Category Archives: Recruitment Marketing

2019 Transform Recruitment Marketing Conference

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Recruitment Marketing is on the hottest trends and functional areas in talent acquisition right now! I hate even calling it a trend, because the conference is in it’s 5th year, so five years ago it was a trend! Now it’s a must have in your talent strategy!

What I love about Transform is it’s less about “thought leadership” and more about actual in the weeds TA leaders giving the tools and insight to do great Recruitment Marketing on your own. I’m always inspired about how freely they share their knowledge with this community!

The Transform Conference will take place on June 20-21st in Boston and the lineup is a who’s who of RM leaders and strategist including:

  • Holland Dombeck – Delta Airlines Head of Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing
  • Julie Levy – Global TA Leader at Fiserv
  • James Ellis – Former Head of Employment at Groupon
  • Torin Ellis – Diversity Strategist & Author
  • Erik Qualman – Digital Futurist
  • Leon Logothetis – creator of the Netflix show Kindness Diaries
  • A couple of idiots that call themselves Chad and Cheese! 😉 (fyi – the run the single best podcast in the HR & TA Tech space)

Oh, and me! I’ve Emceed every Transform conference because early on they saw I was a super geek for this stuff, so they let me geek out both days and ask the speakers all the dumb questions that pop into my head as a practitioner trying to figure this stuff out!

So, come join me and hundreds of others in the EB and RM space who are trying to get smarter. The space is extremely limited, so don’t delay your decision to attend (No, really, I mean it – this will be a tight group of smart folks at a cool venue that has limited seating capacity)! 

You can register by clicking on this link for Transform 2019! When you register use the code: Sackett for an extra $100 off your registration fee. 

Career Confessions of Gen Z – Great Recruitment Content

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Welcome to the reboot of Career Confessions of Gen Z! I started this in 2018 with my Gen Z son, Cameron, and the response was off the charts. So, in 2019 I found 8 great Gen Z HR, TA, and Marketing pros to continue the Gen Z content. Enjoy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O036O22dyLw&feature=youtu.be

Skyler Baty is a Videographer and Video Editor for SkillScout and lives in the Detroit Metro Area in Michigan. 

Skyler loves doing video work and helping organizations with their video projects. Connect with him, he’s a genius with this stuff! 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @EmployUsApp – Referral Automation

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Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the candidate referral automation platform EmployUs. I actually first told you about EmployUs about four years ago when they just launched, but since then they’ve improved their tech and added a bunch of stuff, so I wanted to give you a second look! 

You guys already know I’m in love with candidate referral automation. In my experience of looking at every kind of HR and TA Technology I believe it has the single highest ROI of any tech on the market, and let still relatively few organizations actually use it as part of their TA Tech stack.

EmployUS took candidate referral technology one more step and actually allows you to use it both internally and externally with your organization. Clearly we love using this tech with our employees to get more of their referrals, but what if we could also use it outside our organization to gain more referrals as well? EmployUs allows you to do that, if you choose.

What I like about EmployUs:

  • They jumped into the chatbot/AI world to help those referring candidates make it much easier and faster, and through the use of SMS they’ve actually made is super simple for hourly workers to now refer candidates in seconds! Always a draw back to traditional referral software.
  • The automation aspect truly helps make the referral process simple for your internal employees who might not be thinking of this all day, every day, but once they do decide, you need it to self-sufficient and fast.
  • Tailored email and texting campaigns so you can target parts of your organization for specific referrals.
  • A dashboard that tracks and automates payouts based on the rules you build, that also gives you the gamification aspect of internal scoreboards to keep your referral program top of mind all the time.

Here’s what we know. Most of our top hires come from referrals. Our most inexpensive hires come from referrals. Almost all of us would say we need more referrals in our hiring process.

Then we watch our old, tired, analog referral program deliver the exact same results year in and year out, and we do nothing to change it. Go demo EmployUs and take a look at what your candidate referral program should look like.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

The Talent Fix Book Club Starts this Week!#RecruiterDevelopment

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If you are a regular reader of this blog than you clearly know I wrote a book, The Talent Fix, that was launched in April 2018. I have been overwhelmed by the awesome response and I would like to give back to the community that has given me so much. 

Beginning January 23, 2019, I’ll hold a monthly book club webinar, for free, where I’ll be going over each chapter of the book in detail, from a discussion point of view. Each webinar is scheduled for one hour, it might be a bit less or a bit more depending on discussion and questions. 

