ResearchGoddess

A week has passed and I haven’t even uploaded all my photos from Minneapolis. Call me a slacker, but I’m still trying to absorb my experience at the Social Recruiting Summit that was held at Best Buy’s HQ. Being a presenter at an event always gives me a different perspective than if I just get to attend and learn. I get nervous before I present, which is silly because usually I am WAY over-prepared, and I settle right into a comfortable place within about 2 minutes. But it’s how I roll. This having been my very first Social Recruiting Summit, I had no prior experience with which to compare – and looking back now, I think this was probably the most emotion I’ve felt in a 24 hour period coming into a conference at which I was to present. A couple of reasons for this:

1. The last time I presented to a sizable crowd was at last June’s Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas. I presented on how to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Recruiting Plan in a 3-hour pre-conference workshop. I felt rusty.
2. I was presenting in front of several people whom I hold in high regard and who’ve never seen me present live before, including but not limited to Chris Hoyt, Jessica Lee, Eric Winegardner, Jennifer McClure, Jeremy Langhans, Marvin Smith, Anthony Knierim, and my colleagues from Waggener Edstrom. Some, like Jennifer McClure, I’ve known for years and consider to be close friends. The pressure was on!
3. My presentation topic was a potentially controversial one – How To Market Yourself With Social Media… Without Being Annoying!

I sat at the ‘blogging tables’ throughout the day, writing down my thoughts on the various presentations and stewing over my own. Being the wrap-up speaker comes with its own challenges – you’re the only thing standing between your audience and a frosty beverage, so whatever you have to say needs to be extra memorable. However, having a week now to digest and critique, I feel I did a good job with my presentation, and the feedback I’ve received from it has confirmed this feeling. For those who were unable to tune in, during my presentation we did about a 15 minute exercise on developing our own personal marketing plans. We used the POST method, derived from Groundswell, written by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. Feedback from this activity has been wonderful – I have had several people proactively reach out to me to let me know that they were adding details to the framework they came up with in my presentation and are eager to really get more focused in their online efforts. Hearing this warms my heart, and I look forward to seeing how they develop.

Having Minneapolis host a national recruiting event was long overdue. Minneapolis has put itself on the map over the last several years with its many heavily attended locally-based recruiting events, including the Minnesota Recruiters events and the Minnesota Technical Recruiters Network. However, Minneapolis also has a rich social media community that I’ve grown to know and love, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet many people who I knew online through Twitter but had never met in person before. As a former Cincinnati gal myself, it pains me to say this (not really…) but if the 513 wants to host a Social Recruiting Summit in the future, they’ve got some big shoes to fill.

Highlights from the conference, from my experience, included:

• The pre-conference Tweetup, hosted and sponsored graciously by LinkUp. Lots of the local Minneapolis social media community members attended this in addition to all the recruiters who were in town for the event. It was a great ‘sandbox’ evening – everyone played quite nicely and great new friendships were begun.
• Best Buy – truly a wonderful company, not only for hosting the event (and I hear they also hosted at least 2 more events over the remainder of the week – wow!) but for giving us a glimpse into what they do with their social presence, not just from a recruiting standpoint but also from a marketing, financial, and customer service perspective. Those guys and gals are cutting edge.
• Josh Ingalls and Andy Drish of Principal Financial Group – a campus relations guy (Josh) and a marketing guy (Andy). AWESOME… I believe our jobs are more marketing-based than many really understand, and it was great to hear an actual marketing person speaking at a recruiting event. And the part of me that has been doing work with campus relations jumped for joy at Josh. Thanks, guys!
• My roommate (for the 3rd time now I think!), Jennifer McClure – many of you know the saga of my 2600 mile move from Cincinnati to Washington state last summer, and Jennifer accompanied me on most of this journey. Any chance I can get to spend with her is special, since we no longer live near each other (we seriously used to live down the road from one another!)
• Meeting some Minneapolis friends – something I honestly didn’t think I would ever get to do. Just through 6 degrees of separation, I think outside of my Cincinnati and Washington state connections, I have more connections with people in Minneapolis than anywhere else. Specifically, Keith Privette, Steve Lewis, Kate-Madonna Hindes, Erica Mayer, Nicole Bodem, and Lisa Grimm, it was nice to meet you in person along with everyone else!

Things I’d like to see at the next Social Recruiting Summit (which incidentally is being held 80 miles from my current residence, in Seattle WA!):

• More metrics – now, for those who know me, you know that it hurts for me to say I want to see MORE numbers (I loathe metrics) but these are needed in order to make a business case for the continued use of social media for our recruitment efforts.
• More small business examples - Paul DeBettignies gave us a glimpse into what he does as a one-man shop when it comes to social media presence. I think we need more examples of this, as employment trends will continue to move more and more toward companies hiring for contract as opposed to FTE. We need to know more about the how-to from an individual contributor standpoint.
• More marketing and more PR – once again, I think there is more marketing and PR in our current job duties than we’d like to admit. I would like to see pure marketing and/or PR professionals do presentations at these events. These are the people whose bread and butter is based on the things that we really are just skimming the surface of.

