Last Thursday we held our first ever Direct Sourcing event for members of The FIRM. Thanks to Total Jobs and The Network who sponsored the day (without whom it would not have possible)
For me the overarching theme of the day was ‘engagement’ whether that is in terms of social media strategies for enhancing the candidate experience or simply in terms of seeing over 100 in-house recruiters networking, sharing experiences and engaging with each other on various topics.
It was a thought provoking day with some inspiring speakers. Katharine Robinson aka The Sourceress – taught us how to mine sites like event brite for information on potential candidates and also great people finding tools such as 123people.com and pipl.com. Steven Lewis from Total Jobs and The Network delivered his presentation and surprised us all with the breadth of job boards available within The Network which is going to be a really useful opportunity for many of our members in international roles. Next up Andy Headworth who gave us the low down on the whys and hows for social recruiting. For me the most prevalent point was ‘Listen’ only a few people in the room stuck their hands up when he asked how many of us have methods in place to listen to what is being said about our companies on the web.
Our very own Gary Franklin then gave a recruiters perspective on looking for a role – you can find out more via his blog www.garyfranklin.wordpress.com. As he said so himself social media didn’t get him hired, he did. But undoubtedly he used social media to work in his favour. Gary also named and shamed a few organisations where he experienced a poor candidate experience – need less to say the room of recruiters loved it!
Mark Williams aka Mr Linked In was next up and really surprised me with what I’m not doing on Linked In. His five tips were:
1. Build a great pipeline
2. Build an effective network
3. Join many groups
4. Leverage your employees networks
5. Get involved
Last but not least was Alastair Cartwright whose main presentation surrounded the use of Google adwords but I particularly loved his tips for sorting out your online recruitment strategy:
1. Sort out your ATS
2. Then focus on your careers site (no point driving traffic through to it if its rubbish)
3. Choose one good generalist job board
4. Then a couple of niche ones (sector specific)
5. Then take a look at some other sites that could work for you: regional/ community)
6. Linked In
We wrapped up by asking people what they wanted the group to focus on over the next year – answers as follows:
• Employee referral schemes
• Reduction of agency spend
• Recruiter capability
• Internal mobility
• International assignments
• Succession planning
• New types of supplier (i.e. talent puzzle, gatzu, easyweb)
• Alumni schemes
• How to identify potential
• More social media!
• ATS (choosing the right provider)
All in all a fab day – now we’re just looking forward to organising the next one! Check out the speakers slides on www.slideshare.net/firmnetwork
