Interview with Hervé Peitrequin, Digital Marketing & Social Media Expert and Track Leader at #TruZurich on 27 March 2014.

I must admit, I don’t remember exactly when I first met Hervé in person. But I definitely remember how we were once sitting outside of the Grand Duke Pub in Geneva and talking about Social Media (of course!), online recruiting, mobile, ads, apps, and lots of other stuff during one of the HR TweetUps.

Hervé is also one of the few Swiss people I know who couldn’t care less about the Rösti Curtain. He seems equally comfortable in the Deutschschweiz and in the Suisse Romande, and will already be in the middle of a discussion in English, French or German while other people are still explaining that they “can’t” speak French or German because they had a terrible language teacher

But I actually wanted to publish an interview with Hervé, not just some random thoughts about somebody I like a lot…

Interview with Hervé Peitrequin

Hervé, you’re a marketing professional. So what do you do, in words that an HR professional like myself can understand?

Hervé Peitrequin: I work at PubliGroupe which is a leading provider of marketing and media sales services in Switzerland and Europe. I am responsible for everything related to digital marketing, being websites, advertizing campaigns or social media.

In easy words: I take care of the image of the company on the web.
Easier to understand?

Yes, I think so. Otherwise I’ll ask you again at #TruZurich on 27 March 2014. And talking about our event, somebody suggested on Twitter that you lead a track at #TruZurich with Michel Ganouchi. You didn’t know each other, but accepted right away. Isn’t this a bit weird?

Hervé Peitrequin: Michel is famous, so I accepted right away!

No just kidding, I knew Michel from reputation as he was CEO of Monster Switzerland, so I thought this guy should have something to say about the subject.

You know, somehow I think that you and Michel are the perfect match for the Marketing/HR track. When I interviewed Michel for my RekrutierungsNews.ch blog in German, he also had a “just kidding” moment. But lets talk quickly about your #TruZurich track:
What is the title of your track and what do you expect from the discussion?

Hervé Peitrequin: The title of our track is “What HR can learn from Marketing. And vice versa”.

HR more than any other department are representing their company on the web. In order to attract and retain the best candidates, they have to master marketing techniques. But this is not their core competence.

Coming from marketing, I’m looking forward to exchanging some ideas around what marketing can bring to HR but also from what, as a marketer, I can learn from HR.

About Hervé Peitrequin

Hervé has been working in online marketing for over 10 years for international companies like L’Oreal, Adecco and now PubliGroupe. He’s always focusing on the customer experience but also on increasing and measuring the success of his activities (e.g. through online ads, analytics and SEO).

Some of the places, where you can find Hervé online:

• LinkedIn profile
• Hervé Peitrequin on Twitter
• Hervé’s blog Human+, he doesn’t post often, but usually shares things that you haven’t already seen dozens of times online

Thank you Hervé for this interesting interview and I’m looking forward to seeing you on Thursday!

A QR code on a construction site in Zurich. A minisite with engaging information. And interesting ideas for recruiters.

When I walk home from work I often pass the back of the Werd building in Zurich. And there’s this billboard featuring companies involved in a construction project. But the thing that got my attention is the QR code.

Until now I didn’t really pay attention to it. I assumed that it was one more failed attempt at trying to be cool by using a QR code. I mean, who would scan a QR code that’s 4 meters (approximately 13 feet) up in the air? And would it even work?

Live Testing

Today I simply couldn’t resist anymore. So I took a picture of the billboard from across the road. Yes, I may be (or most certainly am) a QR Geek, but I don’t want to get run over by a car… So here’s the picture:

Then I crossed the road and took another closer (and careful) picture:

I admit that I was surprised, but the QR reader on my Android phone was actually able to read the code and here’s the URL:

What’s really cool, is that the website I accessed was fully mobile-friendly. Here’s the first screen I saw. Okay, the “Geschaeftshaus Morgartenstrasse” was a bit cut off, but that’s a detail:

The first part was a quick history of the building and what they’re intending to do with it. Then they added information about who is in charge of the construction project, who will use it once it’s finished, the budget (8.3 Mio CHF) and how long it will take (until June 2014).

