Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Creating your own (vanity) URL shortener

This is a guest post written for us by James Mayes.

There's been a little more noise recently around the use of vanity URL shorteners.  I've had one for some time, mostly because there were some scare stories a while back about the security of the pages hiding behind these links. I figure if the link is tweeted by James Mayes, and contains the domain jmay.es - it's pretty clear I did it intentionally and am responsible for anything behind it.  Noticing a recent rise in interest, I offered to write up a very loose guide for Louise....

1. Start with http://domai.nr/  - enter the name of your business, your personal name, your blog, etc. It will then come up with suggestions of possible short domains you might like. It'll indicate beside each suggestion (with a green square) whether that domain might be available.  Domai.nr will help you purchase these domains if you wish - I guess affiliate marketing for domain registrars is their revenue model.

2. Buy your domain.  You can use the domai.nr recommendation above, or any number of other domain registration services. Three noticeable differences between domain registration services at this point: (a) it's a price-competitive market (b) the ease of use of the domain management tool and (c) the level of customer service available if you need help. Like anything, you get what you pay for.  I'm very happy with the provider I currently use, but I'm not about to pitch them on someone else's blog - so come ask me on Twitter if you're stumped for ideas.

3. Obtain a http://bitly.com/ account.  Bit.ly are one of the main url shortener services out there and are well-respected. They've had the capability to support personal short URL's for a while now, but only on private beta accounts (yes, I was lucky). Now though, it's open to all, as part of their regular free account. Create/sign in to an account, go to Settings, then down to Custom Short Domain. From here, bit.ly will talk you through the detail of verifying ownership of your main site (ownership validation).  Once done, you can use you the new shortener for both your own site, but also for any other links you wish to share.

So why do it? As I explained above, there's a trust/ownership element to it. More than that though, if you choose the domain right, and other people then share or retweet it further, it can help your brand to spread.  Finally, the bit.ly analytics are pretty good. I can see not only how many times MY link has been clicked, but also how many times bit.ly has directed other traffic to that destination. By using the Chrome plug-in from bit.ly, I'm also notified by a pop-up if a link I shared starts trending - and of course, I can set thresholds on that so I can adjust sensitivity accordingly.

So, costs? Domai.nr is free, as is bit.ly - the only cost I've experienced in the last 6 months is in registering the actual domain.  You should note here that some countries are getting very commercial around the values of short domain names.  Mine was an early one, and thus (I think!) cost me about $20 - but a friend of mine checked out a short URL for his company name, and was quoted well over $2,000!  Those values are largely driven by the country you're registering in - so if it seems expensive, get creative with your name/brand. If you need to know which country the domain belongs to, just Google the final couple of letters.

Finally - there are other ways. I know a couple of proud geeks who've enjoyed writing their own code for a personal domain shortener, rather than using bit.ly - feel free.  I use the method above because it requires nothing more than a cut n paste of HMTL code for the ownership validation described in step 3. The only limitation I've found is that I can't redirect the home page too. My short-links work fine, but if you try visit jmay.es as a home page, you'll get bit.ly - still I owe them a bit of publicity, it's not like they charge me ;-)

According to his Twitter profile James is a .... Dad. Gadget-fan. Adrenalin junkie. Outdoors beats indoors. Recruitment industry. Head of Client Solutions for BraveNewTalent. Curate @SocRecFeed & @HRBlogFeed

TweetJobs’ Social Media starter pack

Tweetjobs advertise with us in the newsletter (although that’s not why I’m writing this!).  I was talking with Richard over there the other day and I said how I think for many recruiters the problem with Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn is not having the time to keep thinking about what they should be doing to make it work. They (we!) engage in a bit of activity – posting jobs, putting up interesting content, adding videos, etc..... then nothing!   What you really need in the early days is someone telling you what to do and when. 

That’s when Richard mentioned their “social media starter pack”.  This is a paid for service before you get too excited – but it’s still worth a look. 

What you get is:
-12 months unlimited job posting to your Twitter account and their industry, location and job specific accounts
- Advice on how to grow your followers on Twitter and look after the admin
- Jobs aggregated to a facebook fan page and linkedin group
- Design of a facebook fan page and 12 months hosting
- Their 7 steps to establishing a social media presence document
- 3 months support to help you set up you campaign and advise on how to get the most out of social media

The cost is £800 + VAT.  If you want more information I think you need to email Richard.

My social networking policy

Recently I saw that Katharine Robinson (aka The Sourceress) had written a blog post setting out how she uses networking websites (so that no-one is offended if she doesn't friend, connect to or follow them).

I loved the idea and thought I'd share mine (which as it happens is different from Katharine's).

