Judging by their efforts, the most pro-active practitioners of social media outreach in the government are turning enthusiastically to the mobile web, Facebook, and other Gov 2.0 modes as they strive to expand their respective agencies’ prestige and audience reach.

For those of us who are focused on recruitment, it’s a little surprising that most of these initiatives don’t begin with the intent of attracting new hires. Still, these leading agencies are building their brands and that, done well, results directly in more informed and enthusiastic recruits.

Here are three examples of federal organizations that are demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of the power of social media, although each emphasizes a different aspect of the challenge:

• the U.S. Army’s IPhone application,
• the White House’s use of video on its Facebook page, and
• the EPA ‘s development of guidelines for its employees’ use of social media.

The Army has released an IPhone app that allows access to a vast store of materials, including content from the Army’s Facebook and Flickr pages, as well as all the video products on its Web site. Released in mid-December, the app achieved more than 20,000 downloads in its first month alone, soaring to a Top-25 ranking for free news sources at the iTunes App store. Take note of its Find a Recruiter facility if you need evidence of the app’s more direct contribution to recruiting. You can find out how to download the app at www.army.mil/mobile/.

Best Practies case number two is the White House, which recently posted a seven-minute video on its Facebook page. The video is a professionally produced mini-documentary about the White House advance team’s trip to an Ohio town to prep for a presidential visit. From a branding standpoint, this slice-of-life coverage, complete with jiggly hand-held camera work, reinforces the authenticity and appeal of everyday activities by the team. Other agencies—particularly those with a more urgent mission to recruit employees actively—can find a polished model here. This is exposure to on-the-job reality at its best, an indispensible tool for reinforcing the appeal of an agency to the community of potential recruits, which is almost always more expansive than agency human capital planners imagine.

My last case is not flashy in any way, but underscores an emerging need in federal social media use: how to ensure that overenthusiastic employees don’t go overboard with the tools at their disposal. EPA’s guidelines are judicious and prescient. Among agencies that encourage informed employee/brand ambassador use of social media, this is a first. In the hope that other agencies will emulate it, I’m reprinting EPA’s handy flowchart below.

We all know how powerful word-of-mouth and the opinions & insights of friends, family and colleagues can be in the world of marketing.  And an overwhelming majority of us would agree that social media has made it far easier for influence – both positive and negative – to reach more ears and eyeballs than ever before. 

A recent AdvertisingAge article begins to explore the impact the powerful influence of social commentary coupled with the evolving personalization of search results will have – leading to the imminent evolution of ‘friendsourcing’.  No longer can companies go on believing (and many still do) that negative commentary from sources unknown might be disregarded or dismissed because the user doesn’t have a connection to the author of that particular comment or post.  

Working with HR clients for many years (and having been one myself) I am amazed at how little attention has been paid to the ability of candidates to share their negative experiences about a company’s sourcing and hiring practices with others.  Even the recent explosion of social media tools giving high visibility to often negative commentary and years of Gerry Crispin & Mark Mehler’s CareerXroads® job seeker experience research  (among others) has not motivated staffing organizations to be more concerned about what is being said about them online. 

Now, the very real possibility of search results including the comments and opinions of those you know and trust – not random strangers – is upon us.  Just think about the impact this can have on the sourcing ROI of hard-to-fill or high turnover hiring areas.  Good recruiters & sourcers work very hard to penetrate and gain the trust of tight knit groups of hard to find talent such as mechanical engineers, critical care nurses or software developers – looking not only for interested candidates but those willing to refer their qualified and equally in-demand friends and colleagues.  Often – this courting process takes weeks, months, even years – giving those targets ample time to share their experiences with their own networks.  Imagine the advantage gained to an organization whose sourcing and hiring practices are reflected positively and spontaneously within peer groups who actually know their fellow members. Now imagine the magnified impact of that same network receiving the negative commentary. The ROI, opportunity cost and time-to-fill improvements you’ve worked so hard for will most surely take a heavy hit – even if temporarily.

Any good social media pundit will tell you that conversations positive and negative are happening about you already – and now is the time to get involved and join in.   The time for “baby-steps” and “dipping a toe” has passed.  If your staffing organization has not figured out how social media impacts your sourcing strategy and results– your ship is sailing without a captain at the wheel.

I truly believe the impending, if not upon us, collision of search and social will have an impact far greater than the sum of its parts.  Reminds me of that old Reese’s ® Peanut Butter Cup commercial: “You got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” But together – it became something magical. And the rest is history.



