groups & remember to establish “acceptable use” guidelines on what can & can’t be included in pictures.

2.Check with your legal team to ensure they don’t require releases even with employee submissions. And for campaign management for dispersed workforces? Take a look at MomentFeed.

3. Mostly, make it fun! Not only should you give your employees flexibility in the pictures they take and send, but find a way to share them. Post it to the company intranet or sharing tool like SocialCast, Sharepoint or Yammer, or even feature these images in traditional employee communications collateral like newsletters or branded brochures. If you’re having trouble getting employees to participate – which is often not a problem, given that recognition, in selfies as in everything else, provides its own reward – consider gamifying the process with friendly competitions for small prizes or allowing other employees to vote and comment on other #selfie submissions.

To attract talent, you need to speak to them in a way that shows you understand them & are in touch with their world. Selfies and Usies are a brilliant branding tool because it not only fulfills both of these goals, but does so without portraying your culture as something its not, because it lets your candidates see potential future coworkers and colleagues through the lens of current employees’ trusted eyes.

If you want to give your talent attraction programs a shot of #SelfieEsteem, consider simply turning the camera around, have a little fun, and don’t forget the flash!

About the Author: Crystal Miller is a strategist with AT&T and has nearly a decade of recruitment marketing and digital strategy experience. In addition, she has led both the internal HR function for a regional $350MM business and the largest real estate recruiting practice for the leading single-site search firm in the United States. Miller has worked with start-ups to Fortune 5 companies to create and execute compelling recruitment marketing & employer branding campaigns.

She has been a reliable expert source on the topics of talent attraction, talent acquisition, talent management, and digital strategy for multiple media outlets including CBS, Hanley-Wood, Mashable, and ABC. As an industry leader, she is recognized for expertise in recruitment, recruitment marketing, social media, social communities, talent pipelining, and digital strategic solutions and speaks globally on the same.

Follow Crystal on Twitter @TheOneCrystal or connect with her on LinkedIn.