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Blog Post: Free hiring: the secret of a $0 cost per hire: Let’s be honest, recruitment can be expensive both in terms of time and money. But does it really have to be that way? Here we list some great free tools out there that recruiters can…; Added by Nick Leigh-Morgan at 8:58am on January 18, 2012

Blog Post: How I Won SourceCon Challenge #2: So I was excited about SourceCon challenge #2, as it appears I was a close runner-up to Mike Notaro who won Challenge #1 and I…; Added by Suzy Tonini at 9:50pm on July 24, 2007

Topic: MagicMethod PHONE SOURCING CERTIFICATION: liked it and felt the learning experience was much, much deeper.   I can't wait for the next level! ~RD 10/29/2012 TIME IS RUNNING OUT! All former MagicMethod Phone Sourcing students may attend these (twelve) webinars and receive the first FOUR LEVELS of certification AT NO COST if you register by December 31, 2012 for ANY future classes in 2013. TELEPHONE SOURCING CERTIFICATION - for those working in staffing OR sales (aren't they the same thing?) This unique telephone instruction series is set into five levels of phone sourcing training designed to take the student from a first level (beginner) phone sourcer to a fourth level (advanced) phone sourcer. (MMPS-1 through MMPS-4 certifications awarded upon the completion of each level) A Master's program is available by application and acceptance only upon completion of all four levels. NEXT CERTIFICATION CLASSES BEGIN IN JANUARY - REGISTRATION IS OPEN! IN-SESSION CLASSES: MagicMethodPhoneSourcing 100 series (MMPS-1) begins on Friday, November 30 and runs Dec 7 & 14. MagicMethodPhoneSourcing 200 series (MMPS-2) begins on Thursday, November 29 and runs Dec 6 & 13. MagicMethodPhoneSourcing 300 series (MMPS-3 begins on Wednesday, November 28 and runs Dec 5 & 12. Complete Fall-Winter Schedule All classes begin promptly at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). REGISTER NOW! To register go to the main page of this network and look for the "Buy Now" logo (on the left) and click on the drop down menu for the level you want to register for! MagicMethod Phone Sourcer Certification Materials required: GUTS A computer A headset and mic recommended or a phone 60-90 minutes per week plus 1-2 hours for homework, reading and quizzes. There is a final exam requiring 60-90 minutes. There are five levels of phone sourcing expertise recognized in this program. The phone sourcing certification levels are: MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 1 (MMPS-1) MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 2 (MMPS-2) MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 3 (MMPS-3) MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 4 (MMPS-4) MagicMethod Phone Sourcer Master (MMPS-Master) Course Instructor: Maureen Sharib Maureen is considered an expert phone sourcer and enjoys a reputation in the industry extending back to 1996. Class Size: 25 Class Length: 1 - 2 hours Course Tuition: $249 per level (MagicMethod Phone Sourcer Levels1-4) Sign up for all four levels of certifications at once for $896 and save $100 off the per-level pricing! Pay at the Paypal "Buy Now" button on the main page of this site! Click "Main" above and you'll see the Paypal button on the left. If you do not have a Paypal account send check or money order to: Maureen Sharib <--Make check payable to me MagicMethod Program 3364 East U.S. Rt. 22/3 Morrow, OH 45152 USA Each webinar comes with slides, audio and video recording, handout(s), two phone sourcing scripts, sourcing war “stories”, and one month of live phone and online support to help you practice your phone sourcing techniques. It also includes an every Tuesday noon (EDT) online community chat class on the MagicMethod network that you can attend as often as you’d like! Course Details: MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 1 (MMPS-1) Courses required: MagicMethod Phone Sourcing 101, 102 and 103 Prerequisite: The smarts to know you need to phone source to gain competitive advantage and cut yourself away from the "Internet Sourcing Group Think" so prevalent in sourcing today! At the end of this 100 course series the Phone Sourcer should have a basic understanding of the why, what and how of phone sourcing. The Student should/will: Know what is and what is not legal in phone sourcing Have a basic grasp of the Gatekeeper mentality and skill Gain an overall confidence in approaching Gatekeepers Know what to say when a Gatekeeper asks "Who's calling?" Know what to say when a Gatekeeper wants to know why they're calling Know what to do when the Gatekeeper is "mean" to themUnderstand the enormous potential of what's available in the workforce that they cannot find online Be able to use a company's telephone directory to their advantage Gain an appreciation for stance and attitude when phone sourcing Be knowledgeable in what materials and time are required in phone sourcing Be more confident and successful on the telephone asking for information Know how to find direct dials and extensions Appreciate why internal transfers are valuable Be able to get important and pertinent information from one in four Gatekeepers Be willing to practice, practice, practice and practice some more! Be able to phone source 3-7 names per hour (that are NOT listed on the Internet) in most industries/most titles Proudly showcase their MMPS-1 Certification on their profiles/signatures MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 2 (MMPS-2) Courses required: MagicMethod Phone Sourcing 201, 202 and 203 Prerequisites: MM Phone Sourcing 101, 102, 103 At the end of this 200 course series the Phone Sourcer will more fully grasp (and experience) Gatekeeper handling and understand more about the tools that help a Phone Sourcer be successful. The Student should/will: Be able to choose target companies appropriate for their search Be able to assess the number of names most probably needed on a specific search Be able to assess the difficulty level of specific searches Know how to manage their time on a phone sourcing job Understand how to set a phone sourcing job up/what information goes into a research document Be able to assign titles to the names they get from a company's telephone "vault" Be skillful in assessing title probabilities of populations within specific offices Understand why "checking" is important and how it can be prolific Know how to say very few words and receive extraordinary amounts of information Be able to get important and pertinent information from one/two in four Gatekeepers Be willing to continue to practice, practice, practice! Be able to phone source 3-10 names per hour (that are NOT listed on the Internet) in most industries/most titles Proudly showcase their MMPS-2 Certification on their profiles/signatures MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 3 (MMPS-3) Courses required: MagicMethod Phone Sourcing 301, 302 and 303 Prerequisites: MM Phone Sourcing 201, 202, 203 At the end of this 300 course series the Phone Sourcer will be more confident in approaching anybody inside any specific company for information. The Student should/will: Be able to turn one name in an organization into several names very quickly Know how to "direct" a Gatekeeper's actions and reactions Understand channeling and trampolining Know what phone sourcing mistakes not to make Understand the value of aged and aging data and how to use it effectively Be able to source across most industries/titles Begin to comprehend what is and how to acquire competitive intelligence Be able to get important and pertinent information from two/three in four Gatekeepers Be willing to continue to practice, practice, practice! Be able to phone source 5-12 names per hour (that are NOT listed on the Internet) in most industries/most titles Proudly showcase their MMPS-3 Certification on their profiles/signatures MagicMethod Phone Sourcer 4 (MMPS-4) Courses required: MagicMethod Phone Sourcing 401, 402 and 403 Prerequisites: MM Phone Sourcing 301, 302, 303 At the end of this 400 course series the Phone Sourcer will have the tools to become an expert phone sourcer with a willingness to continue practice. The Student should/will: Understand who in an organization is best targeted first for information on any phone sourcing job Be able to "hear" conflict and resolution in a Gatekeeper's voice within the first few seconds of a conversation Be attuned to their own body's rhythms, strengths and weaknesses while phone sourcing Be more comfortable in their phone sourcing chair Be able to recite what area codes are in what cities <-This is one of the true ""proofs" of a phone sourcer. Know how to "pull" whole departments in a single call Not break into a cold sweat when a Hiring Manager asks for fifty FPGA Engineers out of ten target companies in Silicon Valley or 100 Personal Wealth Advisors/Bankers out of ten financial institutions Dallas or thirty Underwriters out of six insurance companies on the East Coast or 200 Security Software Engineers out of three companies IN OTHER WORDS be able to source in any