In October I commented on government agencies’ growing use of Facebook and Twitter. My focus then, based on a pair of September articles in Federal Computing Week, was on these social media tools as aids to recruitment. I’ve since taken a closer look at this trend.

The takeaway from my informal scan of federal social media: this trend is growing like a swath of mushrooms after a spring rain. I counted more than thirty major agencies or departments with Facebook pages and innumerable others on Twitter (contact me for a full list, if you’re interested).

None of the government Facebook pages that I found appears to be mounted with much conscious attention to recruiting. Most are devoted to agency programs and activities, and most are (first) linked from their sponsor’s home page, rather than their Careers sections.

What does this tell us? I’d venture that in most of these instances the creative impetus to enter the social media realm originated with agency public affairs professionals rather than HR staff. This doesn’t diminish their effectiveness as collateral recruiting tools. After all, they do reinforce their sponsoring agencies’ brands, and that’s a bonus for recruiting…although a bit more focus on the agency culture--and its employees—would be nice. The same goes for Twitter.

All this is good news for human capital professionals and recruiters, even if your agency’s Facebook and Twitter outreach is administered by your public affairs department. In the first place, an agency social media presence is a powerful branding “hook” for engaging potential recruits. Just because HR doesn’t own your agency’s social media resources doesn’t disqualify you from at least promoting it in your recruiting outreach, both online and off.

What’s more, these tools can provide a recruiting engagement platform that’s accessible to HR at virtually no cost other than the exercise of your team’s intra-agency persuasive powers. If you can sell the team that administers these resources on letting HR contribute content, that’s a big win indeed for your recruiting program.

For several years now, I have been pontificating on the critical importance of mobile devices in terms of the next generation of recruitment. Mobile devices are ubiquitous and offer organizations the opportunity to - quite literally - put their messages in the palms of their candidates' hands. Mobile phones are personal - we don't share them with others. They are always on - unless we are on airplanes and even that is starting to change. They are almost always within arms' reach - and if they are not some of us begin to panic.

Mobile phones are powerful tools for the communication of employer brand messages and we are seeing that mobile phones are increasingly social. In July of 2008 6.4 million Americans used social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) on their mobiles. In July 2009, that number had nearly tripled to 18.3 million.  

Today, companies MUST develop a mobile strategy for talent attraction and engagement. Leveraging mobile search, mobile video, and mobile career sites along with social media is the next evolution in the employment communications world. 

I have often tried to put the impact of mobile in perspective and I found that Newsweek did a very nice job describing the mobile evolution in a video from their 'Sum Total' series. Check it out below.

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more? Reach out to me with a comment here and join the conversation.

SZE

Given the government’s reputation in some quarters as a stodgy, slow-to-adopt monolith in matters of online communication, some might expect Web 2.0 social media tools, spreading so infectiously in the private sector, to have little appeal among the feds (at least during this decade).

Federal Computer Week gives the lie to this cliché in two articles published earlier last month. FCW ranks the federal agencies most successful in using Twitter and Facebook, respectively, to engage the public. The reach and social media savvy of these early adopters might surprise you.

The agencies on either or both lists are not—primarily—reaching out with a human capital and recruiting agenda top-of-mind.  Even so, if you’re inclined to regard these social media programs merely as plain old information dissemination, you’re understating their influence on their audiences. That’s like calling a popular music concert just an exercise in listening enjoyment. Yes, the description may be accurate at its core, but—especially if it’s a rock, R&B, or hip-hop event—it doesn’t quite capture the full experience of being in the auditorium.

For many in these agencies’ social media audiences, that “experience” is charged with high value, and often as much as the information content itself. The truly committed among them gain what brand adherents thrive on—the felt sense that they are insiders and sharers. To me this seems like a pretty cost-effective way to tap the collective enthusiasm and energy of appreciative individuals, in effect, kick starting the social motor of brand contagion. In their efforts to cultivate attentive communities for the agency and the medium—not merely to distribute information—these leading agencies are showing that they “get” social marketing and Web 2.0.

Will the sponsoring agencies also reap recruiting benefits from these Gov 2.0 initiatives? Do you really need me to state this obvious benefit outright? As you build a compelling brand and a community of admirers, you will attract more and more qualified and enthusiastic individuals to your workforce. It's as simple as that.

