CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the HandbookWhat's in it for you?
Your business is only as great as your people. You've got a uniqueproduct or an outstanding service; you've got the infrastructureto deliver it; you're ready to take your organization to the next level. Sohow do you find the best people to get you there? Where are candidateshiding? These days, the answer is simple: they're online, just likeeveryone else! But finding that one qualified candidate among themillions of users who are telling the world who they are and what theycan do via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and dozens of other socialnetworking sites can seem like searching for that proverbial needle inthe haystack. Where do you even begin?
We at hyrebuzz have spent countless hours seeking to leverage themost easy-to-use, powerful, inexpensive, and all-around best socialnetworking tools to help with recruiting, and we've written thishandbook to share what we've learned with you. If you are recruitingin the twenty-first century, you need to use social networks to youradvantage. By using social media, you will find that you can
• enhance your organization's brand recognition as an employerof choice;
• identify qualified candidates more quickly, efficiently, andinexpensively than ever before;
• recruit passive applicants who otherwise would not knowof your openings—there are more than one hundred millionprofiles on the large social media sites;
• target applicants based on such characteristics as geographicallocation, education, and skills;
• net more qualified candidates in less time;
• make it easier for candidates to contact you and apply for ajob;
• obtain more information about a candidate than what is on arésumé or curriculum vitae;
• compare what is on a candidate's résumé or curriculum vitaeto what is on his or her social media pages; and
• better screen for organizational and cultural fit before theinterview.
As you well know, filling positions isn't a one-way street. Socialnetworks won't just help you choose the right people; they'll helpensure that the right people choose you. You'll make a good firstimpression on those candidates whom you interview by showing themthat your organization uses the most efficient and contemporary toolsavailable.
While social networks are relatively simple to use and require nocash outlay to access, they do require time and energy. And if youchoose to use social networks to their best possible advantage, it willcost you money to pay someone to maintain the networks or evenenhance them through design and multimedia. Each site is different,and weaving them together effectively requires that you understandhow to leverage the many and varied tools available, even as siteschange by the second.
But now you're no longer out to sea in the social media storm. Thishandbook takes the many options and presents them in a simple,instructional, and easy-to-read format.
As you take the next steps toward online recruiting, stay connectedwith hyrebuzz. In the ever-evolving social network landscape, thereis no way to keep a printed guide current, so we are making updatesavailable through our website: www.hyrebuzz.com. Be a part ofkeeping us up to the minute! If you have information that others willfind useful or questions about the handbook, please share with us.
And know that hyrebuzz goes far beyond our handbook. We're hereto expand your recruiting versatility through training, consultation,advice, support, and other resources. If you or your colleagues wantto keep expanding on what you've learned from this handbook, visitour website at www.hyrebuzz.com.
So start turning pages—and start finding the best people to fit yourorganization.
Getting StartedHow to use this handbook
You've picked up this handbook because you recognize the valueof social media when it comes to recruiting and you want to takegreater advantage of this powerful tool.
To help you leverage social media toy our organization's advantage, wewill show you, step-by-step, how to become a user of the major socialnetworking sites and how to maximize their efficiency and efficacy.
This handbook is straightforward and pared down; you can read itcover to cover or zero in on the sections that address your specificneeds.
As you proceed through this handbook, you'll find step-by-stepinstructions for creating social media pages, which appear in the formof step checklists to help you track your progress. To the right of eachstep checklist is space for you to make notes in advance or as youprogress. For instance, you might want to jot down a blog address toinclude on a social media page or highlight a suggested change to yourwebsite that will allow it to sync with your social media page.
Read through all the steps before you begin setting up the social mediapages so that you are prepared in advance. By having your digital filesand content ready, you can quickly and easily go through all of thesteps at one time.
You'll find potential pitfalls in using social media highlighted withthis symbol—!!—so you can take special care to avoid them. We'lluse this symbol—$$—to let you know when you have to pay for aservice or feature. But don't worry; most of the options we'll discussare free of charge. You'll also find all the tools and terms specificto social media listed at the back of the handbook in the glossary,which you can refer to as you read and implement the handbook'sinstructions. And to get started, all you need is a computer and anInternet connection! We'll discuss how you may find that you wantto integrate more tools, like an applicant-tracking system, into youronline recruiting efforts, but we'll start simple. Just get online, andyou're ready to begin.
