Recruitment Strategies, Social Recruiting,
Recruiting Tools / News / Articles & Resources
Showing posts with label Recruiting Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recruiting Articles. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

IT Recruitment strategies : 4 Niche Job Boards for Free Job Posting and Resume Search


IT recruitment has its own challanges as you need to fine highly qualified technical talent quickly. In order to be sucesful here you will need to deploy IT recruitment stategies that work. You just cannot depend on large job boards like Dice and Monster as thousands of recruiters and employers and sourcing and recruiting same talent base. So many times we spend precious time recruiting a top end talent from major job boards only to be informed that the candidate is already on employers databank or aready in their shortlist.

Why? because you are depending on the same resume sources. The biggest job boards are also the most common resume sources!

You will have to go beyond the major Job Boards to be sucessful and you will have to be creative in your IT recruitment strategy. The following websites allow you Free Job Posting and Resume Search to find IT talent. The following Job Boards allow you Free Job Posting and Resume Search both and can add to your recruiting efforts.

http://www.itjobcafe.com/


According to compete.com estimate ITJobCafe.com attracts 16,114 uniques visitors per month.This is one of the oldest FREE job sites for IT Recruitment. ITJobCafe.com is a specialized portal that focuses exclusively on IT professionals. Here you can post upto 100 jobs FREE alog with a basic resume search. I have been using IT Job Cafe with good results.

http://www.jobirn.com/

According to compete.com estimate http://www.jobirn.com/ attracts 38,985 unique visitors per month. Jobirn is referral network that connects applicants with employers. Jobirn makes connecting easy with features like Video conferencing and chat where you can chat directly with job applicants. The site also offrs job postig via email saving time for recruiters. The resumes search is basic but can get you a gem of a resume if you are doing a simple search.

These are 2 new Job Boards worth taking a look. They offer impressive features but since these are newly launched services; their resume banks are light at the moment. But worth giving a try as they are growing fast within the IT recruitment community and free job positing can get you good visibility on the internet.

http://www.talentspro.net/

Talentspro is one of the new services with impressive functionalities for information technology recruitment.The Job Board offers resume match functionality to shortlist resumes quickly. The site offers Good Search functionality where you can save & schedule your searches. The portal also offers branded company pages to list all your jobs.

http://www.bestmindz.com/

Bestminds is new job portal which allow you to manage your Jobs and Candidates on bench. The site also offer basic applicat tracking features to manage job applications and resume submissions. A feature worth looking at is the peer networking feature that help you to network with recruiters and resource vendors. The site also has a web chat feature that allows you to collaborate with Recruiters, Employers and Job Seekers.


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

How to get your Jobs Listed on Job Aggegation websites


One of the most effective IT recruitment strategies is to get your jobs listed on Job Aggregation websites. They can provide excellent visibility for your jobs posts and thereby helping you to locate interested local talent that can make a difference to your recruiting efforts.

What are the Job Aggregation Websites?

The aggregation websites crawl job openings of leading companies, job boards and trusted feeds from leading recruitment agencies and present those in front of job seekers in searchable format. They are getting increasingly popular as they provide job seekers with choice. The job aggregation websites compile their job listings from thousands of sources. So the job seekers can view opportunities they would have missed if they were just depending on a single job board to find their next employment opportunity. Most of these job aggregation websites provide excellent search and sort tools and saves precious time and effort in job search as the job seekers can sort though the openings my location and skills quickly and easily. If you have a well written / interesting job post then it will attract attention of job seekers. This can make a huge difference in your recruiting efforts.

Some of the biggest and popular job aggregators on the internet are:
  1. http://www.indeed.com/
  2. http://www.simplyhired.com/
  3. http://www.glassdoor.com/
  4. http://www.careerjet.com/
  5. http://www.jobrapido.com/
  6. http://www.jooble.com/
  7. http://www.juju.com/
  8. http://www.oodle.com/
  9. http://www.trovit.com/
  10. http://www.linkup.com/

How to get your jobs listed?

