I keep saying that the only purpose of recruiting blogs is hiring more people. If blogs don't make our jobs easier, we should save them for offhours. The
question of whether a recruiter should blog boils down to a few simple
facts.
1) Will it help hire more people than other activities?
2) Will it help hire better people than other activities?
Everything else is marshmallow fluff. My contention is that the
only way for us to determine if blogging is an effective recruiting
tool is for recruiters to use blogs and report on the results. For the
purposes of these examples, we're going to make the assumption that the
authors of these example blogs are competent bloggers who update
regularly, write well, and join online communities. That's a big
assumption, but here are two specific ways a recruiter can use blogs to
improve the number and the quality of the people the hire.
Blog Example # 1: Hyperion Recruiter.
Search Google for "hyperion essbase st louis"
The results should bring up a series of posts I made when I was
looking for Hyperion Essbase programmers. To this day, Hyperion
Essbase searches from MSN and Google routinely lead people to my site
who submit their resume for placement.
Blog Example #2: Desktop Java Recruiter.
Do a search of "Swing interview questions" on Google.
While looking for a swing developer, I posted a list of Swing
Interview Questions. That one post is my highest traffic builder,
bringing 10 people a day from around the world looking for a list of
swing interview questions.
Analysis:
What kind of people use search engines to find
jobs? Primarily the people most difficult to find - travelling
consultants who are constantly on the lookout for new long-term
positions. These consultants, ERP experts (SAP, Peoplesoft Financials,
Oracle Express, Siebel), financial experts in Hyperion, EDI experts in
Streamserve and other programs, usability architects, and hundreds of
other specialites outside of the technical world are looking for new
positions.
They are also looking for advice on how to do their job better. A
recruiter who hosted a blog on the technical aspects of hard-to-find
technologies for their firm is going to better locate hard-to-find
people with a blog that pulls candidates than phone calls that push
them.
Good recruiters for years have haunted forums, lurking for top
talent. Doesn't it make sense to bring that talent directly to your
website?