industry for any amount of names on any title with confidence with results usually within 2 to 5 days. Be able to get important and pertinent information from three in four Gatekeepers Be willing to continue to practice, practice, practice! Be able to share phone sourcing tips and techniques within a team environment Be able to phone source 10-20 names per hour (that are NOT listed on the Internet) in most industries/most titles Proudly showcase their MMPS-4 Certification on their profiles/signatures MagicMethod Phone Sourcer Master (MMPS-Master) MMPS-Master Certificate of Recognition awarded for completion of two-year internship in actual in-the-field phone sourcing efforts. Prerequisites: MM Phone Phone Sourcing 401, 402 and 403 Once the MagicMethod Phone Sourcing 1 thru 4 series are completed the Student may apply for the Phone Sourcing Master’s program. Only those will be admitted who will commit themselves to a two-year intensive phone sourcing program that will include accomplishing real-time jobs in the field that will be rewarded with real-time cash! The Master's graduate will then be able to proudly showcase their MMPS-Master Certification on their profiles/signatures LinkedIn Burnout - Fact or Fiction? http://tinyurl.com/cytug5s Maureen Sharib (MMPS-Master) Please send inquiries by email to maureen at techtrak.com Phone Sourcer 513 899 9628 513 476 1139…; Added by Maureen Sharib to Phone Sourcing at 10:55am on December 11, 2012

Blog Post: Recruiting Communication: Email is dead. Send flowers, pay your respects and move on.: Do you remember recruitment back in the 1990s? I do. A typical day would start…; Added by Johnny Campbell at 8:25am on December 8, 2011

Blog Post: The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Event Best Practices: Even with the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic and…; Added by Rakuna at 7:34am on February 12, 2021

Topic: Meet Marie Journey, Sourcing Enthusiast - "Listening Within A Constant Sea of Voices & Heard": esentation of a company. A Sourcer knows OFCCP inside and out. A Sourcer uses the finest tools at hand to create a talent pool. There are endless other examples of value that a Sourcer brings. We organize and use data to build relationships." "Easy, you just help other people ... When people are needing food and mortgage money, there were no splits, no markers, and no thanks needed. Most never knew my hand was there at all. How did this help me? It didn’t in terms of money or recognition. It was priceless in terms of ability to break every previous personal production record, stretch my network a thousand-fold, and be in finest form for my next role." • RecruitingBlogs Profile Marie Journey • Sourcing Extraordinaire & Sweet Tea Enthusiast • Location: Navarre, FL • Linkedin • Facebook • Twitter • Website • Company • Community Volunteering: Volunteer at the local elementary school and helping women out of abusive situations. • Personal Causes: Working with children that are wired differently, helping families of deployed military, and being there for women in need. • Office: 678.779.6619 • Personal Email Our mutual friend, Steve Rath, was kind enough to introduce me to Marie Journey and the more I inquired - the more I learned how many fellow travelers we have in our lives. Marie and I share the same ecosystem of sourcers to social networking enthusiasts and a passion for passing it forward. She is a rock star with10+ years recruiting experience, and contributed to talent development in five languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese) in both Corporate as well as Agency Environments; working with one of the largest for profit organizations, Microsoft, as well as one of the largest non-profit organizations in the world, AIESEC. She has presented at Recruitfest 2009, been on on Jim Stroud’s Recruiters Lounge, and among fellow gurus as an attendee at each of the last two Sourcecon conferences. Marie is also one of the pioneers in video SEO for high demand reqs; she was able to get 1st Page Google, 1st Rank for key skill set within 48 hrs of launching the following video: http://budurl.com/hogandev Q & A with Marie Journey Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. MARIE: My world comprises of people I love that live with me, next to me, and all around the world. My feet are in Paradise AKA Navarre, FL. As far as family goes, if you can order sweet tea, it is likely one of my blood kin from my mother’s side is nearby. You’d have to travel the seas to encounter rest. A sweet, chocolate eyed, mad scientist in the making that holds both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einstein close to his heart calls me Momma. His name is Julian age 7 and he is a miracle child many times over. A wild burst of energy, that flies across any ground and launches into my arms is Ian, age 6. Then there is Miss Kayla who will change the world for the better with her passion for science, animals, and justice that is age 10. Jared’s silence speaks loudly in the near constant sea of voices; he can sum up a person and motivators within seconds, age 8. Simply put, single mom of 1 and official back-up Daddy to 3 more when their father is deployed. MARIE: All the children gather one evening every other week for a sit down meal and the Extreme Play Date begins: we build robots, conduct science experiments, fiercely debate merits of Pokemon, and dance to hundreds of random questions. In the rare moments of me time, I devour a book a day. When stress weighs too heavy or I need a bigger dose of escape, it is power tool time. Have a flare for blades and dying to get my hands on a 26 inch Katana to continue Japanese sword fighting lesions. Painting abstracts along with photography feeds the creative side. Checking out new apps is another favorite. Love all types of tools for creating be it an iPhone, Dremel, brush, or camcorder. The future holds - a nonprofit called the League of Competent Woman that attracts strong ladies looking to make a positive change by promoting and protecting both women and children through changing/enforcing laws, providing an extensive network of resources, and mentoring. Until my house remodel is complete and the greyhound rescue dog of my dreams comes home to us, my only pet is my laptop, Vixen. She is smoking hot and holds her own. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? MARIE: I started 10+ years ago during my time at AIESEC, which was one of the largest non-profit orgs in the world second only to the Red Cross at the time. With AIESEC, there was International recruiting, business development, marketing, and a mission to better the world. After AIESEC, I went on to be an international logistic consultant designing automotive factories in cool places like Brazil and Germany. 100% international travel, worked on multi-national project teams, learned a great deal about other cultures and business practices. Had fun reworking highly complex systems with thousands of variables, designing with AutoCAD in five languages, being humbled by the brilliance of great minds, and even got to dance with the Portelas @ Carnival in Rio. Why go back to recruiting? When I returned to the United States for love, I had the opportunity to choose a different career path. Decided to return to recruiting and found that the career break helped me immensely by gaining skills sets that are often needed and hard to gather on the typical recruiting career path. Six Degrees: What types of training in sourcing/recruitment are available to you and have you taken advantage of? MARIE: For years, I have been absolutely relentless in the pursuit of sourcing/recruitment training. I have taken One on one training with National Sourcing Expert, Shally Steckerl. I could list out a couple of hundred, but generically –Taken massive training on OFCCP and even designed training manuals. Did every available session on Diversity and wrote several more training sessions. Any ATS used, I worked to become a super user at warp speed. Went outside of traditional recruiting/sourcing and took training on tech/marketing/system optimizations and courses that involved the current niche or sector of talent. Training is essential to know the law, the space, the MVPs, how to connect, how to present, and then how to close in shortest time possible. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? MARIE: The moment of silence from Shally, when he decided if I was serious or not and how to respond to my request for what I would like for him to teach me. Okay, he probably had the mute on and was laughing his back-side off, but he proceeded to first drill me on what I knew, tell me what I needed to learn, and ticked off points to help make it happen. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? MARIE: To survive your first week in recruiting you had better have a strong mentor or an example of a person that has it figured out. There are hundreds that have knowingly or unknowingly helped along the way. For recruiting/sourcing successes you can bank that one or more of the following were a factor (listed in alpha order by first name): 1. Barbara Marks – watched her flawlessly perform recruiting miracles and hiring manager interfacing magic for years. Generous of heart and would stop my desk for her anytime. 