ResearchGoddess

I haven’t seen TechCrunch or Mashable cover the quiet release of www.followfriday.com yet, so I’m not quite sure if that means it’s not newsworthy. Either way, I think it will be interesting for anyone who likes to participate in Follow Fridays on Twitter.

So, a little history here to begin: apparently, last year a website called www.followfridays.com was launched to help people manage their #FF’s and see who the most #FF’ed individuals are. Clicking on that URL today brings you to a web hosting site called ‘(mt) Media Temple’. So I guess it’s been shut down. I heard whisperings of Twitter incorporating something to officially recognize #FFs, but I have yet to see anything leaked, tweeted, or scooped on that. Then, this afternoon, I received an email from Alfredo Artiles of www.e24apps.com – the company that also launched LocaFollow which I highlighted in my post on tools for searching Twitter profiles. He said:

I am releasing http://www.followfriday.com, which is a world Twitter ranking of the most recommended tweeps based on the #followfriday recommendations. The app is a Twitter ranking but also a Twitter directory and a recommendations management tool where you can check who recommends you, who you have recommended and automatically thank all of them or create Twitter lists in only a couple of clicks.

Continue reading “#FollowFriday Goes .com (again)” »

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!

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!

Earlier today, I spent about 30 minutes in the Arbita Sourcing Lab at SourceCon showing the participants how to search Twitter profiles and clean/manage their followers. We had fun and learned how to make good use of the information that people provide in their bios to aid in our candidate searches. Below are some of the resources I shared with the lab participants. Enjoy!

Tweepsearch – allows people on Twitter to search their followers bio and location information. Twitter doesn’t currently have a bio search and as your Twitter network grows, it’s nice to be able to look through your tweeps. Limited advanced Boolean search (i.e. no near: location search). This is a good service be cause it is:

• Sortable by username, # of followers, or # followed
• Able to download search results to .csv file

Tweepz – does the same thing as Tweepsearch, but allows you to create an RSS feed from your search results. You can:

• Use advanced Boolean operators (location, specific name, etc.)
• Create an RSS feed of search results

Followerwonk – lets you search bios as well as do Twitter account comparisons. Can be either a very simple keyword search or a more complex, detailed SQL full-text search (using the documentation available on the site). For account comparisons, you can run up to three accounts side-by-side and get Venn diagram information on:

• Shared connections – followers & following
• Days on Twitter
• # of new followers per day
• # of tweets

LocaFollow – a Google-powered Twitter profile search engine. It allows you to search bio, location, name, AND tweets. By logging in to your Twitter account from LocaFollow you will be able to:

• Bulk follow the resulting Twitter accounts, or follow them individually
• Create a Twitter list directly from the search results
• Create a TweepML list as the service is integrated with LocaFollow (see my post about why I love TweepML)
• Tweet a particular Twitter user’s search results rank

Twiangulate – lets you search for who your friends, enemies and peers are following (see my Cool Tool Alert post about Twiangulate). Allows for three comparison searches of up to three Twitter accounts, as well as a keyword search. Only simple Boolean can be used in the keyword search (AND, OR [using | ], NOT [using !], and phrase [using “ ”]). This is an awesome service because:

• You can keywords search for profiles of individuals whom a specific Twitter user is following – for example, let’s say I wanted to find out what Account Directors a recruiting colleague is following… I would type “account director” into the keywords search, and the Twitter username I wanted to parse into the next field. I would get the results listed below
• You can instantly tweet out your search results directly from Twiangulate
• You can search for biggest or most common followers, or most common or most obscure friends

I believe there’s a lot of untapped gold on Twitter when it comes to searching for job candidates. The thing you need to keep in mind is that there is more than one type of job seeker on Twitter. Here are the two types of active job seekers I’ve noticed on Twitter:

1. The Deliberate Twitter Job Seeker
2. The Situational Twitter Job Seeker

The deliberate twitter job seeker is the person who has written in their bio line that they are looking, whereas the situational twitter job seeker is one who might tweet that they dislike their job or want a new job after a frustrating day at work. The key is to run searches for both types of people. If you only search Twitter updates for job seekers, you’re going to miss out on the ones who have their job seeker status in their bio.

The deliberate job seekers most likely have other social network profiles elsewhere noting their status as a job seeker, and Twitter is simply a part of their ‘campaign’. As such, it would be best to use a tool such as TweepSearch or Tweepz to find these people. These two search engines search only Twitter profiles, not the tweets themselves. Here is a sample search string to use:

“looking for a job” OR “looking for work” OR “seeking employment” OR “need a job” OR “need work” OR unemployed OR “new opportunity”

Situational job seekers are going to be a bit more challenging to find, because they probably don’t even consider themselves to really be ‘active’ job seekers. Rather, these are the individuals that maybe had a bad day at work and are venting. For example:

When approaching these people, it’s important to catch them close to the time in which they expressed their disdain to their job. That is, if you wait until 2 days after they’ve expressed hatred for their current job, you’ve probably missed your window of opportunity. For this search, I recommend conducting a basic search through Twitter’s advanced search function and subscribing to an RSS of the results. This way, you’ll get fresh results for people who are having frustrating days at work. Here is a search string that has worked pretty well for me:

“new job” OR “need a job” OR (“looking for” job) OR ((want OR need) “new job”) OR (hate “my job”) OR “job sucks”

Another good resource to follow is the Twitter account @hatemyjobfeed. This particular Twitter account automatically retweets message that contain “hate my job”. While often just amusing, there are occasionally tweets that come through this feed that warrant a response from a recruiter with a good opportunity.