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Twitter: Intel takes on a new recruitment agency

How about this for a great new way of seeking a new hire?

Intel use TwitterIntel

Yesterday Intel put their first job up on their Twitter account JobsatIntel. If you were looking for someone with an interest in the web, whether technical or design, or someone interested in social networking, or even just someone who is likely to be au fait with the latest tools and feeds, you couldn’t do better than to post a mini-ad on Twitter.

Once here, it is likely to be picked up and passed around to people working in, or with an interest in, this area. This job is for a Graphics Validation Engineer. I don’t know what the job entails, but this may be the quickest way of getting the job description under the nose of someone suitable.

That is because it is quick and free, it capitalises on people’s willingness to do a favour for a friend (especially at no cost) and pass this on to them if they think it relevant, and it puts the job ad where the target market is – on the web, and well-connected.

I notice that Intel’s Twitter account has 22 people signed up to receive their Tweets, even though it has only been there a day. That is 22 people already who may act as recruiting agents on Intel’s behalf, at no cost.

You’ve got to love Intel’s ability to use the web to their advantage.

Using Networking to Target Graduates

Are you looking forward to the milkround again?

Here’s a different approach to targeting particular students at particular universities that might just be what you’re looking for …

Web Worker Daily recently described a new tool (from Affinity Circles) to help Fortune 500 companies target specific graduates – down to particular universities, educational background, year groups or work experience – and communicate directly with their targets about job opportunities.

This works by harnessing the power of social networks. Members send messages about jobs or other opportunities to their peers, universities send announcements to members, and outside companies like pay to send job postings to potential candidates.

Why is this news? Surely graduates use Facebook and LinkedIn?

Affinity Circles say that an online community sanctioned by a university promotes a higher degree of trust than an open community such as Facebook or LinkedIn; and that because it is members-only, there has been an element of preselection by the university; and that because it is members-only there is more privacy for the candidate. No candidate is identifiable by the recruiter until they identify themselves as interested.

From the candidate’s point of view, it’s the online version of the old boy (and girl) network for getting a foot in the door to places that don’t need to advertise and to talk to other alumni at that company to find out what it is really like to work there.

For the companies who participate, it’s a way to find potential recruits who may not be actively looking for a job, or simply to tap into a group of preselected candidates, thus reducing recruitment time and costs.

So should you seriously consider this?

It looks as though the only universities that Affinity Circles have access to at the moment are US-based, so this won’t be useful for everyone.

And I wonder why Affinity Circles are promoting this to Fortune 500 companies; I would have thought that this kind of advertising could be useful to many other, smaller, companies as well.

Nevertheless, I think that this is potentially a very useful way forward, and I think that Affinity Circles have astutely identified the current problems with online recruitment: that there are too many job boards with too little preselection of candidates and that the current set of wellknown networks offer too little by way of targeting and privacy.

Their solution, to use existing private networking circles, is a good one. I wonder what private networks currently exist in British universities …

7 steps to Yes

Princeton acceptance letter

Yes!

The letter from Princeton is an old standard now, but I mention it again to emphasize that the goal of a recruitment process (from both points of view) is to get to Yes.

Or perhaps Yes-Yes, because the goal is to get to Yes on both sides. (Yes-No or No-Yes are both mismatches resulting in disappointment. No-No is usually less of an issue).

To get to Yes, the prospective recruit has to find the answer to a number of different questions, and go through 7 steps:
[Read more…] about 7 steps to Yes

Put your brochure in their pocket

Have you considered using podscrolls to communicate more detail about you?

Podscrolls are like presentations, or brochures, and are composed of a series of images, but they are read using an iPod or other personal media player with a colour screen rather than on paper. These were first used by travel guides (Rough Guides), but potentially have a lot of different applications.

Accenture are using them in their Careers section to enable prospective candidates to download brochures for reading later – on their ipods.

Accenture using podscrolls in Careers
Accenture

I can see that this might work for documents or presentations that you’d like people to review, re-read, and think about, and it is certainly convenient – no need to carry about a document in case you’d like to have another look later.

However, the pixel size is small (320*240) so you probably wouldn’t want to put your annual report or financial statements on podscroll.

But do you have manuals – either for your end customer or for your staff – that it would be helpful for them to have available in a size that would fit in a pocket? Or price lists? What about other presentations that people could download and read on the bus without having to get out their PC?

I’m going to be looking out for interesting uses of podscrolls, so if you come across something, do let us know.

Starbucks: how to communicate change

Starbucks provides us with a demonstration of a great way of communicating the significant changes under way (changes in their approach and in their senior management structure).

The home page has been replaced with a letter from Howard Schultz, addressed to all customers. At the bottom are links to copies of a letter and a voicemail from him to all Starbucks partners (employees), together with a link to a Questions and Answers page dealing with the changes, and to the Investor Relations pages, which shows the press release at the top of the list. If we click through to review the details of the Board of Directors, we can see that the changes have been reflected on this page, which is up to date. Even potential job applicants have been provided with a link to the letter/voicemail to partners and letter to customers in the careers section.
[Read more…] about Starbucks: how to communicate change

Turn your new employees into sales people

Not to sell the products or services that you deliver – though that would be great, obviously – but to sell your company to future employees.

Assuming that you’ve got the right people in the right jobs for them, and that you’re keeping them happy with interesting work and great prospects – who could possibly be better placed to sell your jobs to this year’s crop of graduates than last year’s?

The more information that job seekers can get about what it is really like to work in your company, what you do and what your company culture is like, the more informed their decision – whether to accept the job offer or to apply in the first place. And the more informed your applicants are, the easier (and cheaper) it is for Human Resources. You don’t really want them to have to spend time filtering out people who haven’t really understood your company, do you? Or to spend hours answering emails and phone calls with questions that could have been answered by the website?

[Read more…] about Turn your new employees into sales people