2. Burt Black – taught me tech recruiting, a multi-million dollar producer for over ten years, and has been a true friend to me for over 15 years. 3. Chandra Bodapati @ Egrabber - creates the tools that make me drool on myself. 4. Chris Havrilla – queen of empowerment, legend in the field, and always one of the 1st gen adopters of doable/usable tech. 5. Dave Copps – had me at AI app. 6. Eric Jaquith – listening to him is pure beneficial bliss to any recruiter or sourcer. If you need to “Miracle Grow” your system, he is the man with the plan. 7. Geoff Webb – geek that gets social networking, sourcing, and keeps the space lively. We are in the middle of a friendly yet fierce challenge: http://bit.ly/geekchallenge 8. Jeffrey Rosado, at Pensacolaco Computers – he opened the door and let me out of the box. Smartest guy in tech I’ve ever met, taught me how to get 1st page/top rank in Google (SEO Amazing Man), created Vixen (My smokin’ hot, voice activated laptop), and fully stocks my software addiction with professional grade product! 9. Jim Stroud – his reach is so vast in terms of training, involvement, and accomplishments; I am one of hordes that owe him credit. 10. Kay Kelison – brilliant social networking and researching talent and flat out one of my favorite people for talking shop with, future trends, or just about anything. 11. Marjorie Mancini of CVTracer – created an ATS that actually does what you need in recruiting with the fewest clicks possible. She has also been a light of inspiration. One woman that has done so much in this field! 12. Rob McIntosh – if you are in Sourcing you owe this man thanks. 13. Rodney Walden – Showed me stuff on InfoGist I didn’t know was possible, got me on to LinkedIN years ago, and always makes me laugh. 14. Shally Steckerl – gave the advice I needed to hear at just the right time. 15. Sharon Meyers – awes me with her sourcing talent in both the national and international space. This lady has to use a fire hose for her talent pipe. 16. Steve Rath – put together one of my favorite recruiting teams, forerunner in Sourcing 2.0, pays it forward, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching him be stellar in the industry for years. Any mistakes made along the way have been 100% my own doing! Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? MARIE: Any shop that Rob McIntosh or Chris Havrilla is running. (B) In what aspects are they superior? MARIE: Rob can whip out Excel spreadsheets, PPT presentations, and flowchart his superior methods. Love the quantifying of what most would consider intangibles. Chris Havrilla is the finest cherry picker of talent and can create magic with her managing style and in depth understanding of how to be effective in not only today’s market, but tomorrow’s as well. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? MARIE: As tech improves and people like Dave & Chandra come up with these groundbreaking, time saving sourcing tools…why do companies need “Sourcers”? A Sourcer brings much more than the ability to rattle off a complex Boolean string, a database of names, or niche product knowledge – A Sourcer is often the front line and first representation of a company. A Sourcer knows OFCCP inside and out. A Sourcer uses the finest tools at hand to create a talent pool. There are endless other examples of value that a Sourcer brings. We organize and use data to build relationships. Bring on the best Tech! Six Degrees: Tell us about your broader involvement within the staffing industry: MARIE: Attended both SourceCons and was asked to speak at RecruitFest! 2009. Six Degrees: Can you detail how the recession has affected your particular industry niche? Has it effected your job or that of your fellow team members within the organization? MARIE: When Microsoft has massive layoffs you know it is going to be a rough road. As a MS Prospecting Consultant via SearchWizards, I got the call right in time for Christmas of 2008 that the whole team was toasted effective December 30th. What was the experience like for a single mom, in Tech Recruiting, that has always worked? Well, having twins without an epidural in the Amazon would have been less painful and shocking. Like childbirth, I’m glad it is over, joyous at the bright future ahead, and will not be sending pictures/videos/or play by plays of the process. Six Degrees: Aside from simply the generic term “Networking” what specific efforts have you made on your own behalf, or on behalf of colleagues to broaden your opportunities? MARIE: Easy, you just help other people. I answered that question, “If you had to do your job for free would you do it?” Yes, I sure would and did within the week of being laid off. I went from recruiting on behalf of Microsoft to pipelining any viable jobs that were open. It was fast and furious work and mostly done in stealth mode. When people are needing food and mortgage money, there were no splits, no markers, and no thanks needed. Most never knew my hand was there at all. How did this help me? It didn’t in terms of money or recognition. It was priceless in terms of ability to break every previous personal production record, stretch my network a thousand-fold, and be in finest form for my next role. Six Degrees: Given your own Trial and Error experiences as a Networker, what advice do you have for your peers on what NOT to do? MARIE: Never take complete credit for any success if there is the slightest possibility that you can share the credit with somebody else. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? MARIE: Take a high need skill set, create a video campaign, work with corporate Marketing, and then track results for both recruiting and sales. For example, if you Google: “Hogan developers” job The 1st Page and 1st Rank has been one of my videos from launch weeks ago until the moment of writing this. Jim Stroud was the first to introduce me to the idea of using video to reach candidates and Jeff@pensacolacomputers.com has been teaching me the SEO and backend side of ranking. Really wanted to work the SEO angle without any corporate branding or specific job to see what would happen in terms of rank as a control. Now the next goal is to add the corporate branding along with buy in and marketing resources in order to incorporate a much broader social networking strategy and own the space. Recruiting wins low cost renewable pipeline with shorter fills and less production loss. Marketing wins name recognition and increased revenue. All I need is company that likes the notion of prime market position Using Your Geek Card Lately? This profile is one in a series titled Monday Member Showcase. It was originally published on RecruitingBlogs.com, a recruiting and HR community, where I am a featured contributor. To read the whole series please click here.…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 8:24pm on December 6, 2009

Topic: Meet Jerry Albright, RBC Regular & Staffing Software Innovator: roup.com Jerry is one of those people you instantly like and feel a camaraderie much akin to someone who has sat on a lawn chair on your deck with a beer in hand for many a summer night. From a chat discussion to live at RecruitFest, RecruitingBlogs.com keeps bringing people from across the country and the world together, learning, singing and laughing. With Jerry we get all three. A practicing recruiter with a high grossing contracting firm who also happened to submit his talents on guitar with vocals for the RecruitingBlogs video contest and, not least, his ability to have us laughing throughout dinner in Toronto at Recruitfest on the first night at an RBC feast. Avid Outdoorsman, Familyman, Recruiter, contracting firm owner, singer, musician, and staffing software innovator, he still finds time each and every day to contribute at RecruitingBlogs be in a forum or a chatroom discussion. My friends, - we have ourselves a Renaissance man and a familiar face in Jerry Albright, a family member within a tight knit community. Meet my good friend, Jerry Albright ... Q&A with Jerry Albright, RBC Regular & Founder of Verbal Summary Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world, Jerry. Jerry: Nikole and I married in 1994 and have been enjoying our lives together for nearly 15 years! We have 3 children – boys Reagan (7) and Reed (5) and our little girl Hannah (3). Our home is in rural Northeast Indiana where we enjoy gardening, swimming in the pond on hot summer days and being actively involved with our kids! Nikole works at Oak Farm Montessori School where our children attend. In the summer we really love getting away in our camper. Venturing to new places and seeing how much the kids love exploring is a perfect way to get away from the desk. I’m an avid outdoorsman – so our family enjoys a varied menu depending on the season! Walleye, morel mushrooms, venison and pheasant are some of our favorite meals together. Six Degrees: How many years have you been a recruiter? Jerry: My recruiting career began in June of 1987. I remember seeing an ad in the Fort Wayne paper with the following headline: Human Resource Consultant. Are you enthusiastic? Motivated? Influential? It then listed the phone number to call. I was certainly motivated, as at that point in my life I hadn’t decided on a particular direction. Enthusiasm has also been a part of anything I do. So all I needed to learn was how to be influential which sounded great to me! I called the number and have stuck with it ever since! Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Jerry: I haven’t thought about that before…..It would most likely have to be the impact of my first few placements. The “big picture” of recruiting really sunk in. I remember feeling like I had really accomplished something. . I had been in sales roles before recruiting but something just felt completely different. I fell in love with it! Since then I have never taken any placement for granted. I can remember the names and companies of nearly everyone I have placed. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Jerry: I have been fortunate in my career to have several mentors – each of whom gave me invaluable insight into the fine art of staffing. Richard Pulse is the one who hired me and gave me my start in 1987. His training and guidance was fantastic. It’s really hard to quantify just how much impact he had on my career because if it weren’t for him I’m quite certain I would be doing something entirely different with my life. My other mentor in the recruiting world was Bruce A. Bone. He was the one who showed me the absolute necessity to personally visit each client your represent. That is one of the things that have stuck with me over the years. If you are going to invest your time and effort with someone (clients) – you simply MUST meet them and build that relationship in a way that only face to face meetings can do. Six Degrees: Tell us about your Day Job, Jerry: Jerry: I am the owner of Professional Search Group as well as Verbal Summary. Professional Search Group was founded in 1998. Since that time I have developed clients throughout the Midwest. We are a small group of independent recruiters working together to fill our client need within the I.T. and Engineering community. We have a focus in I.T. and Technology and also recruit within the Engineering world for several key clients. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Jerry: It would be foolish to not recognize the economic landscape we are all dealing with. It is refreshing for us all to be reminded of the true nature of our work and the focus and discipline success requires in the staffing world. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Jerry: Next for me is to continue developing the presence of Verbal Summary in the marketplace. Having been a successful recruiter for many years is allowing me to shift gears just a bit and follow an idea all the way through. Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit? Jerry: I really can’t say enough about Verbal Summary. If you can just picture how many times each day recruiters make marketing call into every company in the marketplace. They have absolutely nothing NEW to present to the clients. Faster? I doubt it. Better? Really. Lower Fee? Please….. When all is said and done there is nothing new taking place for our clients. They are getting resumes in Word format the same way they always have. So it all gets down to providing a truly different (absolutely unique) service to them. Verbal Summary is a tool which allows you to add targeted audio right on top of the resume. So when your client reviews a candidate you have introduced they just click the play button and LISTEN to the candidate describe their particular background for that position. Clients love this. Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career? Jerry: About the only tool we had was the telephone. What I learned during those days was the importance of listening. It seems that with the overload of internet tools we use now – there isn’t much “listening” going on. In fact there is more silence that anything. The process has shifted from “conversation” based recruiting to a more question/answer/email format. I don’t see as much investment in getting to know your clients and candidates as much as we use to. So the tool that has stuck with me is the good old telephone. (Rumor has it the phone is making a comeback!) Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people's assumptions about our vocation differ from reality? Jerry: Well – for me I had never heard of such a thing. It was all brand new for me and it felt quite natural. Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience? Jerry: I’m all about learning from mistakes! Luckily I haven’t made too many big ones. After deciding to “do my own thing” in 1998 I did make the mistake of hiring people based on reasons other than what I knew from my previous 10 years in the business it takes to be a success. I made the mistake of assuming the people I hired had the same desire for success that I did. It cost my some real money and lost opportunities to figure that out! Six Degrees: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry, and/or at your place of work? If you started that process, outline the problem, your solutions, and the vision. Jerry: It has been quite apparent to many of us “old school” recruiters that the general level of service provided my many agencies has become stagnant. Find a candidate. Send the resume. Start again. Our clients are getting resume after resume in the same boring fashion they have for years! I am personally committed to changing the way recruiters make presentations to their customers. As mentioned I have developed a tool for very easily combining audio with resumes. This tool is saving clients considerable time by being able to hear highlighted parts of their interview with the recruiter. The benefits of using it are endless. It is also used to capture your discussion with the client and add that to a written job requirement to be sent to your candidates. They love it. They get to hear the CLIENT describe the job – not just the recruiter’s interpretation. Candidates can very easily refer jobs to their associates just by forwarding the link you send. It’s amazing. Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general? Jerry: Clients now hide behind a wall of voicemail and email. It had been getting harder and harder to reach out to potential clients that had not worked with me before. Up until developing Verbal Summary I had nothing new to offer them. Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, -- what inspires you as you continue in your career? Jerry: What inspires me are the goals and dreams we have as a family. My lovely wife Nikole inspires me! My children inspire me! Recruiting has always been a gift I feel lucky to have received. I am inspired when I drive down the highway and see names of our clients on the trucks. It makes me feel in some small way a part of the big picture. There is not a single profession I can think of which offers such a balance between life and work. Recruiting for me is simply a way of life! The flexibility is something which few careers offer. I can take my work with me – leave it at the office – let it consume me for whatever time it may – or anywhere in between. The choice is up to me! Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2009? Jerry: I will continue to get the word out on Verbal Summary while maintaining the level of placement activity I expect from myself. Should be a very busy year! Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug? Jerry: Everyone should really check out Verbal Summary. If you want to offer your clients something absolutely revolutionary…..this is it! It’s one of the few tools I have ever seen which actually give you something that will open client doors for you. It really does! Six Degrees: How Are You Going To Change The Recruitment Industry? Jerry: In a small (but growing) way I already have! Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com Six Degrees: Tell us about Your Company Jerry: Verbal Summary - www.verbalsummary.com - is the first of its kind. It’s a "Presentation Tool" designed for every desk in the staffing world. It allows the recruiter to easily combine audio with a resume for effective and powerful presentations to their clients. They simply record a conversation with their candidate creating an MP3 file. This audio is then easily uploaded along with the resume to the website. This profile is then turned into a friendly link for sending to their client. All activity taking place from that point forward is tracked instantaneously on their “dashboard”. You will now know immediately when your client has reviewed your presentation. That alone is worth the price! Take a look at this example candidate profile! http://www.verbalsummary.com/ViewCandidate.aspx?p1=23cfc27e-2654-46ad-a4ef-59abcbf732a2 Six Degrees: How was Your Company Founded? Jerry: Our industry has been fixated on candidate sourcing, social networking and storing candidate profiles. There has been very little (if any) thought put into how we’re presenting these individuals to our customer base. In searching for a way to make our candidates stand out from the crowd we found nothing available. I’m an old school recruiter. My success comes from having conversations – REAL conversations - with candidates and clients. Lately many of my clients have begun to rely more and more on email for communication. This frustrates me. After developing an excellent understanding of my candidate’s background and qualifications – I then have to throw it out the window and just send a plain old email with resume attached! I had to change that. Often times during the initial part of the process the client begins with a phone call to the candidate. This is usually a few days in the making and the end result is in essence covering the very same ground your client is paying you for! So this tool simply had to be built. I now take specific parts of my interview audio with the candidate and stick it right on top of the resume. There are hundreds of products to help us keep track of our candidates, but nothing to move them forward once a match has been identified. With that in mind we built the industry’s only tool geared toward our client’s first impression of the candidate that requires NOTHING NEW from the client or candidate. We have significantly changed the way our customers expect to be served by reconstructing the entire ‘resume sending’ process. We’re now introducing the “person” to our clients, not just their resume. Six Degrees: Where did you go and find investors? Jerry: This was done in-house. This project was done with a team of outside software developers. They helped me put my idea into a workable design and then took it from there. Being the first software product I had experienced it was a fascinating and rewarding process…..expensive…but rewarding! From the initial concept to product launch took just under 1 year. Six Degrees: Your Company’s Value Proposition Jerry: With a world gone crazy with all kinds of technology to find candidates – there is simply not a single, straight-forward tool to help you “brand” your “product” once you’ve identified a solid candidate for your client. I find it amazing just how much money is spent in the recruiting world just to make sure everyone has access to all the same resumes their competitors do – but nothing is being invested (yet) to set that resume apart from the crowd for your client. Using Verbal Summary is a way for you to CLEARLY provide an incrementally better service to your client. Without a doubt clients absolutely love the ability to LISTEN to the candidate speak directly about their experience for the job. All the client does is click the link you send. Your email is a sharply branded message sent from Verbal Summary. The customer just follows the link. No downloads, passwords or additional software is required on their end. Your client can review YOUR INTERVIEW AUDIO at any time that fits into their schedule. Six Degrees: What is the pricing structure for your services/products? Jerry: $50/month for the first account with discounts for additional users in the same company. Six Degrees: What is the future for Your Company? Jerry: The future is great! Being the first tool of its kind I have noticed it taking a bit for the idea to catch on with the recruiting public. Once a recruiter sits down and really looks at it the advantage in using it becomes absolutely clear. I know most recruiters think in terms of placements so I’ll put it this way – if you make just ONE additional placement in 30 years due to VS – then it has paid for itself! Why WOULDN’T someone use it?! Six Degrees: Do you blog? Jerry: I’m a recruiter – not a journalist or reporter - so I really haven’t felt the need to blog much. I’ve never thought the general public needed to know my every thought – but to each his own. I am a regular on RecruitingBlogs.com though. Sometimes I’ll put something together over there. I have had the pleasure of hosting Talent Talk Cafe several times and have really enjoyed it. It is a chat every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm EST on the front page. I strongly believe every recruiter in the world should be a member there. Each day is a learning opportunity. The volume of information there is mind boggling! Six Degrees: Tell me something others may not know about you. Jerry: My home is heated by burning corn which heats water in a boiler. That water is then pumped through my homes original gas/forced air system. The fan blows across the radiator and sends the heat throughout the duct system. It’s very quiet.…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 9:41pm on November 23, 2008

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Everywhere you turn lately, you seem to come across another…

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Blog Post: The Net / Net of Net Geners

The Net Net of the Net Geners

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Topic: Transcript Talent Talk Cafe: Week of Jan. 12th - A conversation on blogging and best practices: great conversation - enjoy! 3:00pm Susan Burns Welcome to Talent Talk Cafe! 3:00pm Susan Burns Quick note before we begin 3:00pm Geri Kleeman hi all 3:00pm Susan Burns You can click on the coffee cup above the chat screen to pop the chat out and make it bigger 3:01pm Lance Haun Good afternoon all 3:01pm Susan Burns Hi Geri! Hi Lance! 3:01pm David Benjamin Hello 3:01pm Susan Burns So our topic today is recruitment and blogging - as an opening question, I'm curious how many of you are actively blogging? 3:02pm Susan Burns HI David! 3:02pm Lance Haun I am 3:02pm Kari Quaas Hi Susan - I am. :) 3:02pm Tracy Tran Ditto 3:02pm Ben Gotkin Hi Susan and everyone else out there in Chatland today. You know I am 3:02pm Becky Metcalf me too 3:02pm Susan Burns Great 0 Hi Kari, Tracy, Ben and Becky! 3:02pm Sarah White i am starting back up in Feb 3:03pm Susan Burns How many of you are blogging for professional - talent attraction purposes and how many combine professional and personal? 3:03pm Ben Yoskovitz Afternoon everyone. 3:03pm Susan Burns HI Ben! Hi Sarah! 3:03pm Becky Metcalf combo 3:03pm David Benjamin I am actively blogging, just started a month ago. 3:03pm Kari Quaas Combo 3:03pm Maren Hogan Well does personal include ego? 3:03pm Tracy Tran Mine is combined. 3:03pm Lance Haun combo-ish 3:03pm Ben Gotkin Professional only, for the company 3:03pm David Benjamin combo blogs, seperate sites 3:03pm Lance Haun mainly personal 3:04pm Sarah White mostly professional 3:04pm Susan Burns If you answered combined - is it within the same blog or do you manage multiple blogs? 3:04pm Tracy Tran Same blog 3:04pm Maren Hogan trying to manage multiple 3:04pm Maren Hogan not suceeding 3:04pm Susan Burns Hey Maren! 3:04pm Becky Metcalf maintaing multiple, but I do try to incorporate both personal and professional. That's the point for me. 3:04pm David Benjamin Multiple blogs. Don't like them combined 3:04pm Kari Quaas multiple 3:04pm Sarah White multiple - i think even on professional, your personality will come out. 3:04pm Maren Hogan Hi Susan! 3:05pm Susan Burns Becky and Tracy - are you blogging for a company or is this our own biz combined with the personal content? 3:05pm Susan Burns Sarah - agree that if your being authentic your personal style will show through 3:05pm Becky Metcalf representative of my company 3:06pm David Benjamin I have different topics I want to address. Some are recruiting, others are not 3:06pm Tracy Tran own biz 3:06pm Becky Metcalf but personal to the point of adding authenticity 3:06pm Susan Burns Is anyone besides Lance, Kari and Ben writing for a company blog - public or private besides your own company? 3:07pm David Benjamin silence :) 3:07pm Ben Gotkin not surprised 3:07pm Susan Burns I thought it would be fund to explore why we blog. What was the movtivation for each of you to begin blogging? 3:07pm Tracy Tran I don't like having multiple blogs because that would make me have different personalities and I do categorize my topics on my blog 3:07pm Slouch hey there. sorry I'm late 3:07pm Susan Burns Hi Jason! 3:08pm Slouch his Susan 3:08pm Becky Metcalf my motivation was to be more accessible to the people I deal with 3:08pm David Benjamin I need to change hosting site so that I can do everything on one 3:08pm Susan Burns David - why did you decide to begin blogging? 