My Announcement

Metashift After dropping subtle and not so subtle hints on Twitter for the last week I’m absolutely delighted to announce the launch of MetaShift, my new consulting business. I’ll be continuing to work for Penna on a consultancy basis but as of next Monday will be taking on my own additional clients and projects. In the true “Beta” nature of modern business this is really only a soft launch at this stage. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on my proposition, launching the new website and exploring how I can help companies address the challenges of Social Recruiting and the other seismic changes happening in our marketplace.  In the meantime I’m delighted to finally be able to talk about my plans!

Social media and HR – arch enemies or vital partners?

This article was originally published on Changeboard.com

The recent ban by Portsmouth City Council on their employees accessing social media sites such as Facebook while at work, has provoked much debate in other companies and organisations.

I suspect that a large number of HR departments up and down the country are looking at the issue in more detail than ever. Retailer magnet Theo Paphitus encapsulated the social media detractor’s point of view very well when he said this in a recent interview: “At Ryman, we had to knock this problem on the head about a year ago, when it became obvious that too much staff time was being eaten up by this nonsense”.

What HR departments might be less familiar with though, is the strong case for the integration of social media into the workplace. Tony Hseith of Zappos, has this to say, “If you don’t trust your employees to tweet freely, it’s an employee or leadership issue, not an employee Twitter policy issue” While he might not be as well know in the UK as the Ryman’s Dragon, the recent sale of Zappos to Amazon for the best part of a $1 billion illustrates that he also knows a thing or two about running a successful business. Indeed it’s not a coincidence that Zappos is considered by many as the best place to work in US.

What this tells me is that producing a sensible, successful corporate policy on social media usage is very difficult if you don’t use it yourself. It’s very easy to jump on the bandwagon of negativity if you have no idea what the advantages could be for your department and your company.  If you’re struggling for a place to start then it’s well worth considering some of key benefits of social media for the HR profession

Information intelligence

Over the last two years there has been a proliferation of blogs covering HR and recruitment issues. Information can be updated in an instant and breaking news now travels in seconds rather than hours or days. Relevant industry conversations take place daily on sites like Twitter and useful content is continually being uploaded to sites such as YouTube and Slideshare. Is this market intelligence you can afford to miss?

Networking

LinkedIn and Twitter offer the opportunity to expand your professional network like never before. Organisations like “The Firm” (The Forum for In House Recruitment Managers) are also proving this isn’t just happening in cyber space. After starting life as a LinkedIn group they now have regular events, which allow corporate recruiters to meet and network in “real life”.

Recruitment strategy

Recruitment budgets have been slashed and the recession is making it less likely that the very best people will be tempted to move role. Against this backdrop, “social recruiting” is giving many companies a cost effective and dynamic way to evolve their recruitment communication strategy.

Communications

Social media is also driving a corporate communications revolution for many organisations. Major CRM systems such as Salesforce.com are integrating Twitter and Facebook so that customers can communicate with companies directly via these channels. Secure network services such as Yammer are making internal communications more informal and useful while social networking and wiki technology are finally dragging the corporate intranet into the 21st century.

The aggressive consistent growth of the social web should be proof in itself that we are dealing with revolution not a fad and progressive companies like Zappos have already integrated it deep into the culture of their business to great success. As similar positive case studies emerge expect the debate to become more balanced and social media to start being seen as the force for corporate good rather than something that should just be banned.

One day and two events you can’t afford to miss

This year has certainly been a memorable one and not often for the right reasons. However, despite times being so tough for our industry, it’s great to see that over the last few months so many people have come together via Twitter to network and collaborate on creating a more positive and innovative future. The point the social media naysayers always seem to miss is how much Twitter and other social media platforms actually enhance face to face interaction rather than stifling it. To prove this there are not one but two face to face events running in London on Thursday 19th November that I believe will prove invaluable to anyone interested in innovating their way out of the recession in 2010.

First up during the day we have what I’m pretty sure is the first Recruiting Unconference held in the UK. The legendary @BillBoorman is organising everything and it promises to be a unique and interesting day. I’m hosting / co-ordinating / facilitating / refereeing the “Social Media Circus” alongside keen social recruiter  Wendy Jacob and I’m looking forward to some lively discussion and debate. Bill has provided a comprehensive overview of the day here on the sign up page and I know you’ll be very impressed with the breadth and scope of the agenda

Directly after the Unconference Jamie Leonard and myself will be hosting the third Recruitment Tweetup (#RTU to give it’s Twitter hashtag name) which will be held in a bar at the Unconference venue. Registration for the Tweetup is separate to the Unconference and you don’t have to attend during the day to come in the evening. However as we think you’d be mad to miss the daytime shenanigans,  we’re offering a special discount code on Unconference tickets for anyone who registers for the Tweetup. Here’s what happened at the last Tweetup in July.

Sign up for the Tweetup here

Sign up for the Unconference here

Some great research from The Guardian on social influence

Another piece of the jigsaw

Just a quick blog post to let you know that I’ve launched an additional Twitter feed.

SRlinks is an automated stream of links that I have either shared on Google Reader, bookmarked on Delicious or posted to my link blog Social Recruiting. Unsurprisingly most of the links will be about social recruiting and other related recruitment, technology and web 2.0 content. I’ll start by sharing three or four links a day and will increase the frequency if it proves popular.

I’ll still be posting the most interesting links on my main Twitter account, I just want to make sure I’m not cluttering up the conversation on there with every single link that I bookmark!