As a recruiter it is becoming increasingly signifcant to get your jobs listed on these job aggregation websites to gain maximum exposure on the positions you are trying to fill. There are many advantages:
  1. They present your jobs in front of thousants of internet job seekers whose resumes are not on Job Boards.
  2. Gives good exposure to your openings on the internet and these jobs are crawled and direct accessible on leading search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
  3. You can get them listed Free of cost.  No need for expensive jobs subscriptions to publish jobs.There are several free services that will allow you to get your jobs listed on job aggregation websites for Free.

Also refer my Prevous articles on: Social Media Posting and Free Jobs Sites

Apart from these websites Free and Feature rich Applicant Tracking system like Smartrecruiters can help you to automatically post your jobs on Job Aggregation websites.

Read Prevous article on Smartrecruiters

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Friday, June 15, 2012

SmartRecruiters Free Applicant Tracking System for Recruitment


SmartRecruiters.Com
Applicant tracking Systems form the back end system of most most successful recruiters and recruitment practices. Until reccently Applicant Tracking Systems systems (ATS) were used by large & medium size corporations and recruitment firms as most Applicant Tracking Systems requires monthly subscriptions and generaly out of reach for individual recruiters and small recruitment practices.

Then Smartrecruiters came along offering free applicant tracking system.SmartRecruiters is a full featured applicant tracking system and allows you to build a solid recruitment management system to support your recruitment efforts.

Smartrecruiters offers features like:

  1. Posts jobs to several Free Job Boards (Indeed, Jobrapido, Trovit etc) giving solid job visibility on the internet.
  2. Provides social media integration so you can quickly share your jobs with your connections in Social Networking sites like linkedin,Facebook and Twitter.
  3. Smartrecruiters allows hiring Team collaboration so you can distribute jobs and collaborate with your team.
  4. Smartrecruiters offers facility to build your own career site with simple plug ins.
  5. Smartrecruiters  makes the applicant profiles 100% searchable, making applicant shortlisting easy.
  6. Smartrecruiters can help in speeding ou the recruitment cycle and also the most effective way to build resume databank.

Take a look at the video below:








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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Rapportive, Smartr & Xobni 3 Excellent Email Tools for Recruiters


Email tools have opened up new possibilities on connecting with your Email Contacts on Social Media space. Rich Contact Tools like Xobni and Rapportive shows you information on your email contacts much beyond the abilities of traditional address book. These tools allow you to view Social Media Profiles of your email contacts right in your inbox. You can view profile information, companies they work for and you can easily connect with your contacts on popular Social Media platforms like Facebook, and Linkedin.

These can be powerfull tools for recruiter if used correctly:

  1. Helps you to grow your social network quickly.
  2. You can connect with candidates you recruit on Social Media Platforms.
  3. Once connected you can stay abreast on their carer moves and you can approach them directly with Job opportunities in the future.
  4. Connect with recruiters in Contact Marketplace and build one on one rapport and share jobs, resumes and hot-lists.
  5. Can be a nifty toll to Advertise Jobs and to get referrals from your network.














Rapportive

http://rapportive.com

Rapportive is a Gmail companion shows you rich information about your contacts right inside your inbox. Once you install Rapportive browser extension you will be able

to view what people look like, where they're based, and what they do right in your Gmail inbox. You can easily connect with your email contacts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google + and more.















Xobni for Outlook

https://www.xobni.com/download/outlook

Xobni pioneered rich email companions. A powerfull tool Xobni for outlook seamlessly integrates with outlook contacts and will show you complete social profiles for

everyone on your contact list. Xobni allows you to search contacts by firstname, lastname OR by company name.













Smartr Inbox from Xobni

https://www.xobni.com/download/gmail

This is a Gmail Companion and webmail version of the Xobni for outlook. Offers silmlar features just like the Xobni outlook tool. Xobni also offers Apps on iPhone and Android Mobile Platforms. For more visit Xobni.