3:09pm Sarah White I started to express ideas I was seeing about our industry - the good and bad then some people started to read it. It was more about me expressing myself and less about others reading (wrong or right) 3:09pm David Benjamin provide value, establish credibility, outlet for creative thoughts 3:09pm Ben Gotkin I started writing about recruiting (for other recruiters), but all along I wanted to provide a broad audience an inside view into my organization, and blogging allows you to do that in a highly effective and efficient manner 3:09pm Sarah White David, I agree, for some reason having a blog makes you more "credible" to some clients 3:09pm Maren Hogan I didn't think anyone would be watching and I thought in Omaha, no one else would be blogging, neither of which was true 3:10pm Tracy Tran I was amazed that someone in Thailand read my blog. 3:10pm David Benjamin If the content is good, and you gain a following, then credibility can be established 3:10pm Susan Burns These are great: accessibility, trends, credibility, creative thinking, add value, views into the company 3:10pm Slouch a big reason to do it is so that the likes of google index you and when candidates or clients are doing searches for things, you will come up. Search engines like blogs 3:10pm David Benjamin that too Slough 3:11pm Susan Burns Jason - that was an interesting learning for me in building the Talent Synchronicity site. I decided to move a lot of the content into what will be developed through the blog 3:11pm David Benjamin Slouch, sorry 3:11pm Tracy Tran I think also integration of social media sites. My blog had 5-7 readers, but when I use twitter, it jumped to 30-40. 3:11pm Susan Burns Thanks great Tracy! 3:11pm Ben Gotkin Blog platforms allow you to provide information in a real-time manner. The easy integration of multimedia also makes it a very powerful tool 3:11pm David Benjamin Adding video, podcast to blogs adds variety of mediums 3:12pm Geri Kleeman How exactly is a blog defined? Is it anything where you can type a response? 3:12pm Susan Burns Ben - so true - its really amazing how easy it is to intergrate multi-media and distribute content 3:12pm Susan Burns Geri - interesting question. So a blog compared to what? An article? Website content? 3:12pm Geri Kleeman I guess so 3:12pm Tracy Tran Anything can be a blog: words, ideas, pictures, thoughts. 3:12pm Slouch Geri, it is a page on the web where you can write things without thinking too much about PR and being the fastest and the best 3:13pm David Benjamin From now, I'm just posting pictures and calling it my blog :) 3:13pm Ben Gotkin Susan - It's also easy to drive traffic to other related media, such as your own career website, specific jobs, other sites with content (i.e. Facebook, Youtube, etc.) 3:13pm Susan Burns To add on to what Tracy shared is it also an ongoing process - commitment to fresh content. 3:13pm Kelly Dingee And blogs would typically be hosted on wordpress or typepad, no? And Twitter is the so-called microblog... 3:13pm Susan Burns Kelly - yep - need to distringuish between blog and microblog 3:13pm Ben Gotkin Kelly - Yep, I use Blogger. Microblogs are becoming very powerful too 3:14pm Kari Quaas "Commitment to fresh content" - great description, Susan. 3:14pm Stephanie the fresh content is the part that scares me about starting a blog, frankly. 3:14pm Ben Gotkin I twittered earlier today about participating on todays TTC :-) 3:14pm Susan Burns It does feel that there are higher expectations growing around blog content and it almost feels like some are merging with "traditional" media - articles and so forth as many mainstream publications have started blogs - content lines are bluring 3:15pm David Benjamin Can there be too many bloggers? Sometimes I read blogs and there is so much overlap 3:15pm Becky Metcalf it's so flexible, easy to see the mass appeal 3:15pm Susan Burns Stephanie - I agree! When I was blogging several years ago on HCM Blogspot it was very hard to keep adding something new. With my new blog I'm committing to once a week 3:15pm John Palcisko is it proper etiquette to have original content ot can you comment on a great article ? 3:15pm Tracy Tran It takes time on a blog. When I started 3 years ago, it was more personal, but I keep updating myself to get a broader audience of who I am. 3:15pm Susan Burns David - is it too many bloggers or too many posts by the same person - quality over quantity! 3:16pm Stephanie when starting one, is it best to define what you want from it? applicants, for example, vs more candidate development and long term cultivation? 3:16pm Slouch Stephanie, what are the some of the the things you see as issues with what you do for a living and you must have some ideas how to make it better. That is a good place to start in terms of writing 3:16pm David Benjamin too many blogs on the same topic 3:16pm Ben Gotkin Stephanie - With our corporate blog, we have several contributors, and are constantly on the lookout for stories in the organization, many of which are often already posted on our intranet 3:16pm Slouch yes you need to know your audience 3:16pm Susan Burns John - HI - great question - Yes, I see that alot and as long as you credit the original source and link to the article absolutely! 3:16pm John Palcisko Thanks 3:16pm Tracy Tran I do admit there are a lot of blogs, but find the ones that are trustworthy and you're willing to come back. 3:17pm Susan Burns Ben - I like how your Blog is set up. I also like the model of multiple contributors - one of the things that attracted me to what Lanceis doing on HRM Today 3:17pm David Benjamin I'm looking to write fresh content, something that may not be found everywhere else. It's challanging. 3:17pm Slouch nothing wrong John with taking a few lines or more and saying to read the rest go here. the person you are linking to will appreciate it and maybe link back. it's a slow process but it works 3:17pm Ben Gotkin Susan - It's been a big help. I'm the main contributor, but I don't feel like I have to come up with something new 1-2 times a week. 3:18pm Susan Burns How frequently do each of you post to your blog? 3:18pm Dava Stewart Should ask permission before linking to someone else's content? What is the etiquette? 3:18pm John Palcisko Thanks Slouch 3:18pm David Benjamin Posting a couple times a week. 3:18pm Tracy Tran 1-3 times a week. 3:18pm Susan Burns Dava - its an open web so no, you don't need to but a heads up could be nice 3:18pm Dava Stewart thanks, Susan 3:18pm Ben Gotkin We've been averaging 2-3 posts a week since our launch last July 3:18pm Tracy Tran Always give a Hat Tip when borrowing the story. 3:19pm Ben Yoskovitz Ben Gotkin - can you publish your blog URL in here please? 3:19pm Susan Burns Thanks Tracy - yes, always reference the person or place of the original content 3:19pm Ben Gotkin http://mcgladreycareers.blogspot.com 3:19pm JR Fent I like putting in the link to someone else's content and then sending them a note saying that I did it - make a new friend. 3:19pm Ben Yoskovitz But you shouldn't be afraid to link out - linking is one of the best strategies for generating traffic and awareness. 3:19pm Susan Burns Nice approach JR 3:19pm Slouch Dava, no need for permission as long as you link back and don;t take the entire article. 3:20pm Ben Yoskovitz Ben Gotkin - have you had any concerns that you're running on Blogger vs. another platform? 3:20pm Susan Burns Ben - what are you concerned about Blogger? 3:20pm Slouch it drives me crazy when people do that 3:20pm Ben Gotkin Ben Y - I've used Blogger for a few years now and it works well for me actually 3:20pm Tracy Tran Yes, I always check my wordpress dashboard to see who saw my blog and where did it came from, and I click on the site of the referrer. 3:20pm Susan Burns Jason - what drives u crazy? 3:21pm Ben Yoskovitz Susan - not concerned, but generally Blogger isn't regarded as the BEST platform for blogging. But that's a lot of "technical stuff" if you will that doesn't necessarily matter. 3:21pm Ben Yoskovitz The bigger concern would be the professionalism of it. Ben G has a nice looking design though. 3:21pm Susan Burns Got it - It was the original platform, wasn't it? 3:21pm Slouch when someone takes an article from another blog and posts the entire thing on theirs and then puts a link at the bottom. 3:21pm Ben Yoskovitz Ben G - have you ever thought of using a non-Blogspot domain? 3:21pm John Palcisko will we have access to this entire blog- I read slow :) 3:21pm Susan Burns Jason - agree! 3:21pm JR Fent I agree with Ben. Over the years I actually found that an article manager product was better than blogging. 3:21pm Ben Yoskovitz Slouch - you can't get away from people stealing content. Trick: Link to yourself each and every time, so at least there are links in there BACK to you :) 3:21pm Susan Burns John - you should be able to go back from when you logged on but its not always reliable 3:22pm Ben Gotkin Ben Y - Thanks. We got help from our marketing dept with that - I'm fine with Blogger for now, but we may have an opportunity to try another platform in the coming months 3:22pm Slouch not so much stealing content but rather using other content to populate your own 3:22pm Ben Yoskovitz @Slouch: Ya that sucks. A lot of people do that. Take it as a sign of your growing popularity... 3:22pm Slouch not so much from here 3:22pm Susan Burns New question - What is the most important part of successful blogging: frequency? catchy titles? great format? cool media integration....... 3:22pm Stephanie so if you borrow content, you should be making some sort of commentary on it, not just "reblogging" no? 3:23pm Slouch just in general it is bad manners 3:23pm Tracy Tran Content first, then media integration. 