A new community for job seekers and employers/recruiters

Do you use Google+?

Google+ is quickly developing and you might be missing out on opportunities if you don't have a presence there.

Not another social media channel?!

You would be forgiven for thinking this, but Google+ is now the second largest social network after Facebook, so shouldn't be ignored. After all, most people use Google's search engine as their first choice, so why not embrace it? 

I wrote a small piece on Google+ in my previous post "A brief introduction to social networks."

The pros and cons of having a Google+ account are topics for another blog post, but from a personal point of view, I would advise everyone to at least try it out.

Welcome to the UK jobs, Jobseekers & Recruiters Community

I've created a new Google+ community to help job seekers and employers get in contact with each other.

There is going to be much more to it than job adverts though. I want to make it a one stop shop for all the advice and information that you will ever need to find a job, whether online or offline.

It is in it's early days and the number of members is increasing. 

I would love it if you would consider joining the community over on Google+.

Visit the Uk jobs, jobseekers & Recruiters community here

Introductions

Introduction

Hello and thank you for calling by!

My name is Tony and I'm your host:

Why the post?

I read a lot of blog posts about various subjects. One thing I've noticed though is that I don't often know much about who actually created the post.

I want to make sure that you have a little bit more information on who I am, to help you see where I'm coming from in my posts. 

About me

I live in West Yorkshire (UK) and work in Manchester as an in-house Talent Atraction & Selection Advisor (Recruiter!). I've been doing this now for about 9 years, having worked in sales before that.

I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge on the use of social media and digital approaches for recruitment and also for marketing purposes. For me, both of these purposes are very similar and by approaching recruitment as a sales function a lot can be achieved.

What to expect from this blog

I'll try to keep everything as lighthearted and as informative as I can.

The majority of my posts will be geared towards the recruitment implementations of social & digital media.

I have 2 main aims for this blog:

• Helping job seekers approach their online job search and secure a new role
• Help employers/recruiters find and engage suitable candidates

Please let me know if there are any topics that you would like covering though!

Connect with me

As I'm such a big fan of social media, you'll find me on most of the platforms available!

For those of you who stick to the main 4 though, please feel free to connect with me using the details below:

LinkedIn: Connect

Google+: Join me

Facebook: Connect
Twitter: Follow me

I'm unemployed - Do I need a LinkedIn profile?

 

Yes!

There's no point in beating around the bush here. Most employers and recruitment agencies are now looking to find new staff on LinkedIn.

Whether your unemployed, or employed and looking for future opportunities, LinkedIn is important

You are missing out on possible opportunities if you aren't on there.

I don't use Facebook or Twitter, so why do I need LinkedIn?

Think of it as an investment in the future of your career.

Yes, this does also include the people who may think that they are in the Twilight years of their career!

As more and more recruiters use LinkedIn, there is a good chance that they will rely less on the more traditional places that they used to find candidates i.e. CV libraries.

Be lazy…..

I don't think there are many people out there who haven't had to suffer the difficulties of applying for a vacancy online! Every company has a different system, most of which take ages to complete!

You need to attach a covering letter, possibly optimised for certain industry keywords to get through the automated sift on the ATS.

You "tailor" your application to each vacancy, again in a vain attempt to get through the infamous "ATS"!

YOU'RE DOING THE WORK HERE!!

Why not spend some time setting up a LinkedIn profile? You can included all of your achievements, experiences, qualifications & keywords and then let the Recruiter come to you?!?!

……and also make it easy for them!

I can't speak for every recruiter out there, but would hazard a guess that LinkedIn is likely to be their first place to search when they are given their requisition. Most have paid good money for a Recruiter licence, so will be likely to justify that by making LinkedIn priority.

Make the most of this opportunity and make it easy for them to find you!

There are hundreds of blog posts out there which explain in detail exactly how to "optimise" your profile, so do a bit of research before you start. It's well worth the time invested!

Everyone I see on there is more Senior to me!

You're correct! There seem to be  a lot of more "senior" staff on LinkedIn. There are lots more people joining who may be considered as entry level too. Bear in mind though - who ultimately makes the hiring decisions? It's not usually the entry level people !

