My husband and I watch a fair number of television shows and movies. When my friends and family began investing in high-definition TV, I found myself wondering if the resolution in our television was lacking. Our satellite provider is always encouraging us to upgrade our package to include HD. A walk through any electronic or warehouse store reminds me of the vivid pictures available for my viewing pleasure. As I evaluated whether I wanted to pay more every month for this service, I asked myself one question: what current problem or issue with my TV will HD solve? I don’t want to invest just because it is the current trend; I need to make sure that my spending decisions are a fit with my household’s specific needs.

Similarly, updates about the latest and greatest social media platforms can flood your inbox and news feeds. With staggering numbers about the growth of usage on these platforms, these channels can appear to be a silver bullet. Even if it seems overwhelming to build out a presence on social media, it can be tempting to just jump in and start creating pages on as many platforms as possible. And while many of these sites are “free” in terms of a monetary investment, they all require your people, time and expertise, which are extremely valuable. Therefore, it is important to make sure that as you build a social media presence, you are executing a social media strategy. Below are three questions to consider as you get started: 

1.       Your Goals: What do you want to accomplish? The first step in developing a social media strategy is to consider what goals you want to achieve through your social media outreach. What targets, specific to your departmental and organizational objectives, will you achieve by utilizing social media channels? I’ve included a few potential goals below.

• Build your employment brand
• Sell candidates on your company
• Post open positions
• Find new passive candidates
• Gain referrals
• Rely less on job boards
• Lower recruiting costs

2.       The Audience: Who are you talking to? Consider who specifically you are trying to reach. Is there a particular job family? One or more geographic locations? An ideal demographic of age, gender or educational background? Is diversity a factor in your audience? Before you can consider which platforms you will incorporate into your strategy or how you will best utilize their resources, you will need to identify your target audience. Once your intended audience is identified, you will be able to consider which channels are a fit for their social media habits.

 3.       The Conversation: Is it positive, negative or neutral? What is being said about your workplace as an employer right now? Are there any misconceptions that you are hoping to overcome? If nothing is being said, that is also a problem, as the goal is to have people saying positive things about what a great place your organization is to work. Sites such as Radian6, Jobitorial, Glassdoor and Vault can all provide insight into the current conversation. Even if your organization does not have an official page on a social media channel, individuals are still able to share their feedback about employment experiences with your company. By taking a pulse of the current feedback online, you will be able to plan what messaging will be most effective in your social media approach.

Is your social media strategy specific to your organization’s needs and goals? I would welcome your feedback below. 

Kendra Pearson is passionate about helping companies attract and retain top talent. She assists organizations with perfecting their employment messaging, utilizing the right channels to deploy that message and then measuring the ROI. Kendra has been with NAS Recruitment Communications for six years, and currently serves as director of the Raleigh, North Carolina office.

Many companies have a hard time determining what their employment brand is. What makes you a satisfying place to work? How are you different from competing organizations? Why should candidates upend their lives and make the move to join your team?

You can’t simply make this up. You can’t throw out some clichés (“you can make a difference here”) or reiterate your values (respect, collaboration, integrity) if you are going to seriously communicate what makes your company special to candidates – and why it is worth their serious consideration.

You need to do discovery. Here are some great ways to go about it:

Review your vision and direction: Start by reviewing your company’s direction, mission and recent history. Is there a disconnect between what has been happening with the organization and how you are presenting yourself to candidates?

Review your current employment and marketing brands: What is lacking from the current positioning? Get some honest dialogue going about how you currently position yourself and how effective you have been.

Look at your marketing brand: How does your company market itself to consumers or other businesses? Are there ways you can leverage that positioning when speaking to candidates?

Speak to your recruiters: One of the best sources for discovery is your HR team – the people who are in the trenches every day talking to candidates. How do they sell the organization? What are they hearing from candidates? Where do they see the gaps – and the opportunities?

Hold internal focus groups: Talk to your employees, in sessions that are set up by job family, to learn what brought them to you, what inspires them and what they tell their friends about working for your company.

Utilize internal surveys: To get feedback from a much larger group of employees, utilize an online survey. Ask some targeted questions about what you believe to be your employment value proposition and see if they agree.