3:23pm John Palcisko something of value Susan 3:23pm Susan Burns Stephanie - if you "borrowing" it may be appropriate to use quotes and then reference source - if your linking - just pointing to the original source and referencing 3:23pm Ben Gotkin Frequency is key 3:23pm Stephanie gotcha 3:23pm Slouch the idea is that you hilight something you think is interesting or your readers will like and let them know that " I thought yoiu would like this and it is about this and here is a little of it and then let them follow the link to the other place 3:24pm John Palcisko so Ben if you put up "crap" frequently" it is good? 3:24pm Ben Yoskovitz Ben G - Frequency or regularity? 3:24pm Susan Burns John - thats a classic line! Thanks for the chuckle! 3:24pm Ben Gotkin ahem, quality and frequency are key... 3:24pm David Benjamin Has anyone gone from having readers and no comments to getting comments? What changed? 3:24pm JR Fent Quality and search engine relevance are the most important to me 3:24pm Tracy Tran Putting badges on my site and my profiles. 3:24pm Ben Gotkin Good question David, I'm curious myself, we rarely get comments 3:25pm Susan Burns Tracy - was that in response to David's question? 3:25pm Tracy Tran yes 3:25pm Slouch most readers do not comment david 3:25pm Stephanie what are badges? 3:25pm John Palcisko I have been asked by my new firm to figure out what to have in a blog so I hear this is the room of experts :) 3:25pm Ben Yoskovitz David - Not all blogs are comment-friendly. And generally I've seen comments drop as people share content or comment in other ways - via Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. 3:25pm Ben Yoskovitz There are ways to encourage comments though... 3:26pm Ben Yoskovitz Ask questions at the end of posts, for example. 3:26pm Susan Burns Stephanie - a graphic element you can add to a page and are hyperlinked 3:26pm John Palcisko why not just have "ghost" commenters to get the ball rolling? 3:26pm Ben Yoskovitz Beg a friend to comment first to get things started (I'm not entirely kidding) 3:26pm Maren Hogan tweetsuite! 3:26pm Tracy Tran @Stephanie - Profile badges that know you have a profile in LinkedIN, Facebook, or Alltop or RecruitingBlogs. 3:26pm Chris stephanie a badge is a widget(?) I think 3:26pm Maren Hogan for comments from twitter, I get a lot of those as opposed to on blog comments 3:26pm Ben Yoskovitz Be controversial -that always helps. 3:26pm Stephanie thanks all 3:26pm Tracy Tran Or What Susan said 3:27pm David Benjamin I get comments in person, on twitter. Will encourage them to write them. 3:27pm Slouch "ghost" comments reminds me of this http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/candidate-splits 3:27pm Tracy Tran Or What Susan said 3:27pm Ben Gotkin Be real, write with an authentic 'voice', no marketing-speak 3:27pm Susan Burns Jason Buss did giveaways on his blog to create traffic and get people engaged 3:27pm David Benjamin It seems that when they can reference their latest blog, more comments are written 3:27pm Slouch when it is hard to see the real reason behind it 3:27pm Stephanie lol @ slouch..classy. 3:27pm Ben Yoskovitz Also, I think you want to leave things "hanging" - you don't need to answer every question in a blog post so that it has "finality" to it. Leave things open ended to encourage people to say, "And? Tell us more!" 3:27pm Praveen Jain Hello 3:27pm Praveen Jain Guys 3:28pm Susan Burns New Question - How do you measure the success of your blog? What are your expectations 3:28pm Tracy Tran People understand who I am and where I'm coming from and ask questions. 3:29pm Susan Burns Tracy - do in your active conversations people are more aware and informed? 3:29pm Susan Burns oops that was so not do 3:29pm Slouch Susan, if it delivers the results you want taking into account the time put into it 3:29pm Ben Gotkin There's a lot of ways you can track traffic - Ultimately we want to create a buzz and drive traffic from the blog to other related sites, such as our career website 3:29pm John Palcisko great link Slouch- called her out and she was quite honest 3:29pm Susan Burns So if what you want is credibility - as was mentioned - how would you measure that? Increase in readers? 3:30pm Kari Quaas If it gives one of our readers an insight they didn't have before, we're happy. Sometimes we hear via the comments or emails later. 3:30pm Tracy Tran Yes they are. 3:30pm Slouch it happens all the time here and I call it out everytime I see it 3:30pm John Palcisko I think you and I will get along fine Slouch- we need more straight shooters in this world 3:31pm Slouch lol 3:31pm Susan Burns Ben - very important point for corp bloggers - moving traffic to main site and vice versa. Are you tracking hires from the blog too? 3:31pm Susan Burns Kari - do you track hires from your blog as well 3:31pm Slouch ask Ben Yoskovits or read his blog. he is the ceo of a funded startup but when you read his posts about his company or opther posts, you don;t feel he is selling something and that is the key 3:31pm Dava Stewart Slouch, is that an example of an "advertorial?" 3:31pm Ben Gotkin Susan - Yes, we use Site Meter to measure traffic, it can tell us where they are coming from and where they are going, among other things 3:31pm Slouch it's misleading 3:32pm Kari Quaas Hard to track since we're not doing the hiring. We just figure more traffic on Cool works, means more traffic to our employers. 3:32pm Slouch sometimes people will say I joined this great network or splits group or whatever and you should join and please use this tracking code when you do 3:32pm Ben Yoskovitz Thanks Slouch :) 3:32pm Susan Burns I have a question specific to the corporate bloggers and then we'll come back to all - 3:32pm Slouch so I ask are you going to make money if I join using that code and if yes, you should say something about it 3:32pm Slouch no problem ben 3:33pm Susan Burns When your company started a blog how easy or difficult was the process? What steps did you have to go through to make it happen? 3:33pm Slouch now ben, if you advertised here, I would have never said anything nice about you 3:33pm Chris Tracy Tran is a micro format the same as a badge or widget? 3:33pm Susan Burns Chris - do you mean micro blogging like twitter? 3:34pm Chris No 3:34pm Stephanie Susan, I am at that stage myself, and having a hard time convincing people that its real work I think. LOL 3:34pm Chris hResume and hCalendar 3:34pm Ben Gotkin Susan - I consider myself lucky, it was rather easy. But I had a boss and a marketing department who supported it, and a legal department who was OK with the guidelines we set 3:34pm Susan Burns Stephanie - are they open to the idea bus suspect of the amount of time allocated? 3:34pm Ben Gotkin It wasn't so easy at my last employer, even though we had a very active internal blogging culture there 3:35pm Tracy Tran I really don't know, I have no idea what micro format is 3:35pm Susan Burns Ben - what were the obstacles last time? 3:35pm Stephanie I think they just resist from a "legal hoops" perspective. No one is sure what is the right messaging maybe? Not too sure. 3:35pm Ben Gotkin Misperceptions and lack of trust. Externally the corp comm model was very conservative 3:35pm Stephanie what legal hoops we would have to jump thru to make our lawyers feel its not a risk. 3:35pm Ben Yoskovitz Wasn't there a post on RecruitingBlogs recently about the legal issues and how they were really overblown? 3:35pm Susan Burns Stephanie - there are some great examples of success and also the cost of resistance 3:36pm Slouch lots of them 3:36pm Ben Gotkin McGladrey has been very supportive of social media 3:36pm Stephanie I know other parts of the company have blogs, so I just need to be more vocal and come at it with more research and data. which is why i'm here! 3:36pm Susan Burns Stephanie - are the legal concerns specific to HR? 3:37pm Stephanie likely, yes. what its ok to say and not ok 3:37pm Ben Gotkin Stephanie - Use it to tell stories. Most of us have great stories that happen in our organization all the time, blogging is a great platform for telling those stories 3:37pm Stephanie ben g - that's exactly how I'm picturing this as a recruiting tool. 3:37pm Susan Burns Stephanie - the funny thing is most of what they are afraid of people don't really want to hear - or its certainly easy to respond to without crossing the line 3:38pm Ben Gotkin Stephanie - Create a clear, common-sense based set of guidelines 3:38pm Susan Burns Ok - lets get back to the big picture - thanks for the insight on whats happening in the corp world 3:38pm Stephanie ben g - do you have guidelines already created that you could share w me offline? 3:38pm Chris not not happening (pulled hair out) 3:38pm Susan Burns What is the "ideal" frequency of posts to keep content current and quality? And, is there an ideal length to a post? 3:39pm Ben Gotkin Sure, send me a message with your email and I'll send you what we use 3:39pm Slouch sorry, related to what I was saying beofre. you can check this out http://www.recruitingblogs.com/forum/topics/502551:Topic:303885 3:39pm Susan Burns Ok - thinking you didn't like that last question...... 