Your Employees Are Your Most Valuable Recruiting Tools

Your Employees Are Your Most Valuable Recruiting Tools
New Microsoft CEO May Lead in Different Direction
Are You Making These 6 Content Marketing Mistakes?
NBC News Site Goes Cutting Edge with New Infinite Scroll
Quality Logo Products: Marketing is the Differentiating Factor

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 04:00 PM PST

recruiting tools

The most obvious and glaring trend for recruiting is the use of social media for outreach to active and passive candidates. Most recruiters, staffing firms and other companies will tell you that their job opportunities need to be readily available, easily accessible and mobile friendly.

Building your company's employment brand and online presence is essential not only in making candidates aware of your company as an employer, but also in giving them the ability to easily apply for a position no matter where they are, or what device they're using, when they come across your company online.

Given that most companies today understand and undertake these practices, the question becomes, how do you best utilize your company's online employment brand to attract the best talent? What can you do to set yourself apart from the competition?

Valuable Recruiting Tools: Your Employees

One vital asset that recruiters often overlook are the people sitting right around them in the office. Current employees can provide valuable help in the recruiting process. The most direct way they can impact the process is through candidate referrals. Most businesses have an employee referral program, where current employees receive an incentive (usually in the monetary form) for referring a candidate who gets hired.

If your company does not have this type of program in place, it should be a high priority item to get one set up.

Assuming you do have a system, make sure your employees are aware of it. It's one thing to mention it in an employee handbook with a dearth of other information that an employee may or may not retain, but it's better to emphasize it separately – and repeatedly.

Keep It Top of Mind

One tactic that works well is reminding your employees of the program in conjunction with mentioning a new position the company is looking to fill. Whether it's through a company-wide e-mail, an internal company Facebook group or some other form of mass communication, it's beneficial to make everyone at the company aware of any new opening.

And while you're mentioning the opening, it won't hurt to remind everyone of the employee referral program. Make sure to give enough details about the incentive, and be clear with instructions for how to submit the referrals.

Encourage Use of Social Media

In addition to employee referrals, another way to utilize your employees to help build your brand is to get them going online. Encourage them to use popular social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. When you have a link to a job opening or any other recruiting/branding related effort, make it easy for them to share it online to their social media circles. This is especially important for a site like LinkedIn, because most of your employees' networks and groups are filled with passive candidates.

Sharing updates about your company is a great way to make them aware you're hiring.

Encourage Company Reviews on Job-Seeker Sites

Another way you can have your employees engage online is by encouraging them to fill out reviews (which can be anonymous) on popular job-seeker sites like Indeed, Career Bliss and Glassdoor. The more – hopefully positive – reviews your company gets, the better you will look to potential job-seekers.

As a recruiter, you can go on and on bragging about your company to candidates, but ultimately a candidate knows "selling" your company is part of your job. Hearing what employees, not recruiters, have to say about the company gives your organization more transparency and lets candidates receive a first-hand prospective from someone who is currently in a job they're considering applying for on your team.

Conclusion

Do not be afraid to reach out to your current employees as recruiting ambassadors, because in addition to you, they're the ones who know best about what it is like to work for your company. Obviously not everyone will be responsive to this kind of outreach, so it could be helpful to identify some "go to" employees whom you can always count on to help out with everything from referring candidates or just sharing updates on LinkedIn.

Asking employees to perform additional tasks outside their usual duties can sometimes be perceived as a nuisance, so be sure to be delicate and tactful when communicating with co-workers. Make sure people understand the reason behind what you're asking and how it will help the company.

And don't get discouraged if everyone doesn't seem like they're on board. Remember, the ones who are most responsive to the idea will likely be the best ambassadors of your brand.

Hiring Photo via Shutterstock

The post Your Employees Are Your Most Valuable Recruiting Tools appeared first on Small Business Trends.

New Microsoft CEO May Lead in Different Direction

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 01:30 PM PST

Satya_NadellaEdit

The appointment of Satya Nadella as the new Microsoft CEO may signal a change in direction for the technology giant. And the ramifications could be felt by anyone who does business with the company or who uses Microsoft products.

Nadella, a 22 year Microsoft veteran, will get about $18 million in total compensation in his first full year on the job, 2015, the Seattle Times reports. That includes a base salary of $1.2 million, a bonus of $3.6 million and a stock award worth $13.2 million.

But beyond these details so often covered by the media, how will the new Microsoft CEO’s leadership affect the direction the company takes as a whole?

There have been many weighing in since yesterday’s announcement.

On the Lookout for New Opportunities

Clearly, Microsoft is expecting something from Nadella beyond business as usual. In an email to employees, outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer noted:

“He's got strong technical skills and great business insights. He has a remarkable ability to see what’s going on in the market, to sense opportunity, and to really understand how we come together at Microsoft to execute against those opportunities in a collaborative way.”