Amongst other things, they show a picture of what the building looked like in the 70s and a mock-up of the offices that will soon be available for rent.

At the bottom of the page they encourage the visitors to share the page with their friends and online contacts through Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Email.

Why Recruiters Should Be Jealous

Nobody cares about construction works. Well, at least until they have to use the back entrance in order to access their office or they sit at their desk and it sounds (and feels) like somebody’s trying to bring down the whole building with a drill (trust me, I knooohoow whaaat it feee-heels liiike…).

But the people working for the City of Zurich managed to make this interesting. If somebody bothers to scan the QR code, they will

• get information about what’s going on
• learn about the history of the building
• see what it will look like once it’s done
• be encouraged to share the site with their friends and contacts

Of course, what I totally love is that the website is mobile friendly (QR codes are usually scanned with mobile devices, after all) and they added a call-to-action to share the link on social media.

Now isn’t this what many recruiters are dreaming about?

But It’s Not About Recruiting?!?

No, this has nothing to do with recruiting. Although, they could have added a link to open positions…

But…

• you could post a billboard in front of your office with a QR code, maybe even add a picture of the QR code to Foursquare
• and then you could create a mobile-friendly page telling the story of your company
• and feature some of your co-workers, what they do all day, why they like working for your company and what they expect from their future colleagues
• mention your open positions in a way that links to the story of your company and the presentation of your colleagues
• add “share” links to social networks
• and encourage people to apply, ideally without an online form that takes 30 minutes to complete and has mandatory fields asking for unnecessary information

Now if some state employees could do this for an old and a bit boring building, how hard could it be for a cool company?

Cool stuff I found online about direct sourcing: How to do it in France, legal restrictions in Germany, some stuff in English… and the IKEA sex table.

It’s been a year since my first, last and (so far) only Shiny Web Stuff article. Here comes part 2: The International Legal Edition.

Direct Sourcing The French Way

Most online resources about direct sourcing (formerly known as “headhunting” and sometimes even called “poaching”) are available in English.

Laurent Brouat (@LaurentBrouat) published a great summary in French on how to source on LinkedIn: Comment recruter et sourcer sur LinkedIn. You will learn about:

• Boolean basics
• keywords: don’t forget synonyms, different languages and also typos (just search for “manger” on LinkedIn…)
• concrete examples of searche strings
• how to find hidden profiles

Laurent is one of the organizers of RMSconf which will take place for the 3rd time on 15 October 2013 in Paris. And Michel (or Mitch) from CERN (@MitchSGB) will also be presenting. If you speak (or just understand) French: don’t miss it!
I could attend the first two events and they were great!

And if you don’t speak the language of love, I recommend these blogs in English:

• Boolean Black Belt by Glen Cathey
• SocialTalent by Johnny Campbell and his awesomely talented team

Sourcing In Germany: You Might Get Sued

Nina Diercks published part 1 of a new series about Active Sourcing and Talent Relationship Management in Germany on her blog “Social Media Recht Blog”.

While some people claim that the Swiss are too careless when it comes to labor law and data protection, I think that the Germans tend to go over the top. Just ask Google and Facebook, their legal advisors must be making a fortune!

But nonetheless, I really like Nina’s article. If you understand German, you really should read her post. Otherwise here are the main points:

• like in most countries, most German companies have a hard time filling some positions
• Employer Branding sounds good, but sometimes it’s still not enough in order to “bait” potential future employees
• Direct Sourcing looks like a good solution. And if it doesn’t work immediately, staying in touch might be an option

What about Data Protection? Worst case potential candidates might sue you for damages. But why should they? After all, it’s cool if somebody contacts you. Who doesn’t want to feel in demand? But if you get spammed several dozens of times per week by wannabe direct sourcers, this can get really, REALLY annoying.