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Recruiting Bar - An essential resume sourcing tool for Recruiters



There are millions of resumes and profiles on the Internet but searching and filtering this data requires advance knowledge of Boolean Logic. The recruiting bar makes sourcing easy with over 100 pre consrtructed boolean phrases that allow you to seouce resumes from leading search engines (Google, Bing etc) and social networking sites (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc). All you need to do is download and install the toolbar on your browser, select the search that you want to perform, modify the string and run the search. The searched will bring you the resumes that you are looking for! You can become a Boolean Pro yourself in matter of weeks!

This toolbar will give you the ability to source resumes on open internt outside the job boards that can make a difference to your recruiting efforts. Keep in mind that a lot of top talents will never post their resumes on Job Boards but their profiles are searchable on the Internt via private blogs / websites or on Social Networking sites.

Apart from resume search the Recruiting Bar also offers useful content on traning, webinars, research tools and may more.

Check the video below for a quick lesson how to use the bar:



You can Download the bar at : http://booleanbar.ourtoolbar.com/



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Bullhorn Reach & Jobshouts 2 Excellent Free Social Media Recruitment Tools


Following up on my earlier article on Social Media Recruitment I did a quick research on social media recruitment tools on the internet. There are excellent social media recruitment tools out there but most of them requires paid subscriptions. Out of those, 2 services (Jobshouts & Bullhorn Reach) stood out as they are Free and Very Effective in reaching hidden talent and referrals on your social networks.

Social media recruitment can be a very usefull tool for recruiters as these tools allow you to share your jobs with your connections on popular social networks quickly. But in order to be sucessful in social media recruitment space you need to build your social networks diligently. Larger the number of connections you have on the social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Google + and Twitter, the better will be the results.


http://www.bullhornreach.com/


Bullhorh Reach is a excellent social recruting tool and allows 2 Free Job Posts. Once you sign up Bullhorn Reach linked ups with your social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter allowing you to quicky share your jobs with your connections across social networks.
















https://jobshouts.com/


JobShouts is a job distribution network and social recruiting search engine. JobShouts! is integrated with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn. Allowing you to quickly publish your Jobs across your Social Media Accounts.

Apart from Social Media platforms, Jobshouts! also distributes job postings to Job Aggregators like Indeed, Simply Hired etc thereby allowing you a good presence on the traditation internet job advertisement space as well.


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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

4 Free Job Posting Sites for Recruiters

Where do I post my Jobs?

One of the biggest challenges any recruiter faces is how to reach out to qualified talent quickly. Everyday thousands of job applicants search the internet for their next employment opportunity. The most effective methods is to advertise jobs on the Internet.
The Challenge: Most of the job boards offer paid job advertisement slots and expensive. 
Remember most of the job seekers are not going to restrict their searches on major Job Boards Like Monster or Dice. They also search on popular search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and increasingly on Job Aggregation websites like SimplyHired, Indeed, Oodle etc. This is where advertising on the internet comes in.

The following are few websites that allow you to advertise jobs  free and they produce results. They are crawled regularly by Google and some of then are directly liked with Job Aggregation websites. Your Job Post will quickly show up on Google, Bing etc and in turn in front of thousands of job seekers. A well drafted job advertisement will attract job applicants that can make a difference in your recruiting efforts.











http://www.jobvertise.com/

One of the oldest free services jobveetise adds 44,433 new jobs every week. Jobvertise's mission is to provide top tier recruiting and career tools at little or no cost. With over 200,000 employer accounts and over 1 MILLION resumes Jobvertise appeals to recruiters working for themselves and Fortune 500 corporations.







http://www.postjobfree.com/

An excellent free service that allows to to post free and also broadcasts the jobs to leading job syndicators such as Simplyhired, Indeed, Careerjet, Oodle Etc.







http://www.devbistro.com/

Devbistro offer FREE job posting (5 Jobs Per Month). Each month, the site attracts over 350,000 visitors (1.5 million pageviews) and growing! Employers using devbistro.com vary from Fortune 500 to startups located around the globe. These include global Technology leaders such as Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Dell, Yahoo, Oracle, Ebay, Electronic Arts, Accenture and many others.







http://www.jobzoom.com/

A similar service like Postjobfree that allows to to post free and also broadcasts the jobs to leading job syndicators such as Indeed, Oodle Etc.




