@JBC34 just RSVPed Yes for #SocialRecruiting tweepup 11/15 NYC http://bit.ly/1Jr7C #MonsterSocial

@AnnetteatAlstin just RSVPed Yes for #SocialRecruiting tweepup 11/15 NYC http://bit.ly/1Jr7C #MonsterSocial

How did I end up with so many dollar bills in my wallet. Anyone have a 20 for for 21 singles…

@heathert390 just RSVPed Yes for #SocialRecruiting tweepup 11/15 NYC http://bit.ly/1Jr7C #MonsterSocial

Sesame Street was really good today. Big bird migrating and the rapping real estate guy was has the baby glued to TV. Happy 40th Bday!

What does your phone number spell? find out checkout http://phonespell.org/ , nothing for mine 612-6006

Recruiting Has to Go Video, right. Video, combined with the Internet, is a game-changer for recruiting, right, as Kevin Wheeler has stated recently. But I still hear it all the time – “How much for a video?,” “It too expensive?” In ADOTAS I came across an article that is retweeted below. This article answers the cost question very well, but the answer is it depends. Read the article to see why.

When thinking strategically about your talent acquisition, a more important question is – “what will my ROI be.” I know HR “isn’t” traditionally know to be good with numbers/math. If you want a “seat” at the table you’ll need to think how to add value to the organization. Everything can be measured, by adding value and focusing on ROI, you will save and make your firm more money than just focusing on price.

I know you still want to see a price, $0 – $30,000 for a ‘typical’ recruitment video. Well, zero is not really zero because you need to allocate the cost of your time (and other people’s) as well as the cost of lost opportunity of having a poor product. $30K is not the limit either, but paying a high price doesn’t always mean your get the best product either. But if you come back to value and RIO, then you’ll know whether $5k or $20K a better price.

I started my career in investment banking on Wall Street, I worked about 80hrs per week, two years of financial modeling and analysis taught me a lot about ROI. But even more important, I learned from the SVP of HR, the importance of having the “right” people to make the “right” decisions to get the desired ROI. She had a seat at the table (and yes they were pioneers in using video too).

Video on the Web: Where to Start

Written on September 3rd 2009 Author by Ernie Mosteller | ADOTAS – “How much for a web video?”

I don’t know about you, but I get that question all the time. Video on the web has officially come of age for advertisers (a long-anticipated event, at least for this former spot director), and everybody wants in on it. Everybody.

Of course, a lot of the groundwork that was laid to get to this point, at least in the minds of most advertisers, has led to the mistaken belief among too many that you can do just about anything in video, slap it up on the web somewhere, and you’ll have the next viral hit. Or at least, people who are, ever so remotely, interested in the broad category your product fits into will flock to watch what you put up, no matter what you put up. Oh, and by the way, how much?

 I sometimes have a hard time believing it, but too many advertisers are still in a mind-space that treats the web as a thing, a plug-in, a commoditized unit, that can simply be applied to a marcom mix in nice, even increments. Sorry folks, it just doesn’t work that way.

Cheap, done-on-a-webcam, silly little videos can, yes, become global viral hits. But the chances of your regional sales manager, talking across his desk about “added consumer value” to a guy with a camcorder, becoming the next Numa Numa are – remote, at best. To be fair, maybe you’re not after the next viral hit. But I’m assuming you do want someone to watch what you upload. I’m not one of those ad guys who says you have to spend what we used to spend on TV commercials to make a web video that’s watchable. You do, if you come up with an idea that requires the same production specs. But the key to what you need to spend has everything to do with the ideas you generate. And that has everything to do with what you hope to accomplish with your video on the web. Which, together, make the calculations for the price of a web video exactly like the calculations for any other type of advertising creative: It all depends on what you want it to do, and the idea you create to do it.

Important here to note that actually having an idea in the first place is the real cost of entry. Making effective web video boils down to ideas that connect with the people you want to connect with. If the idea is there, the video will do its job. The idea, of course, is going to tell you how much you’ll need to spend. If your idea involves explosions and car crashes, please don’t try to do it on your intern’s camcorder. But if said intern’s camcorder represents all the money you have to spend – don’t automatically give up, either. Spend more time thinking, or get someone to think smarter, and there’s every chance you can create something that connects, on a much lower budget. But you’ll have to leave the explosions out of it. There are good, cheap web videos. There are bad ones, too. Just like there are good expensive web videos, and bad ones to go along with those. It’s not the price that makes it work, or fail. It’s the idea. Start there.

