BCjobs Blog

Jessica Lee, corporate recruiter, discusses the ins and outs of social recruiting — using social networking sites to identify and recruit potential hires. She examines how to create a strategy, establish goals and define measurement tools and success, while ultimately looking to increase job applications and improve brand awareness.

Last week, SourceCon ran the first part of an article series on Twitter’s Hiring Strategies, outlining some of the significant new hires Twitter has made this year. I also showed you the video that Twitter put out to help its recruiting efforts. I was able to grab about 30 minutes with Twitter’s director of recruiting, Oliver Ryan, and talk to him about some of the recruiting and hiring practices that Twitter has in place for its internal efforts. While Twitter has talked with several tech media publishers about their recruiting video, this is the first time it has talked about their recruiting practices directly with the HR, recruiting, and sourcing community.

On the average day, I read somewhere between 10 and 50 job postings. Yes, the life of a professional recruiter is not a glamorous one – shocking but true. Also shocking and true is the fact that 90% of those job ads have something in common that limits their effectiveness in a huge way.

The Canadian labour market consists of nearly 1 million finance professionals; 1.1 million workers in the Educational Services sector; and just over 950,000 professionals in Public Administration. All of these are examples of sizable, high-impact industries within our economy.

6. Social media is only used by kids looking to socialize with their friends.

More than half of Facebook users are outside of college.
The fastest growing demographic is that of those 30 years old and older.
The average age of a LinkedIn user is 45, and the average age of a Twitter user is 31.

Whether you’ve just started a small business or are the head honcho in a entrepreneurial corporation, any of the following top ten employee hiring mistakes could prove disastrous for your business.

Finding the right employee for your team can be like searching for a hard-to-find puzzle piece. With thousands to choose from, the task can be overwhelming. Choose wrong, and your new team member won’t be the right fit for your job opening, your team, or your company. A problem far more frustrating than a missing puzzle piece, hiring an employee who doesn’t complement your team can result in lost time and productivity, turnover, and endless hours of headaches for you and your staff.

Good or bad economy, the need to make a quality hire doesn’t change. Given that the Cost of Voluntary Turnover for 2009 was approximately $56,000 for the private sector and over $80,000 for the public sector, hiring decisions cannot be taken lightly as the wrong decision can impact the bottom-line.

Employers in major metropolitan areas of British Columbia have a number of methods to advertise their available job openings. From out-of-home to sponsored job fairs to social media, organizations in large BC cities can often reach talented candidates due to their location. But what about smaller BC communities?