My social media “jigsaw” currently looks like this -

Recruitingfuture.com – My main blog for longer thoughts, comments and discussion

Twitter/Mattalder – My main Twitter account for conversation

Work/life stream – Repository for the most interesting and relevant links as well as my own shorter content (blog posts, comments, pics, videos etc)

Social Recruiting – Link blog specifically for videos and presentations related to social recruiting

Twitter/SRlinks – Unedited feed of links from my Google Reader shared items and Delicious bookmarks.

Please feel free to subscribe to as many of them or as few of them as you want!

Putting together my personal social media jigsaw

Matt Alder I’ve just noticed that I haven’t posted a blog post yet in August. This is mainly because I’ve been on holiday but also partly because I’ve been experimenting with some different types of social media.

During my blog break I’ve mostly been using Posterous as a “work stream” and it’s already proving to be as useful as I had hoped it would be. I’ve also been using Brightkite a bit more and I’ve found it a great tool for uploading and distributing photos while on the move. Interestingly most of the conversation about my Brightkite updates has happened via Twitter which shows that these tools are really at their most powerful when they work together. This is obviously one thing that Facebook had in mind when they acquired Friendfeed last week.

It was only when I started to play around with a newish service called Dandy ID that I realised just how many different social media services I have accounts with! Some I use a lot, some I’ve only ever used once and that is really where the personal jigsaw comes in. With so much aggregation and automatic cross posting,  I’m able to continually evolve my “jigsaw” of services to suit my needs without having to worry that the people I want to connect with might not be using the same sites.

So does the Friendfeed acquisition mean we won’t have a Betamax v VHS style format war with social media services or does it mean that Facebook have already won it? Who knows but I certainly hope it’s the former!

What the F*ck is Social Media – One year on

I posted the first version of this presentation last November. Great to see that it has been updated and I really like the just f**king do it message. There is a lot of talk and not a lot of action in the Social Recruiting space at the moment, I hope that we’ll see this change in the coming weeks and months

Pondering Posterous

Ever since I became aware of Posterous I’ve been wondering if there was any way its rather clever functionality could be relevant to me. For those of you who might not have heard of it, it’s a very simply blog site which allows you to post several different types of content quickly and easily via a number of sources including email and SMS.

Having played around with the site the other evening I think I’ve identified a useful role for it within my portfolio of social media tools and platforms.

I’ve always been frustrated that I only average two or three blog posts a month. I love blogging and the debate that goes along with it but it is very difficult to find the time to do more of it. Twitter offers an excellent way of maintaining this debate on a daily basis but its instant nature makes it very short term and not effective when you want to post more permanent content.

This is the gap I think Posterous might be able to fill.

I’ve set up a Lifestream on there and will be posting any interesting links and content that I come across. Basically things which I feel deserve a more permanent home for debate than just within a passing tweet.  I’ll also be putting some of my thoughts on various issues on there, particularly when I don’t  have time to work them up into full blown blog posts.  Finally for a bit of variety I’m not going to stick solely to recruitment and will be posting about anything that interests me.

It will be interesting to see whether it works the way I’m hoping it will!

Thanks for coming to the Summer Recruitment Tweetup #RTU

A belated thank you  to everyone who came to the Summer Recruitment Tweetup a couple of weeks ago. Particular thanks must go to my co-organiser Jamie Leonard (now working at The Ladders) and our generous sponsors TwitterJobSearch and 1Job.co.uk

We’ll be looking to do another one in October or  November  so if anyone has any good ideas about formats or venues please get in touch.

For those of you who couldn’t make it on the night this is what you missed…..

Six key elements of Social Recruiting

Well deserved congratulations to Mike Taylor for organising such a well attended and well received conference last week.  It was great to have such an event in the UK and really interesting to see the momentum building behind Social Recruiting, something which will be  force for  seismic change in our industry

During my presentation at the conference I defined what I believe to be the key elements of “Social Recruiting”. I wanted to blog them as my “beta” attempt to draw a line in the sand and get some discussions going. I’ve no doubt people will have some very valid alternative views and I’d be really interested to hear what they are

In my opinion the key elements that make up Social Recruiting are:-

Social Advertising

Often dismissed as not being “proper” social media marketing, there is no doubt that advertising in social channels is an important and effective tool. Highly targeted and available across most social platforms (including LinkedIn), social advertising is already delivering bottom line results in the recruitment industry

Portable Content

Increasingly, more companies aren’t just putting their content on their corporate recruitment sites they are letting the content go to their candidates and travel around unhindered in the social space. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook are already being utilised to take key content (with video being one example) beyond the traditional company web site

Referral Networks

Expect to see much talk of “Social Graphs” , “Nodes” and “Ties”  in our space in coming years. Referrals and word of mouth have always been key in recruitment and technology is going to turbo charge this as we move forward

Authentic Conversations

Profiles of current employees have been a big part of recruitment websites in the last ten years. Things are now moving towards more authentic real time communication. Conversations between current / past employees and future hires whether officially sanctioned or not are already becoming an important part of the recruitment process

Reputation Management

A highly complex area in which no two situations or responses will be the same. The key thing here though is for companies is know what is being said about them and where it’s being said

Social Sourcing

I really liked the phrase “chatter mining” which Bill from TwitterJobSearch used at the conference.  In areas where the best talent still remains difficult to recruit, social media is offering more and more ways for skilled recruiters to identify and engage with top quality prospects

So, what does everything else think?