BIG thanks:

• ERE – David Manaster and his team always put on a good event. I appreciate being given the opportunity to present here and I am looking forward to being able to help out with the next one – just let me know what I can do!
• Best Buy – gracious hosts and wonderful examples of how to really do things right and be thought leaders. Thank you for giving to all of us in so many ways!
• Kris Dunn – for being a fun and engaging emcee – I’ve been a fan of Fistful Of Talent  and HR Capitalist for awhile, and it was great to finally have the chance to meet and chat with you!
• Paul DeBettignies – you are the poster child for going above and beyond the call of duty. You lobbied hard to bring ERE to your city and brought all of your worlds together for one big awesome party. Thanks for being a gracious host. I hope you’ll come to Seattle and allow us out here to return the favor to you!

I’ll post the link to the video from my presentation as soon as (or IF) it can be recovered (technical difficulties). In the meantime, here’s the Prezi version of it. As well, here’s a neat transcript of the #socialrecruiting hashtag from the day of the Summit as well as the day before and the day after, created at www.wthashtag.com. I look forward to seeing many of you again in Seattle!

I’ve been in Minneapolis since Friday hanging out with friends Paul DeBettignies and Kasey Skala, and meeting new friends like Erica Mayer, Lisa Grimm, and Bridgett Jewell. Why am I here? ERE is holding the Social Recruiting Summit here today – a gathering of recruitment professionals interested in learning about social technologies and how they can play a part in the future of our functions. People are coming from all over the US (and someone even flew from Australia from what I heard!) to get their learning on. And yours truly is the wrap-up speaker for this event! Yep – I have the honor of being the only thing standing between the attendees and happy hour at the end of the day I’ll be talking about how to market yourself through social media without being annoying.

I plan to have some fun with this topic – after all, each and every one of us had to crawl before we walked around these here parts, and we’ve all made pain in the you-know-whats out of ourselves at some point in our quest to establish our online identities. I’m looking forward to having a great group discussion with the attendees – and as an added bonus, I understand that the session will be live-streamed! So please feel free to tune in to the live broadcast at ERE.net. My session will begin at 4:30pm Central Time. I am using the hashtag #rgMN on Twitter throughout my presentation as well if you want to follow some of the online discussion (also follow #socialrecruiting for the rest of the conference).

PS – this will be my first time doing a livestreamed event! Please send me happy thoughts Look forward to meeting many of you in person and hope to see some lively interaction from those of you who will be following along online!

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending GasPedal‘s BlogWell conference which was hosted at Microsoft in the Seattle area. I was really looking forward to this event, as I usually attend recruiting events where social media is certainly a hot topic but we never really get beyond skimming the surface of it or really dig deep into the potential of how social technologies fit in with recruiting strategies today. I certainly was not disappointed where content was concerned. Of the 8 big brands which shared some of their companies’ best practices I was able to catch Boeing (Todd Blecher, Communications Director presenting), Pemco Insurance (Rod Brooks, VP, Chief Marketing Officer presenting), Nokia (Molly Schonthal, Social Media Communications presenting) and Intel (Bryan Rhoads, Digital Strategist presenting). Also presenting were Microsoft, ExOfficio, Starbucks, and Xerox. I loved how Boeing is running feature stories on their website of the people who work for the company, and how Nokia has used creative partnerships with people like the @IceCreamMan to embrace the pure ‘fun’ of social media while still driving a business agenda.

For me, attending BlogWell was a dream come true. I finally got the meat and potatoes I’ve been desperately looking for with regards to learning about how other big companies are really getting themselves out there with social media. There should be more recruiting professionals attending events like this to learn important things about marketing and communication via social channels. After all, we are similar creatures. Our jobs involve much more marketing and PR than most of us realize. And knowing this, there is something that plagues me…

With all of the effort that many companies are putting into their social media presences, it surprises me that the recruiting organizations at so many companies aren’t proactively partnering with the marketing, communications, and/or PR organizations to leverage their work for filling job openings. I had some sidebar conversations with a few people over the course of the day, just out of sheer curiosity for what their recruiters are doing with social media, and most of the folks I spoke with either said their recruiting is just starting to dabble in social media, or that they have no clue what it is or how to use it in the first place. This is surprising to me!