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Thursday, June 7, 2012

Google Groups for Recruitment : 24 Top Google Groups to subscribe to for Contract IT Recruitment


Google Groups that caters to Corp to Corp Staffing are the quickest to find qualified H1B talent on the internet. All you need to do is subscribe to the Groups you want to use. After becoming member you can publish your hot IT requirements OR distribute consultant hot lists to a large number to resource vendors who are subscribers to these groups.There are over 100 active Google Groups for Corp to Corp recruitment but the list selected below are the most active groups in terms on volume posts and number of members.

These list below will allow to to reach out to over 10,000 recruiters. Please note that there will be a lot of overlap of recruiters across the groups but offers excellent way to rech out to a large list quickly and efficiantly. Needless to say these allways works!

Tips to select Groups:

1) Make sure they are staffing / recruitment / employment groups
2) Make sure they are catering to US IT marketplace.
3) Make sure that there are no unrelated spam or adult oriented posts in the group you are signing up for.
4) Allways subscribe digest mails of your mainbox will get flooded with mails.

  1. US-Staffing // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/us-staffing
  2. Recruiting Simplifies // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/recruiting-simplifies
  3. USITJOBS // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/usitjobs
  4. SureShotJobs // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sureshotjobs
  5. Technical Recruiters // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/technical-recruiters
  6. C-2-C-Corp-Usajobs // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/c-2-c-corp-usajobs
  7. Ethical Recruiters // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/closure
  8. ITSOFTWAREJOBS // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/itsoftwarejobs
  9. USITSTAFFING // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/usitstaffing
  10. C2C JOBS // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/c2c-jobs
  11. IT CONSULTING US RECRUITING // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/it-consulting-us-recruiting
  12. IT CONSULTING US staffing // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/it-consulting-us-staffing
  13. C2C DealUSA // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/c2c-dealusa
  14. C2C-staffing // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/c2c-staffing
  15. IMMEDIATE-RESPONSE // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/immediate-response
  16. IMMEDIATE REQUIREMENT // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/immediate-requirement
  17. US-Staffing // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/us-staffing
  18. C2C-C2C // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/c2c-c2c
  19. US IT HOTLIST // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/us-it-hotlist
  20. HOTLIST-moreDICE // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/hotlist-moredice
  21. True Value Careers // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/true-value-careers
  22. US Computer Jobs // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/us-computer-jobs
  23. US IT STAFFING - HRBot.com // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/usit_staffing
  24. Xrecnet IT Recruiters Network // https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xrecnet
Q6RAQ47SJ38B



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Thursday, October 14, 2010

50 Hot IT Skills on the Rise



Here are the 25 certifications and non-certified skills most likely to increase in value over the next six months, as determined by Foote Partners LLC. But President David Foote cautions, "There is simply no such thing as a reliable six-month IT labor forecast in these volatile market conditions." 