Text in graphic on right:

Government Twitter leaders (FCW, September 10) 

• The White House: 1,071,927 followers
• CDC Emergency: 808,979 folowers
• NASA: 125.901 followers
• U.S. Army: 14,263 followers
• Smithsonian: 12711 followers

Government Facebook leaders (FCW, September 14)

• The White House: 327,592 fans
• Marine Corps: 83,144 fans
• U.S. Army: 49,416 fans
• CDC: 21,257 fans
• State Department: 16,386 fans

Lets keep the "doomed" part short : my answer would be iPhone (and it's siblings).

This is why : ban it from the company’s internet access makes no sense, as a growing number of your people will reach facebook anyway from their phones.

You waste just as much time on a phone than on a computer.

Ok, now, why is banning facebook bad decision?

Most of the companies I meet with want to know what they could or should do using social media and Facebook in particular.

Well, of course you want to hear more about the website which has about 300.000.000 members (by the way, the 5 biggest Facebook countries are #1 USA - 81M, #2 UK 20M, #3 Turkey 14M, #4 Canada 13M, #5 France - 12M) 

According to Universum, 88% of French master degree students (and equivalent) are on Facebook so whether you like FB and the hype around it, or not, you have to consider it for its advertising potential and interaction.

Chances are, no single website will gather a larger portion of your audience when it comes to millennials.

Now you just have to figure out how you can put Facebook to good use within your HR marketing strategy ... and that's when it gets complex.

According to an (already old) survey, 50% of US companies seem to ban Facebook from the office.

Are those companies willing to ‘look cool’ although they're not?

Of course, there's the fear those highly qualified employees, selected to shape the future of multi million dollars companies, might not realise the money they receive from their employer is not meant to fund their time on FB ...

I mean ... really?

A client of mine formulated that very sensible theory : "I think when the first phones in the office came, management would not allow just anyone to have one because those people would be so overwhelmed with being able to give phone calls to people that they would do it all the time; its probably the same for social networking, it needs time to settle as something people will know how to reasonably use" (Vincent, if you read me, thanks).

There are risks you should consider if your company is one of those 50% though ...

1st, assuming you chose to use social networks as part of your HR marketing (which you definitely should by the way), you risk disappointing new hires by selling them what you're not (how come social networking is cool enough for the company to use as part of it's attraction strategy but not enough for them to use as employees?).

2nd, you'll end up loosing some of your employees. This Accenture survey (USA, Nov 08) called "New generation workers want technology their way" is a MUST read.

I'll just quote their conclusion :

“The message from Millennials is clear:  to lure them into the workplace, prospective employers must provide state-of-the-art technologies,” said Gary Curtis, managing director of Accenture Technology Consulting.  “And if their employers don’t support their preferred technologies, Millennials will acquire and use them anyway. In order to acquire and retain the best talent, organizations must understand the technologies that the new workforce expects and then find a way to support their employees without compromising enterprise security.”
 

If that's not enough, I'll quote another survey (and, by the way, I just love quoting surveys) that found out that "39% would consider quitting work if social networking was given the chop."

With the rise of the Blackberry powered "Nights & week ends working availability", workers have long learnt that they had to keep room for work within their personal time, now they want to right to slice some personal into their work time : "I'll stay in the office until 8PM and then go to my friends place for dinner afterwards assuming I had the chance to plan it on Facebook during the day (20 minutes?) ; otherwise, I'll just leave at 6 and plan the exact same dinner ..."

So, i beg you "Don't ban Facebook at work" (and yes, that’s another survey!)

PS : Assuming you work for one of those companies, you obviously have tried replacing "http://" by "https://" at the beginning of the URLs when trying to access Facebook? (works more often than not).

A recently released report published by Ipsos Reid Canada on Twitter showed that only 26% of Canadians who are online are aware of Twitter (or roughly 6 million Canadians). What’s even more interesting is that only 6% of those, or 360,000, are actually using Twitter. While this number is small, it is important to note that Twitter is a recent Web 2.0 media, and is working through the latter part of the early adopter stage of its lifecycle.

Twitter awareness is highest between the ages of 18-34, making it a prime medium for connecting with millennials and Generation Y. Through communication, open dialogue, and HR-related conversations, Twitter can be a prime medium which you can use to communicate with a notoriously difficult-to-reach community. The study outlines that Twitter “can be used to create brand interest, inform customers…and lastly, to create a community.” Through building a community and dialogue around your brand’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) your organization can effectively target early adopters and your future brand ambassadors.

