I'm a big fan of Posterous. Using just one email to my posterous account I can post to my Google Blog, my Posterous Blog, my FaceBook account, my Twitter account and now to Google Buzz. Pictures are also copied from emails and saved to my Flickr account. In writing this quick update I notice that it could also post to my LinkedIn account but I'd already set up LinkedIn and Twitter integration on LinkedIn. So I get LinkedIn status updates via Posterous posting to Twitter. There's also a bunch of other available links (e.g. YouTube).

I could not but agree that was has changed is my tendency to wake in the middle of the night.. the article goes on to suggest the change that comes with age is losing the ability to sleep in one chunk but there is no change to the equation that more sleep equals better functioning.

All of which suggests I probably need to do more to address my mild insomnia issues...

Anyway, here is the article...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/older-people-do-not-need-less-sleep...

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I gave a presentation to around 450 delegates at the Enhanced Media conference about 3 weeks ago. Today I noticed the presentation has 518 views on slideshare. Relevancy is difficult to establish but in basic statistical terms more people have seen my slideshow on the net through a social media channel than in person.

The presentation is here...

Here is my learning from day 2...

NETWORKING

·         Got talking with Stephen O’Donnell. He tells me his company put up the first job app for the iPhone – Jobs UK

·         He showed me just how many job apps are now out there – he has almost two screens of them on his iPhone – examples Hays, Monster, Total Jobs, Jobsite

·         His assertion is that a lot of these apps are “me too’s” – caused by the rush to get there and have presence

EYE CANDY

Take a look at http://www.twitterfountain.com/ - awesome UI but not personally convinced it’s something I’d use on a primary screen – projected on the wall at an office, conference, event or if you’re lucky enough to have three screens maybe...

SOURCING

A few sourcing ideas from the serious practitioners...

·         Whois search on GoDaddy.com - http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?isc=goazguk3a&ci=8926

·         Whoozy.com – People Search Engine - http://whoozy.com/

·         TinEye – Reverse Image Search Engine - http://www.tineye.com/

·         Egrabber – captures and processes unstructured data such as cv’s - http://www.egrabber.com/

·         pipl.com – people search engine - http://www.pipl.com/

·         Tweepz – twitter search engine - http://www.tweepz.com/

·         TwitterSheep - http://twittersheep.com/ - produces tag cloud generated from the bios of your “flock” of followers... here is mine...

·         Search is only as good as the quality of your keywords, so keyword research is a critical skill in this arena

·         As much as one can admire the skills on display is this kind of deep web search & social sourcing a dark art and do recruiters in the UK generally need this depth of help?

·         Interesting but unsatisfactory debate about data privacy issues raised by this kind of searching

LINKEDIN

·         Yes, it’s a sourcing tool but it’s a network building and business development tool

·         Default view of recruiters on LinkedIn is overwhelmingly negative

·         A profile 100% complete will get 4 times the number of views of a profile only 90% complete

·         QUOTE – The new API is quite restrictive

·         Discussion about profile pictures – company logo’s and cartoons are not acceptable – difficult for LinkedIn to police but if found you will be suspended

·         Interesting thought – are you happy with the profile and pictures of your recruiters on LinkedIn

·         There is value in using the LinkedIn company profile widget on your website

·         Groups are the value add for those not using LinkedIn to look for a job

TWITJOBSEARCH

·         Arguably the biggest job board in the world right now... http://www.twitjobsearch.com/

·         650,000 new jobs posted in the last 30 days on Twitter

ROI

·         This tracks wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, I was hoping for a discussion on metrics, analysis, tricks and tools

·         I wanted more than... “a company should get into New Media because it’s cheap, fast and everyone else is doing it”

·         Great idea I picked up on the track... If you want to see how bad our industry still is, set up a tweetdeck column using “recruiter” as a search term

FINAL THOUGHTS

·         Two days and two blog posts full of learning points

·         I felt it a more comfortable atmosphere in which to network, I usually feel quite uncomfortable at major conferences and pretty much keep to myself

·         Day 2 of the unconference organisationally better than Day 1 but in the spirit of complete honesty...

