This is part 10 of our Tru Recruitment ebook series.

1. 5
e Tru Files
SOCIAL RECRUITING PERSONALIZATION
4.0
TRU HEAT
INDEX
@BillBoorman and Klaus Toepfer

2. 10 /02
events
8,000field of recruiting. 48
We scoured
presentations and
conversations from
the last twelve
months of TRU
events to bring you
the best forward-looking
ideas in the
attendees Big ideas

3. social recruiting PERSONALIZATION /03
this will be the year
you move beyond
aimless social chatter.
If you want your social networks to
function as recruiting power tools,
it’s time to consider personalization.

4. social recruiting PAEILNORSZAINOT /04
Pre-2006 (the year Facebook opened to anyone over 13 with
an email address), recruiters would post and pray—post a job
on the company website and a few job boards, and then wait
for applicants to respond.
When professional social networking sites like LinkedIn became popular, recruiters moved on
to a source and spray approach—identify every java programmer in the area, for example, and
send out mass emails hoping for just a few hits.
Neither approach makes any sense.
Both assume a recruiter’s job is to attract as many applicants as possible in the hopes that
one of the hundreds is exactly right. But in truth you aren’t searching for hundreds—you’re
actually searching for just one person. One perfectly suited candidate for the position. And
for most companies, the 999 applicants who aren’t chosen are essentially throwaways—in the
metaphorical wastebasket of recruiting files.
Something has to change.

5. social recruiting PAEILNORSZAINOT /05
Recruiters must begin working on attracting the right candidates rather than a massive quantity
of candidates. And recruiters must begin wooing not only the right candidate, but also those
who may not be a good fit … for now. Many applicants you reject could become a perfect fit
for another opening. With that in mind, every applicant should be considered part of a larger
network of talent—people you want to stay in touch with for possible future openings. People
you want to impress, even if you’re not on the verge of hiring them.

6. social recruiting PAEILNORSZAINOT /06
From talent rejecters
to talent attractors
According to TRU conversations over the last 12 months,
this will be the year of behaving less like job brokers and
more like relationship-builders.
Recruiters will spend less time scouring the globe to fill a particular current vacancy, and more
time building talent networks for jobs that may become available in the future.
If it’s true that recruiters will be given the role of building networks for forward-looking talent
needs, then we must stop thinking in terms of candidates and clients, and instead start thinking
about audience. How will we interact with this vast network of talent in a way that’s interesting
and engaging? Particularly given we won’t be dangling a job in front of them?
With an audience-minded approach, recruiters will ask: What kind of information do job
candidates seek out online? Which social networks do they use, and to what end? How do
job seekers prefer to receive information? How do responses to these questions differ when
we consider unique segments of our market (e.g. engineers vs. developers; millennials vs.
experienced professionals)?

7. /07
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
Answering these questions—and dozens of others—will help recruiters build long-term
relationships with their audiences rather than one-shot tactical relationships. By understanding
job candidates as members of an audience, recruiters will be able to develop content streams
(e.g. educational articles, eBooks and videos) to keep in touch with candidates beyond a single
application or job opening.

8. /08
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
The promise
(and pitfalls) of
personalization
This is also the year recruiters will learn audience development
tactics like market research, segmentation, targeting and
personalization—the Holy Grail of publishers everywhere.
First, let’s understand what personalization means. When marketers discuss personalization,
they are referring to content personalization—offering web visitors content or product
recommendations based on that individual’s prior viewing or purchasing history.
There are two types of personalization:
Segment-driven personalization: As an example, a T-shirt company can deduce,
based on viewing patterns, whether a visitor is male or female, and whether or not they are a
parent. The company makes product recommendations based on broad customer segments (or
what marketers call personas).

9. /09
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
One-to-one personalization: Used more often in consumer marketing, one-to-one
personalization offers customized recommendations based on a single individual’s viewing
patterns (ascertained through cookies or by sign-in data). If last month the customer spent most
of her time examining women’s shirts with cartoon designs, the next time she visits the website,
it will serve up examples similar to those she enjoyed last time.
To apply the personalization concept to recruiting:
• Sourcing tools offer very nuanced profiles of individual candidates or groups of candidates.
Ideally, a recruiter can use all the details within these profiles to create a customized
candidate experience. For example, if a Toronto-based statistician working in biotech visits
your website, he will encounter open positions well-suited to his background and location.
• If a UX designer opts-in to receive updates from you, she will get notices of open positions
and educational information that suit her particular profile.
• If your organization wants to host an event for developers in the London area, you’ll be able
to query your database to find out who should be invited, and which educational tracks you
should promote to different segments of your developer database.
By understanding
job candidates as
members of an
audience, recruiters
will be able to develop
content streams (e.g.
educational articles,
eBooks and videos)
to keep in touch with
candidates beyond a
single application or
job opening.