What Is Social Media?A simple introduction for the beginner
In this section we'll introduce social media in general. If you arealready familiar with social media, you can skip to the nextsection, which will familiarize you with the key social media sites werecommend that you use for recruiting.
We started this book with a bold claim: social media can revolutionizeyour recruiting results. But what exactly is this seemingly magic tool?To quote web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik: "Social media islike teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it'sfinally done, there is surprise it's not better."
Social media sites are popular, easy to use, and effective for quickand immediate communication to a broad audience of friends,family, fans, and colleagues.
Social media sites are websites where people who subscribe cancommunicate and exchange information with each other via theInternet. These websites contain what ever you elect to include, such asdemographic, educational, experiential, personal, and organizationalinformation; images and messages about you or your organization;posted messages, blogs, videos, photographs, surveys, games, andlinks to other sites; and feeds that bring information in from otherwebsites.
When you "post" information on a social media site, the informationcan be viewed by those with whom you choose to connect by following,friending, and linking—as long as your connections visit the site. Sothat you can limit who is able to see various types of information youshare on a social media site, your connections each have settings thatallow you to define who can see parts of, or all of, your page.
While many social media sites provide free basic membership whenyou sign up and create a username and password, social media sitesoften offer "extras" for a fee. These extras tend to be low in cost but arenot necessary for use of the site. For example, on LinkedIn you canadvertise by paying for LinkedIn ads; or on Facebook you can buyFacebook credits, which can be used to send "gifts" or to purchaseapplications and games.
When you use social media, communicating with people andorganizations you know who also use social media becomes verysimple: when you post a photograph, greeting, well wish, update,news, or other information, it can be seen immediately by those withwhom you have chosen to connect. Here's an example: If you have aFacebook account, you can share photographs of a trip by creatinga photograph album and uploading your favorite photographs to it(which is very easy and intuitive to do). Everyone whom you have"friended" on Facebook can log in and see those photographs at anytime, making it easier to stay in touch regardless of how near or faryou are from your "friends."
!! Social media sites can absorb an incredible amount of your time,if you let them. Like reality television and soap operas, social mediacan suck you in before you know it!
Since there are countless social media sites, and the number increasesby the minute, we are going to focus on the small segment of theever-expanding social media universe that is particularly usefulfor recruiting. These sites are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, andGoogle+.
Decoding the lingo can be frustrating, so before we dive into the nitty-grittyof these four sites, here are some common terms that you'll seecome up again and again. For a complete list, turn to the back of thishandbook.
• avatar: An avatar is a graphical image that social mediausers use to represent themselves rather than using an actualpersonal photograph.
• blog: A shortening of the term "web log," which refers to anelectronic journal or written conversation on a website, usuallygenerated by someone who wants to share their activities andthoughts or engage in a virtual debate. In the movie Julieand Julia, the character Julie writes a daily blog about herexperiences as she hones her French cooking skills recipeby recipe from a Julia Child cookbook. When her blog getsdiscovered and gains a following, she gains notoriety. You canread and respond to someone else's blog. Each written blogentry is dated and appears in reverse chronological order.
• follower: On Twitter, if you want to read all of the Tweetswith Twitter of another Twitter user, you must become a"follower" of theirs. When you "follow" a Twitter accountholder, their Tweets with Twitter will post on your Twitterpage, and when another Twitter account holder "follows" you,your Tweets with Twitter will appear on their Twitter page.
• hashtag: In order for you to be able to search for Tweets withTwitter about a certain subject, Tweets with Twitter have tocontain a key reference word called a "hashtag." This is a wordthat has a hash mark as its first character, like "#socialmedia."If you searched Twitter for #socialmedia, you would seeTweets with Twitter that contain the #socialmedia hashtag.
• link: A person to whom you are connected via LinkedIn.You can stay connected with your links and follow theiradvancements and changes in professional activities.
• post: A message that appears on a social media site, where itcan be viewed by others. Also a verb, "to post": to share on asocial media site.
