Simplify Social Media for Recruiting: A Step-By-Step Handbook for Implementing Social Media

By Eileen Taylor and Kathy Mulder-Williamson

Your business is only as great as your people. But how do you find the best people to get you there? Where are candidates hiding? The answer is simple: theyre online. In Simplify Social Media for Recruiting, authors and human resource professionals Kathy Mulder-Williamson and Eileen M. Taylor explain how to leverage the most easy-to-use, powerful, inexpensive, and all-around best social networking tools to assist with recruiting.

Designed for both the novice and experienced social media user, this step-by-step handbook provides information and instruction on technologies, policies, shortcuts, and tips to help you recruit, brand, and market through the social media formats of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Simplify Social Media for Recruiting shows you how to become a user of these time- and cost-effective major social networking sites to maximize their efficiency and efficacy.

Through these simple directions and strategies, Mulder-Williamson and Taylor explain how social media can revolutionize your recruiting results and help you find the best people to fit your organization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475980776

Eileen Taylor

Kathy Mulder-Williamson is a former human resource director who has focused the last ten years of her career on recruiting. She has used LinkedIn to recruit since its infancy in 2004 and continually incorporates the ever-growing and evolving Internet and social media tools to source candidates and publicize job opportunities. Eileen M. Taylor is a senior human resource and business executive and writer/editor. She first became sold on using free and low-cost websites to post job opportunities when she had an opening but no recruiting budget and had great results using Craig’s List. Mulder-Williamson and Taylor created the company hyrebuzz to help recruiters and human resource professionals stay current on the latest trends in social media. Visit them online at www.hyrebuzz.com.

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Copyright © 2013 Kathy Mulder-Williamson and Eileen M. Taylor.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-8076-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8075-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8077-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904259

iUniverse rev. date: 4/9/2013

Contents

Preface

About the authors

Introduction to the Handbook

What’s in it for you?

Getting Started

How to use this handbook

What Is Social Media?

A simple introduction for the beginner

An Overview of Frequently Used Social Media Sites

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+

How to Create Your Social Media Sites

Step-by-step instructions for setting up Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+

Tools and Tips to Maximize Your Use of Social Media

Get it done easier, faster, and more efficiently

Applicant Tracking System

Why it is important to use in conjunction with social media

Strategy and Policy/Guidelines

Guidance on developing a social media strategy and policy/guidelines

!! Social Media Warnings

Guarding against the risks associated with social media

Conclusion

Glossary

Definitions of popular terms used in social media

Preface

About the authors

A fter Eileen M. Taylor hired Kathy Mulder-Williamson to provide recruitment services to her firm, she was surprised to learn the number of passive and hard-to-find candidates Kathy was sourcing using the Internet, long before social media became a household word. Eileen and Kathy realized the power of Internet tools, and together they explored and tested different avenues for recruiting, discovering the potential of LinkedIn before it became the sourcing tool it is today. They created time-saving techniques using Internet-based tools for sourcing candidates, posting job opportunities, and marketing on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Eileen and Kathy decided to partner and write this handbook, sharing their social media passion and knowledge and helping recruiters and human resource professionals avoid wasting the countless hours it takes to learn the tips and tools of social media.

It is through this shared experience that hyrebuzz, llc, was born, offering consulting services in social media, recruitment, and training. Hyrebuzz works with employers to maximize social media and traditional methods to source candidates and to brand and market their organization as an employer of choice.

Kathy Mulder-Williamson owns a business providing recruitment consulting services in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. She is experienced at sourcing and recruiting in the United States, Asia, and Europe. Kathy has a keen interest in technology and is continually researching and incorporating future trends in recruiting. She leverages the growing and evolving Internet and social media tools to source candidates and publicize job opportunities. Kathy has been using LinkedIn to recruit since it was in its infancy, in 2004, and was on the beta-testing team for one of the first Internet job boards to hit the market. It is Kathy’s passion—and somewhat of an obsession—to tirelessly research and share her knowledge of these tools with clients and colleagues.

Eileen M. Taylor, SPHR, is a business executive specializing in human resource consulting. She is a lifelong writer/editor by avocation. Eileen’s career in human resources spans commercial, nonprofit, and government industries. Managing recruiting, often with little or no budget, Eileen searched for inventive low-cost ways to publicize job openings and became an advocate of using the Internet when she first discovered Craig’s List. It is through her association with Kathy that she broadened her knowledge of using the Internet to support human resource activities. As a teacher of other human resource professionals, Eileen realized that the industry needed a handbook that would simplify the business use of social media.

Introduction to the Handbook

What’s in it for you?

Y our business is only as great as your people. You’ve got a unique product or an outstanding service; you’ve got the infrastructure to deliver it; you’re ready to take your organization to the next level. So how do you find the best people to get you there? Where are candidates hiding? These days, the answer is simple: they’re online, just like everyone else! But finding that one qualified candidate among the millions of users who are telling the world who they are and what they can do via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and dozens of other social networking sites can seem like searching for that proverbial needle in the haystack. Where do