Linkedin Recruitment: Sourcing Monkeys, Ninjas & Village Idiots

Social networks can be funny old places, and while Linkedin's professional leanings clearly differentiate it from places like Bebo, Facebook and Myspace, it can also throw up some suprising (and often amusing) search results.

While doing some research for my next round of Linkedin Training Webinars I came across a profile whose current position was "Office skivvy". Now, aside from wondering what their employers position would be on this, it got me curious as to the other "unusual" job titles I might find...

A quick search turned up some amusing results, here are the numbers along with some of my favourites...

169 users with "monkey" in their job title, including the fantastic "Monkey - With delusions of being an Organ Grinder"

32 Ninjas.

14 idiots, including Chief Idiots, Founder Idiots, Big Idiots, Little Idiots and of course, a Village Idiot.

16 Skivvies.

130 Tea Boys & 6 Tea girls.

Now a large percentage of these profiles are very limited and have clearly been set up and forgotten about without the intention of really using the network, but a worrying number are much more complete and seem to have fairly active users. The million dollar question from an employers point of view is whether this admittedly minor trend can be flipped on it's head to make a vacancy stand out from the crowd.

In tomorrow’s posting I will show you how you can use some of the “stand out” job titles like Ninja and Guru to make your advert jump off the page. I will also highlight some of the pitfalls of this technique.

Facebook Plots World Domination – What does it mean for Online Recruitment & Social Recruiting?

I have just finished reading an interesting article, based on a presentation at Facebook’s F8 conference, about how Facebook wants to make social connections as commonplace as hyperlinks. An understandable position for the world’s largest social network to take. But what is interesting is the method they've chosen. They are making it far easier for websites of all sizes to integrate the “like” function into their site. I checked out this article on CNN and found the Facebook thumbs up symbol at the bottom of the article.




So what does this mean for recruitment?

Well I don’t think you will see this thumbs up on Monster just yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out. It does not seem such a logical leap to let your social community know you found a job you like, in the same way that if you read an interesting article, you might want to share this with your network. Your network of friends, colleagues probably have similar interests to you. Do they have the same professional aspirations, skills, experience? Seems less likely. So sharing jobs, will for now stay limited to the one-to-one option of “send this job to a friend”, rather than the one-to-many “share with network” option.

So what does this mean for the future?

Well I think I need to clarify first that I am not an expert on Facebook or Social Recruiting. But the whole point of a blog is to give your opinion and no one really knows how this will pan out.

Here is my best guess.

This move by Facebook is not aimed at recruitment, but the internet in general. That means every site you visit could potentially integrate with facebook. Leaving aside the good/bad argument, this means corporate careers sites, job boards, job board aggregators etc are all potential partners to Facebook in the advancement of its network. I believe the vast majority of recruitment sites will integrate with facebook in some fashion. It may not be a thumbs up, and many Facebook users may not want to involve their Facebook network in their job hunt, but it will be an option and Job Boards in particular will be paying close attention to how this area develops.

Glassdoor.com - Employees & Interviewees Anonymously Rate Your Organisation

Almost the end of the January and my first post of the year, oh dear. Got some ground to make up so expect to see some more posts soon. First I thought I would share Glassdoor with you. The site gives employees a free inside look at 70,000 firms. you can access anonymous reports by people who have (or at least claim to have) been interviewed or worked for these organisations.

There reviews are tend to be posted by fair minded professional types and companies could also use this as a good way to gain some feedback on the salaries, interview process and organisation in general.

However, there are some less professional reviews, this one is my favourite so far based on Somerfield. This is a cracking quote from one former employee "Pros: 10% discount straight from the off on all items in store apart from cigarettes. I was late a lot and they barely noticed (this could also be a con).". Advice to senior mgt "Quit.". Hardly sounds like the ideal employee.

If you are a inhouse recruiter reading this you might be a little worried. However, social media has a habit of promoting the great and exposing the weak. So if you have a great company culture and your staff love the company. Send them an email and ask them to add some feedback.

There are not too many UK reviews so for some profiles one review will be the only review a new employee would see. Best to get in early. If you can get some good reviews then make sure you add a link to your profile on your careers page and into your interview pack so new employees see them.

Job Baskets: The Reason Recruiters Get Spammed with Irrelevant CVs

I was speaking with The IT Job Board earlier this week and they highlighted to me that they do not have a job basket function on their website. This may seem a small issue, but it is a fairly radical departure from the norm. Most job boards know that many recruitment agencies and corporate recruiters struggle to record the origins of the hires they make. Many of them seem to end up judging job boards based on the number of applications they to send to them. The IT Job Board takes the view that they would rather encourage strong applications rather than lots of applications, and I congratulate them on such an approach. Interestingly, their application numbers are not bad and we have already made placements from their service.

We have a strong applicant tracking system in place, from Hireserve, and record where each hire comes from as well as how many completely irrelevant CVs we see. This means we can focus our efforts on the right job boards as well as quickly reach decisions on new job boards we trial.

But going back to my original point, as many job boards know that their customers struggle to track applications from their board through to hire, they make sure they encourage as many applications from their job seekers as possible, to ensure their stats look good when its time to review and renew contracts.

How do they keep the applications as high as possible? They have a job basket. Some job seekers are selective in their approach, while others will throw every single job that comes back from their search into the basket and apply. Ironically, many job seekers experience the same issue in reverse when recruiters spam out their one job to 200 people from their database who happen to have one keyword on their CV.

It's also worth noting that some job boards have taken the approach of encouraging a "one click apply" system, just in case loading several jobs into a basket and a multiple application process is too timely.

In the current climate, none of the other recruiters I meet are complaining that they do not get enough applications. Plenty are complaining about the quality of their applications, and almost everyone is complaining about too many applications. Everyone that is, except me. I am a realist. I know that many of the new clients that come to us do so because having to wade through the crazy amount of irrelevant applications is simply not feasible in the modern-day, lean recruitment dept. If they do manage to review every CV, then they struggle to reply back to all candidates, perform proactive searches of online CV databases and social networking sites such as Linkedin. So I can understand why easywebrecruitment looks an attractive proposition, but I would say that, wouldn't I?

Viva la Job Basket!

New Online Recruitment Training Dates Announced

Our free online recruitment training sessions have just gone nationwide. As I look at our Eventbrite account we have 36 events taking place between now and March. Starting in Birmingham tomorrow.

If you want to find out how to recruit for free via social networks like Linkedin and Facebook. Or maximise your return on investment when you post adverts to job boards. We run our half day sessions to between 12-20 direct recruiters at time and we have had some really positive feedback so far.

Here is a full list of dates and a short video giving an example of just one of the tips we look to give away in the session.