Tales From the Digital Side

If you haven’t heard of Affinity Circles yet, I strongly recommend checking them out. in a nutshell, they provide private communities to member-based organizations, mostly university & college alumni groups and professional associations. What is great about this for employers, is that you can take advantage of these trusted, verified networks to target the professional candidates you are seeking. Read the rest of this entry »

Google has launched Google Gadget Ads. You can now serve ads within gadget s(also referred to as widgets). Advertisers can now create these branded mini-apps using Flash or HTML and incorporate data feeds, video, images, and more. Essentially, you can create a mini-website within the ads (similar in function to many of the rich media formats available). This has many uses for recruitment. Think jobs database integration, recruiting events, chat, games, etc.

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If you manage college recruitment initiatives, you are probably in the midst of preparing for the fall semester. As you consider your options of how to brand yourself to the millenial generation, take a look at MentosIntern.com. Read the rest of this entry »

I think this is the coolest rich media ad that I’ve ever seen. This campaign is showing a live streaming video feed of an event in Times Square. Accelerade has paid a guy to run on a treadmill for 24 hours and you can see him if you happen to be passing through Times Square or if you happen to be browsing Yahoo. The banner was developed by PointRoll. The banner drives people to the site at: http://www.accelerade.com. Read the rest of this entry »

As a recruitment advertiser, how is your relationship with your target audience? Are you keeping the passion alive, or are you about to get dumped via an awkward email, text message, or Post-it note?

I love the video below because it very clearly illustrates how advertisers have not grown with their consumers. Consumers (read: candidates) want different things now. They want to be part of the conversation, to have a “dialogue”with you. Are you listening? Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of discussion about Second Life and virtual career fairs. From Job Fairs in Second Life (here and here), with many differing opinions regarding the value of such an initiative. Personally, I’m less enthusiastic about job fairs in Second Life, than I am about the branding opportunities.

However, I do very much believe that companies can leverage virtual recruitment to significantly enhance their ROI in Real Life. And that is by using chat technology to either to run a virtual career fair or as a recruiter chat function on the corporate career site. Why do I believe in this model?
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Most media reps that work with me know that I am not too high on behavioral targeting (BT). This is because BT has evolved at a macro level with broad categories. Many networks allow you to target career-related behavior (which generally boils down to visiting career sites and doing career related searches). However, most media plans I work on are to attract passive candidates, and adding a layer of BT for career-related behavior, just hits an active audience. Sometimes BT can be added to a media buy to get your ad in front of more diverse (i.e. African-American interest, Hispanic Interest), or more relevant (outdoor interest, sports interest) candidate, but it’s usually only marginally effective. I have always preferred occupational and industry demographic targeting.
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I was inspired by Shannon’s great post about HCA’s new careers web site, to think about healthcare’s adoption of new technologies for recruitment. And yes, historically, healthcare has lagged behind other industries and has been led kicking and screaming into using technology. But I think this is changing.
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As I’ve blogged about before, I believe that the real opportunity in Second Life (SL) is the ability to develop an immersive branding experience for the candidate. So I’ve decided to write a series on my explorations within SL of good and bad branding experiences. Many of these will not be specific to employer branding, but it should give you a good feeling of what is possible.

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If I had a nickel for every article, blog post, and question I’ve received in the last month or so about video resumes, I might be getting rich. There is so much buzz about this topic, and I’m actually surprised that the concept has gotten as far as it has.

First, I’ll admit that I think the concept of video resumes is pretty cool. If I hadn’t worked in the recruitment space for the last 9 years, I’d probably be pretty enthusiastic. But unless that guy from Heroes shows up to erase my memory before I finish this post, I think I’m going to have to say that I think the concept won’t ever catch on.
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