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Why is a job seeker like a bride?

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Guest post by Lucy Thorpe

Social media marketing – How do you do it?

For a couple of years now I have been using social media as a pr and marketing tool in the hospitality industry to make new contacts and to spread the word about family friendly travel – and it’s great to see so many recruitment and HR people doing the same in their sphere.

But while I turn up bearing promises of sun and surf, you guys in recruitment are dealing with something potentially far more life changing. Does that affect the way we both use social media?

We often assume that social media is the same for everyone – but Twitter, LinkedIn etc are just another set of tools and so there are going to be as many ways to use them as there are industries. It depends on your goals.

What is clear – I hope – is that social media is social and that hard selling in this space is a big turn off.

So where do recruitment and the hospitality game, differ?

I’ll tell you what I do and then you can let me know.

My approach is to use Twitter to make new contacts.

This is where I hook up with people who are going to be brand ambassadors for my hotels. For family-friendly properties I am going to be looking at “mummy bloggers” and women running small businesses on the internet aimed at children. For wedding venues I am going to be looking at stylists and style bloggers, photographers etc

My aim is to get to know a whole community of people who will spread the word about my venues and I do it by spreading the word about them – my ultimate goal is to get them to feature us in their blog or magazine. They may even become guests themselves. One contact did just that – she blogged her stay complete with photos on her baby clothes website which lead to a newsletter swap and mutual special offers. If you want me to put it into business-speak (which I hate) – I leveraged the reciprocity element of Twitter to benefit my client.

I also use Facebook to give friends and fans more information about a property but in an informal and organic way. It’s not the official brochure, but we might feature photos of the chef’s new dishes along with pictures of events like bonfire night on the beach. I might draw attention to a marquee being set up live on the web cam for a wedding or a Christmas tree being brought back on the ferry.  I see Facebook as a tighter opted-in community – the numbers are smaller, they have chosen to be there and can easily leave if they don’t like it.

I am a big fan of content marketing and use strong relevant content where ever I can. On Twitter I will share links to blogs, websites and articles which I think the people who follow us will like. On Facebook we create our own content with bespoke guides to the local area – what’s on and at Christmas I worked with my hotel in Cornwall on a style guide which built on their strong sense of décor.

Beyond that there are newsletters, which are more salesy but still beautifully produced.

So what about recruiters? Are they so very different?

A job candidate may not be in such a sunny frame of mind when he or she engages with you – looking for a job and booking a holiday are clearly not the same thing. Job Hunters may be in a bad place mentally and under pressure.

Why is a job seeker like a bride?

Is a job seeker like a bride?

Well brides engage intensely with online communities – they can’t get enough, until the big day when for obvious reasons they don’t want to buy a cake, hire a photographer or book a honeymoon anymore.

Is the job seeker who has found a job like the bride after the wedding? Is it true that they will no longer want to engage with you after the contract is signed?

Recruiters certainly don’t want to see their “brides” riding off into the sunset – networks are made up of people and you can’t afford to just let them go. Anyway networks are what you guys are best at – you want to keep in touch – but the challenge is how to persuade them that they want the same. They will need another job in the future, although whether the bride will need another groom faster is a moot point – we could argue that.

Let’s talk niche marketing.

This is where the niche comes in. Niche is good because it allows you to target your marketing very tightly. It’s much easier for me to target the children’s travel market and share links about all aspects of entertaining and bringing up kids than it is to go for everyone who wants a holiday. My market is affluent and their kids are young so I can focus even more.

When it comes to recruitment I am happy to say I am working with a niche recruiter – FMCG Central – which has a highly targeted FMCG market. They are not trying to appeal to everyone and so we can get to work on social media and content marketing that really fits the needs of the candidates.

But what if candidates don’t want it?! – I hear you cry.

Well that depends on what you are offering. As an ex BBC journalist I keep in touch with all my industry news via blogs and other “social” media – I subscribe to info digests about media technology and other relevant content. Content is king – cliché or not – and I reckon that smart use of content that adds some sort of value, together with great service and sound advice is the way to go for a niche recruitment business.

Now I’ve put quite a lot out there, so I am going to stop and let you have your say. How do you think we can learn from each other?

