The year is 2012. We had Taleo Enterprise with all of its intricacies, applicant source data picked from a mile long drop down, and the term “social media recruiting” was new to our vocabulary.
As a contract sourcer, no one expected me to do anything but source. We were packed into a conference “war room” for months with insane deadlines. I had a large req load, crazy deadlines, and a second sourcer who spent more time on smoke breaks than at his desk. No sane person would ask for more work. What can I say, I like wearing hats. I’ve always loved pushing the envelope, and in no time we had magically aged accounts with all kinds of auto follow kung-fu.
I had hacked together Auto-feeding Twitter our jobs with geo-location data and the next question from my boss was how to scale my knowledge so anyone on the team could do it. Many did not have a Twitter account or didn’t know how to use it. Requests to post MY HOT JOB on social media came directly to me. I needed to create a fair way that everyone could put their job into a cue to be posted on a schedule mixed in with real content. As usual, zero budget was allotted, along with a kind reminder that if anything went south, I was accountable.
I was seated in our corporate headquarters with the financial analysts while waiting for the new headquarters location down the street to be ready. I observed these finance folks with their cool tools and SQL powered brains. I became good friends with a few of them, learning all I could. They inspired me to create this Excel sheet to power a team of free social media authors.
Basic instructions:
- Recruiter adds req # (Column C)
- Pick source from dropdown (D)
- Type in message (H)
- Crude character count (I)
- Click link in column (J)
- Language option hidden (K)
This link opens in Outlook an email that is sent to buffer adding the message to our social accounts in a drip feed fashion (first come first serve). The subject is the tweet. Link pre-populates in the application.
No one needs to know how it works; It just that it works. See the example:
In case someone acts reckless, I have the email logs and can reset the secret email address anytime. I built a social content Army for our global multi-brand recruiting function for $0 in my spare time.
Four years later and the birth of employment branding has laid waste to the evils of “social recruiting.” Most don’t post jobs blindly on Twitter, and anyone who comes in contact without some public online presence is a dinosaur.
I don’t recommend using this tool to post jobs. Instead, think about the ways off the shelf tech can be stacked to make something awesome. Most ATS systems have similar URL structures that can be reverse engineered. Use what you know, bounce ideas off of trusted people, and research what you don’t know already for the sake of learning.
My brother from another mother Arron Daniels reminded me about this mothballed project today when he asked how properly code link source in Taleo. He loves Excel, and many great sourcers do too.