Glancing over the new Microsoft CEO’s list of accomplishments in a recent Microsoft press release on the appointment is impressive enough.

Achievements include leading the company’s move to the cloud and the building of an infrastructure that now supports products like Bing, the company’s search engine; and also Office and Xbox.

The decision for Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates to step down from his position as chairman of the board and take a more direct role in technology and product direction might help, too.

Prepared to Create New Products on the Web

Speaking of Bing, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land insists Nadella’s credentials as a Web pioneer at Microsoft are equally important.

Sullivan notes that in 2007, Nadella took over Microsoft Windows Live MSN Search, a Bing predecessor, and helped transform Microsoft into a major search engine contender.

Sullivan writes:

“When Nadella took over, Microsoft had started down the path of building its own search technology but still hadn't gotten anywhere. By the time Nadella moved on elsewhere at Microsoft in 2011, Bing was moving up, both in share and respectability as a solid alternative to Google. It has continued that rise. Some knock it as being the number two to Google. I think having the number two search engine in the United States is an incredible achievement and one that ultimately may lead to profits.”

Needless to say, the Web is yet another frontier for Microsoft to explore with new products and services moving forward.

Ready to Compete with Google, Apple and Others

But most important, Nadella may be prepared to compete more directly with Google, Apple…and even Amazon.

The company led by this new Microsoft CEO will likely be more willing and able to deal with a technology market in which it is certainly no longer the only big player.

Developer John Gruber observes that a company led by Nadella will be less likely to focus on its past and miss key innovations like the mobile revolution.

Fellow developer Brent Simmons points out that under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft’s Azure division was probably the only one in the company building services for the iPhone operating system. Other divisions have tended to limit themselves to building products and services for Microsoft’s own operating systems.

But with Microsoft more open to the idea of competition with other companies like Google, Apple and others could create more competitive products. Good news for Microsoft’s customers. It could also, says Simmons, be a remedy for a monopoly on cloud services by a company like Amazon.

Image: Wikipedia

The post New Microsoft CEO May Lead in Different Direction appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are You Making These 6 Content Marketing Mistakes?

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 11:00 AM PST

Top Content Marketing Mistakes

Selling, Selling, Selling

Your content should not be about you or your company. This sounds counterintuitive (you may wonder why you would spend time writing something that wasn't going to net you customers), but it is the only way to go.

By providing articles, audio and video that interests your base, people will start to come to your site as a trusted source of information. For many of those readers, that trust will eventually turn into dollars for you.

Sporadic Posting

If you want to hold an audience, you need to post content regularly.

Don't have time to post every day?

No problem. Try twice or three times per week but keep it up – people will notice if you lag.

Exhibiting Lack of Focus

As the leader of your own CPA firm, one day you post an article about tax tips and the next day you post something about your dog's trip to the beach. This lack of focus is a common mistake.

Try to stick with a theme in line with your industry. Your content should have a purpose. It should be useful to readers, not just an outlet for your personal thoughts or opinions.

Creating Boring Posts

The content you put out there doesn't always need to be in text form. Change things up every once in a while with video posts, infographics or photo-heavy posts with captions.

Your effort to keep things fresh will help attract readers.

Loading Up on Keywords

Keywords are important to enhance the search engine optimization (SEO) of your content. But peppering in too many of them can get annoying.

Lets say you are a CPA writing an article about how employers can fill out 1099 forms for contractors. Your keyword phrase may be "1099 tax tips," so anyone who Googles that phrase comes to your post first. That is all well and good, but try to mention your phrase only a few times in your piece. It will get redundant otherwise.

Using Bad Grammar or Making Typos

Don't publish anything with less-than-stellar grammar. Remember that typos are a turn-off and can even decrease your company's credibility in the eyes of potential leads.

Mistake Photo via Shutterstock

The post Are You Making These 6 Content Marketing Mistakes? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

NBC News Site Goes Cutting Edge with New Infinite Scroll

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 08:04 AM PST

NBC News new site design

If you are a fan of the infinite scroll, you’ll love the new NBC News website that unveiled today. If infinite scrolls and content that seems to lack any organization drive you nuts, then you won’t be so impressed.

The new NBC News site homepage (pictured above) is heavy on images, light on text. It’s tablet friendly and in the words of Deborah Turness, President of NBC News:

"The new site doesn't feel like TV content chopped up for the web — it is actually born of a seamless collaboration between TV and digital.”

I’ll tell you another thing it feels like — more like a blog than a typical news site. NBC says it has done research into digital news habits to come up with the new design:

“This marks the website's first significant design change since NBC News acquired full control of its digital properties in July 2012. After becoming independent from the joint venture with Microsoft, NBC News conducted extensive research into digital and mobile news consumption habits, and then designed an innovative, mobile-first new format that caters to those needs and behaviors.”

Much of the navigation is accessed through a pull-out menu from the 3 horizontal bars up in the left corner (a la Android type nav menus you find on mobile devices).