Each month, I’ll pull out some of the highlights and strategies, discuss them in more detail, open up the discussion to Q&A from the book club attendees, and probably bring on some micro-celebrity Recruiting guests as well to talk shop and continue to challenge the way we think about Talent Acquisition! 

We’ll go one chapter at a time, and while they might be too slow for some, most people don’t even read one book a year, so we’ll go slow and make sure we have truly dynamic discussions each week! 

The schedule will breakdown like so: 

  • January 23, 2019 – Introduction to the Book Club, we’ll breakdown Kris Dunn’s Foreword and I’ll tell you the “KD” story, plus a bonus topic of what recruiting tools you need to look at in 2019! 
  • February – Chapter 1 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • March – Chapter 2 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • April – Chapter 3 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • May – Chapter 4 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • June – Chapter 5 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • July – Chapter 6 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • August – Chapter 7 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • September – Chapter 8 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • October – Chapter 9 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • November – A look forward to preparing for 2020, looking at our next book club read, and a mini-demo of the hottest recruiting tool on the market I found in 2019! 

Also, remember, I’ll bring in several surprise guests that are genius level TA leaders, sourcers, and tech experts as well! 

Register for the free Talent Fix Monthly Book Club! 

This will be the easiest Team Development you’ll do all year! I’ve already had multiple teams contact me about signing up! One TA leader went out and bought each member of his team the book so they could get started and be ready for January 23rd! 

Buy The Talent Fix on Amazon or SHRM Members can buy it directly from the SHRM bookstore at a discount with your SHRM membership! 

I can’t wait to talk to everyone on January 23rd! If you have any questions, just send me an email at sackett.tim@hru-tech.com! 

Guerilla Recruiting Marketing

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All I know about marketing I’ve learned from friends. Brilliant people like William Tincup, Michael Carden, Laurie Ruettimann, Jamie Gilpin, Bret Starr, Leela Srinivasan, etc.

 

I remember sitting in front of William Tincup and Bret Starr when they were partnered up and running Starr-Tincup (which is now the top marketing firm in the HR Tech space – Starr Conspiracy). I was overwhelmed by how smart and creative they were. You got this feeling like they could solve any marketing challenge within seconds.

 

Michael Carden came to the HR Tech Conference to market, at the time, his new startup (Sonar6) with a giant cardboard box and markers where people could come into the booth and start drawing on the box which was basically their booth.

All of the people I’ve listed have had the courage in their career to do and try stuff others weren’t willing to. Maybe it wasn’t always Guerilla Marketing, but it was definitely out of the box (pun intended!).

When you think about where we are at with Recruitment Marketing right now, we are still, mostly, in this mode of trying to figure out the automation of the martec stack as it relates to recruiting. 

Once we get the technology figured out, we can begin to start being more creative in marketing our jobs and our organizations to the marketplace. We can start having fun!

Imagine partnering with a food truck or two and having them show up across the street from your competitor on a Friday lunch, and you just sit and wait for your competitors employees to walk across the street to check it out and get lunch.

You don’t even have to pay for lunch. People love food trucks and will come buy their own lunch. Just give a few bucks to the food truck to put your branding on their vehicles and show up and eat lunch, network, be different. Put out your big cardboard box!

I love the concept of being the one employer in your marketplace that is willing to be different. If you are just trying to be similar to everyone else, you have little chance of truly standing out as an employer people want to come work at.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Content_App – Job Branding

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This week on the Weekly Dose I review the job branding and messaging technology Content. Content is a mobile-based SMS text-based technology (app) AI social media assistant that scales across your recruitment teams to help your business get the most from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Content will send you a text message when she/he/it discovers something relevant for you to share. Every share Content creates will have relevant hashtags and an image to ensure you get the best engagement.

Content will also decide the best time to share the article so your recruiters don’t need to worry about the details. Just reply yes to share it, or no to decline.

Content will also automatically grab your jobs from your career site and brand them to look like a professionally digital marketed piece of content for your team to share out to your networks and talent communities.

One of the biggest issues we face as Recruiters in sharing great content with candidates is usually we don’t know what good content is out there, and we don’t have time to go out and find good content. The Content app does this automatically for you, while still keeping the power of customization in your hands.

What I like about Content:

  • Content is built on machine learning algorithms that will learn what content you like and dislike, and work to deliver more of the content you want to share with your talent networks.
  • Solves your share issues – want to share a piece of content to your internal team so they’ll share it outwardly, Content uses SMS-text based communication to do this with a simple “yes” or “no” via a text reply.
  • Tracking ROI via clicks is pretty cool showing you which person is responsible, plugs into your Google Analytics on your career site, and will give you ROI verse pay per click advertising.

