“We’ve seriously sold our souls to the internet, ….and it seems that now we are buying them back. Our need and desire to be individualistic and expressive about our lives, photos, feelings and views, is the price we have paid.”

In the New Age of Social Media, it seems that nearly everyone is on board. Instead of having phone call conversations with one good friend once per week, we now have an unlimited “life-feed” of information available to us at the click of a mouse. WE can monitor the lives, updates, events, promotions, photos and status of hundreds of people per day, freely and easily. And WE’RE not the only one’s monitoring. In fact an industry has been created to delve into social media to gather what we once thought to be private, AND another industry has arise to clean up those little secrets you wish never got online.

Photos of new babies, broadcasts of new jobs landed, current moods and descriptive locations. All right there, for everyone to see, everyone that is looking. And by this, we can safely put Recruiters at the top of this list.

The great debate about whether or not it is an invasion of privacy to search someone’s social networking site for ‘character analysis’ of a candidate –has fallen on deaf ears.

Recent Studies have shown that more than 45 percent of employers and recruiters use Facebook or Twitter to screen job candidates. And this number is only growing. Whether it is considered ‘constitutionally right’ for a manager or boss to search Adam Jones’ linked-in profile, Facebook wall or Twitterfeed, after their interview has ended..doesn’t stop the actual act from happening. And it is a strong argument, upheld. Sure, Adam comes in with his perfect 4.0 GPA, impeccable references, polite manners and a relentless outlook of optimism. But not so behind the scenes in the land of the World Wide Web…there are photos of Adam doing kegstands at his Memorial Day weekend party, and doing belly shots off a scantily clad bartender– A huge departure from what the hiring Manager was shown just hours before in their ‘face to face’ interview. Further research found Adam’s twitter account had several racially charged insults and jokes, safely hidden behind the Twitter username RockStar88, still originating from the mind/heart/belliefs of Adam Jones nonetheless.

Kicking the Tires:

Just as any educated consumer would use a service such as a www.Carfax.com report to know where a used car has been, how many times the engine has been rebuilt, how many different owners, or accidents it has had…it is only common knowledge to know and believe, that right or wrong, social background checking is something that is very easily and very frequently performed. Accept this truth. Many new sites are popping up on a daily rate to assist people to obtain any information they would want about you. One of the most popular and highly controversial is www.Spokeo.com.  Spokeo.com is a human search engine, that for a reasonable fee, would show you anyone’s: age, address, phone number, e-mail address, religion, credit score, photos, affiliations, blog comments. ( Go ahead, search yourself on it,  you will be shocked at what you will find for free. ) Spokeo.com is one of several websites that collect personal information. The accuracy of the information varies from person to person and site to site. This site is a very resourceful tool to recruiters to get a better look at your life beyond the suit, tie and uber promising smile.

A recent survey that was commissioned by Beyond.com and conducted by students of the Wharton Small Business Development Center asked college students if they were concerned that potential employers may discover their personal information on social networking sites.  And 51% said yes. Which is a shame given that these sites were originally designed to be used in a social setting (hence the name ‘social’).

Past? What Past?

Because there are sites like spokeo.com that will publicly divulge your information for a fee, and a great deal of nervous college grads that will be soon seeking employment, and needing to cover the tracks of their good times and life experience, there are now also companies that help to protect your reputation, or any negative information that may be available on the internet. One of the forerunners is www.reputationdefender.com, which claims to help you remove information from the Web you don’t want out there…….for a fee.

We’ve seriously sold our souls to the internet, ….and it seems that now we are buying them back. Our need and desire to be individualistic and expressive about our lives, photos, feelings and views, is the price we have paid. We’ve all seem to have been led down the yellow brick road of social media. Yes! It is fun, liberating, exciting and inviting. EVERYBODY is doing it! Only to be led to a glorious castle that is made up entirely of smoke and mirrors…and it’ll cost you a pretty penny to get back to Kansas.

Aside from trying to find sites to ‘protect’ our reputation, how about a bit more of a preventative measure. Accept the reality that what you’re putting online right now is going to shape your digital legacy.

Adam Jones may like to challenge himself to the occasional keg stand, but he may also be the most brilliant salesman your company has ever had. But because of sites like spokeo.com, he’ll never get that chance to shine, unless of course, he has a subscription fee to pay www.reputationdefenfer.com for a year (whose membership list is assuredly confidentlial).

Today, all we need is a click of a button to reach and connect to the rest of the world. This online global village has given rise to the popularity of social media networks where a virtual platform is constructed to interact with likeminded individuals. The effectiveness of existing social media networks have given HR industry a perfect tool to recruit and reach a mass number of desirable candidates. The HR professionals can make use of social media to work in recruitment, employee engagement, increasing retention and more.

