Google Buzz as a recruitment tool?

March 11th, 2010

It’s been a few weeks now since Google Buzz, Google’s latest foray into social media, was launched to the public but signs still show that it’s causing major waves around the World.

In fact, try ‘Googling’ Google Buzz today and you will already see countless numbers of views, reviews and comments left by early adopters and critics. Some are positive, some not that encouraging.

What’s interesting to read, however, is that Google Buzz is already being considered as the next big “recruitment tool” to sit alongside the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn. So what exactly does this new tool mean for recruitment?

Let’s first look into what Google Buzz is all about…

Buzz is effectively a social networking and messaging tool which is designed to integrate into Google’s own web-based email program, Gmail.

Working directly inside Gmail (it’s accessible through clicking a link just under ‘inbox’), the clever tool pulls content from Twitter, Flickr and from various other popular social sites from across the web.

Other key features include; auto-following (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail), public and private sharing (swap between family and friends) and rich, fast media sharing. In short; Buzz makes Gmail social!

For more information, there’s a great little video here which hopefully explains things in plain English.

So, Google Buzz as a recruitment tool?

There are obvious opportunities to be had by recruiters with Buzz. So from reading various recruitment blogs and reviews, Ive compiled a handy list of significant advantages that recruiters could have by using the tool:

Gathering candidate referrals
Like Twitter, Buzz allows you to post a message about a new vacancy to a group of “followers” that subscribe to your updates. However, messages can be longer than 140 characters (à la Twitter) and can include supporting images and links. Any replies are also all grouped under the original message making conversations easier to track and follow up on.

Sharing content – fast!
Just like Twitter and Facebook, you can use Buzz to immediately share blog posts, updates on new vacancies/career events or other interesting links related to your organisation, sector or department.

Real time candidate engagement
Like Google Wave (see our earlier blog here), you are able to share links, embedded multimedia (video & photos) and documents as well as communicating to candidates directly in real-time through their comments feature and/or email.

Search feature
The search feature could allow you to find people who are possible active and passive job seekers.

Social media integration
One of the best features of Buzz is the ability to integrate your status from sites such as Twitter into Google Buzz – meaning you can post a status update in just one place and it’s then updated automatically across each channel!

Location based information
A mobile version of Buzz cleverly uses ‘location tagging’ so that posts made from a specific location are displayed to users nearby. For example, just imagine if a potential candidate is checking who’s ‘buzzing’ nearby and then spots your new job opportunities in the local area or information on a new careers event being held at a specific building/venue nearby.

As previously mentioned, there have been some criticisms of Buzz, notably the privacy issues and the fact that you need a Gmail account to use it.

However with an estimated 176 million people already using Gmail and virtually no set-up, it’s just too convenient for Gmail users to pass by. So it’s easy to see why it had over 9 million posts and comments in its first 56 hours of launching!

There’s no doubt then that Buzz is Google’s boldest effort in creating a social network to match the likes of Facebook and Twitter. However only time will tell if it becomes an essential tool to engage with and source candidates….

Have you tried Buzz yet? What are your thoughts and experiences? Let me know by emailing carl@jobs.ac.uk.

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Online recruiting overtook other hiring channels in 2009

February 9th, 2010

Effective, efficient recruitment of the right staff was imperative for many organisations last year as the recession continued to bite, so it was no surprise to read this month that “online recruitment was the only recruitment channel to grow in 2009”.

The news follows research by PeoplePerHour.com into the three principal recruitment channels (print advertising, agencies and online advertising) which showed that placing jobs online became the most popular way for UK organisations to recruit staff in 2009.

Despite the poor job market, the research suggested that the number of jobs placed by online channels last year (job boards, social media etc) grew by 16% – becoming the largest medium for job placements for the first time.

So whats the reason for the growing popularity? Well, its no big surprise that online recruitment is allowing employers to find candidates quicker, cheaper and more efficiently than most other channels. After all, jobs.ac.uk has been successfully helping its customers to do this for over 10 years.

The real significance perhaps comes from the fact that the recession has made the advantages of online recruitment even more appealing to ROI conscious recruiters.

So why go online? We’ve re-iterated some of the key benefits below…

  1. Cost Savings – There was greater pressure on recruiters last year to attract top talent despite recruitment budget cuts so the cost savings achieved from recruiting online when compared to traditional press advertising is obvious (and as much as 90% in some cases). In the case of social recruiting, many social media tools are also free to leverage (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter etc).
  2. Speed & flexibility – Whether its department restructuring or an urgent recruitment need, responding quickly to changing circumstances or business objectives became essential in 2009. By advertising online, recruiters can publish job adverts at anytime and start to receive applications straight away. Online recruiters will also typically have more advert space available compared to using the traditional media; meaning more (meaningful) vacancy and company information.
  3. Reach – Research such as NORAS (National Online Recruitment Audience Survey) is already showing that more and more jobseekers are looking for jobs online. Along with the sheer (global) scale of online usage, recruiters can reach far more candidates than they can through other methods.
  4. Accountability – Finally, online recruitment gives organisations greater control over the recruitment process and makes it easy to measure the return on investment such as the number of applicants.

So did online recruitment merely benefit from the recession in 2009? Of course not! Whilst the recession may have helped encourage more employers to consider online recruitment than ever before, the interest for e-recruitment and social recruiting has been ramping up for years – even before the recession hit!

And with the UK now officially out of recession, online recruitment will undoubtedly continue to grow and surpass the traditional recruitment channels for engaging and attracting great jobseekers.

