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The Fordyce Letter

Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


Articles tagged 'facebook'

Social Media

The Die-Hard Phone Jockey’s Guide to Facebook



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Before I persuade you that Facebook is the most amazingly powerful medium with which to transform your recruiting practice, let’s review what we’ve worked on so far in this series.

First, we established that improving recruiting performance is our only goal. If social media can help us do that, then we’re interested.

With that in mind, there can be no question; LinkedIn is the leader of the business pack. And, even if a recruiter uses it for nothing else than to collect stunning recommendations from raving fans, we’ve made progress. If you’re only going to invest in one form of social media, LinkedIn is it.

Blogging comes next. If I want to know you, I should be able to fill that need by reading your blog. Even the smallest, most random investment in writing a blog can be an awesome source of progress. And, if you have the dominant blog in your space, you’ll win business that you can’t win in any other way.

Our last lesson was about email marketing and the power this gives you to reach out and win the treasured status of domain expert in your space. Your newsletter will help your prospects come to know you, and this awareness of you will warm up your cold calls. Your newsletters make doing business with you easy, and comfortable.

And that brings us to this week’s medium, Facebook.

Social Media, Technology

Why Do We Need These Clones?



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A good old-fashioned quick rant. I like Yahoo Groups. It was the first version I saw for what I needed at the time. Now there’s Ning and Google and LinkedIn and many others doing what they do best but also trying to copy Yahoo Groups.

And Yahoo is messing with me too now. I got an invite from someone to share pictures and status updates and all the same crap that’s on FaceBook via Yahoo. Why do we need ten different versions of Facebook now? They won! Let it go! Just stick with your main Yahoo stuff.

Just yesterday I saw a new search aggregator that says it’ll search about 10 of those things at once for info on people.

Maybe we all need a ‘personal portal’ that will handle all these requests from all these entities so we can actually get something done.

Now I need to go update my LinkedIn status so it’ll go out on Twitter and Facebook so people will know I have a new blog entry. If I send it on Plaxo and my Yahoo Profile it’ll also go to people who spoke to me once and could not care less. In fact, what I should really do is just call Tom, Ron, and Clyde. Then the only three people who were going to read it anyway can say…he’s at it again…

original post from Dave Staats

Uncategorized

Launching a Career, 2008-Style



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With the exceptions of #21 (Merrill Lynch), #28 (Lehman Brothers), and #68 (AIG), this compilation of the best places to start a career by BusinessWeek is pretty comprehensive.

The number-one spot is Ernst & Young (in fact, the top three companies are in the accounting sector). What sets E&Y apart, the list reports, is its internship program. Each intern participates in a four-day International Leadership Conference, which includes networking with firm leaders, team-building exercises, professional seminars, and Disneyland excursions. Interns from around the world can connect, blog live on the E&Y Facebook page about the conference, and create videos.

In fact, Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com wrote a while back that “recruiters who tell highly qualified candidates that they must apply through traditional channels will lose those candidates if those candidates want to connect through newer channels such as Facebook because those candidates have options and they know it.”

Retail mecca Target made the list for the first time this year, capturing an impressive #14 out of 119 companies on the list for 2008. The Minneapolis-based company recruited on 404 undergrad campuses in 2007-08, and it made job offers on 355 undergrad campuses. There is an official summer internship program; 63% of eligible 2007 interns received full-time job offers and 74% of interns with offers accepted.

Another newcomer, at #33, is Seattle-based Amazon.com. Online business must be good, as all entry-level hires won signing bonuses in 2008 averaging $20,000.

Also new to the list this year are Abercrombie & Fitch (#98), Dominion (#99), and Comcast (#100). Coming in last on this year’s rankings is another newcomer to the list: at #119, Wynn Las Vegas sees only 20% of its entry-level employees make it to their third anniversary with the company.

Industry News

The Top 5 Web 2.0 Tools that Keep Me Connected



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As a kid, I remember watching tv (yep, black and white) while staying up late on the weekends. I’d always get scared to death every time I saw the short commercial that came on and said:

“It’s 10:00pm, do you know where your children are?”

Anybody remember that? I thought the only reason they ran that crazy commercial was to scare all the children. Well, now I realize they were just trying to help the parents keep track of their children.

It got me to thinking about how I keep track of my customers. I don’t need scary commercials, but I do need tools that help me easily track all of the details that are critical for success. I also need tools that help me keep track of them. What are they doing today? What’s going on in their industry? How’s their business?