Consider external focus groups/surveys: For a real gut check, do some external focus groups or surveys of individuals outside of your organization. What do they really know about you? What have they heard? What are they getting right – and what are they getting wrong?

Review the competition: Take a look at how your direct competitors for talent are positioning themselves. Does your messaging stack up? Where do you realistically fit into the big picture? Do you have an EVP that could set you apart?

Once you have all of this information, you should have a clearer picture of where you stand – and what you stand for in the eyes of employees and candidates. You can hone the information down to its essence and use the simple value proposition that remains as the basis for the creative development of your employment brand.

If all of this sounds daunting, remember that there are organizations out there (including NAS Recruitment Communications) who are experts and can help you put together a discovery program that fits your needs and budget. They can also run the groups and analyze the results. It’s okay to ask for help!

Charles Kapec is a Senior Creative Strategist at NAS Recruitment Communications. With the agency since 1993, he partners with clients to develop employment brands and to provide a wide range of creative solutions.

Ever frustrated about how your employee referral program and the technology that supports it creates an employee referral mess? Frustrated employees. Frustrated referrals. Embarrassed HR departments because of the big black hole, and equally frustrated by how difficult it is to maintain the program. Seems like we should all figure it out, since organizations on average attribute 27.5% of their total hires to employee referral programs (2011 CareerXRoads Source of Hire Report).  

Well, we may have found an interesting solution. JIBE has created a product called “Get Referred” that puts the onus of the referral on the job seeker to find connections within your organization who are willing to provide the referral, as opposed to the standard process where the employees have to pair a job to a potential referral. Interesting, huh. Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Employer has a button placed on their ATS and external job board postings that sits near the “click here to apply” button that reads “Get Referred to this Job.”  Check out the screen shot below for a Sr. IT Help Desk Technician position at CDW.

Step 2: Candidate finds position he/she is interested in and pushes the “Get Referred to this Job” link and is served up the prompt to search his/her network of Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Gmail connections for CDW employees who are a first degree connection and might be willing to be referred to the position.

Step 3: Job Seeker identifies his/her first degree connections.

Step 4: Job seeker sends a private employee referral email to the CDW employee requesting if he/she would provide a referral for the Sr. IT Help Desk Technician position (the applicant’s resume is also attached). If the CDW employee does not refer the requesting applicant within three days, he or she is notified and can find a different first degree connection from CDW to make the referral.

Step 5:  The employee who makes the referral is tagged to the applicant referral through the ATS. The platform is integrated not only into the ATS, but also to your referral software (if you have one) and will then be eligible for the bonus (if your organization has a referral bonus).

From my perspective, this is a truly wonderful way for job seekers to connect into an organization for a referral that will likely end up in a better quality hire. For companies that don’t have referral bonuses, it’s ideal because this type of reverse referral doesn’t imply to the employee there’s any sort of payout, but rather that the employee is simply making a referral based on a connection, and the employeedoes not have to take time to match a job to a potential referral.

I know what you’re thinking, “Our employees don’t have to tie a job to a referral.” However, I’ve conducted focus groups with employees for over 20 years and even though employees don’t necessarily have to tie a job to a referral, they think they have to. It’s more a perception than reality.

There are a few things about the program that could be potential barriers. First, the technology integration. They say it’s seamless. I’ve not heard of any complaints, and big companies such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon Wireless, Microsoft and Bank of America are using the platform, so I have to think they’ve worked out many of the kinks…but it is a fairly new process so there is a bit of a risk. The second item that concerns me a bit is that we’re asking job seekers to change their habits from taking the standard call to action by pushing the big “Apply Now” button versus noticing the “Get Referred” link/button. However, most applicants feel they have a better shot at a job if they know someone inside the company. So the more prevalent this technology becomes and the more job seekers become aware of the feature and see the “Get Referred” button, the more I think it’ll catch on, and we’ll see better qualified referrals and an easy process to shift the referral program upside-down to ease the pain of the referral programs.  Check it out at www.jibe.com and let me know what you think.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention JIBEs reverse referral is just one piece that could enhance your overall employee referral program. For more insight on employee referral programs, trends in engagement and technology, please visit http://www.nasrecruitment.com/EmployeeReferral to read our white paper “Backyard recruiting. How you can turn your employees into a super source of new talent.”

