Given all of the media brouhaha about social networking lately, it would be easy to feel out of step or worse if you weren’t actively trolling the profiles on MySpace and Friendster for your next candidate. And yet, a recent survey by Yahoo! suggests that social networking has its benefits, to be sure, but one of them is not recruitment.
The Yahoo! poll was conducted in May of this year and garnered responses from 3,714 U.S. workers aged 18 to 64 who were either employed or had been in the last five years. Here’s what it found:
What do these data tell us? I think they offer the following lessons:
and
The reality is that most people see a stark difference between the interactions they have to find a date and the interactions they have to find a job. (Witness their surprise when recruiters use social networking sites to conduct character checks on them.) That said, it is also accurate to describe the Internet as the greatest facilitator of recruitment networking since the introduction of the telephone. Networking online to engage candidates, however, occurs in different places and is done in a different way than networking for social purposes. Here’s what I mean.
Professional Networking is Done in Different Places
Top talent is like matter. It seeks to return to its original state. In other words, the best and brightest like to interact and communicate with their peers regularly. Traditionally, that’s been done at professional conferences and meetings. Today, it’s also done online.
Where does this professional networking occur on the Internet? In discussion forums and chat rooms, on bulletin boards and listservs that bring together people who share a career field, affinity or both. They create a virtual meeting place for sales representatives and Hispanic-American accountants, for IT contractors and women in technology and for just about every other cohort of the workforce. Using the asynchronous communications of the Web, these professionals can stay in touch with their peers and do so whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them. They can network online from the office, in a hotel room while on a business trip and at home in their fuzzy slippers.
What destinations online offer such forums and bulletin boards? You’ll find them at:
Professional Networking is Done Differently
As the word itself notes, networking involves work. In other words, to be effective, it has to be an integral part of our business day. I recommend that online networking be done twice a week for 30 minutes at a time. That’s important because the purpose of professional networking on the Web is the same as it is in the real world. We interact with people to develop relationships with them. Now, for all of us who have ever been in a relationship, we know that these interactions take time to develop and involve hard work to succeed.
Why go to the trouble? Because as recruiters, we must:
Recruiting on the Internet has always been more than recruitment advertising and data mining for digital resumes. In cyberspace as much as in the real world, it is also a process of stringing an ever tighter net of appropriate ties between recruiters and their prospects. While there is a social component to that networking-it is, after all, an interaction between people-it is most effective when done in a professional way and for professional purposes.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
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This Issue’s Sponsor: The Diversity Talent Network
This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of the Diversity Talent Network.
An event you don’t want to miss… the ‘2007 HBCU Alumni Online Career Fair’ sponsored by the Diversity Talent Network!
Howard University, Spelman College , Morehouse College and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities throughout the United States will showcase the best diversity candidates with degrees in Business, Communications, Engineering, Healthcare, Liberal Arts, Political Science and many more. Participating will be recent graduates and experienced professionals engaged in their careers and seeking new opportunities.
The entire event is online and virtual. You will be able to post your best job openings, screen online applications from motivated candidates, schedule and conduct telephone interviews from your desk at home or your office anytime during the weeks of November 5-9, 2007 & November 12-16, 2007. Don’t wait; take the first step … register today!
For more information and to register visit the Diversity Talent Network or to speak with a representative, call direct (866) 405-8045
Section Two: Site News You Can Use
Boxwood Technologies and the American Hospital Association (AHA) announced that they will be partnering to provide online recruitment services to AHA member hospitals and other healthcare organizations. When it launches in November of this year, the service will include both a recruitment advertising job bank and a searchable resume database for employers looking for both clinical and non-clinical talent. It will be accessible through the AHA Web-site.
GMaps has been described as “a site for sore thighs.” More and more business travelers are bringing along their running shoes when they’re on trips and starting or ending their day with a jog around the local streets or parks. It’s hard to know how far you’ve gone in a strange neighborhood, however, so GMaps provides a solution. Using Google maps, it enables you to draw a route through an area and then provides the exact distance you’ll run and even the elevations you’ll encounter. It’s a great way to see the sights and see that you keep up with your normal running regimen while on the road.
Health recently published a strategy for dealing with one of the great stressors of the modern workplace: the late afternoon, totally unexpected, completely out-of-the-blue but critically important briefing for the boss. What should you do? The magazine suggests the following (with my translation):
MIT Sloan Management Review published an article that suggests the conventional approach to teambuilding may be wrong. Typically, teams focus first on building interpersonal relationships and then turn to the tasks at hand. The idea, of course, is that the better people know each other, the better they will be able to work together as a unit. Authors Lynda Gratton, Andreas Voigt and Tamara Erickson, however, argue that exactly the opposite is true. By focusing on identifying personality traits and backgrounds first, team members are more likely to interact solely with those most like them rather than with the group as a whole. This splintering effect makes it difficult to achieve a cohesive effort that draws on the talent of everyone. They suggest, instead, that the team begin by working together on one or more of its tasks and that only after they have been successfully accomplished should the group then turn to developing individual relationships.
WEDDLE’s launched its 2007 Fall/Winter Training Series. It provides a full curriculum of training programs that are delivered by toll-free teleconference. You get the PowerPoint slides for each program in advance, and on the day of the training, you simply call a toll-free number and have the presentation delivered right to you. All of the programs are presented by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle, and draw on WEDDLE’s 10+ years of research into the Best Practices for sourcing and recruiting online. The Fall/Winter 2007 series is sponsored by Bernard Hodes Group and includes:
These are great learning opportunities and priced hundreds, even thousands of dollars less than other training programs. Registrations are limited, so reserve your seats now. To get pricing information and sign up, please call WEDDLE’s at 317.916.9424.
Section Three: Site Profiles
Site Spotlite … from the pages of WEDDLE’s 2007/8 Guides and Directories
There are 40,000 job boards now in operation in North America and an equal number operating elsewhere around the world. The key to recruiting top talent online, therefore, is knowing where to find and how to select the best sites for each of your requirements. WEDDLE’s 2007/8 Guide identifies 350 of the top sites worldwide and provides the information you need to determine which job boards will deliver the optimum yield for you. For example:
Absolutely Health Care
Post full time jobs: Yes
Post part time, contract or consulting jobs: Yes-All
Distribution of jobs: National-USA
Fee to post a job: $195/posting
Posting period: 90 days
Can posting be linked to your site: Yes
Resume database: Yes
Number of resumes: 154,000+
Source of resumes: Direct from individual
Top occupations among visitors: Nurse, Physician, Allied Health
Other services for employers: Automated resume agent, Banner advertising, Status report on advertising
Member, International Association of Employment Web Sites: Yes
Please Support Our Sponsor: The Diversity Talent N
This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of the Diversity Talent Network.
An event you don’t want to miss… the ‘2007 HBCU Alumni Online Career Fair’ sponsored by the Diversity Talent Network!
Howard University, Spelman College , Morehouse College and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities throughout the United States will showcase the best diversity candidates with degrees in Business, Communications, Engineering, Healthcare, Liberal Arts, Political Science and many more. Participating will be recent graduates and experienced professionals engaged in their careers and seeking new opportunities.
The entire event is online and virtual. You will be able to post your best job openings, screen online applications from motivated candidates, schedule and conduct telephone interviews from your desk at home or your office anytime during the weeks of November 5-9, 2007 & November 12-16, 2007. Don’t wait; take the first step … register today!
For more information and to register visit the Diversity Talent Network or to speak with a representative, call direct (866) 405-8045