Facebook Recruiting App: The Absolute Hands Down Best Way To Do It

This is my idea for a facebook recruiting application. I offered it to hotjobs while I was there but they didn't want it. They decided to go with this, which I guess makes sense since the company needs to be focused on job seekers.

Me, I was selling to HR Directors, so I was focused on them and I think this app would deliver what they need: highly targeted, applies and career site traffic from their employees referral networks and referral program compensation and motivation.

5 Social Media Tips for Recruiters, a la Obama

I’m not gonna get political here except to say that McCain is old as dirt. He knows nothing about the economy and even if he brings in Romney to be VP, I don’t think he would relinquish much control to the VP office.

As for Obama, his campaign’s been impressive at marketing the candidate but I’m afraid he’s just a bunch of hot air. Sure he gives a great speeches but I could see his lack of experience lead to the reversal of some policies that I believe are keeping us safe at home and my PATH train from blowing up as I commute to NYC every morning.

But I digress… the reason for this post is to point out a move by the Obama campaign to leverage social media to engage voters and drive site traffic; something employers need to better understand as they look to engage talent and drive traffic to their career sites.

If you’re looking for new ways to attract and engage talent and drive that talent to your career site to apply to jobs, watch and video or further engage in your employer brand in some other way, take a tip from the Obama camp. Leverage LinkedIn Answers.

What is Obama doing?
His campaign is asking questions related to their agenda. This is building interest in Obama, engaging voters, attracting them to the campaign’s site and probably generated new fund raising leads. Obama's question is currently featured on LinkedIn users' homepages. It leads to this question which links to this landing page on the Obama site.

What can employers do?
Simple. Here are 5 Social Media Tips for Recruiters looking to leverage LinkedIn Answers.

1. Be active in the LinkedIn Answers community and add value

Being an active member provides credibility. Remember, answering questions often provides better site traffic and branding than asking questions. Don’t ask questions like, ‘Anyone want to work in sales.’ Only answer questions if you can offer a decent answer.

2. Always include a link to your career site or relevant landing page

The Obama camp linked to a landing page with a lead generation for and video. This is a perfect example of what to do.

3. Never pitch.

We know. Your company is a great place to work. I’ll figure that out on my own. Let your answers stand on their own.

4. Try to get your employees involved, measure success and reward

Install analytics on your site so that you can see where you traffic is coming from, when an employee is responsible for answering a question and leading traffic to your career site, compensate him/her. Bonus the employee if he/she achieves an expert rating in any category.

It’s not as hard as you think to put value on career site traffic. Think about it. You can look into your job board stats and payments and figure out what you pay monster, cb or hotjobs per job view or site visitor.

Look into it. Figure out what you’re currently paying per visitor. Set aside some budget, taken from your job boards. Id suggest taking it from monster since hotjobs and cb are beating up on them and are therefore less flexible to day with pricing.

Take that added budget, put it aside for rewarding your employees’ efforts in linkedin answers that drive traffic to your career site. Review traffic at the end of the quarter and compensate those employees whom were most active or whom generated the most traffic.

5. Monitor the LinkedIn Answers RSS feed for terms related to your niche

With rss you can keep tabs on the questions and answers that are most valuable to you and most likely to provide the best return. Subscribe the high value feeds. This will keep you from having to search for topics all the some and sift through the same clutter.

That’s it.

Yahoo! Answers works well too, but I’ve found the LinkedIn audience to be less spammy, more engaged and more qualified.

If you have questions or something to add about your own experience with recruiting with social media and answer service like these, be sure to comment.

You can read the my answers on LinkedIn Answers here.

Jobster’s new direction

With Jason Goldberg out and former investment banker Jeff Seely in as CEO, Jobster is heading down a new path. It will be interesting to see what a company so well funded does competing with a class of companies marginally funded in comparison.

In December ’07 on Jobster’s blog Goldberg made a reference to the new direction…

‘We've also recently entered into some truly game-changing partnerships to enable large publishers and website operators to build their own career networking services utilizing Jobster's technology. We'll be announcing the first of these partners and launching their sites in early 2008.’ continue reading.

Today those, ‘game-changing partnerships’ are a little more transparent, though to my knowledge; Jobster has yet to announce a single partner.

Variety is an early partner. In February ’08 Variety sent an email to registered users announcing its new site called, The Biz…

‘The new site (Called The Biz) will be a business networking site encompassing careers, community and content. Users will be able to upload profiles, photos, portfolios, videos and more.