The Great Recession is in the ninth inning and the home team is up by one run.  As long as the other team doesn’t ties it up, the recession is over.  As you can see, I am cautiously optimistic.  We have come a long way from the market panic in the fall on ’08 and March ‘09 lows.  The “green shoots” we started to see in Q2 and Q3 have led to stock market rebound of almost 55%.  The stock market usually moves six months ahead of the real market.

The Conference Board said recently that its index of leading indicators rose 0.6% in July – its fourth consecutive gain – suggesting the economy has bottomed and the recession will end this summer, if it hasn’t already.  On Tuesday, The Conference Board reported its gauge of consumer confidence jumped to 54.1 in August from an upwardly revised 47.4 in July. Economists had expected a milder uptick to 47.5. Consumer confidence number over 50% is bullish.  When you start to hear economists proclaim the recession is over, they’re celebrating the technical meaning, they mean economic output has stopped contracting.

Economic activity “will increase slightly over the remainder of 2009,” Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress. As a result the Fed will stop some of it bond buying activity, signaling that the Fed is less concerned about liquidity in the market.

Some the concerns in the ninth inning of the recessions are that unemployment rate remains north of 9% and foreclosures are near all-time highs.  Since December 2007 The U.S. has lost 6.5 million jobs and spurred the sharpest rise in the unemployment rate since the 1930s. As manufacturing jobs move overseas and companies struggle to further reduce costs, unemployment, which stands at 9.5 percent, is likely to rise above 10 percent, but jobs are trailing indicator.  Recent job losses have dropped 60-70% from their peak.  The temp job market recovers first, so keep an eye on that.  Employers want to feel confident about the business environment, so mass fulltime employ happens only when the economy is well out of a recession. 

WANTED Technologies forecasts that Nonfarm Employment Payroll will drop by 190,000 in August. Last month the BLS reported a decline of 247,000 nonfarm workers, substantially down from the 700,00+ declines earlier in the year.

The stock market is a lead indicator and the marker has recovered more than half of its losses. The S&P 500 stock index bottoms, on average, four months before the recession ends and never by more than eight months.  This year the S&P 500 bottomed on early March.

My brother-in-law toke that drive from MA to NJ for the weekend and he talked of all the infrastructure work going on, which cause his trip to take twice as long.  That infrastructure work and much of the positive economic data is simply the result of government action (the stimulus plan) and stabilization of banks and credit markets.  Seems like Keynesian economics, a theory stating that active government intervention in the marketplace and monetary policy is the best method of ensuring economic growth and stability (especially in recessions), is working, or at least prevented a depression.  Goldman Sachs predicts Global GDP for 2009 to be 4%.  All other recession have ended so will this one. 

The jobs numbers are important to a full recovery and a booming economy.  I think in Feb 2010 we’ll have positive jobs numbers.  Indeed.com had about 2.8M jobs listed on the site when I did a search for ‘a’, top occupation Physical Therapist, top employer Pizza Hut/YUM Brands, top location NY, and there are almost half million jobs list with salaries over $100K.

 By Feb 2010 the stimulus plan will be in full swing, employers will have new budgets and consumers should be even more optimistic.  To keep the economy rolling after that we will need to stop relying on government stimulus funding and interest rates need to rise above 0%. In addition, inflations (not currently an issue) will need to be managed and the national debt reduced.

We are a long way from the go-go days of a 5% unemployment rate, 7 or 8% is much more likely than 12 or 13%.  After a category 5 hurricane, thunder storms don’t seem so bad. Let hope our star “closer” can pitch his way to a win in the bottom of the ninth.

75 talent acquisition gurus turned out to discuss best practices in recruitment, in particularly, how to effectively use business networking at the NYC Recruiting & HR Network Meetup.  The Meetup.com group is adding about 50 new members per month.