If you are a HR professional, you must have already utilized and experienced various social media networks especially in the year 2008, where the whole concept of using social media as HR tool gathered momentum. Phrases like ‘tweet’, ‘community’, etc have become acceptable part of our daily vocabulary. The sharing of job opportunities, new openings or even a new Public relation tactics has become instant, convenient and most importantly official through these social networking sites.

About a decade ago, if HR managers wanted to share or communicate any information regarding job assignments, recruitment, increasing retention or even to induce employer brand, they are expected to engage in month long planning activities and executing the information through various traditional mediums. It was a long process that consumed time, labor and money.

However, now, many HR departments of various corporate are getting free advertising, revolutionizing their marketing and PR strategies and investing a considerable amount of time and money to make their presence felt in facebook, linkedin or twitter accounts, something that would have sound absurd a few years ago. Many are embracing social recruiting.
So for those amateurs who are still unsure of how to make use of social media as a HR tool, here are few tips that I can think of:

1) Go where people “like you” might hangout virtually
Gather people who are like minded and face similar challenges like you. Choose any of the networking sites such as LinkedIn and consequently engage in live chats, discussions and Blog posts to create a group of professionals facing common challenges and vision.

2) Get familiar with twitter
Twitter can prove to be an excellent recruiter tool, coach and talent hunter at the same time. If you think Twitter cannot actually reach the niche group or target group you are aiming at, I am afraid I must warn you that it is a misconception. Twitter has become the ‘choice’ for almost all professionals and senior level executives as a medium to stay in connect with their concerned clients and followers.

3) Tap the power of facebook for recruiting
Facebook has definitely proved to be an important tool for HR professionals in the kitty offered by social media network. Many companies are already using facebook features to connect with and recruit young professionals. It has the right platform to engage in process of employment branding and social recruiting.

Social network indeed has taken the form of revolution as far as HR area is concerned. It has set its own game rules but has definitely left space for the HR team to make the most of social media. However remember even cyber space require certain amount of professionalism. Are you still thinking How HR Can Make The Most of Social Media? It is time to explore this.

Steve Sinclair is a writter on Social Recruiting and he advices companies on Social Media Recruiting strategies
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Sinclair

One of the most important aspects of your organization’s overall recruitment strategy is developing and managing your employment brand. Candidates rate an organization’s employment brand the 2nd most influential factor when considering employment opportunities. Google is the world’s most recognized employment brand. Google’s employment brand was built in a short period of time and exclusively through viral marketing. Google’s employment brand has been written about in every major business publication and as a result of its branding Google receives over 3,000 resumes per day. Other organizations such as Southwest Airlines, IBM, GE, Disney and HP have implemented similar employment branding techniques and are finding similar results.

While smaller organizations should not set out to compete with Google’s employment brand they can strive to become the number one brand in their vertical. A viral based approach to employment branding will result in the ability of the organization to attract top candidates. If you have to pay to get your message out it will not be credible. A successful employment branding strategy must be viral and must excite potential candidates to take action.

Successful employment branding emphasizes stories about an organization, an organization’s recruitment process and what it’s like to work in an organization which can easily be spread by employees and candidates. Employment branding has been called the #1 strategic way to increase application traffic yet on average companies spend less than 5% of their recruitment budget on employment branding.

The goal of any organization’s employment branding should be to build the organization’s reputation as a top place to work in order to attract top talent. Your employment brand should be credible, believable, and concentrate on the spreading of positive stories about the organization, being talked about in the media, and winning awards.

Some of the components of your employment branding
initiative should include:

· A well developed and implemented employee referral program.

· Development an execution of a “Recruitment Culture”

· Proper utilization of social networking
(LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, Twitter, Ning, etc.).

· Viral Marketing

· Recruitment Video
· Career site SEO

· Award programs.

· Articles in targeted business publications

· Presentations at conferences

An organization’s employment branding should lead potential candidates to a strong career site. Candidates will visit the career site to confirm if what they’ve heard about the organization is true and read detailed information about the organization. The career site should clearly identify the organization’s culture, values, vision, current job openings and benefit programs. The site should reflect an organization’s brand and strengthen a candidate’s desire to consider employment with the organization. Included on the site should be testimonials from employees and video showing employees doing engaging work. Video should definitely be a part of employment branding as it can excite candidates and allow them to see feel and hear the passion and excitement of an organization’s employees. Google’s recruitment video “An inside look at Google” has been viewed over 500,000 times on the Internet.

Positive employment branding will result in a significant increase in the volume of unsolicited resumes, higher quality candidates, higher offer acceptance rates, an increased number of employee referrals, improved employee retention rates and an overall increase in the success rates of an organization’s recruitment programs. Remember that your employment branding is only as good as your candidate experience ratings.

Mike Astringer, Founder and CEO
Human Capital X701
mike.astringer@humancapitalconsultants.com

http://www.humancapitalconsultants.com
http://mikeastringer.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Astringer

The birth of Hooklineandthinker.com has come from a group of recruitment professionals specializing in print advertising. Since the tides of recruitment advertising have shifted dramatically in the direction of web, social networking, and career boards, we’ve decided to dedicate our manpower towards following these exciting new trends, and provide up to date information on the latest and greatest technologies and applications. Through our resources and news sites, we do our best to provide great tips, tricks, news and information on topics such related to HR and the world wide web.