Kristine Rhodes brings more than 20 years of marketing and recruitment communications experience to her leadership role at NAS, where she directs strategic talent engagements, planning and consultation for global and enterprise-wide clients. Kristine has helped a wide array of Fortune 1000 companies develop and implement highly successful talent acquisition and communications programs.

 Kristine is also a nationally recognized speaker on employment branding, talent acquisition and emerging issues of interest to human resource executives.

In the last several years, recruitment has made great strides in heightening the pre-career experience for potential candidates.

Through the delivery system of the Internet, we can post podcasts and videos so target audiences can get an inside glimpse of a company’s work environment or hear actual employees give testimony as to why they love working at XYZ International. But, have we merely scratched the surface in giving likely candidates a full sensory experience of how great a new career can be?

Scented ads are certainly nothing new, particularly to those of us who find the perfume-scented strips inside magazines bordering on total annoyance. But, according to research firms like Gfk MRI who polled 49 scented ads versus 6,000 unscented, the “stop and read” factor is enormously high. Now enter KA Aroma, a Finnish company that has developed a patent-pending aroma-locking technology called Smell Me ™ that can infuse just about any smell into paper — from coffee to salt air. Imagine creating a direct-mail postcard or a brochure with the customized scent — a hospital located only miles from the sea breeze of the beach or the whiff of fried chicken being served at the spring company picnic. Talk to fragrance developers like Scent A Brand in Belgium and they can come up with more than 10,000 options. As they put it, “our different scented technologies can be orchestrated in harmony with brand strategy or brand identity.”

Maybe you’re a bit skeptical about how effective scent can be in transmitting your employment brand. However, when your brand packs the right emotional wallop, scent should be a natural extension. Talk to world-famous chef Grant Achatz of Chicago’s Alinea restaurant and he’ll tell you that emotion is central to his dining experience. Over a four-hour-plus meal of 24 courses, Chef Achatz has been known to serve a soup that contains liquefied hay that might remind diners of a long-ago hayride. Or, they may experience a goose dish with a ramekin of orange peel, nutmeg, allspice, sage and goose fat that is meant to give off the smell of opening the oven door on Christmas day. It is not uncharacteristic for an Alinea diner to cry during a meal just from the emotional recall of a smell from their past. “What we do is search out that kind of emotional trigger,” says Achatz.

Of course, our senses are not relegated to smell. Sight is certainly still a powerful means of communicating and exciting our preceptors of want and need.

At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft and Kinect developer PrimeSense showed-off their 3D Modeling technology adapted to enhance the retail experience. This virtual dressing room enables the consumer to not only view a company’s online apparel catalog onscreen, but also to actually show the consumer how the clothes fit on the body. A sophisticated heat mapping output allows the customer to see where the item they’ve chosen is tight or loose. Also at CES, Visikord Interactive has created software that puts users in the center of a gesture-driven environment to have a full interactive experience in just about any location. Think of the possibilities if these technologies could be tweaked for careers. The candidate could “try on” that new job, imagining themselves in their future workplace, interacting with potential coworkers.

Whether it’s rethinking past technologies or exploring inconceivable new ones, the potential to enrich the candidate experience is moving at a furious pace. We, as recruitment thought leaders, must constantly seek out cutting-edge ways that allow interested candidates to “kick the tires” on a new career, engaging them in near-visceral experiences that not only differentiate our clients, but also greatly surpass those offered by their nearest competition.

Our ultimate goal lies beyond immersing our candidates in a sensory experience, arriving at the point where the decision to apply is a cognitive connection. And, in the end, that delivers a sense of success.

Let’s continue the conversation. I’d love to hear what you think about it.                                                                                                                                                              

Based since 2000 at NAS’ Los Angeles office, Charles Davis has conceived and created award-winning recruitment marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients. He is one of the company’s principal brand architects, responsible for developing powerful employment messaging to attract and engage top-tier talent. His conceptual abilities and creative executions have also been honored outside of the recruitment space by the domestic/international Clio Awards, as well as Hollywood Reporter “Key Art” Awards. You may contact Charles atcdavis@nasrecruitment.com.