While this data may tell you that Twitter is not a media for the masses it is key to point out that Twitter is merely one piece in your overall social media strategy. Simply posting jobs to a Twitter account is not a method for pushing open positions, but rather a vehicle for communicating with potential employees. TMP works with many of our clients to develop an overarching social media strategy that incorporates Blogs, Videos, Twitter, Facebook, and overall education on social media strategies to allow you and your teams to better understand the media which you can turn to into recruitment channels.

Twitter use hits a sweet spot with Canadian digitally-savvy internet users, as we begin to define how we use the service for recruitment, marketing, and fundraising events like HOHOTO.

I have been traveling the world for the past four years evangelizing about the shift in candidates' behaviors and the social media revolution on behalf of the agency. Much of what I have shared with audiences from New York and London to Vancouver and Minneapolis is captured nicely in this short YouTube video by Erik Qualman of Socialnomics fame.

The video does a nice job of putting into perspective the media revolution we are currently experiencing. As always, I am happy to discuss these issues, and more, with any reader.

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more? Reach out to me with a comment here and join the conversation.

SZE

As YouTube and Facebook remind us daily, cell phone and other spur-of-the-moment video has become a powerful one-to-many peer communication tool worldwide, particularly among Gen-Y populations. If you harbor any interest in recruiting members of this segment for your agency, can you convincingly deny that online video deserves an important place in your web toolset?

We’re all familiar with the swarm of nagging little reasons why an agency might shy away from web video, including rights questions, the perceived difficulty of making video clips 508-compliant, and just general institutional conservatism. But these perceived speed-bumps might just crumble as you consider—and argue for—digital video’s proven and widespread appeal to an essential recruiting demographic for your agency.

For the moment, let’s take employee-contributed clips off the table. I’ll grant you that government may not quite be ready for that, although several private sector companies—like Accenture and Deloitte—have carried this off quite successfully. Even so, this leaves lots of room for video shot simply and directly by the agency itself—stationary camera, no elaborate lighting, no A-B roll editing.

New tools mean new horizons for recruiting engagement.

Digital camcorders and desktop editing software have changed the video game entirely for the federal recruiter. Short video segments are simple and inexpensive to shoot and edit. They’re also remarkably easy to post online (even with 508-mandated subtitles). A good place to start? Short videos of individual employees describing their jobs and what it means to work at your agency. This is pure peer-to-peer engagement, personal and authentic and it’s ideally framed to appeal to the candidates you most want to reach.

USPTO Employee Profiles

 A few public sector organizations are already taking the lead in producing these employee vignettes or "realistic job profiles," as some have called them. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is one. I’m linking to their employee profiles here. You might also check out the short videos at Washington’s Metropolitan Police jobs site. Another example—this one repurposed for the web from a more elaborate video training piece—is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The TSA piece illustrates yet another advantage of digital video. Baseline footage can be easily be edited and recombined for all sorts of online uses, from custo m email and mobile engagement to social media placement.

As you can see, nobody is aspiring for spectacular cinematic effects in these productions. In fact, a glitzy approach would likely be counterproductive. Online video for recruiting has more to gain from simplicity and here-and-now authenticity. It speaks in a real-world accent that many of your most promising candidates find much more convincing than the written word. 

As we are all more than aware, there is great upheaval taking place in Iran. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools (collectively the "new" new media) have provided a conduit for real-time news and information that organizations like CNN (the old media - even when considering CNN.com) have not been able to match. The twitterverse has been filled with tweets about the Iranian situation and CNN's coverage thereof followed by the hashtag "#FAIL" since CNN has not kept pace with the story.

Clay Shirky delivered a TED Talk at the U.S. State Department this month (June 2009) about the impact of social media on the dissemination of information. He discusses how "Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics."This video showcases how these tools are fundamentally changing the way we communicate as a society. It is absolutely worth watching.

As you watch Clay discuss the impact of these tools on the global stage, think about these open questions on a more local HR level: How do we share information about employers? How do we engage with employer brands? How do we leverage these tools not only for attraction, but also for retention? How do we identify and empower our internal and external brand evangelists?

In NO WAY do I wish to diminish the severity of the events in Iran. The questions I raise above are about the impact of social media and the fundamental shift in the way we communicate on every level.

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more? Reach out to me with a comment here and join the conversation.

SZE