LinkedIn:

This is me on LinkedIn

I am more than happy to connect with anyone.  Absolutely anyone. I know that goes against many people's principals of only connecting to people that they've met in person or at least had conversations with over the ‘phone/email, etc.  However, I enjoy facilitating introductions and helping others to connect, and a large network certainly helps. So feel free to just send me an invite.   

Also, more than happy to forward on introductions.  However, here you need to explain why you want to connect with the other person. I'm not in the business of forwarding introductions willy-nilly!

Twitter:

Like Katharine, I regard Twitter as a communication free for all. If you follow me I will check out your profile (sometimes this takes a bit longer than it should!) and will follow back if you meet some of these criteria:

- You work within the recruitment space
- You are based in the UK or you tweet about things that have some relevance to the UK market
- You work in some other industry than recruitment but talk about relevant subjects (eg, social media)
- You are someone I know!
- You live within about 10 miles of me
However, even if you meet all the above criteria but all you do is tweet links to jobs, talk about sport or other "boring" hobbies, or retweet celebs then I'm unlikely to follow you.

This is me @louisetriance

Facebook:

I love Katharine's "thought experiment" for accepting friends on facebook...."Would I hug this person if I saw them in the street? If the answer is yes, you’ll probably get friended".  That's pretty much my policy too.  However, most of what I put on facebook is personal stuff so unless we are already friends I doubt you'd actually be interested in connecting with me!

Social Recruiting Conference

 
My very good friend Alan Whitford is organising a social recruiting conference on the 30th November (in London) and I think you should go.
 
 What?  You want more information?  Ok.
 
So, Alan is working with a chap called Vic Okezie to host a conference which focusses on social recruiting case studies - with measurable ROIs.   What Alan found is that while there is a lot of talk about the subject of social recruitment what can be lacking are those real case studies of social media recruitment within UK and European organisations.  Nothing wrong with conferences that tell you HOW to use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc or WHY to use them.  However, it's got to be useful to hear HOW and WHY and with what RESULTS other organisations have used them.
 
The focus is around how these social media tools can be (are being) used for employer branding, engaging with and attracting talent.

His speakers include:

Matthew Jeffery, Global Talent Brand Director, Electronic Arts
Jennifer Candee, Group Head of Talent Acquisition, SABMiller
Colin Minto, Global Head of Resourcing, G4S Plc
Lennart Sloof, e-Recruitment Manager, Deloitte NL
Jon Ingham, Former HR Director, EY & Owner, Strategic HCM
Mel Carson, Community Manager, Microsoft Advertising
Marie Pavelka, European Recruitment Manager, Cummins
Sedef Buyukataman, University Relations Manager, Cisco EU/EMEA
Ted Meulenkamp, Global Program Manager Attraction and Sourcing, Roche

If you want to find out more you'll need to visit the website or the Facebook page or the LinkedIn group or view the Twitter hashtag: #SRCONF
 
One final thing .... uk recruiter readers save 10% when you register with the code UKR10 on the registration page: http://srconf.eventbrite.com/ 

Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters

I had wanted to mention how cool it was to be listed in the Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters.  The first point is that I'm not actually a recruiter - mind you looking through the list it seems only 50% of those on it are actually working recruiters.
 
In order to understand how the list was created you really ought to read the blog post.  However, it's basically looking at reach (traffic), relevance and resonance (the number of mentions, inbound links, etc).
 
One of the reasons I'm so pleased to be on the list is that only 25% of the "influencers" are based outside the US and that only 30% are women.  I think I'm the only woman on the list who is not US based. 
 
What I wanted to do when I found out I was on the list is work out how I get from number 10 up to number one (well, actually I'm not that ambitious - so really I just wanted to see what I could learn from the people above me). So here they are:

• I will NEVER be number one.  Jason Buss has over 42,000 followers on Twitter and 1,580 friends on Facebook. His LinkedIn group has over 12,000 members. Maybe I could get our LinkedIn group membership that high but I can't imagine a time when I'd be able to invest the time to increase the Twitter and Facebook figures to his level.
• I won't be number two (Bill Vick) either. Bill uses eight different points of contact and has 3 blogs. I have enough trouble finding the time to write this blog!
• In order to be number three (Thomas Shaw) I'm going to have a work a lot harder at getting people to re-tweet me (he has 5,600 follows on Twitter and 3,857 mentions vs my 157!).
• Blimey, I've no chance of being number four (Jessica Lee) as she writes under 3 twitter profiles (with between 3,748 and 1,125 followers) as well as having a lot more blog visitors. This is one busy woman!#
• Unless I write a book (or review them?) I'm not going to be number five. Marc Cenedella has a reviewer rank of 97,917 on Amazon. Marc also has a lot more twitter followers than me (6,445)
• I COULD be number six. Bill "beat" me with more Twitter followers. He also has a YouTube channel. But if I'm being harsh he demonstrates how time sensitive this list is. I've been on Twitter for two years longer than you Bill but not as active in the past few months!
• Like Bill number seven (Peggy McKee) makes user of YouTube (2,493 views on her channel) and has more followers. There is another lesson to be learnt there.
• At number eight Michael Long is also using YouTube and has 14,546 followers on Twitter. Again - I have no real aspiration for nearly 15k followers!
• Number nine (Paul Debettignies) demonstrates what I need to do to up my influence...

