The Social
Recruiting Summit is being held today here in New York.
Fred Wilson, who is keynoting,
posted his presentation and requested comments. What a
fantastic way to improve your thinking on any topic, by the way.
When this type of behavior gets "into the bones" of up-and-coming
scientists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, imagine how much more
quickly we will cycle through all the wrong answers and get to the
good ones. Kudos to Fred for pioneering in this regard.
I
posted my thoughts in Fred's comments but I thought I would
share them here as well for the broader HR community...
Lots of great thinking in this deck, and the exciting part of
the internet and recruiting is that we are really just getting
started. The newspapers are only now dying, and the Web 1.0 job
boards "just" replicated their model. Cool ideas -- GlassDoor,
Tracked, and of course, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meetup (at TheLadders,
we've sponsored Meetups to very good effect for our recruiting)
etc., -- are going to make the next decade even more exciting.
A few points that I think go along thematically with what you
are saying but bear emphasis:
1. Social media are fantastic information and communications
tools. A question we should be asking is: how do we use these tools
wisely and well?
Commenter Melih notes: "I didn't really see you emphasize
that while talent is valuable, the real value, to me, of the social
hire is vouching for the integrity and the character of the person
much more so than their skill set. I think it's fair to say that
you wouldn't recommend a friend or colleague who you didn't think
was strong enough, but would you recommend a friend who you knew
would constantly butt heads with the VP of Engineering?"
As tools, we are using social media very well to find
candidates, and to find people who worked with the people who
worked with our candidates. But to really close the deal, we need
to find a way to make social media better at making the art of
referencing better. Because I'm not sure we really have. The cold
call out of the blue from the nice person in HR at a company
looking to hiring Jeremiah, who saw that you worked with him from
2003 to 2005, is not immediately, to my mind, somebody with whom
you should exercise your complete and utmost candor. Legal and
social consequences loom. We're finding the information, but we're
not generating the right type of communication.
2. And I wonder if you should mention Uber community on the web
-- Craigslist. Despite its enormous size today, it started as
"social media" -- Craig sending out his favorite events to his
email buddies, and somehow that DNA remains at the core of what
Craigslist is all about. Especially with recruiting designers and
college graduates, we find it invaluable. I think we all sometimes
forget to put Craig in this bucket.
3. I agree blog posts and tweets are a great way to get people
who are already engaged with your brand. This is the virtual
equivalent of the "Help Wanted; Inquire Within" sign: to attract
somebody, they need to already be attracted. Which is fantastic.
But it's not going to scale for all the needs of a young company.
How are we going to use social media to expand our message, not
just repeat it in an echo chamber?
4. And, finally, I think it bears repeating: "0" is the number
of people you've hired in or invested in without meeting them
face-to-face. (Even more interesting if the answer isn't zero --
would love to hear that story!) The internet, social media, tweets
and updates can not replace the value of sitting across from a
human and learning their story directly from them. That's what
we're all about - we are *social* creatures, and the *media* is
there to serve us.
[Read Entry] 
It's important to 
My brother is a marathon
runner who recently had his best time ever in the New York City
Marathon. He's got a hectic full-time job and he's middle aged, so
it was a really big accomplishment. He spends a lot of time
training and staying in shape.
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