Blog Post: Brett Farmiloe's Notes From the 2009 Social Recruiting Summit at Google HQ

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the 2009 Social Recruiting Summit held at Google HQ in Mountain View .  Really cool stuff.  Here’s my notes and recap of the day. 

Intro 

Laszlo Bock, VP of HR at Google starts out the conference by saying that he has been responsible for growing Google from a 3,000 employee operation to a 20,000 employee operation.  He goes on to say that social networking as we know it officially died for him at 5:05 Thursday evening, when his mother in law added him as a friend on Facebook.  Good incentive to take the bachelor party photos off the ol’ Facebook page.

Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman 

Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman takes the stage by asking for a show of hands of anyone who is not on Linkedin.  This is while an Linkedin application rapidly displays the latest person who has signed up for Linkedin across the globe…no one raises their hand.  Everyone is on Linkedin.

Most of the speech is surface level CEO jargon that’s a poorly hidden sales pitch…but here’s the points I found interesting:

·    Everyone is their own small business.  Time to be an entrepreneur.

·    1 million people sign up for Linkedin every 17 days.

·    Linkedin profiles are better than resumes…the reason?  Because people don’t lie in public as much. 

·    Reid’s vision is for everyone to have a professional profile.

·    Reid is an angel investor…he won’t see you unless you have a referral…he never seeks out opportunity because his strong brand delivers enough opportunity to his doorstep.  Time to care about your own brand.

The coolest part of the presentation is when Reid brings in one of his product engineers to explain a product called Linkedin Recruiter.  Before they demonstrate how the product works, they play a commercial about social networking.  The recruiter is looking for an international finance expert who knows merger arbitrage with experience in speaking Cantonese that is also ready to hit the ground running by Monday.  The engineer narrows down each step, showing the audience the search results.  249,000.  120,000.  249.  108.  5.  5 international finance experts who know merger arbitrage and Cantonese who are ready to hit the ground running on Monday.  Impressive.  Probably wouldn’t work to find a telemarketer though.

Next up…Laurie Ruettimann.  Punk Rock HR. 

First time I’ve seen the conference hashtag this whole conference…#srs09.  Why didn’t they start a social media conference with a hashtag?

Alright…main points from the Punk Rock HR…

·    Small but strong in the social media space.  Kind of like Laurie. It’s more important to be on 3 social networks and be active than being in many places and not actively engaging.

·    Four things to place importance on when diving into social media: community, tools, conversations, and most of all, an authentic voice.

·    Oh, and Laurie has a bacon chocolate fudge recipe.  Get at her if you’d like a copy. http://twitter.com/lruettimann

Tour of Google… 

·    There is a projection screen that updates every second with a Google search term in the lobby.  This screen seemingly serves as a reminder for why the 10,000 employees on campus go to work every day.

·    Everything is free…everything.  The ride to work, the food, the drinks, the Its Its…amazing place.

On to Sasha Chua, who used blogs and social media to secure a job with IBM.  

·    Company policy on social media should be limited to three points: Be nice, don’t trash talk, and don’t give away company secrets.

·    Her thesis in college was about how big companies should internally use social media to determine which projects employees get assigned to.  The reason is that social media (what they tweet, what they subscribe to, how many facebook friends they have) is a lot more current and accurate than an outdated title in the company rolodex.  Interesting point…wish she wouldn’t have waited 55 minutes to share it.

An ‘unconference’ session with the co-founders of Aftercollege.com.  The topic: are job boards dead due to social media. 

·    Aftercollege did a survey with 700 respondents.  70% of them preferred to find a job board, while 11% preferred using social media (obviously a little biased because the survey was done by a job board, as their CEO noted).  But why, if social media is so popular, do so few people find a job through them?

·    Job boards need to use social networks as a supplemental layer to what they’ve already got going. 

·    The reason why no one finds a job on Facebook is due to confidentiality.  A Microsoft employee who is passively looking for a job at Google can’t join Google’s fan page because it’s broadcasted out to the network, lives permanently on the employees page, and the employee will appear in search terms.  Once Facebook figures out the privacy issues, there should be a lot more job seeking in social media.

·    Employee referral program for putting jobs on their facebook profile?  Interesting…

·    Social media is almost like the beginning of the internet.  It’s the Wild, Wild, West.  Everyone is throwing money at it and it’s only the experimentation phase.  See you in six months.

·    Bottom line: Job boards aren’t going away.  People need a place to go to find a job.  Just like a car lot.

Save the best for last…@seerysm, VP at Bernard Hodes. 

·  7 Steps of Social Media (in this order): Unaware, Listening, Goal Setting, Participating, Monitoring, Engaging, Community.

·  You cannot create a community.  You have to find your community.  You can only find your community by engaging.

·  Two phases of implementing a social media plan.  Phase 1: Assess, Resources, Goals & Strategy.  Phase 2: Implementation, Analytics.

·  Best way to measure social media’s effectiveness is through SEO and Google results.  Also rans: ratings & reviews (indeed.com forums), search (twitter), Networks (Facebook), multi-media (Youtube)

·    Database of emails is not a community.

·    Social media can only be effective when you make it part of your objectives.

·    Lots of talk about who these social media responsibilities fall on to.  @seerysm suggests that there will eventually be career community managers in HR.  Someone from audience says that the Army’s social media saying is “All That You Can Do.”

·    Southwest rep speaks up about the line between personal and professional in social media.  The solution between the blurry line is to hire people who are consistent with your brand up front so you don’t have to worry about this line.

·    Your social media strategy should be: (Strengths + Value + Visibility) x Engagement.

Sites I’ve never heard of before but plan on checking them all out:

Knowem.com, http://www.nursinglink.com/, http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm, Radian 6, Yahoo Pipes. Smashfly.com.  

Brett Farmiloe is the Social Media Manager for Jobing.com.  He twitters under @thatpassionguy, and you can find his new Facebook vanity url under facebook.com/brettfarmiloe.