I need to increase my the number of "link backs" on blog posts (by making them more relevant and interesting).  I need to work to increase the number of people who follow me on Twitter (by making my posts more interesting and relevant).  I need to get more Facebook friends (probably by being more interesting and writing relevant status updates).  I should get some videos on YouTube (which of course need to be interesting and relevant).

Really it's obvious - to be more influential you need a good sized audience and you need to share interesting and relevant stuff with them.
 
I'm aiming for at least number 4 next year!

Finding Recruitment Tweeps

Twitter continues to be an important tool to help us connect with the UK Recruiter community.  I'd like to think we use it to help the community (re-tweeting enquiries, requests for help with assignments and answering questions) as much as using it to promote ourselves (networking events, advertising space on the site, questions around research for articles/blogs).  Our Twitter network has grown (2287 followers for our UK Recruiter account and 884 for Louise's) but it's a constant challenge to ensure we are following the right people.  To help this we've created a list of recruitment related Twitter users (Tweeps) who are happy to be followed by anyone: http://tweepml.org/UK-Recruiters-on-Twitter/

If you log onto Twitter you can follow them all in one go.  If you are on Twitter and want to be added to the list you just need to fill in the form: http://tweepml.org/TweepGen/suggest.aspx?g=19eadc4125f24b94b67538acad6a3f1c

Of course this isn't the only way to find recruiters on Twitter.  You can do a search on twellow (yellow pages for Twitter) or check out the "lists" created (within Twitter) of some high profile Twitter users.  For example the UK Recruiters list from UK Sourcers.

Also, don't forget, there is a Guide to Twitter available via our UK Recruiter Plus site.

Recruitment Tweeters - part three

We've recently started a list of Recruitment Tweeters.  As Twitter usages is growing all the time, I've had requests from recruiters wanting to be added to the list.

Here are some UK Recruitment professionals who are using Twitter and are happy to be "followed":

gazgreen278
PanEight
TLPConsultancy
VixHungary
sfsilks
mervino
keithpotts
networx_recruit
TopJobsInLondon

If you missed my first two blog posts about this then you should also add those people:

alanwhitford
JobsScotland
IndigoAccount
CallCentreJobs1
BFurby_abrsjobs
mikeetaylor
languagejobs
jobsacuk
lisascales
SusannahC
mikemcclelland
stephenodonn
deansadler
alcartwright
jobsacuk
Bobdillon
Debbiesuckling
Jackievdean
Gillmking
Neil_jones
thomasshaw
Accite
BillBoorman
BlueSkyPR
cebux
EcoSearch
erecruitmentbud
followaaron
hrconnexions
Kaonix
LanguageJobsUK
louisetriance
LukeCollier
mattalder
MDangerfield
MichelleFF
prefio
stevierogers
SussexMatt
TheSourceress
ThomasAtkinson
TLPConsultancy
tonyrestell
ukrecruiter
Urps
wendyjacob

You can add them all in one go by using Twitterator (http://twitterator.org).

I will add to this post as I get more requests to be followed. So if you want to be on the next list please drop me an email (Louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk) or contact me via Twitter.

 

Twitter vs Blogs

A little while ago I posted on Twitter how bad I felt at my lack of blog activity.  I got a nice, sympathetic, response with a number of people saying they are having trouble finding the time to blog in recent weeks/months.  Mostly I think I'm blogging less as I'm more busy in other areas; focus on our guides, UK Recruiter Plus and other calls on my time (despite now having a team here my workload seems to have increased).  However, I do wonder if I blog less as I tweet more. 
 
Today I posted this on Twitter: is it just me? Whilst at my desk I'd much rather read an interview with someone than listen to an audio or watch a video.  It was prompted by seeing a link to a video interview between Mike Taylor and James Caan.  Previously I might have written a blog about the place of videos in learning and development for recruiters.  It might have included my thoughts on video CVs and I know I'd have felt I ought to dig out some stats on preferences for video vs audio vs written.  That would have taken me a good half hour to write (and then another 10 minutes to find an appropriate photo!).  It took me about 20 seconds to post it on Twitter.
 