It is my pleasure to have Margo Rose with me today. Margo caught my attention over a year ago when I saw her omnipresence on numerous social media platforms. She is one of the most respected and well-connected individuals in the social media and human resource space today. She is a community leader, HR pro, social media advocate and entrepreneur. She began working in human resources over 25 years ago and has seen this field go through metamorphic transformation with an insider’s view.

Margo is the brainchild and CEO behind HireFriday, the job seeker community and social movement that brings job seekers resources to people, information, career best practices and networking opportunities. Putting her HR background to good use, Margo dedicates many hours of volunteer time to coach and instruct job seekers on interview techniques, cover letter and resume development, and follow-up communications.

Cyndy: Margo, you have such a long and varied career with most of it being in or around the field of human resources. What is it about human resources that keeps you interested?

Margo: (response) The way human resources and social network technology meet will pave the way to helping organizations becoming an employer of choice, build talent communities and leverage technology to acquire top talent.  The online communities that are engaging candidates will transform the way we recruit and do business. It’s always about them, not you. It’s not marketing…it’s engagement.

Cyndy: With the advent of social media, information seems to travel at the speed of light. Do you think this openness of transparency and immediacy is a benefit or hindrance to most businesses?

Margo: (response) The instant access to business leaders and thought leaders will change the way we meet, engage and greet the most important people in our industry. The instant access changes how we communicate at all levels. Conversely, it is incumbent upon the individual to clean up their digital footprint on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.  As I say, “preface your status update with the invisible salutation, ‘Dear Employer.’  People can get fired, or not hired, based on how they communicate online.  The instant access behind the computer screen creates a false sense of security. Nothing is private on any social network. Ever.

Cyndy: Tell me how you see social media changing the business of human resources in the present and for the future?

Margo: (response) Social media will be the way we learn about and engage with our favorite brands, from everything from food and automobiles to big brands, jobs and colleagues.  It’s changing the way we do business, and now Facebook Pages are turning into online e-commerce store fronts.  People are looking for, and finding jobs, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Social media is giving us the news as it happens.

Cyndy: How is recruiting different today as compared to 10 years ago, and do you believe these differences are having a positive impact on the process of talent acquisition?

Margo: (response) Everything is digital. Sourcing and developing talent pipelines are digital via Internet Boolean and semantic search. Gone are the index cards and yellow pages…company websites, tools and the entire methodology has changed. While social media recruiting is relatively new, we are now relying on online sources to source talent. We will always use the phone, and social networks help us find the contact information, build the relationship and leverage one’s online presence to “get” the meeting, and score call, or Skype meeting.

Cyndy: If you could tell an organization that does not have a social media presence three things to entice that company to develop a social presence, what would you say?

Margo: (response) Simple, will you be in business in 5 years? It’s an imperative to have a business brand presence online for inbound and outbound marketing, recruiting, sales, advertising and active grassroots engagement, and building strong communities.

1. brand building
2. developing at least one, but ideally many broadcasting channels
3. connect with individuals to develop brand ambassadors and evangelists for free earned media and making their message go viral

Thank you, Margo, for a very informative conversation!

Margo owns HRSocial Strategy, and is the founder of HireFriday, and the popular Twitter #HFChat. She regularly interviews authors and thought leaders on Compassionate HR on blogtalkradio, and is a recurrent blogger on BrazenCareerist and her own blog HRMargo. She also serves as a presenter of the Nashville Social Media Club, has been named to the Top 100 Digital Media Influencers and 25 Influencers in Recruiting by HR Examiner, and named the “Social Networker of 2011” on blogtalkradio.com.

Cyndy began her career in Human Resource Communications on Madison Avenue in New York City over 12 years ago. Prior to that, she worked in corporate human resources as a recruiter and as a training and development coordinator. In addition, Cyndy has multiple years of media planning and account strategy experience at a management level from both the media and agency sides. She currently resides as the director and branch manager for NAS Recruitment Communications in Kansas City.

Cyndy holds a BA in psychology and mass communications and is currently matriculating towards a MA in psychology.