The group beleives in face-to-face meetups to learn from each other, network/socialize, and have a little fun.  At this Meetup people discussed how to become a better Talent Acquisition guru (for yourself).  Tiger Woods can use a coach, so can recruiters.  Even recruiters and HR candidates make mistakes with ineffective “elevator speeches,” ineffective networking mistakes candidates make “moving “ through the crowd, ineffective/annoying FOLLOW-UP, ungrounded expectations ( critical!), etcc…  The presenters addressed how to avoid some of these mistakes.

Here’s brief videos from the presenters address some of those issues:

Monica R. Milner - Main points work on your elevator pitch and help others in networking.

Rick Longenec-ker – Main point be authentic in your networking.

 Pictures at:  http://www.meetup.com/NYCRecruiting/photos/687016/ – Meetup has a “tag” function now, so tag those you know in the pictures.

The Meetup.com group has teamed up with ERE.net (the leading community and source for recruiting news and information) on these events.  Ernest Feiteira, the Meetup organizer, stated the next meetup will be in 4-6 weeks, the announcement will be on www.meetup.com/NYCRecruiting.

In the past I’ve wondered what the value of the size of your network on LinkedIn and Twitter is with regards to hiring. Today, I learned in a MediaPost article, Is Twitter A Job Qualification #FAIL? (R/T below), that a Best Buy job description preferred job qualifications of a graduate degree and 250+ Twitter followers.

Companies want to sell a product or services, right? Companies need to market or advertise their products or service, right? All other things being equal, would you rather hire a bunch of employees that are unknowns or those that are connected and/or followed by hundred (may thousands) or people? Wouldn’t ‘knowns’ help expand your brand and help sell more product? Quantity does not equal quality, so an assessment of quality of those followers/connections/relationships needs to be part of the equations too. Here on ERE, you can have followers too.

Perhaps one day it will be common to evaluate the Conversion Rate of posted links, pageviews of blog posts, tweet, etc. as part of the hiring process.

All the Best…..@efeiteira

R/T

Is Twitter A Job Qualification #FAIL
Looking for a job in online social marketing? It’s not what you know. It’s the number of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and connections on other social network sites that matter, according to Nance Rosen.

Rosen, career coach extraordinaire and CEO of Pegasus Media World, a communications firm focusing on publishing, social media and seminars, told Online Media Daily that brands looking to hire marketing professionals want “influencers,” “connectors” and “mavens” — people that others turn to for information, news and trends.

Take, for example, the recent job ad from Best Buy looking for a senior manager for emerging media marketing. The post requested one year of active blogging experience and preferred job qualifications of a graduate degree and 250+ Twitter followers.

The job post created buzz, but the blog post by Best Buy’s CMO Barry Judge announcing the effort to tap the community at bestbuyideax.com for qualifications generated thousands of hits and hundreds of comments.

More companies are asking for followers and friends, Rosen says, but even more want lots of experience in social media. “It’s only a matter of seconds, minutes or hours before marketers look at what is a natural phenomenon like viral marketing and seek to institutionalize it,” she says. “Once we see signs of brand loyalty and engagement, we try to create that artificially.”

Although it’s still unusual to find job descriptions asking for Twitter followers, job boards are filled with requests looking for applicants who know how to attract Twitter followers. Plugging in the keywords “Twitter followers” in the job board indeed.com only returns a couple of listings, but “Twitter” returns jobs ranging from developers to managing accounts and tweets.

CareerBuilder has about 270 job posts looking for Twitter experience. Monster has roughly 300, but it seems that job headhunters are using it to get job tips out to people first, Rosen notes.

Similar to PageRank and Quality Scores on Google, search engine marketers should understand the influence among community members that puts prospective job candidates at the top of the human resources employment list.

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan wrote in a blog post that Google Analytics and other JavaScript-based tracking tools may undercount visits to Twitter. Sullivan ran recent tests to challenge the numbers, and it appears that Twitter sent 500% to 1600% more traffic than log files or hosted stat packages like Google Analytics might show, he writes. And while the post really analyzes the discrepancies in reporting, the underlying message says marketers could find more of a lift from Twitter than first believed.