Personal branding in its simplest form is the application of marketing principles and tactics to promote an individual as a ‘brand’, with the expectation of gaining visibility, recognition and better career prospects. Since Tom Peters coined the phrase ‘brand you’ in the late nineties, the concept of self-promotion has taken off significantly. Today, it’s hard not to encounter material on personal branding; a Google search alone returned thousands of links on the topic.

Two main things (amongst many) seems to drive the popularity of personal branding. Changing work norms and low employment tenure means that job seekers need to engage in self-promotion fairly regularly. Secondly, the tools to self-promote are readily available and becoming easier to use.

Our survey found that executives are highly aware of the concept of personal branding. The vast majority (90%) think that it is important to promote their personal brand as opposed to the company they worked for.

Q. How important is it to build and promote your own personal brand separate from your employer’s brand?

What will happen in a world where everyone indulge in self-promotion?

These are early days and it’s hard to figure out the implications, other than the fact that people are by nature interested in self-promotion and will continue to invest in building their ‘personal brand’. In this scenario, what works in social media’s favour is it provides the tools and the environment for self-promotion. Perhaps, job boards will be at a disadvantage because they are not really equipped to help job seekers beyond presenting them with employment opportunities.

What’s certain is the ability for someone to find someone else will be enhanced significantly. Given that our whole industry is about finding someone, the rising phenomena of ‘personal branding’ will impact all in ways we cannot yet fathom.

If social media is going to be part of your recruitment game plan, it’s worth noting that it’s currently the least trusted source of information amongst 14 measured by Edelman in Australia (refer chart).

Q. Please tell me how credible you believe each one of them is as a source of information about a company

Which means, for no particular fault of yours, many will treat your social media efforts with cynicism. It also means that you’ll need to work very hard to be noticed, be connected and stay relevant; for most it will mean long periods of time before any results can be seen.

The truth is there’s no shortcut to social media success. Trust needs to be earned.

How can trust in a low trust medium (social media) be earned by a traditionally low trust industry (recruitment) ?

I believe the medium rewards generosity. If you subscribe to the idea of openness, transparency and a willingness to give before you can ask anything in return, social media will open up endless new ways to connect and build relationship with candidates and potential clients.

I think we are on the cusp of a new era where recruitment outreach, especially the marketing and advertising component, will be defined by generosity. A change in mindset, more than anything else, is an essential first step towards social media success.

How do executive recruiters navigate the evolving sourcing landscape? Paul Jury (Head of Executive Recruitment) sheds light on Talent2’s experience.

Talent2 was founded as a high-touch executive recruitment business focused on middle- and senior-level permanent and contract appointments. It has an experienced team of recruitment consultants who are recognised as leaders in their specialist areas. While our brand proposition might not traditionally be associated with the use of job boards, we strongly believe they can be utilised to greatly compliment high-quality executive level recruitment assignments.

In challenging markets it is essential that recruiters examine all sourcing channels when filling the requirements of their clients. While a specialist executive level firm such as Talent2 utilises search (from both research and consultant networks) advertising is also a crucial part of what we do. Both broad and specialist job sites offer access to substantial numbers of candidates who are both actively and in some cases more passively looking for new opportunities. This access comes with an immediacy that is a useful complement to the more time intensive processes of research, network search and traditional print advertising.  For example, 69% of permanent roles worked on in the last year by Talent2 utilised job boards to build their shortlists.

As the fundamental shift from print advertising to job boards continues, most active candidates will use job boards during their job search. It therefore becomes imperative that advertisers, both corporate and recruiters make it as easy as possible for candidates to find their ideal job posting. The key is to stand out from the pack and whilst there are a variety of upgrade options to enhance the prominence of your ad and catch the job seekers eye, there are some basics which need to be followed. It is imperative that ad copy is well crafted to both tell and importantly sell the story. Motivated candidates want to be both excited and informed. Interestingly, the basic principles of the more traditional employment display advertisement still ring true.

On-line job seekers focus on salary levels, the location of the role and the job title. Where ever possible we advocate the inclusion of salary details, doing this will maximise the search experience and ultimately the matching process. It is easy to get lost in the ‘noise’ of a generalist job board, especially as most job seekers only have short grabs of time to search the sites (often only 20 minutes here and there). A safe guard for all parties, especially job seekers, is to ensure they have targeted job alerts updating them on the latest and greatest jobs that fit their search criteria. The effectiveness of job alerts is often underestimated. Seek in particular send millions of job alerts and this email process creates
enormous value.

In this current recovery phase where new jobs and job seekers are more evenly balanced, job boards are a cost effective way of sourcing candidates, as is the Early General News sections of the major newspapers with the later particularly well suited to mid and senior level executive appointments, albeit with a significantly different value proposition.The big challenge for job boards and newspapers will be the re-emergence of talent shortages in Australia. In the short to medium stages of the recovery there will be growth in advertising volumes as many corporations and recruiters do what they have always done and advertise their roles (we are already seeing this happen).

The experience from the later stages of the boom years in 2006 and 2007 was that the quantity of responses to ads began to decline and over time the quality of applications followed. We predict the next phase of candidate shortages will be even more competitive and those doing the hiring will not be able to first and foremost rely on job boards alone.

Talent shortages will once again place pressure on the effectiveness of both online and press advertising. It’s all about return on investment and as the employment market tightens the quality and quantity of applications will become variable. As the supply and demand change many hiring managers will increase their usage of head-hunters to search the market for executive level talent.

Many larger organisations have been adapting and are already a lot savvier about how they engage with future talent including employee referral systems, employee value propositions, their own searchable talent pools and effective marketing communications. Many of the larger corporations have established in-house careers centres or partnered with recruitment process
outsourcing firms, including Talent2, to provide these services. While they use job boards as part of the process they have developed other strategic sourcing channels.

