Blogs & Recruiting
Blogs Could Become Newest Recruiting Tool from the SHRM website (membership required):
Blogs offer businesses an excellent and interactive communication tool. For example Microsoft has close to 3,000 blogs posted by the company’s employees. Blogs can give an insiders view of a company’s work environment to potential job candidates. This is extremely important with the younger generations (ed.-see our article), it is as important to understand the culture as it is the responsibilities of the position. For this reason companies that don’t have employee blogs could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in recruiting.
Honeywell Corp. is a good example of a company that uses blogs as a recruiting device. The company launched blogs of three employees who began working for Honeywell last year after earning their masters degrees in business administration. All three of the bloggers participate in Honeywell’s Pathways Leadership Development Program. The intention of the blogs is to show the career opportunities and growth potential that Honeywell offers to students who have earned a masters degree. The idea of using the blogs has tremendous potential that could give Honeywell an edge in recruiting the best and the brightest from masters degree programs, according to Adam Forbes, global university relations manager for Honeywell. Right now, its just too early to tell exactly what the ultimate effect of blogs will be and how many employers will create recruiting blogs.
Blogging certainly isn’t for every company. The corporate culture must be conducive to allowing open communication from their employees to the outside world. The article also states that the companies that seem to be doing it right have found that the best bloggers choose themselves, instead of the company choosing them.
Creating compelling and engaging blogs seems to work best with a certain type of personality and clearly an ability to write good copy (don’t overlook this fact). That last point may explain why there are so many marketing blogs! Anyway, the people who do it well while making their companies look good in the process are easily identified through their blogging.
One last point from our experience – it takes a commitment to posting on a regular basis. There is no quicker way to terminate traffic to your blog than to simply not post for an extended period of time. There are many blogs that piqued my interest and I started reading them but soon unsubscribed from my RSS feed since they rarely posted new content.
Posted By Lee Fratzke | Communication, Hiring, Sourcing, Trends | | 
Comments(5)
Hi:
I couldn’t agree more. Blogs and other social media are changing the recruiting landscape and enabling the ability to connect to potential candidates and cultivate relationships. The buzz around recruiting blogs is certainly attractive – but deciding to start a blog is no small endeavor. There needs to be an immense DESIRE to blog; not just a desire to have a blog. In order for a blog to build a loyal audience – there has to be a real voice and passion behind the posts. But the authors also have to have the stamina to produce content on a regular basis. Bloggers often don’t understand what a commitment this is until you actually start blogging – thus all of the abandoned blogs out there. This is why I feel that the *DESIRE to blog* should be the first determining factor as to whether or not you should start a blog. What do you think?
Shannon Seery, EXCELER8ion.com
Shannon,
Yes, I do agree with you that the desire to blog is a much needed component in the world of blogging. It is a huge commitment not only to post but to understand your audience, find relevant, valuable information and develop your own style.
I believe you also need to invest some time before starting to determine who you are writing to, what are they looking for and lay out a strategy. You know, you also need to understand how a blog works and read some blogs to glean what is the proper etiquette for the blogging world.
On a side note, I liked your post on How to Ruin Your Recruiting Blog (http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/08/15/how-to-ruin-your-recruiting-blog/).
You have touched on some very important points – especially #20.
Thanks for your comment.
Hey, saw your feed on Recruiting.com and enjoyed this post. Welcome to the “Recruitosphere.”
Amitai
I think that most aspiring bloggers won’t fully *get* blogging until you do they it – and once they jump in – they might even regret it. It is more work than most realize or admit! Personally, blogging has been one of the best things that I have ever done – but I had NO idea how much of my life it would take over. Blogging has allowed me to meet many wonderful people with similar interests and develop my ideas about interactive recruitment marketing. Companies can reap the rewards from a talent perspective if they can figure out how to harness this medium.
Consulting on recruitment blog projects has not been an easy task as even if we can get C-level buy-…the hardest part is figuring out who will be the ‘voice’ and who will constantly develop relevant content. Who will relish in the research and awareness that it takes to stay relevant? Figuring out who will become the authors and who will really take a shine to blogging has been the hardest part.
Thanks for the conversation – I appreciate it!
Oh, Shannon, how true. If I had any suggestions to make based on my own experience, short time blogging, I wouldn’t know where to start. Here is a great post from a terrific blooger’s resource:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/07/11/what-would-i-do-different-if-i-had-to-start-my-blog-over-merlin-mann/
Amitai