• retweet: A Tweet that you post on Twitter to share with yourfollowers and that one of your followers then reposts to theirfollowers. If one of your Tweets with Twitter gets retweeted,your Twitter username will appear beside it to indicate whooriginated the Tweet.
• RSS feed: An acronym for rich site summary, also calledreally simple syndication. RSS feeds allow you to subscribeto content on blogs and other social media so that you cancontinually receive notice of new posts via a running feed.
• search engine: A tool you can use to search for informationon the World Wide Web and FTP servers. Google is today'smost widely used search engine. When you enter a searchtopic, the search engine combs the Internet for sites thatreference the topic and lists the web pages and files it finds inorder from the most to the least precise match. Each item thesearch engine finds and lists is called a "hit."
• tag: A keyword in or attached to a blog post, bookmark,photograph, or other item. Tags enable you to find what youwant when searching the web.
• Tweet: A message posted on Twitter by a Twitter accountholder. Tweets with Twitter have a 140-character limit.
• XML: An acronym for extensible markup language, a set ofrules for encoding documents in a machine-readable form,like html. XML formats documents, making them simple andusable over the Internet.
Ready to go to the next step?
Okay, then quiz yourself to see how much you have retained ...
1. In order to use a social media site, you must become a____.
2. True or false: An RSS feed allows you to subscribe to ablog.
3. The overarching purpose of social media is to:
a. Match up people who want to go on dates.
b. Facilitate communication between members.
c. Create groups for people who want to socialize.
Answers: 1. member or user; 2. true; 3. b
Now let's move on to an overview of a few key social media sites youcan easily and inexpensively use for recruiting.
An Overview of FrequentlyUsed Social Media SitesTwitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+
If you are already familiar with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, andGoogle+, you may want to skip to the next section, where we getinto the specifics of how to create profiles for your organization oneach of these sites.
In this section, we'll zero in on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, andGoogle+, four widely used social media sites that we recommendyou use for recruiting. Social media is such a powerful tool because,using sites like these, you can spread the word about job opportunitiesvery quickly and at only the cost of your time. The four sites hyrebuzzhas chosen to spotlight have become so ubiquitous that the sitesare almost mandatory. If, for example, college recruiting is part ofyour recruitment strategy, you may be expected to provide yourorganization's social media page URLs when you register on theschool's career website. Once you become familiar with how to usesocial media to recruit, it will take very little of your time to post jobinformation and, with one posting, broadcast the job across multiplesites.
Twitter
What is Twitter? Twitter, pictured in the accompanying screenshotimage, is a social media site designed to allow users to publish quick,brief messages via the Internet. When you set up an account andbecome a Twitter user, you can select other Twitter users you wantto "follow" and others can elect to "follow" you. When you log into your Twitter account, you will see the most recent Tweets withTwitter of all those you follow. You'll also have a profile page, whichdisplays your username (Twitter usernames are preceded by the@ symbol), a 160-character bio, a profile picture or "avatar," anda link to a web page or blog, if you have one. Profile pictures arecompressed to a very small size and appear to the left of publishedTweets with Twitter along with the Tweeter's username so thatfollowers know who posted. Some can be difficult to see, as you'llnotice if you visit Nelson Mandela's Twitter page, https://twitter.com/NelsonMandela; the logos and long words do not display well.By contrast, you can see that the Sydney Symphony Orchestra'shttps://twitter.com/sydsmph Twitter page logo shows well when itis compressed, even though it is larger. Check out the accompanyingscreenshot of the Recruiter Dynamics Twitter page at https://twitter.com/Recruitdynamics.
Since its inception, Twitter has experienced explosive growth, withover four hundred million views per month and twenty-seven millionTweets with Twitter per day. Employees and consultants use it whensearching for organizations to work for—so, shouldn't you be using itto find employees and consultants to work for your organization?
What are Tweets? Tweets are messages you post on Twitter. Tweetswith Twitter are limited to 140 characters in length but can containany information you wish to share with your followers, such as yourthoughts and activities, messages you receive from and forward toothers, news and information from sources you find interesting, orphotographs and ideas. Tweets with Twitter are almost like web-basedtext messages. Every new Tweet with Twitter you post appears at the topof your Twitter page, with prior Tweets with Twitter appearing below it.