Or a rival company could sue you for disloyal competition if you “poach” one of their employees (here’s the ugly word again). And finally, what about the damage to a company’s reputation if the media starts talking about your organization in relation to the P-word?

I love this article because it starts with understanding the needs of recruiters/sourcers, adopts the usual careful approach of a lawyer with some warnings, explains the legal situation and options in a way that even I could understand (at least I think so…) and then makes you want to read part 2

And now for some great stuff in English:

Social Media Etiqutte? Try Real Life!

I don’t like it when “online” is mentioned as opposed to the so-called “real-life”. I think my bubble from CERN’s #CRSS2013 says it all

But Maebellyne Ventura’s blog post “Everything I need to know about social media etiquette I learned from…real life!” is excellent. I especially love her examples. Am I the only one who sometimes behaves like a real jerk online and would never – EVER! – behave like this when meeting people in person?

Good read, don’t miss it!

Pinterest For Recruiting

Raminta Kaleinikaite (check her out on LinkedIn), one of the great people working at Joberate, published an excellent Prezi presentation about Pinterest’s potential for recruitment.

And yes, once again I feel the need to add the usual disclaimer that I tend to qualify many things as cool, awesome, fantastic, excellent, etc. But would I write about things that I’m not truly passionate about? I’ll let you be the judge of it

I’ll link to the prezi in a minute, but in order to close this article’s circle about international (and non-English) stuff, Christoph Athanas (@CAthanas) wrote about and even highly recommended Raminta’s presentation on his blog MetaHR.de.

And linking back (literally, not as in “a href”) to the virtual vs real-life topic and my previously mentioned CERN bubble, I informed Raminta on Twitter about Christoph’s article.

I thought this was really cool, because after being “virtually” in touch with Christoph for some time, I finally met him at last year’s #SMRC in Zurich and I also had the chance to meet Raminta “IRL” at #TruLondon in March.

And here’s the prezi:

Dirty IKEA Furniture

And now for the big finish of this edition of Shiny Web Stuff: IKEA’s table sex!

It’s actually quite simple:

A Swiss guy called Kevin Kyburz  (Stephen Colbert would probably say: “If that’s his real name”) posted an innocent (well, sort of…) tweet to the IKEA Switzerland Twitter account. Okay, he admits that he might have been a bit intoxicated when he came up with the tweet and, maybe even worse, had been browsing the IKEA website beforehand.

So before we get to the really juicy stuff (we’re almost there), imagine how the Marketing and/or Legal department at your company might react to this…

The tweet that started it all said:

I just saw that the IKEA desk can only sustain 50 kg, where should the other 20 kg go while humping?

Okay, I admit that I don’t really know how to translate “voegeln”, but “humping” sounded a bit less dirty than “shagging”. The original tweet in German said:

Ich habe grade gesehen das der IKEA Schreibtisch nur 50 kg tragen kann, wo sollen die anderen ca. 20 kg beim Vögeln hin?

The really cool thing is that IKEA (@IKEA_CH) didn’t only reply, but they totally played along!

They replied by saying that they didn’t know Kevin’s partner, but that they could provide tables supporting up to 80 kg. Of course, Kevin checked the IKEA website, complained about the price for such a table, then IKEA argued that such a table provided workspaces for up to four people, then they got into a discussion about multiple girlfriends, the need for additional bedroom furniture in order to accommodate them all, a little misunderstanding, a request for a quote (implied: with discount). And so on…

Here is Kevin’s blog post about the IKEA 50/80 kg table incident. including screenshots of the exchange on Twitter.

That’s it for the 2nd installment of my Shiny Web Stuff Series.

On 22 February 2013 the fabulous people of the CERN Recruiting Team organized the 2nd CRSS (CERN Recruitment & Sourcing Seminar). Here are some links to articles, pictures and videos about the #CRSS2013.

The first CRSS took place in 2011 and I was fortunate enough to get one of the few available invitations.