Lucy Thorpe is a blogger and PR consultant – social media is her weapon of choice. She spent her first career as a radio journalist working for the BBC. www.LucyThorpe.wordpress @LucyThorpe

Creative Commons License photo credit: archer10 (Dennis) SLOW

Posted in Guests, Marketing, Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 26, 2012

Becoming Evenbase

In keeping with the tradition of this blog of sharing the thinking and insights from some of our marketing & brand activities, from football sponsorship to TV creative, let me share with you the reasoning and methodology on why we changed the name of our (newly-structured) company  from Jobsite Group to Evenbase.

Background

Since its conception in 1994 Jobsite has grown from a single brand (Jobsite.co.uk) to a network for UK based traditional classified advertising sites, some we built in house, and others we acquired.  But this was only one facet of what Jobsite did, and does: in 2003 we won the contract to build the technology running NHSjobs and other media partnerships followed (Northcliffe 2007, Johnston Press 2009).

At the same time, we accelerated the international expansion of OilCareers.com (now successfully operating in the USA, Canada, Australia and the Middle East) and our parent group A&N Media acquired the then only UK based but now global multi-poster & CV Search provider Broadbean.

Reasoning

As you can see, using the name Jobsite Group when representing all of these different and growing areas became often more than confusing. The more we worked on our strategy of transforming ourselves from a network of UK based traditional classified advertising sites to an international digital recruitment business, we quickly realised the limitations of our current name “Jobsite Group”:

  • Whilst Jobsite is a powerful brand in the UK, it has hardly any traction in the international recruitment space
  • It is limited to the job board market and undervalues the breadth of our current offerings from Recruitment Technology (NHS), Recruitment Software (Broadbean) and New Ventures. Jobsite Group is too restrictive as it only focuses on job boards when we are already covering more than that activity.

We therefore set out to create a new B2B entity. It is important to note that this brand will not replace any of the customer facing and customer interacting brands, but will act in a similar way to organisations such as A&N Media and Unilever, which have all of the individual brands within them..

Planning principles

As we are transforming from a job board business to a recruitment business, we require a brand that:

  • Avoids the word “Jobsite” to minimise the confusion between our B2C job board offer and our wider strategy.
  • Avoids being limited by geography, sector or topicality (eg: the terms UK, recruitment/HR, digital). For example: Using a name such as Digital Talent Acquisition Group presents us with a similar challenge – in the future everything will be digital and talent acquisition only covers the recruiters’ perspective, not the candidates.
  • Avoids acronyms with no external context (eg: DTAg), that need to be spelt out or require additional explanation.

Instead we need a defined B2B entity that separates the group’s wider mission/ purpose from that of Jobsite.co.uk, provides a single proposition that covers both global unity and that can be flexed for local markets, creates clarity and purpose across the group, empowers rather than restricts the sub-brands and most importantly, offers a clean slate on which to inject meaning and credibility.

Methodology

Under the guidance of the social brand consultancy Headstream we went through a six stage process from internal workshops, creation of 70 initial names, reviewing for tone, meaning, intent & appeal, shortlisting for priority market language, url availability and trademark checks, before ultimately arriving at “Evenbase”

Outcome

Evenbase is a brand which focuses on our skills, knowledge and technology, alongside our heritage and authority in the recruitment market. This is expressed in the following positioning:

‘Evenbase – creating balance and equity through solid foundations’.

Evenbase fulfils another important requirement: it gives us the freedom to fill it with any meaning that we want to fill it with (similar to the likes of Diageo, Unilever, Apple).

For many of us that have grown up with Jobsite and nurtured it, creating a new group name is always strange. In the first instance every single one sounds odd, but having used it now several times in internal documents, I can report with confidence that it does work exceptionally well and that it hits all of our planning principles.

A name is only a name and that’s why it’s accompanied with a new structure, so that we can deliver our objectives and execute our strategy. Over the coming months you can witness the transformation into Evenbase, in words and actions. I am very excited about the next couple of years with the transformation on so many different dimensions. It will be one awesome ride.

Posted in Brand, Marketing, Recruitment.

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By Felix – January 24, 2012

The thing with the CV…

As we all – hopefully – agree by now, employer brands and talent communities don’t exist, engagement is defined by the candidate and experience is about the candidates’ problems instead of the recruiters’.