 Rank
 IT Certifications
 Non-certified IT Skills
 1
SAS Certified Base Programmer
SAP Basis components
 2 
Red Hat Certified Security Specialist
RAD/extreme programming/agile programming
 3
CompTIA Security+
Virtual private networks 
 4
 SAS Certified Advanced Programmer
Business continuity and disaster recovery planning
 5
VMware Certified Professional
Web 2.0 skills (AJAX, Adobe Flex, Adobe Flash, JavaScript, JSON) 
 6
GIAC Security Essentials Certification
Windows 7 
 7
Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator
SAP Web Application Server 
 8 
Cisco Certified Network Professional
SAN/storage administration 
 9
Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional
RFID/wireless sensors 
 10
Red Hat Certified Technician
Python 
 11
HP Accredited Integration Specialist
HTML/DHTML/XHTML
 12
Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (all)
Business performance management software/systems 
 13
Sun Certified Systems Administrator for Solaris
SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
 14
Microsoft Certified Database Administrator
SAP EBP (Enterprise Buyer Professional) 
 15
Cisco Certified Design Professional
SAP FI -- FSCM (Financial Accounting -- Financial Supply Chain Management) 
 16
GIAC Certified Incident Handler
Linux
 17
CyberSecurity Forensic Analyst
Ruby/Ruby on Rails 
 18
Certification Authorization Professional
Social networks (tagging, virtual communities, social bookmarking, etc.) 
 19
Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (virtualization)
SAP SCM (Supply Chain Management) 
 20
GIAC Security Audit Essentials
SAP SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) 
 21
GIAC Secure Software Programmer
ITIL v3 Foundation 
 22

IBM Certified Specialist - AIX Basic Op
SAP WM (Warehouse Management) 
 23

Avaya Certified Specialist
Web Dynapro 
 24

Check Point Certified Security Administrator
SAP APO (Advanced Planner and Optimizer) 
 25
GIAC Certified Windows Security Administrator
SAP PP (Production Planning)
Source: Foote Partners IT Skills and Certifications Hot Lists, July 2010. Rankings are based on interviews with hundreds of executives and primary decision-makers from the 2,000 companies in Foote's database of research partners.
(Courtesy: Jamie Eckle. CIO.com)

IT Industry Outlook for 2011 - Budgets and Salaries

Funding for IT budgets—including allocations for salary increases—will go up next year, but cost cutting is still a major concern. Business intelligence—despite its expense and effort—continues to be a No. 1 technology investment priority in 2010.

IT workers, listen up: Management is budgeting for raises next year.

These raises, however, come with an expectation for technology to be a strategic cost-cutting and simultaneous revenue-producing investment. Business intelligence—despite its expense and effort—continues to be the No. 1 technology investment of 2010.

In exact terms, 61 percent of executives are planning to give technology worker salaries a boost in 2011. Only a third of employers will be keeping salaries flat. The silver lining is less than 10 percent will be chopping salaries next year, according to annual data compiled by SIM (Society for Information Management), which surveyed more than 172 companies.

Of most concern to executives such as CIOs and senior IT managers is business productivity coupled with cost reduction. Other major concerns include speed to market, business agility, business and IT alignment and the reliability and efficiency of IT practices.

“The No. 1 response is getting more revenue from IT investments as in leveraging IT to reduce business costs,” said Jerry Luftman, professor of information systems at Stevens Institute of Technology, in an interview with eWEEK. “It is also clear that the trend for offshore outsourcing is expected to continue to rise.”

Luftman is a former SIM executive vice president who will be presenting the survey results to SIM attendees Oct. 3 at its annual conference in Atlanta. Luftman has been producing the research for this report for the last 10 years.

For IT budgets, 38 percent of executives are increasing them next year, 27 percent are decreasing them and 35 percent are keeping them flat. Compared to last year, there is an 11 percent increase in budget spending—a good sign for projects and resources that have been on hold or postponed.

Many executives are looking for IT to lead the way in business process re-engineering, in strategic planning and keeping data and intellectual property secure. Making the list of concerns for the first time, however, was globalization.

The No. 1 technology investment for these 172 organizations is BI (business intelligence). According to Luftman, BI has been the top technology investment for the last three years despite a recession and challenges for many with effective BI implementation. Given the emphasis on cost reduction, how is it that business intelligence ranks above virtualization, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), continuity planning/disaster recovery and cloud computing?

