CHART OF THE DAY: Which matters more, Google or Facebook?

Apologies for not being more clear on the question in the post title, a better way to phrase it would be this:

Which source send the most/best referral traffic to your online content - Google or Facebook?

The answer, and the consultant in me loves this, is really 'It depends.'

And what it depends on is the kind/type of content you are publishing, and is the subject of today's Chart of the Day.

As always, and by popular demand, first the data, then some pithy, wise, and FREE comments from me:

Here goes...

Interesting, no?

(Let's pretend it is interesting and proceed).

1. I have to admit being a little surprised at the edge Facebook has over Google as a source of referral traffic for many of these categories. This surprise is driven and clouded by my own personal media consumption habits I guess. I would never imagine using or relying on Facebook as a source of information for anything other than family/close friend news. And I barely use it for that. Said differently, it is a good reminder that the way you/me consume content may not be the way most people consume content. I barely use Facebook, but I have to remember most of the rest of the world does.

2. If you are pushing any kind of mainstream, general consumption type content, and you care about how many folks consume said content, you might need to think more about how you can up your presence/reach on Facebook, and maybe be a little less concerned about SEO, (which you never really understood anyway, but that is another story).

3. BUT... Take a look at the last content category on the above chart - Job postings. In this category Google still dominates with 7x the referral traffic as Facebook. And it even dominates 'other' (sorry other). It seems like if you are in the Recruiting business you still do need to worry about SEO after all. And you probably need to get a handle of what Google is up to with its recent and early forays into the recruiting and job search space.

This is totally fascinating data I think. And a reminder that job postings are not (yet) the same as the rest of the content on the internet. People look for them, and find them, much, much differently than many of the other forms of content that are all over your Facebook feed.

Interesting stuff for sure.

Have a great week!

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 166 - 'Can I get a referral?'

HR Happy Hour 166 - 'Can I get a referral?'

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, hosts Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane welcomed Ziv Eliraz, Founder and CEO of the social employee referral management platform Zao.com, to talk about the changing and evolving role ot technology to power and support employee referral programs.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below, and as always on iTunes - just do a search in the podcasts section for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

While we ALL know that the employee referral is generally cited as the 'best' source of hire for external hiring, it is also true that creating, managaing, and monitoring these programs has often been an administrative challenge, and keeping employees engaged in the process and referral program can also be a challenge.

Zao helps solve a few of these common challenges, and even if you are not thiking of automating your employee referral process, Ziv shared some ideas and best practices gained from their work with organizations all over the world.

Thanks to Ziv for the time and the insight about the role of technology to empower and extend the classic employee referral program.

Have a great weekend!

Your Top Ten Most Wanted Recruits

Earlier this week the FBI announced the capture of one of the fugitives on its 'Top Ten Most Wanted' list, a man named Walter Williams, who had been sought for a number of accused crimes and interestingly had only been named as a 'Top Ten Most Wanted' person one day prior to his capture.  The surge in attention and interest in Williams' case once he was placed on the Top Ten list was considered the primary reason for his rapid arrest, but even at one day, he doesn't get the distinction as being the 'fastest to be apprehended after making the Top Ten' - back in 1969 a man was captured a mere two hours after being named to the list.

Overall, including the now in custody Williams, a total of 500 people have been on this list over the years, with 94% of them eventually getting captured. And while not all of that success can be directly attributed to the attention and following upsurge in tips and calls from the public that generally stem from a case being featured on the list, it certainly has become an extremely effective tool and mechanism for the FBI to bring widespread attention and focus on individual fugitives, and does in most cases lead to their capture.Excellent.

The Top Ten Most Wanted list is successful as a policing tool because it is well known, it rallies the public behind an important cause, there are often monetary rewards attached to successful apprehensions, and finally, and I think most importantly, it is extremely precise in what it asks. The FBI asks the public for help in finding specific, named individuals. They provide the most recent picture of the fugitive that they can. They publish the relevant details of the fugitive's back story to help paint a more full picture of what citizens should be on the watch for.

Simply put, the FBI  asks for help in finding this very person - not someone like him or her, or someone that might have a similar background as someone else unrelated to the case but may be more familiar, or even to find someone who would have been likely to do the same kinds of things that the Top Ten fugitive is accused of doing.

What's the point you might be wondering? (If you have hung on this far, and thank you if you have).

It's that when most organizations go about hiring, and particularly when they try to engage their exisiting employees in the hiring process via referral programs, they are usually not at all precise about what they are looking for. They ask open and murky questions like, 'Do you know anyone who might be a good fit here?' or 'We need to add a few more engineers - here is the job description - do you know anyone who has that kind of background?'