We’re all in this together, HR professionals, recruitment agencies, and job seekers alike, can all benefit from having information available to be well informed, and utilizing your HR budget in a most effective manner. For job seekers, it’s always best to know where to go, or where to be, to be discovered while searching for a new gig. The light at the end of this recession is closer than we know, and a boom in the recruitment economy is surely on it’s way. In the mean time, it is very beneficial to be prepared, with connections, profiles, networks and tweets, so when the job-rush finally hits, we will all be prepared to reap the spoils.

At HooklineandThinker, we want it to be about you. You, the HR professionals, You the Employers, You the jobseekers, to contribute to our effort, and become a part of the conversation. We are always looking for any contributing material to our blog, and will gladly publish any articles, white-papers, recruitment related stories, and opinions that you may have. We truly want HooklineandThinker to be a blog that is for the people, and by the people. There’s no better way to measure the success of a new-fangled idea,….than to hear from the people that actually apply them. And we mean everyone. You do NOT need to be an expert on Social Media, or even a high level HR professional. Just a person who has an opinion or a case study regarding the newest technologies applied to get people to work…and to get work!

So…Let’s get working!

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I suppose there is no person who was never laid off or didn’t have to search for a new job at least once. Anyway everyone has searched for a job one time a life. There are many ways to start the look up process, though not all the methods will suit you.

Let’s study that out.

The first option would be a newspaper for an uninitiated person, it’s always within a reach and doesn’t obligate to pay in advance and waste time on arranging an interview or meeting HRs in every company you are interested to work in. You may just call and find out the conditions. There are always many vacancies appropriate for Joe Bloggs, it will be suitable for you if you would like to get employed as electrician, clerk, engineer etc. Though it’s not a good way to search work for experienced sales, project or product manager. Not all programmers will look up for a job in a weekly newspaper as well.
Yet in this case there is another way to go and use a more innovative job search mean. Just hit the bricks and you will see a huge number of recruiting agencies on every street corner. It’s not that difficult to pass an interview with the agency representative and provide your resume. Your data will be kept in the big database, and every time they find a suitable job, they will contact you. Nevertheless make sure this agency won’t charge you for a job they find for you. Sometimes you will have to pay for a found job, no difference if you get employed or not. Though there is no denying the fact, that there can be much more job openings that will match your search criteria. And you can get interview invitations for a long time after adding your resume.
Anyway you don’t render a decision about whom you would like to call for an interview and what company is of higher interest for you.

So you can take advantage of another job search method. It’s an online search. They say it’s the most efficient job search process, just register on your local or international job board and get your job openings alerts. You can find a job offering in no time. Make certain you understand the terms and conditions of the job site which hands you would like to put yourself in and you will surely succeed.

Almost all the job portals are free for a job seeker and it’s really profitable to search jobs right there, though not everything depends on them, they are lucky if they appear in top search, though if they fall down no one would be interested in them. So you would need to pay for lift-up in search. And what about an employer? Can every employer make his or her vacancy available to million job seekers in the world? That’s right, it’s not the cheapest way to find a candidate. Not every company will be able to give a chance to a genuine candidate who would rescue its business. The prices range from $300 up to $800 for a vacancy posting or resume database access. Will the medium or small businesses afford that? Monsters who lead the way in this business take advantage of such offering, though they don’t need a new candidate every day. So the companies spectrum is not that broad.

Thus medium and small companies have to search for future employees using another way. And not all of them are aware of job boards pre-designed especially for them. They can just search for candidates, compare them on the basis they only choose, lead online-interviews, everything for a reasonable price, just to pay for server and site maintenance expenses. It’s connected with the fact that employers and job seekers manage the site work and communicate with each others. Moreover job seekers can use many services integrated with the job search service: resume writing, paycheck calculators, e-learning, certification and many other advanced features. And they don’t need to pay for lift-up service as all matching resumes are being sent directly to employer’s email, so every job seeker will find his or her employer. Everything depends on you, so why not to use this splendid opportunity?

Launching a Job Board/Employment Website is a great idea to let employers find their employees. You don’t need an expensive custom website for that, there is a ready-made package available – PG Job Site Pro – powerful software that will do most of the work for you. It will create a Job Board/Employment Website that you can start today, why wait any longer before this field of online business is occupied by someone else? Now is the time to take on the challenge.

Julia Dorofeeva is a Sales and Support Manager specializing in Job Board Software online sales and support. Curious and creative she is always tending to self-education. Her ideas are often good food for thought. Check up her latest article and other ones at job board script site.
P: 1-866-282-1029 (toll free)
http://www.JobSoftPro.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Julia_Dorofeeva