One of the most difficult things in talent acquisition right now is being able to measure the ROI on social media recruiting and Content gives you a tool to actually show these results, but also makes it super easy for your team to share more and better content out to the networks they are trying to engage with.

Ultimately Content does the one thing we all need more of which is to get more traffic to our career site, and with the right CRM and retargeting, this really puts our recruiting on a different level. Well worth a quick demo, as this simple to use tool will help move many TA shops to the next level.

The team behind Content is the former team behind Broadbean, so you know these guys understand recruitment and how to drive traffic to your jobs.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

My top 5 most read posts of 2018!

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I love lists! I love lists when I’m on them. I love lists when I make them. Lists are great!

I had an incredible year. I had the most traffic ever in my decade of blogging. I launched my book, The Talent Fix, in April and the traffic to the blog has been exceptional! I’ve got some great stuff planned for 2019, so please keep coming back and enjoying the content.

Here are my most read blog posts of 2018:

#1 – My New Favorite Interview Question!

This one post was read by over 70,000 people, and I didn’t expect it to actually do this well. Interview question posts always do well. For some reason people Google “Interview questions” a ton, both on the candidate side and the hiring manager/HR side. Want some easy clicks? Write a post on interview questions!

#2 – I’m in Indeed Jail, Help me! #FreeTimSackett

Yeah, my co-dependent relationship with Indeed got me into trouble in 2018, and it all started with this post. I wrote another post later in the year – Indeed takes away free traffic from Staffing firms! Which also got a ton of traffic, and I thought was pretty ‘fair and balanced’ from the Indeed side.

#3 – The Reason You’re Being Ghosted After an Interview

Like I said above, interview content tends to be popular! In 2018 we saw a ton of ghosting happening on both sides of the fence. Companies are ghosting candidates and candidates are ghosting companies, and apparently we have all lost our minds! I mean come on, treat others like you want to be treated!

#4 – The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018!

Hat tip to my buddy Rob Kelly, this was actually mostly based on his content, which I sited and love! Turns out most of us have issues with our ATS systems and we love seeing what everyone else is using, because it must be better than what we are using! BTW- we started using Loxo in 2018 and LOVE it!

#5 – Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting Up his School!

This one breaks my heart. This post was directly from my heart, shouting out to the world, as a father, for help. A lot of people agreed with it, and yet, here we are basically in the exact same place.

The 2018 Emerging Jobs Report is Here!

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LinkedIn released their 2018 Emerging Jobs Report today and as always it’s packed full of some great information that speaks to where we see the world of Recruiting today, but also what we need to keep our eye for the future! 

So, what stood out in the latest report? First and foremost it’s what jobs are hot this year to last – 

So, I think we’ve all been hearing all of this A.I. and Blockchain stuff. The reality is, we aren’t really talking about true A.I., it’s Machine Learning (ML) and we’ve seen giant increases in the needs for these skills. 

Out of the top 15 emerging jobs (those jobs growing the fastest on LinkedIn) 6 of those were related to ML, Data, and Blockchain. That’s significant in terms of the products and technology that are being built by companies for the future. 

What else did we learn? 

While the report is designed to make us believe it’s all about Tech hiring, it’s not really all about tech hiring! 

  • Sales Executives
  • Recruiters
  • Realtors 
  • Account Executives (another title for sales)
  • Administrative Assistants 

Were all super high on the list as well. What does that mean? Well, those really aren’t emerging or growing jobs, it’s more about who’s living, searching, and spending time on LinkedIn. That might not be the patronage that LI really wants long term for the health of the site, in terms of your normal mix. 

The largest skills gap is still good old fashion oral communications! 

Again, I’m not sure how much of this is truly a skills gap and how much of that coming up in the data is just a function of the types of roles people are trying to recruit for on LI. If the report shows that all of these A.I., Blockchain, and Data jobs are what’s truly hot, oral communication wouldn’t be the most critical thing in those roles. 

But, oral communication is definitely a skill that is in short supply for most professions, and much needed by most professions outside of tech, like sales type roles. 

Machine Learning is definitely a skill set that employers are begging for. I reached out to my buddy and Recruiting savant, Steve Levy, just the other day as we had a search for a client demanding 10 years of ML experience. I was like, I don’t even remember ML being used as a term ten years ago! 

Steve confirmed, it most likely wasn’t. We did find some mention from 2009, but that was about it. So, the hysteria is real. Entry level position, five years of experience! 