A cross between Facebook®, IMDb® and Linkedin®, The Biz will connect professionals and enthusiasts within the entertainment industry and encourage people to network, exchange ideas, search for jobs and recruit new talent!!’

A partnership with The Wall Street Journal may also be in the works. Multiple sources confirm that Jobster has either secured that partner or is working hard to land it.

With Jobs representing such a significant portion of online advertising, monetizing career sites has become the trendy and smart thing to do if you’re a niche publisher.

Just ask MediaBistro or Nielsen. Each is a niche publisher. Each has aligned its business for better monetization of its career site. Each has hired top producing Yahoo! HotJobs sales talent to lead its recruitment media sales efforts.

Nielsen's jobs sites like adweekjobs.com and editorandpublisherjobs.com run on adicio. I’m not sure about MediaBistro’s career site. 

Not surprising, top blogs are well into the, 'monetize your career site,' movement. Paidcontent, Read/WriteWeb and Slashdot are all powered by JobThread. GigaOm is using Simply Hired. Techcrunch is powered by PersonForce.

This trend and this new direction represents a growth opportunity for Jobster. One that places Jobster in direct competition with each of the above mentioned players, plus Beyond.com.

In March ’07, Beyond landed $13m round of funding. It’s the only competitor besides Simply Hired to land a multimillion-dollar round.

Beyond and the field are bringing job postings and job boards to niche publishers and blogs, much like Yahoo! HotJobs is to hundreds of local newspapers.

What differentiates Jobster is the fact that it’s bringing social networking (for career opportunities) to these niche sites which may lead to a more engaging experience for the publications’ audiences (a.k.a niche passive talent) and therefore more opportunities for employers to attract, engage and hire that talent.

90% of people looking for a job change don't put their resume on a Portal - Is this true?

This qustion was asked on LinkedIn Answers. I took a shot at it. I don't think its true. What do you think?

The Question

90% of people looking for a job change don't put their resume on a Portal - Is this true?
In other words, just about 10% of people looking for a job change put their resume on a portal. For a search firm like us, this means that the bulk of our sourcing efforts must be towards cold calling and head hunting.

My Answer

Not accurate.

Yahoo! HotJobs has over 20m resumes. Monster claims over 40m (i think). If CareerBuilder has 20m (I have no clue what they claim to have.) That would be 80m claimed resumes online by the top 3 job sites.

When you take into account people using more than 1 site, the number of unique resumes would surly drop. comScore says dual usage is between 30-40%. So, of the 80m resumes we’re talking about, about 52m would be unique.

Now…what % is that 52m of the US work capable and job searching population?

The US population is 303m (wikipedia). So, approx 17% of the US population has their resume on these sites.

But, don’t forget to take into account that large portions of the US population can not work...elderly, children, disabled, etc. This skews that 17% representation.

In reality I think the % of people looking for a job and putting their resume online is much higher than that.

Now take into account the fact that not all able bodied Americas are looking for a job. Most are passive.

That leaves a small group active in its job search. My guess is that at least 35 to 40% of this group has their resume online.

Just a guess.

What do you think?

Cheezman & JGobin...a la The Chad

Question
What do you do when you find yourself laughing from The Chad's post, 'Holy web 2.0 Batman!!'?

Answer
You do what every self-respecting web 2.0 recruitment blogger would do. You enter the conversation and put your photoshop skills to work.

You fire up your search engine and start searching for pics. Thanks to flickr which retured this pic of joel and this one of, 'JGo, '(jason goldberg) I present you Cheezman and JGobin...

Jobster's Facebook App, Fashionably Late and Best Dressed

If Jobster’s Facebook app tells us anything about the state of Jason Goldberg’s union, it…is…strong; albeit a little buggy.

Jobster’s Facebook app marries what it does well (talent networks) with that which Facebook does well (distribution) to effectively connect employers with the less-active and unique talent on Facebook. These two systems, Facebook & Jobster, working together is exactly the kind of innovation that I was hoping to see come from our space when Facebook opened its platform. I’m glad to see it and looking forward to watching this trend evolve.

As it stands Jobster’s app is a little buggy and it lacks some simple functionality that could make it much better. Still, it’s impressive.

Jason Goldberg’s team was not the first to launch a Facebook app for recruiting. That was LinkedIn, followed by Indeed and Simply|Hired. None of the Big3 has yet to launch anything. Though rumors and speculation lead me to believe we can expect to hear something soon from this group. ;)

Considering the timing of Jobster’s app release and its unique use of Facebook’s functionality, I’d say that the Jobster app is fashionably late to the party and best dressed.