By Stephanie Hartman

It’s no secret that recruiters are always on the look out for new ideas that are innovative and creative to help attract top talent to their organizations. Many recruiters have used promotional products. And many recruiters are beginning to use QR codes. But have you ever thought of using them together?

What is a QR code? QR stands for “Quick Response.” It’s essentially a barcode, which, when read by a smartphone, links people directly to a mobile landing page.

So, have you ever considered placing a QR code on your promotional items? Think about your stash of giveaways – T-shirts, pens, notepads, coffee mugs, etc. Consider placing a QR code to your mobile career site on each of these items. The code will allow applicants the ability to quickly recall a job, save the job contact information or have a direct link to your company’s website. Since the QR code was placed on a tangible promotional product, it will not only give applicants quick and direct access to your company’s information, but it will also provide them with a useful item that can be used for an extended period of time.

Okay, so that might not be overly glamorous, but imagine this:

An attendee walks up to your table at a career fair. Based on her resume, she’s the type of talent you’re looking for. You’re speaking to her about an exciting career with your organization and before she walks away, you hand her a coffee mug to reinforce her perception of your organization. As she leaves your table, you remind her to scan the QR code on the mug for an in-depth look at what it’s like to work at your organization.

She gets home and sits down at the kitchen table to review her experience at the career fair. As she unpacks your mug from her bag, she scans the QR code. Suddenly, a video appears on her phone. It’s Sally from customer service. She’s sitting at a table, sipping coffee and explaining what she does during the day and how much she enjoys working for your organization.

At that moment, the conversation you had at the career fair table was confirmed by an employee in your organization. And the attendee feels like she knows your company. After all, she just had coffee with one of your employees…

Do I have you now? What other ideas might you use to combine QR codes and promotional products? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Stephanie Hartman is the Account Executive for the Premium Recognition Incentive Division for Employees (PRIDE).  She has been working to provide unique, innovative and effective promotional products for NAS Clients since 2001. You can contact her at shartman@nasrecruitment.com.

By Kendra Pearson

I am privileged to be a part of the board for my local SHRM chapter, the Raleigh-Wake Human Resource Management Association. At our recent chapter meeting, I shared the ways we are advancing our chapter’s mission through the use of social media. I asked attendees to raise their hand if they found social media to be “overwhelming and time-consuming.” I expected a lot of agreement with this question, but the speed with which so many of our members’ hands shot up demonstrated what a barrier this perception is to many HR professionals experimenting with these tools.

 This time of year is full of many lists of goals for the new year, including tips for watching what you spend, watching what you eat and watching what you do with your time. Lots of people make lofty goals on January 1, only to find they fall into old habits by January 10. I fell into this frustrating category in the past, which is why I began spacing my resolutions throughout the year, focusing on different areas of my life each month.

If either launching a social media strategy or building upon an existing presence using these tools is among your goals for the new year, I recommend breaking down your goals into baby steps throughout the year to avoid that “overwhelmed” feeling that often accompanies the thought of actively engaging with social media resources.

Below, I have included a sample month-to-month guide for your social media efforts this year although I would encourage you to edit this plan as it fits with your goals.

January: Identify your social media goals. What do you want to accomplish using these platforms? Do you want to build your employment brand? Engage with qualified candidates? Further your own development goals? Use this month to make a list of what you hope to achieve by the end of the year.

February: Enhance your LinkedIn profile. If you are not already active on this professional social networking site, take this month to make sure that your profile is 100% complete. If you are on this site, review your profile and update your skills, your summary, your achievements, your connections and your profile photo.

March: All about LinkedIn groups. If you are not a member of any groups on LinkedIn, take this month to join relevant groups. If you are looking for ideas, you can view the groups that your connections have joined by viewing their profiles. In addition to joining, look for opportunities to be a part of the conversation. Post a question, answer a colleague’s dilemma and take advantage of opportunities to post information about your company’s openings or events when appropriate.

April: Examine your company’s LinkedIn presence. There are a number of opportunities for enhancing your organization’s presence. Make sure that you are taking full advantage of your company page, including products and services. Also, take this opportunity to consider how the investment of more advanced tools, such as adding a career page or gaining access to LinkedIn’s Recruiter Platform, could fit into your overall objectives.