I was surprised not to see Autonomous vehicle knowledge on there as this is another skill set we see companies begging for and we are constantly helping our clients in these searches. It’s not just about cars. It’s about delivery vehicles, mass transit, freight hauling, garbage trucks, etc. If it moves people or things, it’s going autonomous eventually. 

Check out the report. It’s great read at the end of the year as you’re preparing for recruiting plans for 2019! 

Does it Capture Eyeballs? #RecruitmentMarketing

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First off, hat tip to my buddy, Glen Cathey for sharing the article I’m about to reference. If you don’t know Glen, do yourself a favor and get to know him, follow him, stalk him. He’s brilliant and I read everything he ever puts out. If released his grocery list, I would read it.

The article title is “The Hottest Advertising Trend for 2018!“.

Can you guess what the trend is, before clicking over the article? Social media? Nope. Digital advertising? Nope? Block Chain? That doesn’t even make sense! Nope!

The hottest ad trend in 2018 is…Billboards!

Come on, Tim, I don’t have time for your crap today, I’ve got to find talent!

Look –

Digital grew more, but billboards also had growth, and they will grow less since they’ve been around since the advent of roads!

It makes sense, though, it today’s world where we capture your attention everywhere, and I mean everywhere, the noise has gotten insane. Except, it’s less insane when we are driving. Turns out, too many distractions and we start playing bumper cars on the highway!

So, Billboards are still highly effective and compared to other advertising, super cheap –

You can put up your “Help Wanted” message on a billboard and the only thing cheaper in getting attention is another old-school tool, the radio! (CPM – Cost per thousand impressions – so for every 1,000 people seeing your ad you’re only paying $5.22 on average)

I love digital media and all the social media tools and strategies. I don’t think you will ever walk away from those. But, in 2019, when Talent is still almost impossible to find, you need to go over to that 60-year-old in the marketing office and let them spin you a tale about the good old days of billboards!

Billboards work because they fill the simple need of putting your message in front of the faces of a lot of people, and some of those people will connect with that message. It’s not a rifle approach that new media tools have become, it’s definitely a shotgun approach, but in local markets, they still are super effective.

So, when your CEO comes running to your office ranting about how you need to find more talent, just let her know you’re going to be using 2018’s hottest marketing technique and solve the problem. Then go buy some billboard space!

Transform Recruitment Marketing Conference is Back for June 2019!!! @Smashfly

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Transform is Back!!!

Smashfly Transform is the bold community that’s impressively grown from 200 at the first-ever Recruitment Marketing Conference in Boston in 2016 to more than 10,000 strong across the globe today. Transform is the place for this community to come together. I was the Emcee for the very first Transform in Boston, and I’ll be the Emcee once again for this event!

Attendees are the rebels, the early adopters who want to transform the Talent Acquisition industry.

What is Transform…

  1. Brings together this unique segment of thinking in TA to create better, smarter experiences through recruitment marketing, technology, and innovation
  2. Is a place to find and connect with the people who get it, the people who want to change the industry through new tech, strategies, data, Marketing techniques and more
  3. Introduces these leaders to each other for support, for ideas, for inspirations, for community, for validation
  4. Gives the recruiting revels a path forward through dialogue, interactive brainstorms, tactical sessions, and strategic keynotes.

Transform is NOT a user conference… We’re still working on the agenda, but we’re planning two days of content including keynotes, super inspiring speakers, break-out sessions and workshops. Transform is one of the only events that takes peer-to-peer learning to the next level.

Each speaker is vetted, coached and their content is completely unique to Transform. No out of the box presentations that you will hear at any other event. We will have some more user-focused content to help with product adoption, but those will be breakouts/opt-in.

Sponsors are invite-only, the leading vendors in the space who get it. This is a unique chance to meet with these technology providers face-to-face and demo their products.

Overall, Transform is an experience. A place to grow in your job, your careers, and as a person. Our speakers challenge more than just the status quo of recruiting, they push you outside your personal comfort zone so you leave the conference with tools the work-belt and the personal-belt.

We don’t skimp on experience, and the food is incredible. The welcome party will be on the rooftop of the Revere Hotel overlooking the Boston Skyline and (fun fact) when you check-in there is a pillow menu in your room to select the type of pillow you want to sleep on.

Sounds like the one conference you can’t miss if you are in Recruitment Marketing, Employment Branding, or have responsibility over those strategies in your organization.

Click Here to Get More Information on Attending Transform on June 19-21 2019!Â