So who and what job boards will win out in this competitive employment market place? SEEK will continue to be the market leader and dominate. Niche boards with content and/or strong communities of regular users should prosper i.e. an e-financials. All other sites that are predominately only a job board will fail unless they are able to reach out, connect and build
relevant communities who regularly come to their site to engage on all range of matters including job postings. There still remain clear opportunities for job boards to offer and market searchable databases that are effectively monetised and LinkMe is well placed. That said, we may already have a clear winner in the contest to build the best database as there
are now over 1 million Australians on LinkedIn. We can all network with like minded professionals including introductions and referrals to jobs. The job boards, recruiters and corporate who most effectively connect and/or source from the LinkedIn networks will have a competitive advantage.

While the best job boards will be pieces in the talent acquisition jigsaw puzzle it is LinkedIn that may well become the centre piece. Meanwhile, hiring managers will be forced to cover as many bases as possible, executive recruiters will do more searches, while job seekers work out just how quickly they want to embrace online networks rather than just job boards.

Paul Jury is inspired by the Talent2 vision to create success with organisations that acquire, manage and optimise their human capital.  As the Head of Executive Recruitment with oversight for A/NZ he thrives on the value of finding the right person for the right job. Interestingly, his first days in recruitment were as a talent scout for the Essendon FC – once he got the bug for finding talent he was hooked for life!

An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Job Board Report 2010.

In line with yesterday’s post, Clifford Rosenberg sheds light on the progress of Linkedin in Australia.

The Australian recruitment industry has been rapidly evolving given the dynamic changes in the economic and social environment. In the early days of the Internet, we saw a shift from traditional recruitment mediums, and a rise in adoption of online channels such as job boards. Now we are witnessing another significant shift with the emergence of social media and online professional networks like LinkedIn.

Professionals are connecting and actively networking online with others across the globe to promote their personal brand and build their career profile. With over 75 million members globally, LinkedIn has seen double digit growth in Australian membership over the last 12 months with well over 1.3 million professionals now connected on LinkedIn in Australia and NZ.

The professional community is increasingly living in a hyper-connected world. Technology is providing a platform where professionals are interacting and conducting conversations about jobs, careers and collaborating to share their ideas and knowledge. Recruiters are making the shift from a static to a dynamic engagement strategy. They are increasingly recognising the need to be pro-active about connecting with those professionals who have the right skills for the job and engage in these conversations. Recruiters are also discovering that the best candidates are often ‘passive’ and may not necessarily be checking job boards or speaking with recruiters. These passive candidates are on professional networks such as LinkedIn.

A field study conducted in the US by the Harvard Business School in 2009 confirmed that recruiting through social media channels is on the rise. Among LinkedIn Hiring Solutions clients, the survey found that within the first year 10% of the hires were sourced via LinkedIn.

Recruitment has always had a strong element of ‘networking’, whether it is identifying and connecting with candidates, building relationships, or seeking referrals and recommendations. Social media is now providing a platform to assist recruiters to connect with the best candidates, conduct conversations in real time, and make it a two-way communication process.

Social recruiting also provides truth and transparency not otherwise available to recruiters. Candidates themselves are posting and updating their own information. This real-time online record posted by professionals provides recruiters with better insights into a person’s talents, interests, career history, achievements and experience than a static resume.

Furthermore, recruiters have visibility of recommendations made, and connections that they may have in common with the candidate. The other key benefit of using social media channels is that you can ‘fish where the fish are.’ Recruiters can take a highly targeted approach and reach candidates with specialised skills by targeting specific groups where such professionals interact. Social media also allows employers to position their company brand among professionals and build a talent pipeline.

Social media and more importantly, professional networks such as LinkedIn, are here to stay and recruiters need to embrace this trend to remain competitive, and build long term relationships with their candidates.

Clifford Rosenberg is the Managing Director for LinkedIn in Australia and New Zealand. In this role, Cliff’s long term focus is to grow LinkedIn’s diverse business model comprised of user subscriptions, advertising sales and enterprise software licensing for the Australia and New Zealand market.  Near-term this will include a focus on user engagement, strategic partnerships, marketing and general operations.

Note: This opinion piece is taken from the Job Board Report

Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin, wants the company to be synonymous with ‘talent’ just as ‘Internet Search’ is for Google. In an interview with Techcrunch, he talks about past achievements and sheds light on future plans. Not surprisingly, Linkedin’s recruitment products are the largest and fastest growing part of the business. However, Jeff is careful to differentiate Linkedin from job boards. Here’s his take:

We are unique….Monster is all about jobs and that’s a component of what we do certainly, but Linkedin is not just about helping you find the best job, it’s about making you more successful, more productive in the job you are already in.…. ultimately we want to connect talent to opportunity. We want to do that on a massive scale and I don’t think that it has been done before……within a professional context we have an opportunity to completely change the game.

Membership has now reached 75 million, and if rumours of an impending IPO are proven real, it’s safe to assume that growth will accelerate further. When job boards first showed up, fear and loathing greeted them. Once the dust settled and it became clear that they added value to the sourcing function, objections subsided. Soon, the focus shifted to getting the best out of the new recruitment channel. Discussions revolves around cost and pricing. ‘What is the cheapest and most effective way I can use job boards’ was the prevailing mindset; a sign job boards have come of age. A week ago I spoke to a recruitment manager who just negotiated a deal with Linkedin. ‘It’s very expensive, but necessary’ he quipped.  Be prepared to see conversations shifting to the issue of pricing. The question is no longer about LinkedIn’s place and relevance as a recruitment tool, but more about how best to capitalise; a situation enjoyed by job boards in their heydays. It seems to me Linkedin is destined to have a permanent and prominent presence in the Australian recruitment landscape. What do you think?