Create your profile and get involved with the senior people. You'll get used to how they work and what their mind-set is like. That way, the next time you're interviewed by one of them, it'll just be like speaking to them on LinkedIn!

You never know who will see your profile on LinkedIn and where this might take you! You may well get referred and go onto much bigger things than you originally thought!

You have nothing to lose..

It is another social platform, at the end of the day, but if you want to start you career, or develop what you already have, then you really need to pay LinkedIn some attention!

What now?

Create that LinkedIn profile and start interacting with people! You'll be surprised how many people that you already know who are on there!

You can connect with me by clicking on the link : Link to Tony

An Introduction to Twitter

Twitter

The Twitter format is quite different to the social networks previously mentioned i.e. Facebook.

It is a micro-blogging site and is free to set up an account.

Basically, this means it is similar to a blog, but you are limited to how much text you can “tweet”. (140 characters) This includes any links to other sources of information

Twitter has approximately 555 million registered users and 182 million unique visitors per month.

Facebook connections are made by invitations, but on Twitter you are free to “follow” anyone, so Twitter is a little more liberal.

There is a definite plus side to this when it comes to recruitment, as very large networks can be produced in a short amount of time. There is a definite argument over whether quality is better than quantity with the numbers of followers though. (Most “Tweeps”, which means Twitter people, can’t resist the urge to collect the highest number of followers!!)

There can also  be a downside to having a lot of followers, as the number of tweets coming through and your feed can suddenly become noisy

There are a few additional features to Twitter:

• Hashtags (#tags) - using a # tag you can highlight a word or phrase and make it more visible to the rest of the network. Trends are created based on the number of times a #tag is used.
• @ mentions - every user has a username, marked with  @user_name. This makes it easier to find people when searching. It can also be sued to highlight their name in a tweet, so they can be included.
• Direct messages (DMs) can be sent to anyone who is also following you and “following back” is one of the unwritten rules on Twitter.
• Retweets (RTs) - If you like a tweet that you see, you can RT it and share it with your followers. This can be very viral!

Some companies use the twitter feed as a jobs board, posting nothing but job ads, but these can also be useful for job seekers.

Recent additions to Twitter have been geo-location (very useful for narrowing down job ads for job seekers to particular areas) and Twitter “cards”. Cards are the most recent addition and are part of the “extended tweets” approach that Twitter are now using.

The 140 character limit can be slightly limiting, so the developers at Twitter have now made extensions, such as being able to include media links and extended tweets to show photo attachments.

The strategies and approaches for using Twitter for recruiters and job seekers, are different to Facebook, so I’ll cover these later.

That’s a very brief introduction to Twitter, as it is quite a simple system, although the strategies used to make it  effective are quite in depth. I’ll be moving onto those in a later post, so bear with me and we’ll get there! It will definitely be worth the wait though, so click the “follow” button, so that you won’t miss out!

Next time I’ll move onto “Blogs and blogging”, so I’ll see you then :-)

Please let me know your thoughts on my blog s

A very brief introduction to social networks

Social Networks

Today I’ll focus on the social networks. Although there are a multitude of them out there to choose from, I’ll stick to the mainstream ones for the sake of this post. It doesn’t take much of a search online to find out exactly how many others there are out there though!

<ahref="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-networking-users.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-networking-users.jpg" alt="User Activity Comparison Of Popular Social Networking Sites" width="580" /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a

Facebook is by far the number 1 social network in existence.

• 901 million monthly active users and 500 million mobile users.
• 7 billion unique monthly visitors
• Average time spent per user per month - 405 minutes
• 3.2 billion “likes” and comments per day
• 300 million photos uploaded each day
• 125 billion friendships

When asked for examples of social networks, Facebook is usually the first one that comes to mind. Especially after its flotation on the stock exchange and subsequent exposure in the press recently.

As you can see by the information above and the infographic, it is a giant compared to the other social networks.

Some of Facebook’s strengths lie in the fact that not only can you keep up to date with your contacts via the status updates, but you can also post various types of media onto your profile i.e videos, photos etc. and share them amongst your contacts.

Facebook applications are popular and are also a very good revenue generator for developers and Facebook alike. Usually very addictive, but simple in format, these games’ trends and popularity tend to ebb and flow! One thing you can be sure of though is that there is always a multitude of status updates from the popular game at that time!