It’s definitely a pretty site, but I’m going to be contrarian on this. It’s great for random browsing of news and wasting time. But for business people, if you’re busy and want to get to the news that matters to YOU, those types of designs are a nightmare to sift through. I like a site where you can find what you’re looking for.

Maybe I’m an outlier. But I have a feeling that a couple of years from now we’ll see site design backtracking from these “browse and scroll” types of designs.

However, if you are a general news organization catering to a wide audience, many of whom are consumers, it might be just what you want — something where people jump around to this and that news article almost randomly.

The company says it’s really about storytelling, and that the Digital News arm of NBC News is creating original content just for the site (versus reheating the TV news) and presenting it in a digital friendly way. NBCNews.com touts its “Stories that take many forms — from standalone images, tweets, or animated gifs; to lists or one-line summaries; to fully produced articles marrying text, video, and photos.”

NBC News should get kudos for being cutting edge and delivering a site that is fast and full of eye candy. It’s certainly entertaining.

It’s just not necessarily all that useful for those trying to find content in an organized way.

Image: NBC News screenshot

The post NBC News Site Goes Cutting Edge with New Infinite Scroll appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Quality Logo Products: Marketing is the Differentiating Factor

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 05:00 AM PST

Sponsored Post

A mug is a mug is a mug. That’s why Quality Logo Products spends so much time on marketing and customer service.

The company has 80 employees at its Aurora, Ill. headquarters. Forty percent of them, with the exception of the accounting department, are in IT, content and media marketing.

They are in charge of what sets Quality Logo Products apart from others that do what they do: The company’s website.

It includes a peppy and entertaining blog and equally conversational and entertaining product descriptions. (Take this one for the Bic Clic Stic Pen, which declares “You haven’t truly written something until you have written it using a Bic Clic Stic Pen.” Wow!)

Another feature allows you to actually get a 360 degree view of many products (see above), giving an even better sense of what customers will get when ordering. Mandy Kilinskis, content and social team manager said:

“We kind of have this fun, quirky feel to our websites.”

This emphasis on marketing as a differentiator isn’t anything new for the 11-year-old company, Kilinskis adds. It was stamped on the business’s DNA from the day Co-Owners and Co-Founders Bret Bonnet and Michael Wenger started it back in college.

You see, Quality Logo Products is a commercial products distributor. That means it doesn’t make the products it sells. It also means there’s no graphics department. (They don’t create your logo or even place your logo on merchandise.)

What the company does do is arranges a comprehensive list of available products on its website. (There are about 25,000 items in all, 4,000 pens alone!) They then source products from the factory, negotiate for the best prices, have supplied artwork added and ship directly to the customer.

All of this happens behind the scenes, however. Quality Logo Products competes head to head with lots of other companies that also supply promotional products.

This competition can range from much larger companies like Staples and OfficeMax to much smaller businesses run by a single person with a website. There’s even disruption from print on demand companies like CafePress.com, admits Kilinskis. But since these kinds of businesses make and ship only one product at a time as orders come in, they are generally not competitive on price.

With so many companies offering potentially similar products and services, getting customers’ attention remains an important strategy.

That also goes for the company’s offbeat YouTube channel too. It features fake action movie promos to sell tote bags. There’s also an over-the-top hillbilly advertising lip balm. Then there’s a guy who eats dirt promoting a hand sanitizer. This is just a sampling of the entertaining videos visitors may come across.

Heck, the company even maintains its own video production studio right on premises for its shoots.

Of course, the rest of the company must focus on helping customers and potential customers the online marketing efforts have brought in and processing their orders.

The other 60 percent of Quality Logo Products’ staff work on either the sales team or in the orders department.

The company’s sales team makes no cold calls, Kilinskis says, since attention-grabbing online marketing brings in all the interest. Instead, they provide assistance to customers via email, phone and live chat from 7 AM to 6 PM Central Time.

There is an online order form, but customers often need help navigating the thousands of products available to find one that works well for them. Kilinskis explains:

“We try to be available to people.”

If there’s a place the company is aggressively working to improve, it’s in the realm of social media. (Marketing and/or customer service again!)

Of course, Quality Logo Products has active Facebook and Twitter accounts. But a website redesign planned for the near future will integrate the company’s website and social media channels even further, Kilinskis says it’s another way the company hopes to distinguish itself.

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iCIMS, a leading provider of talent acquisition solutions for growing businesses, is proud to be the official sponsor of Small Business Trend's "Small Biz Spotlight" of Quality Logo Products. Like iCIMS, Quality Logo Products has succeeded in differentiating itself among a wide range of competition. iCIMS is delighted to have the opportunity to support the innovative spirit of companies like Quality Logo Products through the sponsorship of the 'Small Biz Spotlight." (Visit the "Small Biz Spotlight" series archives and stay tuned for more small business stories there.)

Image: Quality Logo Products

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