“I am surprised too that it remains so high other than they recognize its importance but are still struggling to implement it,” Luftman said.

Cloud computing made the top five technology investments for the first time in this year’s SIM report, further confirming its ascendancy as companies look to reduce costs in areas across the landscape of cloud-based services. Another trend that continues to be taken advantage of is offshore outsourcing, which will see an increase of 2 percent, from 5 percent in 2010 to 7 percent in 2011 IT budgets, according to the SIM report.

IT turnover rates were low in 2010, according to the study. Seventy-one percent of SIM survey participants saw less than 5 percent of IT workers leave their company. Nearly 16 percent saw 6 to 10 percent turnover. The average rate of turnover was about 5.5 percent for 2010; last year, that rate was 6.9 percent.

“The insights from the study confirm that the economic downturn is continuing to cause a significant shift in IT priorities,” said Luftman in a SIM statement. “It is essential to recognize how organizations are leveraging IT during this prolonged economic conundrum, as well as preparing for when the economy will improve.”

Another thing Luftman noted is that as the economy improves, many people are expected to hit the retirement ranks, though he expects to see a larger hiring pool next year.

(Courtesy: Don Sears, eWeek.com)

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Social Media Recruitment: Advanced techniques to reach out to candidates on Twitter and beyond


Social Media Recruitment:  Advance techniques to reach out to candidates on Twitter and beyond

As a recruiter how can you reach out to a potentially large candidate pool on social media space in a short span of time? The answer is in carefully crafted social media strategy.
Link your social Media Accounts

As a recruiter build your professional profile carefully on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. A strong presence in these 3 social media forums are an absolute must if you want to taste success in social Media Recruitment. Linking up your networks is even more important as it allows maintaining uniformity across social media networks.

It may seem a little daunting to start with but with but maintaining all 3 networks can be automated in such a way that if you do a Twitter update it will automatically update your statuses in LinkedIn and Facebook  saving valuable time and energy. Both Linkedin and Facebook offer Twitter widgets and all you need to do is to activate the widgets to link all your 3 accounts together. Once you link up your Twitter account with Linkedin and Facebook you are ready to move to the next level.

Create your Blog Site for Job Posts to harness RSS Feeds

Do I need a blog? The answer is no if you have applicant tracking system which generates RSS feeds for your jobs and offers a job publishing platform. If you don’t have system to rely on than a blog can become an indispensible tool for your recruitment process.  Blogs can be used as a remarkably cheap platform to publicize your jobs and hundreds of smart recruiters are doing so.
So go ahead and create your blog. Build your profile on your blog carefully with links to your Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Make sure the banding is uniform across all 4 platforms. The best approach here is to keep things simple and professional to start with. You can always add bells and whistles as you grow confident. And yes there are ready-made widgets to integrate your social media profiles with your blog and can be unearthed with a little research.

All popular blogging platforms (Blogger, Word Press, Typepad etc to name a few) generate RSS feeds. The innocuous RSS feed are most effective form of content syndication on the Internet today and offers limitless possibilities in spreading your content on the internet.  We need to harness RSS feeds to reach out to a larger audience. Once build your blog and start posting, your blog site with generate your RSS Feed.  There are many ways to publicize your feed:

You can submit your feeds on all major search engines; you can integrate them on Feed Directories. And you can integrate your RSS feed into your social network which is what I will focus on this article.

Use FeedBurner to auto publish your blog RSS feeds as Tweets

Create a FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com ) account and burn your feed to make your blog feed RSS reader friendly.  After you burn your Feed use the FeedBurner tools to optimize and publicize your feed. To publicize your feed FeedBurner offers a  gem of a feature called socialize which integrates your RSS feed with your Twitter account. The interface is simple and intuitive and can be activated with a few clicks! The system allows you to send your blog feeds to your twitter account in 1 hr intervals in a twitter friendly format.