May: Build your blog reading routine. If you are reading this blog, chances are that you already carve out time in your schedule to take advantage of the excellent industry knowledge shared in quick articles online. Take this month to review your reading list and eliminate blogs that are no longer of value and add new blogs that have great content. For ideas on new blogs to add, visit sites such as http://technorati.com/.

June: Time management check. Before you go any further in your year, take this month to consider the various platforms that make your social media life manageable. For blog reading, sites such as Google Reader allow you to organize your online reading. Platforms such as HootSuite and TweetDeck allow you to monitor and update several social media sites at once. Consider which of these tools are the easiest to use for you, and set reminders in your calendar for devoting time to social media (such as 9-9:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday).

July: Consider Facebook as a professional tool. Many of you may consider Facebook as purely a personal pursuit. However, the site also has great potential for you to reach qualified candidates and share how your organization is a great place to work. This month, evaluate platforms such as BranchOut and BeKnown, which allow you to create a professional presence on Facebook that is separate from your personal profile.

August: Leverage your company Facebook page. If your marketing department has created a Facebook page for your organization, look for ways to include your organization’s opportunities on this existing page. Consider building out a separate Facebook tab dedicated to careers with your organization.

September: Join Twitter. I talk to a lot of HR professionals that consider Twitter to be the most difficult social media platform to weave into their routines. Read more about reasons to love Twitter, and this month, just join the site and start reading what other individuals are posting.

October: Join the Twitter conversation. In September, you may have joined Twitter, but take this month to start tweeting. Repost interesting articles from your blog reading, or share content fellow professionals are posting to Twitter.

November: Join Google+. Google+ is the newest major player in the social media space, and the site is consistently making improvements to its potential for organizations and employers.

December: Evaluate your year on social media. Look back on your objectives that you set in January. Where you able to achieve what you set out to accomplish? Take time to celebrate the progress you made, and consider what goals are on your horizon for 2013.

Kendra Pearson is passionate about helping companies attract and retain top talent. She assists organizations with perfecting their employment messaging, utilizing the right channels to deploy that message and then measuring the ROI. Kendra has been with NAS Recruitment Communications for six years, and currently serves as director of the Raleigh, North Carolina office.

Having helped develop many employment brands, I know that one of the more common misconceptions among employers is the idea that their corporate values are their employment brand.

Corporate values serve a vital mission within any organization. They tell customers what you believe in. They also tell your employees what behaviors are important and how you operate. What they do not do is engage candidates or explain why they should work for you. Consider the following:

Values are not a differentiator.

What are your company’s values? Chances are they include words like Excellence, Quality, Integrity, Respect, Accountability, Diversity and Teamwork. If you are a healthcare organization, add in Compassion, Competence and Caring. Let’s face it. The values that contribute to success within any business are essentially the same. Focusing on these words in your employment brand does not set you apart or tell anyone what makes your company different as an employer.

Values are not compelling to candidates.

We look at metrics on career websites to learn where visitors go and what interests them. The path that candidates take most often is the simplest – they go straight to the job search. Other pages that score highly include benefits, career areas and day-in-the-life profiles for job families. Unfortunately, pages that contain mission and values information are among the least visited on any career site. Candidates are busy. They go to the information that they intuitively feel will impact their decision to apply or not to apply.

Values serve a more internal purpose.

The time to focus on values is during the orientation of a new employee. You want to instill your values in new hires to help them understand what is expected of them. You need to reinforce values for current employees through ongoing training. And you should set up recognition programs to reward values-based performance. Yes, your values shape your culture, which in turn helps define one aspect of the employment experience. But the words themselves do not have great meaning divorced from the actual experience of working for you.

If not values, then what?

What is that intangible “something” that can set you apart and help define your employment brand? That’s going to take some discovery and thought on your part. What draws people to your company? How are you different from your competitors? Why do people stay with your organization – or why do they leave?

Do the hard work (employee focus groups or surveys, external focus groups, discussions with leadership, conversations with recruiters and other HR team members) to learn who you are and what you have to offer. Then, get a great creative team to help you put it into context and develop a verbal and visual expression that tells your story and demands attention.