10. /10
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
Keep in mind, personalization doesn’t always have to be technology-driven. Consider this
example: Your company will need to hire 10 java programmers in your London office over the
next three years, beginning in six months (which means you have time to cultivate relationships).
Your sourcing solution has divined a group of 200 high-value java programmers in the London
metro area, and an additional 200 across England. How to begin? Will you send out a mass
email? Get on the phone and begin dialing? If you answered yes, for shame!
This is a ripe opportunity to personalize the recruiting experience for your 400 targets. Do
they use social media and where are they most active? Which social network groups do they
participate in? What subjects interest them most? Do they use Foursquare to check-in to local
pubs? Set up listening posts to study your target candidates. For example, use HootSuite
to build Twitter lists of cohort groups (e.g. java programmers at Dell) and listen for common
themes and activities.
With a more studied understanding of your target group, begin segmenting the list with an
eye toward personalization. For example, younger programmers may respond to different
messaging than more established professionals, or women may use different social channels
than men. Choose segments you feel will meaningfully segregate the different cohorts,
particularly in relation to what your cohorts find interesting online, and develop content streams
for each of these.

11. /11
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
What drives and inspires your high-value candidates? Do your competitors’ programmers
like to visit the Starbucks two blocks away from the office? Place an ad on the bus stop
outside to catch their attention. Do they share a common obsession with Family Guy?
Live-tweet an episode and engage them. The key is to approach them in a way that’s interesting
and personalized.
As your program becomes more sophisticated, you may invest in content personalization
solutions—such as those your colleagues in marketing likely already use. These are most
effective for companies that already publish educational content for job seekers (e.g. blog
posts, eBooks or videos) and will help create a personalized candidate “journey” through
your library of content. And unlike the previous example of hiring 10 java programmers, using
personalization technology will let you scale your recruiting outreach efforts to encompass many
disciplines and regions. Plus it will be sustainable over time, allowing you to maintain longer
term relationships.
The goal is to treat people less like job candidates for currently open positions, and more
like members of a lifelong professional community of talent. As long as you provide high-quality,
easy interactions—whether by sharing informative content, customized job openings
or other personalized experiences—you’ll be learning more and more about these members
of your talent network. Ideally, each interaction builds on the last, until you have such a depth of
information about each candidate that you’ll be able to create job matches much more
easily and quickly.

12. /12
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
Employees as an asset
Your employees are already connected to people you would
potentially like to recruit, and have the means to make an
introduction—and most recruiters have already used this method.
But more sophisticated recruiters are taking it a step further, asking employees to share
information about the company or share high-quality educational content.
Recruiters beware: You should only take this step if what you have to share with your audience
is truly of the highest quality, such that your employees will be proud to share it. So if you think
you’re ready, consider these four steps:
• Design easy-to-share content. While it seems a small point, unless the individual in
question works in HR, they aren’t paid (nor inspired) to help you recruit. Ensure your content-sharing
ask is automated and easy. Solutions like Circulate (circulate.it) allow you to send
a digest of content to employees for social sharing; with a simple drag-and-drop your
employees can share brand-published articles and job openings with their peer group.

13. /13
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION
• Consider mining (with permission) your employees’ networks. Tools like DataHug (a
Salesforce plugin) tie together your employees’ professional networks, letting you unearth
who within your organization may be connected to a high-priority lead. For example, you
may be looking for a UX designer and by coincidence Joe in customer service is connected
to someone on your shortlist.
• Be transparent. Establish immediately and unambiguously what you’re going to do with any
information or contacts your employees share. And never message anyone without explicit
permission. (Even better, always ask employees to initiate the conversation.)
• Think carefully about rewards. Whatever you do, don’t call it a referral program, which
makes it sound temporary and a bit like frequent flying. And second, never pay employees
to refer people in their networks. Paying finders fees simply invites complexity and
regulation. We find giving gratitude to employees is best designed as a series of “micro-rewards.”
Rackspace, a cloud-based hosting company known for its strong workplace
culture, hands out “Takes One to Know One” T-shirts to employees to who refer new talent,
and also raffles gadgets like iPads. All small but consistently positive signs of thanks for
sharing networks and content.

