By Jenny
DeVaughn
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennydevaughn
On Sunday night, the tweetup put the social into #socialrecruiting. We had 50+ guests and motivational beverages. Kathleen Smith with @clearedjobsnet secured the perfect venue. Jobscience was kind enough to cater the food for the party. Their team was a lot of fun too! Those who attended enjoyed lots of laughs, introductions and lively face-to-face conversations. Towards the end of the night, there were a few Captain Morgan poses for the camera. Yes, I have the photos to prove it.
When we arrived at Google, most of us didn’t know what to expect, since Google’s campus is safely hidden in some ordinary city blocks of Small Town USA. We hoped that the day would exceed our expectations. Our group was shuffled to Building 43 to pick up our badges. We found ourselves immersed in a group of new employees (a.k.a. Nooglers) who were signing in for their 1st day of work at Google. @Frannyo and I were tempted to switch groups.
The first speaker, Laszlo Bock, is the Vice-President of People Operations (HR) for Google. He advised us to keep in mind the importance of authenticity and intimacy. By using your own voice in social media, you can build trust and credibility.
The Social Recruiting Summit Chairperson, Susan Burns, gave us a warm welcome and highlighted a very cool application from LinkedIn called “New LinkedIn Members Around the World” that displays in real time all the new members of LinkedIn from around the world. One new LinkedIn profile is created per second. One warning: it’s a potential timewaster and worth viewing at http://newin.linkedinlabs.com.
The keynote speaker, Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, believes that we should all think of ourselves as a small business. He rhetorically asked, “How do you build up the asset value of your own self?” While he didn’t share any upcoming improvements to LinkedIn’s customer service, Reid was approachable and kind when I met him after his presentation to discuss how the most popular profiles are determined on each company page. I also thanked him for my 15,000+ 1st level contacts on LinkedIn. Then I made a weak attempt with Brendan Shields’ blessing to show a sign saying hi to @marenhogan and anyone watching the live stream who couldn’t be with us in-person.
After meeting LinkedIn’s Founder, Reid Hoffman, I took an official tour of Google. (How many Mondays have you had like this at work? Someone pinch me!) At every entrance or even randomly on the walls, were papers stuck up with tape like on a college campus discussing all types of internal offerings or reminders at Google. We also learned about Google’s Doodle team and how the Doodle 4 Google contest gives scholarships to kids and schools. Googlers enjoy many on-site amenities: 24-hour fitness area, infinity pools with a lifeguard, massage therapists, shuttle, sand volleyball, heated toilet seats, communal bikes, medical staff, creative areas with logos, plenty of whiteboards, four child care centers with 200 teachers, free breakfast/lunch/dinner and complimentary cafes/micro-kitchens stocked with a variety of beverages. My inner geek was thrilled to get a quick peek into life at Google.
The next session I attended was put on by the best mobile marketing duo, Chris Hoyt and Michael Marlatt. They discussed the mobile myths: mobile is just hype, only used by the youth generation and that it is only a device for spam. They also shared that SMS (a text message to your phone) has a 94% read rate. We all participated in a live step-by-step text (short code) demonstration. In mobile marketing, we are only limited by our creativity; however, one must consistently create value.
We enjoyed a brown bag lunch outside under the bright primary color umbrellas in the Google courtyard. It started to rain lightly during the last few minutes of lunch and was somehow created by Google to get us quickly back into our conference space.
Sacha Chua led our next discussion on how we all can have the most awesomest job search ever. Sacha was unapologetically enthusiastic about her love for her current role with IBM. Sacha described how important “relational onboarding” is to new or potential employees. It is vital to have genuine connections and relationships with your future co-workers before you start working. I agree with @JohnSumser, this is the key to seamless recruiting. Sacha also mentioned, once you are an employee, you are an ambassador. Laurie Ruettimann retweeted one of my tweets during this session while I was sitting two seats away from her. How cool is that?
Last week, Joshua Kahn with Best Buy announced on Twitter that he created a hashtag, #moo for his Sacred Cow Tipping presentation. During his session, we visually enjoyed a live stream of the tweets using Spy. Josh instructed that we shouldn’t believe him or anyone else for that matter. We learned that we are all participating in backchannels, which are the private conversations that occur behind the conversation that is public. For example, a backchannel is the instant messaging during a presentation at a conference. We can use backchannels to make quality connections by monitoring these conversations through RSS feeds. Josh shared many examples of Best Buy’s wins and failures. He also had us searching for haters of our brand with this question, “If you don’t know that things are bad, how can you fix it?”
The last unconference session was titled, “Death of the job board, ATS and corporate careers site?” with the real Paul Jacobs of TribeHQ. It was certainly a touchy subject with the actual vendors in attendance. The audience did their best to politely debate on the future of job boards and applicant tracking systems. Ryan Caldwell with Entice Labs asked one thought provoking question, “Why can’t I go into Monster and compare opportunities from 10 different companies side-by-side like I would if I was online buying a car?”
When the event was coming to a close, I wished that I could have attended all the sessions. There was a rapid fire tweets of insights and ideas being exchanged during each one.
Then we slowly left Google trying to spot any employee to officially escort us to the Google store. No such luck, so we headed over to the reception at a loyal brewery. We enjoyed more motivational beverages with @cincyrecruiter, @scottbaxt, @gerrycrispin, @mattadler, @jonpbryant, @shally, @geoffpeterson, @booleanblackblt, @mspecht, @seerysm and too many others to name. You know you are and I will email you some photos soon.
In conclusion, I must thank Eric Jaquith, David Manaster, Teela Jackson, Lexy Thompson and many other colleagues who helped make the first Social Recruiting Summit a memorable event. I’m looking forward to listening, keeping the conversations going, sharing best practices, paying-it-forward and building strong relationships. Thank you for everything, especially your friendship.
Jenny
DeVaughn
jennydevaughn@gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/jennydevaughn
http://twitter.com/jennydevaughn
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