Effective use of recruiting blogs

Gretchen from Microsoft has provided a fantasticreal world example of how to effectively use her blog within a recruiting environment.

Gretchen and some of her colleagues are looking at cold calling candidates to try and attract “passive candidates”. So before they undertake the exercise she has decided to run a short survey to find out what the readers of her blog think.

Is it scientific, probably no. Is it the most accurate method of collecting data, probably no again. However, it is easy, effective, fast and a fantastic marketing exercise for Microsoft. I am not sure how many readers she has but, if the comments are anything to go by she has a lot of candidate and recruiters reading. Therefore the feedback received will be real, and honest. Honest you say. It will be honest because due to her blog she has been having a conversation with her readers over the past week, month, year or however long they have been reading. There is a trust that has developed. Yes, she might only get people who like her and Microsoft replying, but I am sure this is not their only benchmark. What the process is doing is instead of launching their new “recruiting product” into the market place they are getting a quick temperature gauge on how it will be received.

Rugby and the English

Ok this is completely off topic and even a bit petty but I don’t really care as I am a huge rugby fan and love stirring the English.

Philip Malone directed me to an online voting process being conducted by the London Development Agency who want the public to name the new bridge which will lead up to the new Wembley Stadium. It seems a bunch of us Australians want the bridge named “The John Eales Bridge”.

And yes I was childish enough to vote, sorry.

Digital IDs at Cebit

Computerworld has an item today talking about digital identity and how some of the work from organisations like Liberty Alliance were starting to make progress on enhancing security online.

While an interesting read, the article really says nothing, I found it filled with PR-type comments and meaningless announcements from big companies. It is sad to see such when so much good work is going on, and a lot is available already in the public domain.

Blogging = Good Career?

Tim Bray from ongoing wrote last week about how blogging can be good, yes good not evil. Basically Tim brings it do to a couple of clear facts.

  1. You will have employees who blog
  2. Becuase 1 is true then you must have a policy!

Tim’s post also gives us 10 reasons why and how blogging can be good, while he has focused on the benefits for the individual who blogs I see the same benefits can be found for the employer.

If you are HR manager then please add blogging to your Internet Usage policy! If you are unsure how or what should be included then there are lots of people out in blogsphere, just ask.

Well I’m back!

I am back from my trip to the Olympic Dam mine out at Roxby Downs. I flew on Qantas from Melbourne to Adelaide and then Rex Air to the Olympic Dam airport, which is really the Roxby Downs airport. The whole trip was an interesting experience, it is about 15 years since I have flown in a prop plane, a first time into the centre (well close enough) of Australia (I know I really should have been there before but the cost), my first time at a mine site and my first business trip for WMC. Overall a great time, and I think successful.

Over the next couple of days I am going to catch up on my feeds.

Away

I will not be posting over the next few days as I will be away on business at a mine site, my first visit! Should be very interesting.

Indeed thoughts

Michael sees some flaws with the Indeed system, I however see the potential of their system, with some changes (which I guess could be seen as flaws).

Why only search jobs? Why not search the resumes that are on the web and delivery matched candidates to recruiters via RSS as a paid service.

Another extension of this would be to allow candidate to register themselves for free, post their resume (in HR-XML format of course) and then deliver matched jobs to the candidate.

What about the temporary labour market? What about adding the RSS feed into a system like eShift currently being used in Boston for nurses to bid on extra shifts?

I mentioned yesterday about the options for using the Indeed API for specific types of vertical market solutions.

These are few of my initial thoughts, I am sure there are many great ideas I have forgotten. I would be interested to hear from Indeed what their plans are and to see what feedback they have received from the marketplace.

Aggregated jobs site indeed.com

Slashdot reported overnight on the Job market for developers based on data from indeed. While the results that Slashdot have are interesting if you are a developer, but from an HR/Recruitment perspective it is much more!

indeed went live Nov 2004 and aggregates jobs postings from many different sources in reading their FAQ they describe themselves as a Jobs Search engine, very similar to RSSJobs. As a user you enter what you are looking for and where you would like it; ie SAP Project Manager in New York. The system then conducts the search providing the job seeker aggregated results across many different sources, today they claim to have 2,510,345 jobs from the last 30 days. The search can now be set up as an RSS feed, or email alert.

Indeed are also providing Job Trends across the US and the service can be used to benchmark the current demand for certain skills. Both useful pieces of information for both employers and job seekers. Indeed also state that they plan to add additional information as time goes on. They also have a blog which if you are interested in these types of developments I would recommend subscribing to.

There have been a couple of posts over the last few months about the service.

One very cool piece of functionality that they have provided is a series of web services to allow third parties to query their data via XML. You can create a simple version of this using the Jobroll function, or a more complex solution if you register as a developer. For example here is a query I created for SAP HR project managers in New York.

Indeed have provided the framework for several services to be provided based on their data. For example professional organisations could provide a scrolling jobs service for their members, or education institutions could help students to find jobs once they have graduated. There might even be some vertical markets for the service, we shall wait and see.

ResumeWiki Shutdown

Jeremy has had to shutdown ResumeWiki due to wiki spam. This is an unfortunate event, I hope he is able to get it back up and running.

ResumeWiki was a great concept Jeremy set up late last year allow job seekers to publish their resume and allow others to provide feedback and change the resume for them. A unique and fascinating use of wiki technology.