Now that we have clarified this, let’s have a look at the newest darling of social recruiting events: The death of the CV (often also referred to as The Future of the CV). It’s the newest member in the death/future series including recruitment agencies, recruitment ad agencies, job boards, ATS,… and these examples show us that we are not talking so much about death, but about rebirth, about adapting to new realities.

Years ago, when I first sent out a CV to a potential employer, it was common place to include exhibits of work you had produced (which also spurred us on to get work experience and internships during school and university times), references and recommendations you had received, as well as proof of qualifications. The CV itself was more like an executive summary of your life, giving context to the application and the exhibits.

These days, luckily, people can just include links, which makes it easier to fill a CV with life and makes it more convenient for the recruiter to check out the claims and the person. Soon the common CV might be an aggregated piece of publicly available information (and Mark Schaefer outlines the importance of blogging for Job hunters very nicely in his article “7 reasons every  job-seeker needs to blog”), soon it might include video footage, soon it might not be hosted in a word document, soon it might include learnings from underlying data analysis and comparison, soon it might be updated automatically, but it will still be an executive summary of a person’s life, which will still have a similar structure to the ‘traditional’ CV. After all Curriculum Vitae “can be loosely translated as [the] course of [my] life”. Of course, if our perception of a linear timeline changes, then the traditional course of life transcript might not work anymore.

As we all know, some executive summaries are better written than others, some are based on more information and knowledge than others, some are more inspirational, outlining the future and the argument more clearly than others. But they are all still executive summaries.

The CV won’t die, but it will change, and instead of a CV we might call it a profile, but all in all it will still be the executive summary of a person’s life, describing the course of a person’s life, with embedded exhibits of past experiences. And most importantly, the final product, before submission, still will need sign-off by the person whose name is on the CV and an approved way to contact and communicate with the person.

Posted in Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 23, 2012

The thing with candidate experience…

As we all – hopefully – agree by now, employer brands and talent communities don’t exist and the beginning, end and rebirth of engagement is defined by the candidate.

Now that we have clarified this, let’s look at candidate experience. It is absolutely essential that we continue to focus on making candidate experience better and better. Ideally, job hunting should be a happy, exciting time. Unfortunately for most people it isn’t.

Our research shows that job hunting is frustrating, lonely, confidence zapping. That makes sense, doesn’t it, especially in times when people have to find a new job and know that it is essential for paying bills. So most people are always in a negative mindset when job hunting. So let’s be careful when we compare this with the experience consumers have when buying an iPhone, or a lovely holiday. But nevertheless let’s make sure we thrive to making the experience as good as it can be in often trying times and difficult circumstances.

To achieve this, we have to look at what candidates want. Do they want engagement? No! Do they want quirky emails and video content about a company? No! Do they want to be sold to? No! Do they want a job? Yes! Do they want a relevant and realistic selection, matching their needs and desires? Yes! Do they want to be told as swiftly and quickly as possible if they have reached the next stage or not? Yes! Do they want to be treated like adults by other adults? Yes! So let’s focus on this.

Let’s remember that positive candidate (and consumer) experience is achieved by following the old mantra of “solve my problems AND make me feel good”.  There’s a good reason why it is in this sequence: If the problem isn’t solved, all the good feeling in the world is not sustainable. Let’s focus and improve what candidates really want and let’s treat them with the respect they deserve and that we demand for ourselves.

Now that we have clarified this, let’s have a look at the death of the CV…

Posted in Marketing, Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 20, 2012

The thing with candidate engagement…

As we all – hopefully – agree by now, employer brands and talent communities don’t exist. Both are a slice/sliver/facet of an overarching brand or corporate identity and of an existing community of a brand or company.

Now that we have clarified this, let’s have a look at candidate engagement. As a Christmas present I bought some scooters. The scooters are superb and a great hit, but  the company has fallen in the engagement marketing trap:

Since then, I have received several, well-meaning and well-written engagement emails, enticing me to look a videos of other people using scooters… as I must have not found the little ticked box that opted me into the engagement program. But I am not interested in watching other people scoot around, nor am I likely to purchase more scooters at his precise movement in time. The well intentioned, brand led engagement has become spam. Engagement marketing turns into annoyance marketing.  The user (not the brand) defines when engagement starts and when it finishes.