It’s great to hear about the way other companies are getting their marketing message out via social channels, but shouldn’t recruiting also be participating in this practice? Why not capitalize on the communication that’s already happening, recruiters? These are the places where your target audience spends its leisure time… go to them and get involved. Get to know your marketing team and learn what message they are putting out, and use it to your advantage when you recruit. According to what I’m seeing, you’ll stand out from the crowd by embracing this.

If you want to get started in learning about some of these things, I’d recommend getting yourself to Minneapolis on May 17th for the Social Recruiting Summit. Let me know if you’re going to be there, because I will be!

Today, I’m going to enlighten you as to why so many recruiters think that social media is just a time suck, a waste of your precious hours, and worthless as recruiting tools.

It’s because the majority of recruiting professionals are extroverts.

Yes, this is a widely believed theory, that the best recruiters possess extroverted personalities. Well I’m here to tell you that this is why you poo-poo social media so much. Because you’re an extrovert, and you just don’t get it.

My friend Tac Anderson, who blogs at NewCommBiz and is the Digital Consulting Director at Waggener Edstrom (and an extrovert himself) wrote a thoughtful post earlier this week on why introverts make better networkers. Here are his own words on the topic:

“…what I’ve noticed is that extroverts turn social networking into a popularity contest. We think success in networking means having the most connections. This approach can work but after a while this approach doesn’t scale anymore.”

Oh yes you extroverts, everything to you is about who has the most friends. But for those of us who are more introverted (yes, I STILL claim that, I just have extroverted tendencies) know that the friendship quality outweighs the quantity! And that’s why we rock at finding the usefulness of social media. While you’re out hawking for more followers, we’re busy figuring out how to add value to our networks and develop our relationships. We’re occupied with sharing, rather than bullhorning. As Tac says,

“Simply put they are more deliberate. Introverts are more likely to look for relationships that are mutually beneficial. They don’t want to waste their time or the other persons time. The relationships they do build are more sincere and more likely to result in something meaningful.”

You can take this stuff to the bank because it’s pure gold. Just because you’ve found no value in all your wild arm flailing and jumping up and down to scream “Look at me! Look at my jobs! I’m awesome!” doesn’t mean there is no value to be found. You just have to be cooler. You know, be an introvert. Because quite simply, we rock

Check out Tac’s post in its entirety. It’s great.

No, it’s not a joke Today officially marks one year that I’ve been working as a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T. Why am I writing a blog post about it? Because it’s my blog and I can, that’s why… no seriously, it’s because I couldn’t think of a better place for me to be right now – except perhaps sipping a frosty beverage in a chaise lounge chair on a tropical beach somewhere. *hint hint to my manager*

I started doing internet research almost 8 years ago. The progression of my career to this point, in my opinion, couldn’t really be any more perfect. Each step along the way helped prepare me for the next phase. I began at an MRI franchise office in Cincinnati, where I spent the first four years of my professional career learning the business of recruiting. I learned almost all there is to know about all parts of the recruiting process from my time spent at that company. I also learned a lot about my own role as an internet researcher as well as the beginnings of social networking…

When we parted ways after four years, I joined a recruiting franchisor, for which I worked remotely, that was based in Cleveland. From this experience I learned self-discipline (working from home isn’t as easy as some people may think!) and how to work well with clients. My role at this company was one of researcher, database administrator, and trainer. I trained all of our recruitment franchise owners on how to use their ATS, how to do some basic internet research, and on the beginning basics of social networking. Some franchise owners (my clients) were easier to train than others, so I had to learn patience and client relations in this position in addition to the art and science of putting together coherent presentations.

After a year with this company I joined the corporate side of recruiting and took a position with a public relations agency. This role was, again, remote, but it was quite different from my previous two in that I was now sourcing for just one company – the one that employed me. From this experience, I fell head over heels in love with social technology as well as communications. I enjoyed being a part of the employment branding strategy and contributed quite a bit to the company’s online presence. This experience taught me the importance of consistent messaging, having a good online image, and gave me a new experience of working with an in-house recruiting team.

Which brings me to AT&T! I’m so excited about the fact that my job came from a long-term friendship and a Twitter DM – social technology meets old-fashioned relationship-building. Being offered this opportunity also provided me a chance to prove the things I had been teaching others for years about the importance of networking before you need it. And most importantly, it has given me the privilege of working with Chris Hoyt, someone who had been on my radar ever since I first started blogging. This last year has really opened my eyes to the potential of mobile recruiting, including things like geotagging and running SMS recruiting campaigns. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being the go-to sourcing expert for our Campus Recruiting team as well and being part of our strategic social and employment branding efforts. My AT&T recruiting colleagues are such smart and friendly people who love what they do and it shows. For such an incredibly big organization, it feels like family to me and I’m so pleased to be able to celebrate a year here.

So here’s hoping for many more awesome years with this fun and innovative bunch – thanks for this opportunity. It’s the perfect place for me!