I promise you – all of that Teamwork and Accountability will lead to Excellence and a Quality employment brand with Integrity.

Charles Kapec is a Senior Creative Strategist at NAS Recruitment Communications. With the agency since 1993, he partners with clients to develop employment brands and to provide a wide range of creative solutions.

This year, 18.4 million American job seekers claimed they found their job through Facebook. 10.2 American job seekers claim they found their job through LinkedIn (Source: SelectMinds survey 2011). With those sorts of statistics, it’s no wonder organizations are scrambling to find ways to capture their audiences through these channels. More and more, we are hearing success stories around the LinkedIn model of companies and their recruiters connecting with candidates and building relationships to ultimately make hires. But are organizations creating connections using Facebook? Obviously, companies are creating Facebook pages with job feeds to their ATS. And of course, we can buy targeted advertising on Facebook. But the biggest challenge with Facebook has been how to expand the organization’s network. How do we gain more fans for our company Facebook pages and make it worth the investment of time and money? After all, what’s the destination worth if a Fortune 1000 company only has 1,400 fans? How do you build that to be a viable recruiting destination? Our job with our client-partners is to help build the strategies around these social media destinations so they can make more meaningful connections and hire the necessary talent.

In our quest to help our clients build successful strategies around Facebook, I ran into a tool that I believe has huge potential. What if Facebook – clearly the largest social network in the world – could operate in many ways like LinkedIn? What if there was a tool that would provide a safe and secure environment for professional networking on Facebook? What if recruiters and hiring managers had the ability to search professional Facebook profiles just like LinkedIn? Source and match candidates and build private talent networks? Well now you can! BranchOut , founded in July 2010, is the largest professional network on Facebook with millions of users in more than 60 countries and growing.

BranchOut certainly has potential for recruiting talent, but in order for this tool to work, it has to appeal to the audience – the job seeker and professional audiences we seek to hire. After all, we know they have plenty of networking tools to choose from. Why invest the time to create a BranchOut profile? From a user perspective, people know organizations are recruiting from Facebook. They also know the way to find a job is to make an “inside connection” at a “desired” company. Yes, they can find the company’s Facebook page and become a fan and apply for a job through their integrated job posting – but likely, they’re right back in the company’s ATS – the big, black hole and certainly not a connection. I believe that’s why LinkedIn has become so successful.  The inside-connection component. So now the second part of the equation – the bigger issue – “My Facebook page is way too personal and not appropriate for organizations to view.”  That’s where the BranchOut profile comes in. Companies can only see work history, education and endorsements, so no need to worry about risqué pictures.

Bottom line, the appeal to organizations and to users is there. The average user has an established network and spends an estimated 12 minutes per day; 8.5 hours a week on Facebook. Companies know Facebook’s potential as a recruiting tool to find talent and are often struggling to figure out how to make meaningful connections within the network.  I believe BranchOut will prove to be much more than a growing fad or shiny widget. I believe it will have the ability to harness the power of Facebook and its users and connect talent to organizations in meaningful ways. And I’m not alone – Human Resources Executive magazine awarded BranchOut the prestigious “Top HR Product of 2011”. So check them out at www.branchout.com and please share your thoughts.

Kristine Rhodes brings more than 20 years of marketing and recruitment communications experience to her leadership role at NAS, where she directs strategic talent engagements, planning and consultation for global and enterprise-wide clients. Kristine has helped a wide array of Fortune 1000 companies develop and implement highly successful talent acquisition and communications programs.

 Kristine is also a nationally recognized speaker on employment branding, talent acquisition and emerging issues of interest to human resource executives.

We can see what the resume says. But who is this person really? Is he or she a dog or cat person? Are they more like their German Shephard or their Tabby?

Don’t scoff. For all you extremely talented recruiters out their schooled in the latest behavioral role playing or SWOT-style interviewing techniques, are you really delving into this candidate’s hidden psyche from a fresh angle?