It’s the same with candidate engagement (often used, but not exclusively, by so called talent community providers). Candidates come because they are interested in a job. Once they have found one or have found out that the company doesn’t have a job for them, engagement ends. Because, surprise, surprise, they have a life and many communities that they are actually interested in engaging with. By all means, send them an email wishing them luck in their next career steps but then stop. Stop bothering candidates after they have shown, often through their behaviour, that they do not want to be engaged with anymore. Otherwise the engager becomes a spammer. The spammer becomes a con artist, when engagement with candidates is prolonged as they might have use in the future. The thing with candidate engagement… and as you might remember can’t be contained in this age of social media and peer to peer communication.

Now, that we have clarified this, let’s have a look at candidate experience…

Posted in Marketing, Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 19, 2012

The thing with talent communities…

As we all – hopefully – agree by now, an employer brand doesn’t exist. There is only one brand and the employer brand is a facet of this overarching brand or corporate identity.

The same holds true for talent communities. They do not exist either as an independent entity, but are a slice/slither/facet of the existing community of a brand or company.

As a minimum a talent community starts with the existing workforce and its network. This can be extended by including suppliers. In the brave new world of data transparency and richness, this community extends to customers, clients and consumers. Some of these can be easily identified as the workforce has direct contact, others could be found via the behaviour towards a brand; be it rave reviews, buying behaviour, product and service improvement suggestions, complaints (yes, complaints, people clearly care enough to overcome the inertia).

Therefore the biggest players in the talent community marketplace are Salesforce & co. Salesforce’s acquisition of Rypple might indicate that they are moving in this way and it’s certainly an area for observation and potential integration. But let’s be cautious, at this stage people might actually find it quite creepy, if their own separation of identity and interaction is overwritten without their explicit consent.

Now, that we have clarified talent communities, let’s move on to candidate engagement….

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Posted in Marketing, Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 18, 2012

Revolution not evolution

.A wise man recently summed it up quite neatly: “Globalisation and Digitalisation are the two main drivers in the world at the moment and they are changing everything. This revolution will not only continue for the next 30 years, but also level everything.”

These changes are well known and discussed, here, there, everywhere. We experience these changes on a daily basis. But something struck me when I heard the words and made me realise that we are not going far enough, that we have to be much bolder, both in terms of our assumptions and our visions.

Let’s take, for example, the assertion that data collected should only ever be used for the individual’s benefit. Currently this isn’t happening, everybody talks about it, but hardly anybody truly delivers it. Yes, every company is collecting lots of data and we are talking open data, big data, data ownership, but ultimately most organisations (and many governments) only use the individual’s data to fill their coffers.

It is time we become a little more literal, using data for the individual’s benefit. Where is the advice and the analysis that lets me live my life more efficiently and effectively? That could be from financial advice (this will be very obvious when we all use mobile payments) as to how I can deploy my money better for my own benefit to route planning to pointing out the best matching job opportunities (Stop – before you take this job, did you know there’s one with exactly the same requirements 5 min down the road that pays 10% more?).

It might be states and banks at the moments, but discontent will spread to all organisations that do not work for the benefit of the individual. So instead of trying to build the next Facebook, let’s look at a data analyser/meta app instead. But be aware, if an individual does not actively opt into you collecting or interpreting his data, you are out of bounds.

Mobile is obviously a really important component in this new world and any new initiative should start with mobile first. But, it’s just another example of us not pushing the boat out enough. The debate isn’t mobile app versus mobile enabled site. In recruitment, the debate needs to move on from applications made via mobile or videos watched on the employer branded career pages. The debate needs to focus on the underlying shift from networked internet to connected internet (Tomi Ahonen looked at this in-depth in his book ‘Communities dominate brands’ and you can find a summary in this post), the main difference for me is the move from consumption to communication, from the knowing what I’m looking for before I start, to exploring it through collaboration. The debate needs to move on from the obvious from a hirer’s perspective to the real use from candidates, for example, secretly communicating with friends during interviews. The debate needs to move from the direct, controlled communication channel to the less accessible, value enhancing, impact creating feedback loops.

The old ways won’t work anymore. Evolving the existing won’t be enough. We need new approaches. So when looking at an innovation, let’s immediately make sure that it would work when we interact with computers via mind-control instead of just within the legacy internet or within legacy economies and legacy states.

Creative Commons License photo credit: CMMooney

Posted in Mobile, Politics, Recruitment, Social Media.

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By Felix – January 11, 2012