14. /14
social recruiting PERSONALIZATION:
actionable insights
Ask the
experts
If it’s true recruiters will
stop thinking in terms of
candidates and clients, and
instead start thinking about
audience, then how will
recruiters interact with this
vast network of talent in
the future?
Begin with research.
To engage professionals who
are not necessarily looking
for a job, recruiters must
understand what interests
professionals (defined by
segment or role), what
questions they may have,
and where they currently
seek out information. Which
social networks do they use,
and to what end? How do
job seekers prefer to receive
information? Answering
these questions—and
dozens of others—will
help recruiters map out an
engagement strategy.
Partner with marketing.
Marketers in your
organization have likely
been adapting the way
they reach customers in
the last five years, focusing
on educational content and
moving away from purely
promotional content.
They know what changes
recruiters will need to
make to engage potential
job candidates online.
Consult with marketing
and ask them to help you
define your audience
engagement strategy.
Build a content framework.
To engage professionals
over a long period of time,
recruiters will need an
ongoing stream of content
to share through social
networks. Begin to think
about what this library will
look like (e.g. educational
articles, eBooks and videos),
and the processes and team
members you’ll need to keep
it going. Members of the
marketing team can help you
build a strategy and train the
recruiting team in areas like
social media engagement
and measurement of impact.

15. social recruiting PERSONALIZATION /15
thE #tru story
I first discovered the Unconference concept when I led a track at #RecruitFest in Toronto in
1999. I was taken aback by the way discussion flowed and how different the format was to a
traditional conference. I led a track all day under a tree and learnt far more than I gave.
Two months later and back in the UK, we ran the first #truLondon at Canary Wharf in November
2009. Today, we’re running dozens of #tru events a year across Europe, North America, Africa
and the Asia-Pacific. Thousands of recruiters, HR leaders and providers come together in an
informal spirit of information sharing and networking.
#tru is based on the BarCamp principle, which means that everybody can be an active
participant instead of listening to speakers and watching presentations all day. The emphasis is
on communication and the free exchange of ideas and experiences where the participants fuel
the conversations.
bill boorman

16. social recruiting PERSONALIZATION /16
The role of the recruiter
The role of the recruiter is experiencing a fundamental change: It is no longer about being the
gatekeeper who waits for applications coming in, neither is it about being the broker who wants
to “sell” the job to as many people possible. To be a successful recruiter you need to focus on
relationship-building and management, while engaging your hiring managers to become part
of the relationship. Content matters, especially first-hand-content provided by experts!
In order to engage the hiring managers to invest in building relationships, companies have
to accept the strategic impact of talent and need to align their recruiting structure. How
many “Chief Talent Officers” do you know? “Talent” has not made it to the board yet, but
almost certainly will do in the future. Building talent communities will become the key success
factor for companies. We will no longer speak of “candidates” instead referring to “audience”
and “communities”.
To stay on top of this, you need to be equipped with the relevant tools and technology. But
besides the technology driven trends, there’s still one thing that is key to success:
Understand the talent you’re targeting and speak in the same language, while communicating
and offering content which is both relevant and authentic.
And don’t forget, there’s one thing which will make the difference: the personal touch!
Klaus Toepfer
Klaus Toepfer,
Director Talent Sourcing EMEA,
access KellyOCG
Klaus leads the KellyOCG
Talent Sourcing Practice,
which designs and delivers
project-related support of
bespoke recruiting and
employer branding activities to
attract, hire and retain academic
talent through a toolset of
innovative products, services
and solutions. He is based in
Cologne, Germany. Klaus has
been working for more than
15 years in the employer
branding and HR-marketing
business. Before joining
KellyOCG, he led the graduate
recruitment for Germany,
Switzerland and Austria at
Booz Company. Klaus holds
a degree in psychology and
completed the Young Managers
Program at INSEAD.

17. For more thought leadership go to talentproject.com
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About Kelly Services®
Kelly Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: KELYA, KELYB) is a leader in providing workforce solutions. Kelly® offers a
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temporary-to-hire, and direct-hire basis. Serving clients around the globe, Kelly provided employment to
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TRU HEAT
INDEX e Tru Files
HIRE WORK, NOT WORKERS
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TRU HEAT
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e Tru Files
ASSESSMENTS
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4.0
TRU HEAT
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e Tru Files
SOURCING TECHNOLOGY
6 4.0
TRU HEAT
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e Tru Files
GAMIFICATION
9 3.5
TRU HEAT
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e Tru Files
VIDEO INTERVIEWING
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3.5
TRU HEAT
INDEX e Tru Files
NEW ROLE OF THE RECRUITER
7 TRU HEAT
INDEX
e Tru Files
SOCIAL RECRUITING PERSONALIZATION
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TRU HEAT
INDEX