If I'd have written this as a blog post I might have got a few comments.  My Twitter post got 6 immediate responses and a re-tweet (if you don't know what that is you ought to take a look at our Twitter guide!).  The problem is that it's not easy for me to now share those comments with you without cutting and pasting them here:
 
BraeScotland No I am the same .. I switch all the sounds off from all the office computers .. drives me mad!
Mr_Linkedin I would always vote for the video personally, followed by the audio - unless its something you have written of course Louise!
BillBoorman Thats your learning style. Good marketing delivers the same message written, audio, visual and demonstrated. One option e ...
grahambunting It's perhaps an indication that you have a preference for communication through the visual channel :-) I enjoy listening
SussexMatt I think it depends on the speaker but generally I'd rather read then watch/ listen, maybe we are just old media
WendyJacob In my lunchbreak at work yes - at home no.
 
(the issue of comments is something that Jason Alba recently mentioned in a blog post too)
 
The other problem is that of coverage and longevity.  I have 542 Twitter followers; I'm guessing the only people who will EVER see that tweet are those who were online in the 30 minutes or so following my post.  The blog gets around 4,000 unique visits a month.  Posts from it are picked up in Google searches and sometimes re-posted or linked to elsewhere. 
 
Finally, of course, no matter how succinct I am sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.  I couldn't have managed a mini-slating of The Apprentice in less than the 980 characters I used.
 
For me the answer is going to be to continue to Tweet and Blog.  Although the only way to achieve the second goal may be to physically lock myself to my desk 4x a week for 30 minutes!

PS, you can follow me on Twitter here
 

 

Recruitment Tweeters - part two

We've started a list of Recruitment Tweeters.  Unsurprisingly, as Twitter usages grows all the time, I've had requests from recruiters wanting to be added to the list.

Here are some UK Recruitment professionals who are using Twitter and are happy to be "followed":

alanwhitford
JobsScotland
IndigoAccount
CallCentreJobs1
BFurby_abrsjobs
mikeetaylor
languagejobs
jobsacuk
lisascales
SusannahC
mikemcclelland
stephenodonn
deansadler
alcartwright
jobsacuk
Bobdillon
Debbiesuckling
Jackievdean
Gillmking
Neil_jones
thomasshaw

If you missed my first blog post about this then you should also add those people.  You can add them all in one go by using Twitterator (http://twitterator.org).

Again, I will add to this post as I get more requests to be followed. So if you feel left out please drop me an email (Louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk) or contact me via Twitter.

Recruitment Tweeters

If you aren't already using Twitter for recruitment here is previous blog post you might like to read (if you are using it but think there is room for improvement you might like to check out our UK Recruiter's Guide to Twitter!)

This is a list of UK Recruitment professionals who are using Twitter and are happy to be "followed":

Accite
BillBoorman
BlueSkyPR
cebux
EcoSearch
erecruitmentbud
followaaron
hrconnexions
Kaonix
LanguageJobsUK
louisetriance
LukeCollier
mattalder
MDangerfield
MichelleFF
prefio
stevierogers
SussexMatt
TheSourceress
ThomasAtkinson
TLPConsultancy
tonyrestell
ukrecruiter
Urps
wendyjacob
alanwhitford
JobsScotland
IndigoAccount
CallCentreJobs1
BFurby_abrsjobs
mikeetaylor
languagejobs
jobsacuk
lisascales
SusannahC
mikemcclelland
stephenodonn
deansadler
alcartwright
jobsacuk
Bobdillon
Debbiesuckling
Jackievdean
Gillmking
Neil_jones

Here are some non-UK ones who have an interest in the UK market:

mjkimberley
thomasshaw

You can add them all in one go by using Twitterator.

I will add to this post as I get more requests to be followed. So if you feel left out please drop me an email (Louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk) or contact me via Twitter.

Recruiters slow to embrace social media

I'm often found talking about how recruiters can/should use social media (and we recently launched a Recruiter's Guide to LinkedIn).  Via Twitter I came across a blog post entitled "Recruiters slow to embrace social media" which talks about a few key ways recruiters should be using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and some tips on getting started.  So if you aren't listening to me - listen to blogistic digression!

Getting the most from LinkedIn - for Recruiters

I spotted this post over at ERE about how Recruiters can get the most from LInkedIn.  It looks at using LinkedIn Groups,

using the company search feature and driving traffic to your profile.  I especially like the tips around using Google to compensate for the weaknesses in some of the LinkedIn search options.

It's a superb bit of training material with some easy to implement tips.