Singing About Social Recruitment

The Social Recruiting Conference rolls into town on 30 June.

I’m looking forward to my visit, to get to see a few familiar faces, and to meet and learn from some new ones too. What is social recruitment all about? I guess we all have our own ideas; I’d be interested to hear yours. I’ve had a few conversations with conference chair Alan Whitford about this and the thoughts and ideas we have bounced around include:

• Engagement
• Technology
• Behaviour
• Opportunity
• Innovate…(or die?)

We thought it might be useful to try and sum up these feelings and ideas, and I suggested that rather than write another blog post on the subject, we should experiment a little. So here’s a song for you. A song about social recruitment. I hope it prompts a few questions for the event next week – looking forward to seeing you there.

Lyrics:

Career advice is plentiful
You’re lost in the maze
So many ways to do this stuff
A head banging haze

I’ve done all my research
My planning is meticulous
If I think about any more
Slide from sublime to ridiculous

Yet there is something wrong
I need experts to see what they meant
I don’t understand
Don’t get social recruitment

Is it about engagement
And the importance of communication
But these two terms so over used
Like verbal constipation

They say all this social
Do it now or fall behind
Better get your message sorted
Or your business will be blind

No one sits still no more your business must be Mobile
Your brand has to be authentic
Else how you gonna make a pile

Is your strategy about technology, or maybe it’s cost saving
If you get the behaviour right, folk’s careers you can be saving

I don’t have to tell you, it’s Innovate or die,
I want to be there laughing with you
Not sitting back trying not to cry

Be Locally global take this thing around the world
Be Globally local your banner is unfurled
Be locally Global you wanna make that call
Be globally local grow the market grow it all

Where can you go
Be in the know
Be energetic
I don’t want ponderous
Head to London town
On 30th June
To the social recruiting conference

I’m in the market for a new way to work

First job, worst job

First job

The very first paid work I can recall was delivering newspapers. I had a Sunday morning round and a week day evening free paper round. The guy in shop sorting papers on a Sunday morning invariably had a drip on his long nose. And he used to sneak a read of the top shelf magazines, I regularly caught him with a copy of Razzle hidden in the Sunday Times! The week day round was huge and it took me ages for very little money. The bags of papers weighed heavily and my Mum used to walk full bags to various points on the route so I didn’t have to keep going back home to restock. That was very kind of her, mind you the whole crazy paper round thing was her idea in the first place!

Worst job

I once worked in a timber yard. It was back breaking work and I’m sure the team I worked with were extras from the Addams Family and The Hills Have Eyes. One guy had no teeth and swore a lot. He couldn’t pronounce the letter f so to him, everyone was a pucking plonker! Lugging bags of cement and stacks of wood was knackering, mind numbingly boring and shockingly badly paid. Needless to say I didn’t stick it for long.

What are yours?

If you would like to share your first and worst jobs with us I’d be pleased to hear from you.

What’s the point?

So you’re too busy eh? Let me rephrase that. So you’re too productive eh? You’ve hit the limit of what you can achieve and you need some help. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

You think carefully about what you can afford and balance that with what you need. You go and find the right person or people and in time, you have it. Your team. You can be confident of their abilities, you chose them. So why do you insist on checking everything they do? Every. Little. Thing. Let’s think about some of the feelings that behaviour produces inside the head of your colleague, sorry I mean victim:

  • Lack of trust
  • Undermined
  • Disengaged
  • What’s the point?

One of the simplest things great managers do is to get the right people around them and then critically, get out of the way and let them get on with it. Show your colleagues you trust them, support them, and engage them. Give them a purpose – show them what the point is. Get out of the way, please.