Originally published on LinkedIn
When I began my career in recruiting IT professionals in 1972, COBOL and Autocoder (don’t ask) were the main technologies. I found jobs for people in New York City and that meant I advertised in the Sunday New York Times. If a ran an ad in the classified section, each ad had to be a minimum of 3 lines. It would be on the bottom of the page where no one saw it and cost more than $12. In today’s dollars, that is $68.51 in 2015 dollars for an ad no one would see and you could do nothing to describe the position.
Today, no one would respond to an ad like that. People rightly want more than 5 words of job description and a place to send their resume to. Today, people want to know about the job and its requirements, as well as the responsibilities they will have if hired.
But firms make the mistake of writing these bureaucratic ads with lists of requirements and responsibilities with bullet points next to each or they try the “forced hip” approach to advertising (“If you’re the best person in Silicon Valley and want to change the world by helping to develop something that will revolutionize . . . ).
The way companies reach out to talent has been limited for a long time. Today, the model involves advertising the job on the corporate website or job boards, networking or recruiting using LinkedIn or other sites. The process is broken. Everyone knows it . . .especially the first time they have to apply online through an applicant tracking system (or the avoiding talent system as someone commented last week in a comment to my article on Pulse.
I don’t think anyone pays attention to these tactics any more. They sound like so much B.S..
I would like to suggest an alternative for companies to use. I am not compensated in any way by this service (although if they want to send me some swag I would be happy to receive it).
Last week, I was listening to a podcast where Chris Brogan interviewed James Altuscher on a site called blab.im.
Blab is like Twitter’s Periscope on steroids or a Google Hangout on Air with “rooms” where participants can be invited in to chat with one another.
Like Persicope, you can announce on Twitter that you are blabbing, you can schedule a blab in advance (miss the time, they give you a 15 minute grace period. Miss your scheduled time, they say, “Life happens). There are up to 4 people who can speak to one another at once observed by other participants kind of like in a webinar where a host and guest may chat with people watching.
Here’s how I can see you integrating it into your marketing.
HR, schedule a blab with a hiring manager where you discuss a position they have available. Maybe someone from the team joins the discussion and asks some questions to flush out more OR to attest to the fact your firm is the best place on the planet to work. Maybe you add the department head or C level person who controls the group to do the blab.
Have the hiring manager describe the position and the work, have a staffer talk about working at the firm, have the C level person talk about opportunities and what it is like working for the firm.
Here’s where the idea because really “tasty.”
After the blab is completed, they will send you two links– one to the video, one to the audio of the blab you just did AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER TO CLICK THE RECORD BUTTON.
Put the video on YouTube.
Link to it or the audio in your advertising.
Create a podcast of open jobs. People will think your company is cool, you’ll reach out to people in new ways (through YouTube which, in case you didn’t know it, as the second most successful search engine) better advertising because people will have a link to people at the firm talking about the job, the firm and the opportunity.
For job hunters, you can create a room around your area of expertise. Do live Q&A with people where you chat with them about the topic, then place the video on your website and, perhaps, create a podcast around the topic.
And, of course, you can enter a room and be a participant either by joining a conversation by video or chatting through the webinar like comments feed along the side.
Blab.im is still in beta and making changes almost daily to improve user experience.
© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2015
If HR seems too uncomfortable to conduct the online interview (some people are camera shy), hire me to do the interview and let me help your people look great on camera and draw better talent to your firm.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a recruiter for more than 40 years.
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