One of the many things that impressed me was that James Purvis and his recruitment team really lived up to the CERN credo of sharing information openly: after the event every presentation was made available publicly.

This year wasn’t different and here are the videos of all presentations. Click on “Talk Details” for the slides (pdf or PowerPoint).

As far as I know there were only 2 blog posts about the event (this might be the 3rd one):

• Jon Ingham (who was also the MC): CRSS2013 – Recruitment and Sourcing from CERN
• Andy Hill from Broadbean: A Short History Of The Recruitment Universe

The bubble comments were also fun. The idea was to write down a statement about what we had learned. The pictures are available in an album on the CERN Jobs Facebook page.

I especially like the one from my friend Antoine Lhosmot (@AntoineLhosmot) mentioning “matching”, which I believe will be one of the big recruitment challenges of the future. And at the same time he managed to elegantly quote one of my favorite movies.

And of course I also like my own bubble, because it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about quite a lot recently. And yes, I have a beard now

After the #CRSS2013 Michel (@MitchSGB) created a video summary of the event. And I must say, this video is… please pardon my French… well, it’s da shit! Great info, great people, and great quality.

During the event I was also very impressed by the online presence of the CERN team, especially on Twitter.

There’s of course the @CERN_Jobs Twitter account managed by the Jedi Master of CERN Recruitment. But James’ Padawan’s also tweeted during the day, sharing thoughts and interesting links. I’m rather confident that I managed to add all (most) of them to my “Swiss HR on Twitter” list.

A couple of days ago (roughly 1 month after the event) I googled #CRSS2013 on my phone and here’s what I found:

Jon and Sara posted on G+.

Not familiar with this supposedly extremely successful social network? You know, it’s the one that reports hundreds of millions of users, but the only people you know that are using it are the IT geeks in your family. Sounds familiar?

Then I checked Instagram. And realized that only one person had posted 2 pictures under the #CRSS2013 hashtag. You know, a weird guy from Geneva…

Last minute announcement:

The CERN Recruitment Team is trying to annoy me. They mentioned the hashtag #CERNJobsEnigma on Twitter. But they refuse to tell me what it’s really about.

Apparently all we be revealed on Monday, 1 April 2013. Or at least they promised to release some hints.

And here’s the super secret pic for #CERNjobsEnigma:

See you on Twitter?

Thanks to jobs.ch I finally had the opportunity to speak about and share my passion for social recruiting in public. Here’s how it went on 8 November 2012 in Coppet, Switzerland.

How did my first public presentation about social recruiting go? The answer is actually quite simple: It was a fantastic experience. At least for me

Jobs.ch invited 100 of their clients, rented the beautiful cellar of the castle in Coppet and organized the event perfectly including beautiful Moleskines and a delicious wine tasting.

The main attraction of the event was Eva Zils presenting the results of her online recruiting study. She has been doing this study for several years in Germany, but this time she also included data from Switzerland.

Here’s what Eva had to say about the event on her blog (in German).

On a personal note, this was the first time that I had the chance to meet Eva Zils in person. We had several exchanges on blog comments, Twitter, became Facebook friends and also had a Skype conversation before the event. But this was the first time that we actually met.

And it certainly didn’t feel like I was meeting a stranger. On the contrary, we could dive right into interesting conversations about shared interests instead of doing the usual “Hi, I’m Etienne, what do you do?” dance.

So much for “online contacts are only virtual and therefore superficial and worthless”…

During the first part of the event Eva described the results of her online recruiting study and gave specific advice for the next steps.

For me the main messages were:

• Don’t panic, there’s still plenty of time to start using social media.
• You should rather worry about monitoring your online presence and having a good career site.
• And you should definitely start worrying about your mobile strategy.

You can download the survey in French and German.