Only in pretty rare circumstances do we or can we engage the organization's current employees to help in finding and attracting specific individuals or can provide candidate profiles that are so precise that employees themselves can more easily identify potential candidates on their own. It would be pretty cool if instead of asking employees to do the kinds of mental and historical exercises that are required to actually succeed at providing hireable referrals, we instead could post a list of Top Ten 'most wanted' recruits like the FBI does.

HR or Recruiting could then slap the list up on the break room wall next to the minimum wage laws poster with a big sign that reads 'Know any of these people? Help deliver one of them to XYZ Corp and a $10,000 reward is yours'.

Could you even create that kind of list do you think? Or maybe you have it already - the Top 10 dream recruits you'd love to convince to come to your organization. And if you do have that kind of a list, is it tucked away in a file on your PC or in a folder of your ATS or is it plastered all over the company in hopes of enlisting your 'public's' help?

Happy Thursday.

WEBINAR: Seven strategies to save your employee referral program

Batman is without a doubt the greatest of all superheroes. A tragic origin story. A relentless and lifelong pursuit of elusive justice. And just the right amount of darkness, doubt, pain, and mystery to sustain the narrative for decades. You, me, all of us - we need a Batman. 

And you know what else you need - Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro? You need to fill that Sr. Software Developer role like yesterday - or the next version of Super-fantastic-amazing product might night make it out the door as promised. You could use someone like Batman helping you out, that is for sure.

The really cool thing about superheroes is that they are superheroes for a reason – they have someone who is their equal to compete against them. These competitors are the super-villains, and in the movies they’re doing bad things – but in real life these “villains” are only the bad guys and girls because they work for the competition.

So, how do you get your competitors talent to come over to your side and put on your company’s cape? A great employee referral program is the key.

Your pals over at Fistful of Talent are back at it with the March installment of their monthly webinar series. This month, with the help from the heroes at Zao, HR SuperFriends Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett will be laying down seven strategies that are guaranteed to put your employee referral program on another planet.  

Join us Wednesday March 27 at 1pm ET and we’ll hit you with the following:

• Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
• How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program
• The keys to sustaining your program long-term
•  How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results
• he top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long

Don’t let your employee referral program fall to the Legion of Doom. Register now for The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! 

As always, the FOT webinar comes with a guarantee - 60% of the time it works all of the time!

VIDEO: Rebranding Diversity

We love, love the employee referral as a source of finding that next great hire.

We've heard the reasons a million times why referrals are such a great source of new talent.  Namely that existing employees are the ones that truly understand the culture and the work, so they are able to know who in their networks would be a fit. The people they are referring in to the company are usually friends or close business acquaintances, and the employee will want them to succeed and as such, will make more careful referral decisions. Finally, the referrals themselves and how they perform if hired, are a reflection on the judgement of the referring employee, again underscoring the motivation of the employee to make good referrals.

All solid, probably valid reasons. The sometimes considered downside of relying too heavily on the employee referral source? That the organization continues to bring in people too similar to the people it already has in place. That a kind of circular process of hiring people from the same backgrounds, locations, or general sets of experiences takes hold, since, it is often thought, existing employees tend to refer in people that are kind of like themselves. They think, logically I suppose, 'I'm doing pretty well here, and Joe Boggs is just like me, so I be he'll succeed here too.'

While that kind of potential detrimental effect of too-heavy a reliance on referral programs is commonly explained or rationalized away by statements like, 'Our employee population is very diverse, as long as we are sourcing referrals from a large cross-section of staff, we will not have a problem at all', still it seems like the kind of potential negative effect that can end up causing real, long-term problems for firms, and even entire industries.

But don't take my word for it, spend some time this weekend watching the video below, (email and RSS subscribes click through), titled 'Rebranding Diversity: Colorblind Racism Inside the U.S. Advertising Industry', a presentation overview of the doctoral dissertation of Christopher Boulton. 

Doctoral Defense from Christopher Boulton on Vimeo.

In the video, Boulton examined the perceived and observed lack of diversity at the executive levels of the U.S. Ad industry, offers some recommendations for the industry to begin to make the kinds of changes needed to address this problem. Chief among Boulton's recommendations is to significantly reduce the importance and use of various employee referral schemes that have, over time, continued to foster a climate that lacks diversity, particularly in the managerial and executive ranks.

Certainly the use of employee referral schemes was not the sole reason for Boulton's overall findings, but these programs, and how they were administered were definitely a contributing factors. The study presents a good reminder that even the best-intentioned plans can sometimes have negative consequences, and that we need to regularly validate our gut feelings with some solid data.

Have a Great Weekend!