Need help with a new recruitment campaign? For expert help and advice about online recruitment, don’t hesitate to give jobs.ac.uk a call on +44 (0)24 7615 0083 or email carl@jobs.ac.uk.

Posted in Blogs we read, HR News, Online recruitment | No Comments »

Google Social Search: What could it mean for recruitment?

February 4th, 2010

In the battle to get real-time search results (e.g. Twitter updates) indexed into its search engine, last month Google finally made its ‘Social Search’ feature live for all signed-in English Googlers.

The exciting feature, which has previously been a Google Labs experiment (i.e. hidden from the general public), allows users to see content from Twitter, blogs and other social networks prominently on many of Google’s search engine results pages.

Check out the illustrative video on Google’s blog here for a useful demonstration of Google Social Search.

So what does this feature mean for recruiters? Well, with Google indexing social media results in real-time, it provides recruiters with yet another way to increase brand awareness, generate new users and fill job vacancies.

Of course, the sharp eyed of you may have noticed that some Twitter results have already been appearing in Google’s main search results for some time now – even before the public launch of the ‘Social Search’ feature.

These real-time results are triggered by keywords that are popular in Twitter and deemed by Google to be relevant to the search query.

With the ‘Social Search’ feature enabled, this functionality is extended to include updates and even photos from the user’s entire social network of friends and colleagues.

For example, just imagine a Google user who is also a fan of your Twitter group searching for the terms “lecturer jobs” and then seeing some of your “tweets” about new lecturer jobs in real-time on the same page. This user could instantly click through to the job post to apply or even “re-tweet” your job post to their friends on Twitter!

More importantly, with Google acknowledging the value of real-time social media, it shows just how important sites like Twitter have become and why it’s important for recruiters to utilise them – and have good content.

By their own admission, Google are only beginning to scratch the surface with social search and the success of the feature is completely dependant on user input (i.e. users need to register for a Google profile and add their own details) which could be an issue with users worried about privacy.

For example, the recent (and controversial) privacy changes on Facebook means that much of Facebooks content will not appear within ‘Social Search’ so only time will tell whether Facebook users will decide to share their status updates across the entire web.

One thing is for sure though; only two months in and 2010 is already proving to be another big year for the social media revolution.

Have you tried Google social search yet? What are your thoughts? As usual, please share your opinions at carl@jobs.ac.uk.

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Posted in Blogs we read, Social media, Twitter | No Comments »

Recession is over in UK: Preparing for the upturn

January 27th, 2010

The UK economy has officially come out of recession after a record 18 months in decline according to the latest figures by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

Whilst the news is very encouraging, it’s worth noting that the reported growth by the ONS (0.1% in the past three months of 2009) is far less than what economists had predicted and the CBI warn that a full recovery won’t happen until 2012.

So with the UK economy seemingly still frail and full recovery some way off, what are HR’s priorities for the year ahead to help bolster the upturn?

Using advice from recent blog articles, the latest industry news and beyond we’ve summarised 5 of the key areas that HR experts believe are pivotal to preparing for the upturn:

  1. Improving retention and engagement. The recession may be over but the CIPD warns that employee engagement is at an all time low. 2010 is therefore the time to re-build employee trust by continuing to focus on employee engagement strategies to align and re-connect with the workforce.
  2. Training and continued employee development is key. Do you have the right people in the right jobs? Are line managers ready to lead their teams to business success? Training and clear development opportunities can help to keep top performers focused, committed and motivated at work. Without training or any sense of progression, morale and loyalty will soon wither away.
  3. HR has been pivotal to making cost savings in tough times so continue to keep a tight control of costs. Are you making the most of online recruitment (e.g. jobs.ac.uk) to save costs? Are you using the free channels (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn)? Do you use talent banks?
  4. Open, honest communication is as important as ever in the upturn. Do your employees know your short or long-term business strategies? Is communication to employees interactive and two-way? Adopt an ‘open policy’ when it comes to communication and involve people in tough business decisions.
  5. Keep on your toes. Despite the news by the ONS, Economists are still warning that the UK economy could slide back into recession (known as a ‘double dip’). HR must therefore use the lessons learnt from the recession and be able to respond quickly to changing circumstances and business objectives.

The economic downturn thrust HR into the limelight, what with job cuts and management challenges making daily news in 2009, so the above areas will certainly be nothing new but will hopefully help to summarise some common priorities.

So as the first tiny green shoots begin to appear, 2010 will be the time for getting organisations back in really great shape and making the necessary investments in people to emerge from the recession stronger than ever.

Posted in HR News | No Comments »

Employment outlook for 2010

January 14th, 2010

Whilst the snow and ice have been dominating the headlines (and the office conversation) this month, its encouraging to read reports that last years economic difficulties and ‘recruitment freezes’ could be beginning to thaw.

There’s been lots of interesting HR articles about the employment outlook for 2010 circulating online at the moment, so we’ve pulled together some titbits from Ri5, HR Magazine and beyond:

The optimistic news follows reports of employers across nearly all sectors that are beginning to lift stringent recruitment freezes and are starting to hire again.

This is certainly the case within higher education as jobs.ac.uk has being seeing some fantastic vacancies coming through from our UK university customers in January.

However, as many commentators have pointed out, higher education is on the brink of some very major cutbacks in spending, so the above outlook will certainly have to be taken with caution as we head through Q1.

What is your organisations employment outlook for 2010? Is it positive? Are you experiencing or expecting any major changes or challenges? We would love to hear from you, so please get in touch and let us know at carl@jobs.ac.uk.

Posted in Blogs we read, HR News, Uncategorized, Useful links | No Comments »

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