Jobster takes full advantage of the functionality that the Facebook platform provides. It’s app is growing virally on the Facebook network with a social function where users can ask friends for work advice. The app leverages that on-network viral growth by connecting prospects with employers off the network. That’s taking full advantage.

The other recruiting applications currently on Facebook fail to take full advantage. Simply|Hired’s app does one thing well. Though it doesn’t even have anything to do with the company's biz model. Indeed’s app simply adds indeed job searching to Facebook and LinkedIn adds absolutely no new functionality to Facebook.

Jobster's app is the fastest growing recruiting app on Facebook. It's adding 8 times as many new users daily as #2 Simply|Hired.

According to data supplied by Appaholic, Jobster is averaging 372 new users daily vs. Simply|Hired’s 46.

How the app works
Read Jason Goldberg’s blog for a detailed overview of functionality. link

The quick over
When a prospect installs the app she is invited to join any of the listed 200+ employers’ talent networks. In doing so, she shares some info such as her email address, location and keywords to indicate her interests, skills sets, industry, occupation etc. That data along with the prospect's email address is shared with the employer. No apply. No resume. Just a connect.

With this connect the candidate becomes part of the employer’s ‘talent network,’ and the employer can market its relative jobs and employment brand message to her.

Conclusion
Jobster is getting Facebook right. This innovation is addressing a need. It's customer facing and a welcome change for our industry. Hopefully this is a sign of more to come from Jobster and our industry as a whole.

Btw, in testing I opt’d in to Jobster’s talent network. The keyword I used to express the sort of job that I might be interested in was, ‘CEO’. I have not been contacted.

Related:

• Jobster And Facebook: Astounding Results
• Jobster Talent Network + Facebook Application = Better Results
• I Just Joined Facebook
• Facebook's (Evil?) Application Strategy
• Recruiting on Facebook
• Jobster Launches New Facebook Application, "Employer Talent Networks"
• Initial Stats on Jobster's Facebook Application
• The Jobster Facebook Excitement Continues
• Employer Talent Networks on Facebook, Week 2

New Jobster Facebook app on its way

This from today's press release...

'...Jobster and Alexander Mann Solutions are also collaborating on a unique Facebook application to help UK employers gain access to the valuable Facebook social network audience.'

If the application adds new functionality to Jobster, I'll review it here.

It's worth mentioning that Jobster's group has north of 28,000 members. If the company can pull that much interest to its app, it would dwarfLinkedIn's 615 users and Simply|Hired's 403.

Facebook recruiting apps, simply|hired & linkedin

Update, 10/09/08: For the best way to utilize facebook for recruiting, check out: Facebook Recruiting App: The Absolute Hands Down Best Way To Do It

Simply|Hired's Facebook app called,'Workin' It!' is quickly catching up with LinkedIn's, 'My Company's Hiring,'
in number of users.

* charts provided by Appoholic

Something is mixed up here. LinkedIn, the social networking site released a job posting application and Simply|Hired, the job search engine released a social networking application.

Related:

• LinkedIn Launches Facebook App
• The Yahoo! Music Facebook app
• Want to leverage social networking for your international recruiting initiatives? This map will help...
• Facebook and Online Recruiting, Poking for Talent
• Yahoo! 360 is the 2nd most popular social network among the business professionals (passive talent)

Want to leverage social networking for your international recruiting initiatives? This map will help...

Orkut is tops in Brazil. Facebook owns Canada and Myspace reigns supreme in the U.S.(but apparently not in all demographics). By the way, don't sleep on Yahoo! 360.

It's also interesting to note that what brought down Friendster was the fact that the bulk of its traffic came from the Philippines. They found this out a little too late.

Don't worry. You don't have to be up on the global market penetration of social networks to plan your international recruiting strategy. Just save this map. (hat tip | hat tip)

Related:

• Yahoo! 360 is the 2nd most popular social network among the business professionals (passive talent)
• Social Recruitment Advertising for Sales
• Where can you find millennial males online? The answer might surprise you.

Where can you find millennial males online? The answer might surprise you.

Yahoo! reaches 77 percent of online males ages 18-24. (comScore MediaMetrix, April 2007)

...and with Yahoo! Recruitment Advertising, you can brand to and attract local millennials on sites like, Yahoo! Sports, News, Finance, Mail, the New HotJobs.com or OMG etc.

Related:

• Hey HR, want more Recruiting budget?
• The Millennial Question, by Dan Taylor
• Canadian Forces Recruitment Video
• Job Blogger increases applications 50% YoY, SMS