·         The location was not ideal – it was quite a palava to leave the main room and go to tracks – this ideally should be much easier to do

·         We could have done with slightly more structure around tracks kicking off, what they were going to be about (to start with) and start times could have been more disciplined

·         If these two ideas were implemented I think we might have seen more movement between tracks, more side tracks starting up and more challenging of track leaders – then again British reserve says maybe not

To be fair though a fantastic event overall, congratulations to the organisers and a shout out to @billboorman

Bill and I are running a little tweetup in the Midland “to carry on the conversation” as it were ... 3rd March, Barcelo Hotel, Daventry, 7:30pm sign up http://bit.ly/cTlXvZ #NtonTweetUp. There’s only four of us attending so far so lots of room and it’s free.

I have one last thought. If you read this via twitter and went to #trulondon then I’d ask you to tweet the following...

I went to #trulondon and learnt...

It’s for you to fill in the blanks!

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I had planned to live tweet from #trulondon but in the end I kind of followed the #trulondon hashtag on TweetDeck on my iPhone and spent the time listening and participating in the sessions. To some extent I’m still processing whether the chaos of the unconference style suits me but I did find the day interesting and engaging. Here’s my learning...

VIDEO

·         Jim Stroud made some excellent points about how easy it is to get into video and pointed to the excellent case studies of military and schools in the US

·         The entry barrier to video is so low these days – just a flip camera and away you go – don’t make it too high tech and it doesn’t need high production values

·         Wander round and ask staff... “What do you like about working at xxxxx” – just 30 second clips and edit them together

·         Example: Microsoft Canada Development Centre = 9000 views

·         You can embed video in LinkedIn via Google presentations (and I think you can now do this via SlideShare as well)

·         The jobs don’t have to sexy – the other example was “Food Jobs in Saudi Arabia” - = 1000 views (but it’s about getting to the right audience)

·         Good sourcing idea that cropped up in the discussion – look at the people who comment on specialist videos e.g. Microsoft SQL videos on YouTube or post pictures of windfarms on Flickr as potential candidates for appropriate roles

REPUTATION 2.0

·         Paul Harrison, Carve Consulting, made excellent points about reputation and the impact of ignoring negative social media comment

·         Asda were singled out as a case study in appropriate response to negative social media commentary

·         TripAdvisor was pointed to as an example of social rating – are we far away from online rating of recruitment experiences becoming the norm?

SOCIAL MEDIA ROI

·         Yes, it’s important

·         Yes, it can be measured

·         Yes, advice is out there on how to do that

·         It’s about tracking both cost AND quality

JOB BOARDS

·         Job Boards probably getting tired of hearing about their “imminent death” – and hold my hands up here, I’m one of the culprits

·         Worth noting that downward pressure on the cost model has halved the recruitment media market from £1.5B to £750M in about 10 years

·         Need to factor in the apathy of job hunters and the fact that candidates will continue to use agencies and it’s agencies that fuel Job Boards

·         Behavioural analysis is key – in the final analysis as much as we blather about job boards we will all go where the candidates go

·         There’s some evidence of online profiles replacing CV’s but it’s not universal

TECHNOLOGY STREAM

·         Make sure you establish clearly what problem(s) you are trying to solve

·         QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Implementing an ERP as an ATS takes 18 months just to get you back where you were when you started”

·         There’s a tendency to over-specify when thinking about the requirements for an ATS – map your core processes and deliver that

·         The Big Three ATS systems named as Taleo, Kenexa and Peopleclick

·         SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY – “The wrong people in the organisation often make the buying decision (i.e. IT people rather than HR / Recruiter people)”

·         Approach advice was to focus on use cases rather than huge multi-page requirements documents

·         Technology shout outs to: Jobs2Web, Sonar6 and JobVite (who I see for your contact details are offering a free e-book on the “5 secrets to successful social recruiting”)

GEN Y

·         QUOTE: “For the first time a younger generation is an authority on something that matters – they “get” the internet better than the older generations

·         I felt like an old fuddy duddy defending the honour of my generation!!!

BLOGGING

·         Content

·         Passion

·         ROI

·         It’s part of a broader strategy

·         Internal Blogging by the company CEO

FINAL THOUGHTS

·         Get beyond dipping a toe in the social media world and think seriously about social media strategy

·         Make a start by making sure you’re listening

·         We have under exploited video as a recruiting tool

·         SEO is not as well understood as it should be and we could be better with analysis, metrics and ROI

·         Consider ceding control of social media channels to GEN Y employees

Sent from my iPhone