Tag: Inspecht

Social Media for Recruitment

One of the things that has been going on in the background for the last couple of months has been the building of a social media for recruitment training program, in partnership with InsideJob.

The program consists of three modules; one hour webinar, 1 day introduction and 2 day advance course and is structured to take you from one module to another. (In fact you cannot attend the next module until you have completed the one before.)

So what will you learn?

1. What is Social Media for Recruitment

1 hour Webinar as an introduction and pre work for the Essential Social Media for Recruitment program we will discuss:

  • What is Social Media
  • Social Media Channels and Tools
  • Trends in Social Media
  • Introduction to Essential Social Media for Recruitment program
  • Q&A

2. Essential Social Media for Recruitment

1 day workshop where you will gain the skills to develop an effective Social Media strategy for your business including:

  • Social Media Strategy, Guidelines, Policies and Barriers
  • Defining your Business Drivers and aligning your Social Media strategy
  • Social Media Best Practice Framework
  • Getting Started – what now!

3. Advanced Social Media for Recruitment

2 day workshop where you will gain the skills to develop and deploy an effective Social Media strategy for your business including:

  • Effective use of Social Media Channels & Tools
  • Developing your Social Media Content
  • Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing
  • Defining your Business Case for Social Media to gain key stakeholder buy-in
  • Aligning your EVP and Social Media Messaging
  • Developing your Social Media Strategy in Detail
  • Deploying your Social Media Strategy

If you are interested in attending the next sessions head over to the InsideJob web site and register!

Some visual changes

Yesterday I made a few minor visual changes over at Inspecht and a fairly major change on Inspecht TV. There will be some more changes coming over the new few weeks, along with an upgrade to the blog, but for now I am running with these themes.

The Inspecht TV changes were in direct response to the feedback from you the readers. Overwhelmingly there has been very positive support for the idea, with many people subscribing to the feed. Also in response to feedback there will be some Inspecht produced content coming very soon.

The Inspecht site is now based on the 960 grid system, an interesting method of laying out content on a page. While Inspecht TV is using a premium WordPress theme that has been modified and upgraded with a number of different plugins.

I hope you like the changes.

ATC Social Media Event

Yesterday was the first joint ATC/Inspecht event looking specifically at the usage of social media in recruitment. My personal opinion is that overall the day was a great success, although we will wait for the formal feedback from participants to know their feelings. Here are some of my thoughts and observations.

  • Having over 130 people in a room designed for 120 is a little cramped, but that is what happens when you sell out an event.
  • A lot of people knew very little about social media in general, let alone how they could be using it as part of their day to day work.
  • 80% of the participants were internal recruiters or consultants, very few agencies were represented.
  • Mark Pesce is always a great speaker.
  • There was lots of good discussion on Twitter.
  • E&Y are doing some very good things.
  • Atlassian as always have their finger on the pulse of their community.
  • People are very confused about how to include social media as part of their recruitment strategy.
  • There is a lot of concern about the legal and management issues of social media in the work place.
  • Job boards are not going away anytime soon.
  • We need to really start to promote Enterprise 2.0 as part of talent management strategies

We will be pulling together as many of the presentations as possible and make them available on the conference site. Also all sessions were captured on video once the videos are edited they will be posted online.

Here are a couple of blogs post I have found discussing the event:

A final note, we are talking about a bigger and better event for 2010 so watch this space.

Conference update

Just a short post.

Early bird registration closed yesterday, if you missed out sorry it is now $400 for the day. Still great value if you compare with many of the other events where you can spend $400 for half a day or even a few hours!

I have had a TBD session on the agenda as I have been playing with ideas on what and who to fill the session. While I can’t announce yet who the session will be I am very excited and hope to have things finalised in the next few days.

Finally if you are trying to justify coming along remember there is the executive overview PDF you can provide to your manager. We so far have people attending from Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, hopefully Perth and Adelaide as well. There are spots left so register today!

Self Management & Inspecht Update

The last month to 6 weeks has been very busy, but I have to say I have not made a lot of progress in many different areas. Before we get to the challenges let me review the positive things from the last month.

  • I started attending Jelly in Melbourne and have met some great folks.
  • We went to Sydney for Web Directions South 2008.
  • I spoke at a user group for EmployeeConnect.
  • Sat on a panel for the NSW KM Forum.
  • Meet with several people around possible work opportunities.
  • Helped organise the Melbourne Twitter community’s Talk Like a Pirate Day party & another MTUB meetup.
  • Helped organise and attended Startup Camp Melbourne.
  • Started a wild idea of mine Blue Day 2008.
  • Wrote several blog posts that have focused my thoughts in some new areas.
  • Read several books on business development and social media.
  • Attended the AHRI HR Leadership Day.
  • Begun discussions with some peers on a new project that we can’t talk about at this stage ;-).
Now the challenges.
  • Being a solo operator for the last 6 months and having spent the 6 months previous working from home full time motivation can be an issue some days. The last month has been full of days like that.
  • I have not completed a GTD weekly review, at all.
  • Inbox is no where near zero.
  • I have not finished several documents and presentations that I set as goals for September.
  • To be honest I have no billable work between now and the end of the year, which is a concern.
  • My hosting provider and I have had a falling out meaning I spent most of last week starting to move the dozen or so sites I have onto a brand new dedicated server. While the performance has improved this process is costing me time and money. 
  • I have spent a lot of time writing code on several personal projects that don’t pay any money. While I enjoy the writing of code, you can’t pay the bills with it.
Next steps.
  • Complete a full weekly review, my major task of today.
  • Review my value proposition of Inspecht as I have noticed the message is not clear when selling my services.
  • Update the Inspecht web site with these revised service messages.
  • Finish the outstanding documents from September.
  • Focus on my GTD next actions so I don’t get lost again.

Quoted in the AFR

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to Beverley Head a freelance journalist about recruitment and web 2.0. Today the Australian Financial Review launched their IT Innovations special report with Beverley’s article quoting me. While the article is primarily about KPMG’s virtual career fair that kicks off later this month, I do end up with two paragraphs, not bad really and she mentioned Inspecht which is the best part. Unfortunately AFR run a subscription only online model so you can view the article on the AFR website, only if you have a subscription, I went & bought a physical paper to read it.

Oh and for those interested yes I did research Beverley online before agreeing to speak with her.

Job referral survey

At the beginning of last month I ran a short survey to find out how job referrals where being used within Australia. The results are now available for download.

So what did the survey say?

Well in summary it confirmed several facts. First, referrals are big business with 87% of respondents being referred a job and over 85% having referred a job. But not all referrals result in a job placement with 40% of respondents finding their current jobs via a non-recruiter referral. The final interesting piece of the survey was that the biggest barrier to referring someone a job was the risk to their reputation if the person did not work out.

Away for a week

Regular readers will know that I disappear once a year for about 9 days to go on the annual ski trip, I am heading off today to Charlotte Pass for a few days of skiing and R&R. However this year is a little different in many ways.

Firstly given my personal life changes it will be strange, but also having setup Inspecht I will now have to work a bit while away, and finally I have to study for my final PRINCE2 exam. Previously I have tried to keep work completely separated from the holiday but given I now work for myself I don’t have that luxury I also have to pay for the trip somehow.

So while I am away, be good, have fun and when I return I will get back into a regular posting schedule. You might also want to check out The Scoop podcast early next week as we recorded a follow on to Generation V.