According to University of Texas at Austin research psychologist, Sam Gosling, people who might define themselves as a “dog person” or “cat person” reveal much about their true nature. In Gosling’s 44-point assessment based on his study of 4,565 volunteers, the results were significant:

• Dog people were about 15% more extroverted, 13% more agreeable and 11% more conscientious
• Cat people tended to be 12% more neurotic, but 11% more open than their canine counterparts

The pattern in Gosling’s findings seems to correlate vigorously with dog psychology pioneer Stanley Coren. In a survey of 6,149 respondents cited in his book Why We Love The Dogs We Do, Coren’s statistics uncover:

• Cat owners
• 1/3 more likely to live alone and twice as likely to be living in an apartment
• Exclusively cat owners tend to be relatively introverted/low on extroversion (confirmed by Gosling’s data)
• Those same “cat only” owners are relatively low in dominance
• Dog owners
• More likely than cat owners to be married, living in a house and having children
• Higher on a scale of dominance, which includes qualities such as forceful, assertive, persistent, self-assured and self-confident

Also from Coren’s study, cat owners were deemed “more trusting,” which includes the traits of “obliging, modest, straightforward and good sports.” Coren points out, by contrast, “people low on this dimension can be more suspicious and manipulative.”

In defense of what might seem like some bias against cat owners, a British poll revealed that 47% of cat owner-homes had a person with a college degree compared to 38% of dog homes. And the majority of those same dog owners were likely to live more routine lives compared to their more “open-minded, creative and variety-seeking” cat counterparts.

Depending on the role in your organization you’re trying to fill, you can see how having some of this information at your disposal can add a welcome pro or con to your list of reasons for hiring an individual. But, perhaps the still nagging question might be, can we put a finer point on anything along this already interesting avenue of exploration?

Let’s turn to the work of dog authorities Vicki Croke and Sarah Wilson. In their book, Dogology: What Your Relationship with Your Dog Reveals about You, Croke and Wilson were able to identify some specific personality traits by knowing the dog owner’s particular choice of breed.

Here are some of their results:

• Retriever or Spaniel – family-focused, fun-loving and social, easygoing, active, positive perspective, favoring an open door policy
• Pointer or Setter – passionate and determined, energetic and motivated, lover of luxury, rugged
• Scent Hound – determined and focused, intense (even relentless), funny, food lover
• Sight Hound – relaxed and introverted, quiet, lover of friends and small groups, organized
• Terrier – fun-loving and funny, determined and focused, energetic, talkative and versatile, rough-and-tumble

On the subject of breed choice, professor Coren noted: “There was a spike in the popularity of Portuguese Water Dogs after the Obamas adopted one as a pet. You’re always going to have people who just pick dogs because they’re following a fad – that probably says something about their personality, too.”

Not to be left out of the debate, renowned “dog whisperer,” Caesar Milan, adds his own observation on the subject of dog breed and their potential owners: “The kind of dog people are drawn to is indicative of what’s missing in their life.” Milan further postulates that “Owning a bigger dog could signify a lack of protection or certain masculinity” in the owner’s lifestyle and mood.

While I had no intention of slighting other pet owners — from goldfish to iguanas — from this discussion, I surmise that even the most voluminous stack of studies will not deliver us to absolute conclusiveness. However, what this data points to is while we may continue to practice our tried-and-true habits of asking candidates the questions that might reveal their public personality (up to and including Myers-Briggs psychometrics), we must pause to ask ourselves:

• Are we vigorously challenging the value of what we’re asking candidates each time out?
• Are we tasking ourselves at every opportunity to break our routine and probe to find out more of what we need to know about each individual?
• Are there ways to gain a wider spectrum of knowledge and understanding?
• Can we make more enlightened decisions about the person who wishes to find their place in our organizational dynamic?
• And will this broader view help us increase the odds of not only importing a better “fit,” but also adding a quality contributor to our well-defined culture?

I feel at least unearthing some of the doggone (or catgone) truths are steps in the right direction.

Let’s continue the conversation. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Based since 2000 at NAS’ Los Angeles office, Charles Davis has conceived and created award-winning recruitment marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients. He is one of the company’s principal brand architects, responsible for developing powerful employment messaging to attract and engage top-tier talent. His conceptual abilities and creative executions have also been honored outside of the recruitment space by the domestic/international Clio Awards, as well as Hollywood Reporter “Key Art” Awards. You may contact Charles atcdavis@nasrecruitment.com.