My job was to follow up with hands-on examples of online recruiting activities. The main challenges were:

• There’s not many social recruiting activities in Switzerland. And most of the examples are from the German part of Switzerland. Luckily nobody really seemed to care about the Röschti curtain.
• When I talk about the classic recruitment campaigns like Hard Rock Cafe Florence, people usually have two reactions: 1) “wow, that’s great!” followed 3-5 seconds later by 2) “…but we could never do something like this”. This is why I decided to present many little things that can be done rather easily instead of intimidating projects.

I also used my model with the three levels of communication. And yes, it’s still in beta, so I don’t have a catchy title or a cool acronym for it (yet):

1. grab (e.g. direct sourcing)
2. share (“classic recruitment”, e.g. publication of job ads)
3. engage (e.g. employment branding)

What probably surprised a few is that I presented examples for “grab” and “engage”, but skipped “share”.

My explanation was that social media wasn’t ideal for “classic recruitment” since it’s mostly based on broadcasting or one-way communication. Social media’s main strength however is the potential for conversations (aka “engagement”).

.

The Q&A session was also very interesting. Some of the topics were:

• There’s too many social networks: How many and which ones should we use?
• About Facebook pages: Is it really smart to give people a platform where they can criticize you more easily?
• How can we be present online but still separate our personal and professional lives?
• More and more IT professionals close their online accounts. How can we still reach them?

All in all, Eva and I agreed that the participants were very open-minded towards the use of social media, didn’t really know how to get started (yet) and most of all would love to get a turnkey solution with guaranteed success.

All in all, this was a great event. And I’m looking forward to my next presentation. I don’t know where or when it will take place, but I really hope it will be soon

Here’s the cool stuff (swag) I received at #TruLondon 6 and #RMSconf 2.

This week I’m on vacation and it’s the perfect one for me: Monday and Tuesday at #TruLondon 6 (22 – 23 November 2012), on Thursday I was at #RMSconf 2 (Recrutement Mobile & Social) and today I’ll be at #TruParis 2.

By the way, and sorry if I’m bragging, but #TruParis will be my 13th #tru Event. And I’m co-organizing #TruZurich on 12 November 2012, which will be my 14th #tru Event

HR and Social Media are my two main passions. So of course attending events about social recruiting is something I enjoy very much. Not only do I always learn a lot of new things, but I get to meet really, really (!) fantastic people.

I could tell you many stories and also plan on posting some of my notes from these events. But for now I’ll just present the cool swag I received.

First of all the Kelly t-shirt. I also had some friendly banter with Mervyn Dinnen (@MervynDinnen) regarding my Monster Hungary t-shirt. But that’s a story for another day. Lets just say that I lost in the end. But although I said it before, Merv is a great guy and he’s also the one who initially put me in contact with Sara Wyke (@TeenyTinyBean) via Twitter. And now Sara will be one of the track leaders at #TruZurich on 12 November 2012.

But back to the Kelly t-shirt. I’m a big fan of t-shirts and pens. And since I participated in one of the Kelly Google+ Hangouts on Tuesday morning, I guess it’s okay to wear their t-shirt. When I arrived at the hotel in Paris on Wednesday evening, the hotel staff asked if I was working for Kelly. Then they explained that some Adecco employees were staying at the hotel, so I might want to hide it under my jacket

At yesterday’s #RMSconf in Paris I didn’t get any t-shirts, but a couple of pens and other cool swag:

Viadeo was one of the main sponsors and their pen works really well. But although you could print a QR code on the back of your conference badge linking to your Viadeo profile I didn’t create a Viadeo account. LinkedIn and Xing already keep me quite busy. Plus all the other social networks I’m using. You can check out my about.me profile for an (almost) complete list.

Broadbean gave me a nice pen and some kidney-shaped sweets. Or maybe I should say “bean-shaped”? By the way, did you know that apparently this company was named “Broadbean” because the founder’s wife always used this word instead of “Broadband”? Not sure if it’s really true, but it’s certainly a cool story. And I also got some lip balm.