Now you have created a system where the moment you post your jobs on your blog the post will be automatically fed into your Twitter account as Tweets via FeedBurner .  Once your feed is published on Twitter your already linked accounts on Linkedin and Facebook will automatically pick up the tweets and publish them as your status updates. In other words all your connections across 3 major social networks can view your job posts as status updates with a link to click on. This in turn which will lead them to your blog to view your jobs and apply. Now you are ready to move to Level 4.

Moving beyond your network using Twitter

Now you have created a system to publicize your jobs across your Twitter Linkedin and Facebook contacts.  Is there a way to move beyond your network? Social Networks tend to grow organically depending on how aggressively you are building them and your jobs can spread quickly via viral mode to a larger network of 2nd and 3rd degree contacts.  You can move to an audience beyond your network with the help of a few twitter tools.

Create an account with http://www.twitjobsearch.com/ and integrate your twitter feed. You Job tweets will become part of a large twitter job platform and will reach out to thousands of followers beyond your network.
Also use http://www.twitterjobcast.com/ all you need to do is use the word hiring in your job titles. Twitter job cast will automatically pick up your posts and publicize on twitterjobcast.com. As a strategy start your job posts with the word hiring and use the position and location in a tightly constructed blog title. Example “Hiring Mortgage Sales Officers in San Francisco, CA”. 
You can also explore the following paid services as part of your broader outreach strategy: http://twitterjobs.org/http://tweetmyjobs.com/ and http://tweethopper.com/

Closing the Loop

Now you are reaching beyond your networks and effectively closed the communication loop for effective social media recruitment. 

This article at best lays a very basic foundation of what can be achieved in social media recruitment. There are hundreds and twitter tools out there and possibilities are limitless.  You can refer http://www.twitglry.com/  OR  http://www.feedmyapp.com/ to experiment with social media tools and to move your social media recruiting strategy forward.

Monday, August 16, 2010

2 simple web 2.0 mashups / tools to make your Blogger site more interactive


One of the dilemmas I had faced after publishing my blog on Blogger was how to integrate forms? A simple feedback or Contact Us form can go a long way in making your blog more user focused and interactive. I have found to simple methods to overcome this handicap. And yes you don’t need to be a coder to do this!

1.  Use formstack to build professional looking online forms:

A simple but very effective solution is offered by www.formstack.com . Formstack allows you to design and build forms online and then allows you to embed forms on any blog or website. The Process is very simple:
  1. Sign up on Formstack.
  2. Build your forms using the form builder.
  3. Assign the email address where you want to send form data.
  4. Select a suitable design template and Save your form.
  5. Generate the code to embed on your Blog.
You are pretty much done with Formstack!  Now log in to your Blogger account:
  1. On your blogger add a page using page widget.
  2. Create a new page with the name “Contact Us” using pages widget. If you don’t have the widget already you can do so my going to Design > Add Widget and Select Pages Widget.
  3. On the page editor click HTML source.
  4. Paste the embed code generated from Formstack. And Voila! You have a working feedback form on Blogger!
Do a quick preview. You may have to do small adjustments to the form field lengths if there are any overlaps with your Blogger sidebar but that is simple. The Formstack form builder interface is so simple that you can quickly find your way for small UI twicks. You can view the contact us form on my blog http://xrecnet.blogspot.com .

2.  Use feedback tool from getsatisfaction.com

Get satisfaction is one of the most popular feedback tools on the Internet. Integrating this on blogger requires some careful template code embedding. The Integration process is simple though:
  1. Sign up on getsatisfaction.com.
  2. Generate the code for embedding.
  3. Go to blogger Design  > Edit HTML
  4. On template XML look for code.
  5. Paste the code just before the and save the template and you have the feedback widget!
You can view both these forms in action on my blog http://xrecnet.blogspot.com . Do not hesitate to send me your feedback! Just use the form at http://xrecnet.blogspot.com/p/contact-us.html !