3:40pm Susan Burns Here's another: How do you balance transparency, authenticity and any sort of company policy you have to manage around? 3:40pm Slouch Susan. it depends on what you want with respect to your frequency question 3:40pm Slouch three posts a week. one original and then be creative for the rest 3:41pm Susan Burns To engage readers and build traffic 3:41pm Tracy Tran For length, there should be no ideal length. If it's short and to the point, you made your point. Idea frequency. That's a tough one but once a week should be the min. 3:41pm Chris or not look like an affiliated marketing company. 3:41pm Slouch I cant read long posts - even my own 3:41pm Ben Gotkin That's where those guidelines come in. Don't write anything that will put your employer at risk 3:41pm Susan Burns Ben - do you find that gets in the way at all? Seems almost like common sense 3:42pm Ben Gotkin It doesn't actually. We are using this as a marketing tool. Writing anything that could be damaging to the organization would be counter-productive. Common sense it is 3:43pm Susan Burns Any other feedback on what people have found to work in terms of frequency and length to build engagement? 3:43pm Ben Yoskovitz When I started blogging, it was 3 times / week, although I don't think you have to blog that often. 3:44pm Ben Yoskovitz Length is an open debate, but I prefer to vary things. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. 3:44pm Susan Burns Ben Y - how long were you able to sustain that? 3:44pm Susan Burns The 3 X a week 3:44pm Ben Yoskovitz A long time - but I was blogging primarily for myself vs. my company. For a corporate blog I think it's tougher and requires more preparation. 3:45pm David Benjamin 2-3 times a week is ideal, I think. I agree that length is all based on how long to express your thoughts concisely 3:45pm Ben Yoskovitz Blogging your own personal experiences / advice when there's no corporation to think or "worry" about is easier. 3:45pm Susan Burns New question - do you use Polls in your blog and do you think they add value 3:45pm Ben Yoskovitz But there are ways of blogging 3x per week without it taking a TON of time. Just depends on the types of posts, length, how well organized you are. 3:46pm Ben Gotkin Ben Y - You need to be motivated to write. I'll admit I get writer's block from time-to-time, drives me crazy 3:46pm Susan Burns Ben Y - that definitely something to consider as JD said too - have a strategy to make one post pure, original content and the others can be shorter, refer to other content.... 3:47pm Susan Burns Anyone using polls? No?? 3:47pm Kari Quaas @Susan - we have used polls before. 3:47pm Ben Yoskovitz I've used polls occasionally, but you need a certain amount of traffic before you can pull it off successfully. 3:47pm Susan Burns Kari - were they effective or is that why it was "before" 3:47pm Ben Yoskovitz In terms of frequency and maintaining that - think about using an editorial calendar. 3:47pm Ben Gotkin I'd like to try it at some point 3:47pm Kari Quaas They are usually requests for content on the blog or on our social network. 3:47pm Kari Quaas We got a small number of returns, but it's better than nothing. 3:48pm Kari Quaas www.surveymonkey.com is an easy one to use 3:48pm Susan Burns Do you think they can be a good way to drive traffic initially - maybe by incoporating a giveaway or something? 3:49pm Susan Burns Ben - you could give away a free tax return service! 3:49pm Kari Quaas We gave away an iPod on our social network to get people to post photos. It worked well. 3:49pm Susan Burns Just make sure the winner had nothing to do with Madoff! 3:49pm John Mota hi all 3:49pm Slouch it's a gimmick initially. if yoiu want to start a blog and you want people to come regularly, you need to rely on the content 3:49pm Tracy Tran Susan - In the short-term, yes.But content will always win out for the long-term. 3:49pm John Mota has anyone done career coaching? 3:49pm Ben Yoskovitz Slouch: Content wins, but gimmicks help. 3:50pm Ben Yoskovitz I've run a few writing projects off my site that used to generate hundreds of links back. Bit harder to do these days and less applicable perhaps in the HR corporate blogging world - but memes, gimmicks can help. 3:50pm Slouch sure but the gimmicks work when the readers know they are gimmicks 3:50pm Susan Burns So polls and giveaways could be good on occassion to drive content. I think esp for a corp blog with a product connection its of value 3:50pm Ben Gotkin Susan - lol. That would be our parent company, HR Block, which actually does some of that I think on their Facebook page 3:51pm David Benjamin John, I do currently 3:51pm Susan Burns We have 10 minutes left and I thought I would open it up to anything thats on your mind about blogging and engaging talent - what are your thoughts, questions and ideas? 3:51pm John Mota career coach? 3:51pm David Benjamin Part of my consultant biz is career coaching 3:51pm Susan Burns (jonh and david - could you use the private chat until we're done - thanks) 3:51pm John Mota i am part of an organization that is starting up an internal career development practice 3:52pm Stephanie what % of bloggers time is being taken writing and researching? 3:52pm Slouch that is a whole other conversation 3:52pm Slouch lol 3:52pm Stephanie oh..lol 3:52pm Slouch some people can;t stop thinking or working on it 3:52pm Slouch I know a few people like that 3:52pm Kari Quaas Very true. 3:52pm Stephanie I'm sure..especially if other work isn't as busy as normal in this climate. 3:53pm Ben Gotkin Stephanie - really depends on the post, some require more research, some are pretty quick and easy to write 3:53pm Susan Burns Stephanie - I did an allocation schedule for my time each week and have currently allowed 20% for writing and research - we'll see how that works out ;-) 3:54pm Ben Yoskovitz I often write posts in my head for days before I actually write them. 3:54pm Kari Quaas @Susan - so official ;) 3:54pm Slouch good luck with that susan 3:54pm Stephanie That's what I'm looking to do. Put a number to it I guess. 3:54pm John Mota Benjamin - how do we private chat? 3:54pm Kari Quaas @Ben - Me too. 3:54pm Slouch clcik his name on the left and an option will come up 3:54pm Slouch on the right I mean 3:54pm Slouch search his name and then click it 3:54pm John Mota i did - is he notified? 3:54pm Susan Burns It was one of my NY resolutions! I allocated out all I have to do each week so I can quit working on weekends - so, yes -there is a motivator! 3:54pm Slouch if he is watching. no bell yet 3:55pm John Mota oh 3:55pm John Mota thanks 3:55pm Slouch np 3:55pm Kari Quaas @Susan - good motivator, indeed 3:55pm Jenny DeVaughn @Susan If I don't plan, it means that I will just work right into the weekend too! 3:56pm Kari Quaas @Stephanie - I just write when a topic hits me. The key is to keep writing. 3:56pm Susan Burns Jenny - I also found that working from home things were becoming too blended. I now have a difinitive start and end time to my day just as if I was going into an office - I don't touch my computer in the morning until I'm ready to sit down at my desk 3:56pm Ben Gotkin I'm more spur-of-the-moment, as the inspiration hits me, or as I run across something that looks like worth writing about 3:56pm Susan Burns I've gotten in the habit of starting an "idea" list - as soon as something hits my I write it down and make a few notes about it 3:56pm Tracy Tran Same here Ben 3:56pm Susan Burns I also believe you have to trust in what you know - even if you don't initially think you know it, and go with something your passionate about 3:57pm Ben Gotkin I do have 'guest bloggers' lined up for one post each over the next several weeks too 3:57pm Susan Burns Any finaly questions...thoughts...ideas? 3:57pm Stephanie susan, I have the same list going..lol 3:58pm Susan Burns Stephanie - if I don't write it down I forget it - or what I was initially thinking about. There are so many things that inspire ideas and capturing the inspiration is sometimes as important as the topic itself 3:58pm Jenny DeVaughn @Ben, great idea! 3:58pm Slouch Thanks Susan for this 3:58pm Ratnesh anybody has idea about granite analyst 3:58pm Susan Burns Great suggestion Ben! 3:58pm Slouch like how to cut rock efficiently? 3:58pm Susan Burns I've been building my interview list 3:58pm Stephanie LOL @ slouch 3:58pm Susan Burns Well that all for Talent Talk Cafe today! Thanks so much for joining the conversation and sharing your experiences and ideas 3:59pm Jenny DeVaughn Thanks, Susan! 3:59pm Susan Burns Cheers to great blogging success for all of you! 3:59pm Slouch great session 3:59pm Ben Gotkin Thanks Susan, another great TTC 3:59pm Stephanie this was wonderful! thanks all. very helpful!!! happy blogging 3:59pm Slouch I am available if anyone wants to ask me questions about blogging or stuff like that later. I have been doing it a long time…; Added by Susan Burns at 10:21pm on January 14, 2009