In my opinion Facebook is a great tool for keeping in touch with friends and family and also those friends that you may have lost touch with.

Recruiters and companies are now starting to use Facebook much more to source candidates for their roles and this will definitely become more prominent, as the massive amount of data available to Facebook (courtesy of it’s users) can help laser target the advertising efforts, resulting in saved time and better response.

From a candidate point of view, this is also particularly helpful, as they can be assured that any adverts they see have already been “custom fit” to their profile.

Facebook also an option to set up fan pages, which are a very popular option for some of the larger companies, such as coca cola etc. These are mainly used for general customer/ candidate engagement and advertising purposes, but will also develop and expand as time goes on.

Facebook is constantly developing its offering to keep up with user demand and trends, so keep watching this space for further developments..   

Google+ hasn’t been around for anywhere near as long as Facebook, having only launched from beta in September 2011,but still has a very strong and growing audience.

• 90 million monthly active users and still growing quickly
• 61 million unique visitors per month

Google+ integrates with the other Google products, so is gradually becoming a “one stop shop” for a full browsing experience. Why have several products open in different browsers, when you can have access to your social network (Google+), your work/studies (Google docs), Calendar, YouTube, Google Reader (for news)  and the rest (!), all in one product!!

The speed of growth would suggest that Facebook has some competition on it’s way, but for the time being Google+ still has work to do to catch up.

One of the strengths of Google+ is the option to build “circles”. This is a great way of separating your contacts into different groups, so work and play can be kept apart, if that is how you want to work with your social networks.

Company pages are also starting to pop up and the recruitment community are now starting to use Google+ as another source for searching for candidates. Google has probably the largest data set on its users’ browsing habits, so when this is truly embraced, the whole recruitment process for candidate and company alike, will be very streamlined. This may be some time off, but early adopters on both sides will have the advantage when the software is developed to make the mobile application process smoother and easier.

As with Facebook, watch this space, as no doubt there will be much more to come!

LinkedIn is the social network for professionals and businesses. It is great for networking and keeping in touch with your business contacts.

• Approx 147 million registered users
• 85.7 million unique monthly visitors

LinkedIn allows users to make “connections” with each other and allows you to see how many degrees of separation your are from other users (up to 3 degrees).

Although it is advertised as a social network and not a job board, the platform lends itself very well for recruitment purposes.

Companies can set up pages and job feeds and can directly approach connections with information. It is a strong tool in the recruiter’s toolbox, particularly for more specialist and senior roles.

The users tend to be in more “senior” positions on LinkedIn, which might explain this, but as with the other networks, as it grows, this may change as the demographics change.

Both Job seekers and recruiters can upgrade their accounts, which gives extra search tools and various other options to increase their chances of achieving their results, but these come at a premium. Basic accounts are free though and once you know your way around, they offer pretty much everything you would need.

The others

Myspace was one of the first social networks online, but its popularity has waned over the last few years with the massive growth of Facebook. It is still popular as a social entertainment network, where users and music acts, share media. It is jointly owned by Justin Timberlake and Specific media who made the purchase in June 2011.

Bebo was set up in 2005 and is very similar to Facebook. It never had the popularity though and has not kept up with the growth of the other networks.

Well that’s a brief introduction to each of the main social networks. Next time I’ll introduce Twitter..........

How to post a vine movie on to Facebook

It's taking Twitter by storm, but there are rumours that Facebook has blocked the clips.

Whilst this may be true for downloading straight from the vine app, there is a way to get around this an still post onto facebook!

It's so simple!

1.Save the clip onto your camera roll when it's completed in vine.

2. Log onto your Facebook account and "upload photo/video"

That's it! As long as you're not using a vine link, you're all clear

Thanks for reading and please press the like & share buttons!

Comments would also be great :D

Welcome to a new world in Recruitment and marketing!

Welcome! You're here for a very good reason! You're wondering what the future is for social media. In particular you may want to know how to improve your own efforts and make it more effective for whatever your main purpose may be. This blog has been set up and will be run to enable me to give you all the advice and information to make sure your efforts are rewarded. Please let all of your social contacts know about this blog as I'll be sharing everything with you! I look forward to the future of the social world online and can't wait to share it all with you........ Until next time, Tony