I was at the Social Media in Recruitment conference on Thursday. It was the first social media conference specifically for the recruitment industry and was organised by Mike Taylor. He had a great line up of speakers and topics:
Mike Taylor - Web-Based-Recruitment - An overview of Social Media including Social Networking sites, Blogs and Podcasts.
Josh Smith - Head of Inside Sales Facebook UK - How social networking sites such as Facebook can be used to get messages to your target audience.
Mark Williams - Managing Director, ETN Training - How to use LinkedIn to promote your vacancies and source new candidates.
Bill Fischer - Co-Founder & Director, Work Digital Limited - How to use Twitter, TwitterJobSearch.com and the Job Search Engines for recruitment.
Bill Boorman - Managing Director, Bill Boorman Consultancy Limited - Will social media work for my company? The positives and pitfalls from using social media in recruitment.
Adrian Marlowe - Managing Director, Lawspeed - The legal issues re the use of Social Media web sites.
Luisa Mauro - YouTube - Using online video to promote your company and your job vacancies.
Paul Harrison - Managing Partner, Carve Consulting - How to put together a social media strategy for your company.
Matt Alder - Director of Product Strategy, Penna Barkers - The future - taking Social Media to the next level.
As with lots of these events I attend I (rather immodestly perhaps!) wonder if I'm probably not target audience. However, I took something of value away from each presentation. I know that many of the attendees were real newbies to social media so got a lot of value from the day. I plan to go into each presentation in a bit more detail further down the line (as well as mentioning our social media content on UK Recruiter Plus no doubt!) but for now here is my 2 minute overview of the day
I sadly missed Josh's presentation but managed to catch most of Mark talking about LinkedIn. I'm sure the majority of the audience already had LinkedIn accounts but could probably do with some pointers on how to grow and work their networks.
Bill's presentation on TwitterJobSearch was quite technical but gave a good insight into the workings behind the site. Hopefully showing that even with a small network posting jobs onto Twitter is worthwhile (tips of how to use the service here: http://www.twitterjobsearch.com/static/add-jobs). The next Bill (Boorman) was his usual enthusiastic self - throwing himself around the stage as he talked through his personal journey through social media. Bill is a massive Twitter user and has seen his use of Twitter benefit his business, his brand and the launch of his recent Radio Show (LINK).
During lunch (which was a really nice buffet - my favourites were the egg sarnies and duck wraps) I managed to catch up with about 20 people I knew, Getting positive feedback from all of them.
Then we were onto what could have been a rather dry subject of legal issues around social media. However, Adrian is a great presenter and managed to keep the audience's attention. Basically it's not illegal to check up on candidates (or employees) on social media sites but you must be careful not to discriminate on the basis of the information you find. Also there are guidelines about dealing with the information you find. Luisa from YouTube was next talking about using online video to promote vacancies.
After tea break (with lovely biscuits) Paul Harrison was up talking about putting together a social media strategy. I will write more on this later but Paul is another enthusiastic presenter (perhaps inspired in his stage walking by Bill Boorman) who shared some really useful information.
Finally we had a presentation from Matt Alder. Matt is one of recruitment's favourites and did a good roundup of the future of social media in recruitment (rather nicely calling it social recruiting). The key points were that everyone in the audience's organisations' will use social recruiting, that the organisations that will be the most successful will make their mistakes early and that now is the optimum time to start!
As I mentioned earlier I do plan to do a more detailed summary of the event. However, if you are on Twitter you can view conversations around the day by searching on the #SMIR hashtag. There are also a few photos and more details on the event site at http://www.socialmediainrecruitment.com.
Just waiting for Mike to let us know when next year's conference is going to be (and, obviously, offer me a speaking slot this time!!