Indeed had some nice mints and also a good pen. However the nice lady wasn’t amused when I said that we had an aggregator in Switzerland that was even bigger than Indeed. I mean, JobAgent is currently listing more than 100’000 jobs. That’s a lot for Switzerland. And Swiss job seekers don’t care if another aggregator is bigger abroad

And finally, I found a CareerBuilder.fr pen just before leaving. I hope nobody will come to me today at #TruParis asking for his pen back… It’s a really nice pen.

____________________

If you understand French, then I recommend that you follow the #TruParis Twitter stream. Yesterday the #RMSconf hashtag was on fire. I’m used to events with lots of active tweeters, but this was just madness. And in this case there was both lots of quantity and high quality.

And if you’re in Zurich on 12 November 2012, then you should really join us for #TruZurich. And yes, I already mentioned this a few times. But I’m extremely excited about this event. And who knows, there might even be some cool swag

Here are the Social Recruiting events I will be attending in October and November 2012: #TruLondon, #TruParis, speaking at a jobs.ch event and of course #TruZurich.

Three out of four events I will be attending in the next couple of weeks are #TRU events (The Recruiting Unconferences). What a surprise

I’m currently fighting my friend Johnny Campbell (@SocialTalent) for the #3 spot of people who attended the most #TRU events so far. I was at his Blue Belt in Internet Recruiting training in Geneva last Friday (disclosure: I also acted as the local organizer) and we agreed that the battle was definitely still on.

Johnny may have organized #TruDublin three times (I only did #TruGeneva once in May 2012), but he’s very busy with his trainings, which means that I may have a (temporary) advantage.

But regardless of our private competition, Johnny Campbell’s Blue Belt in Internet Recruitment training was fantastic. I expected to learn a lot about Internet sourcing, but it was even better. And most participants had only one complaint: I should have told them earlier about this training. Because they would have loved to bring along some colleagues!

But I actually wanted to write about the upcoming events I will be attending…

#TruLondon – already number 6

Yes, I will be attending #TruLondon on 22 and 23 October 2012. Again…

I missed the first one, so this will be my 5th #TruLondon. As always, Bill Boorman (@BillBoorman) is pulling out all the stops. You can read all about the wonderful craziness he’s got in store for us here: The #TruLondon 6 Schedule Post.

#TruParis – The French #Tru Edition

I had the chance to attend the first #TruParis earlier this year. It was great. And it was a bit different. Less Boorman craziness, less international, but very well organized and with many great local track leaders with hands-on experience.

But don’t worry, I still got my fix of Boorman craziness when Bill showed me his favorite bars in Paris right after the official event

This time, my buddies Laurent Brouat (@LaurentBrouat) and Jean-Christophe Anna (JChristopheAnna) are combining their successful #RMSconf (classic conference about Social Recruiting) on Thursday with #TruParis on Friday, 26 October 2012. There’s still a few tickets left for both events, by the way.

Jobs.ch Customer Event in the Suisse Romande

This event will be really cool! I’m aware that I often use words like cool, awesome and fantastic. That’s because I’m fortunate enough to meet lots of cool/awesome/fantastic people and attend hplenty of cool/awesome/fantastic events.

But this one is even more cool/awesome/fantastic. Jobs.ch, the most successful job board in Switzerland, is organizing an event with German/French A-List Online Recruiting Blogger Eva Zils (@eva_zils) and she will present the results of her Social Media Recruiting Survey with data specific to Switzerland. You can download the study here, in French and German).

And afterwards I’ll talk about how some companies use social media for recruitment. What can I say? Getting the chance to talk about what I’m most passionate about? That’s priceless.

Okay, I admit, Jobs.ch promised me a t-shirt, amongst other things

But sharing the stage with Eva, that’s something even a MasterCard can’t buy!

This is an event in French by invitation only for Jobs.ch customers. But let me know if you want to attend and I might get you an invitation.

#TruZurich – 12 November 2012

The first Recruiting Unconference in Switzerland was #TruGeneva in May 2012. The 2nd one will be #TruZurich on 12 November 2012.

Yes, I know, for a Swiss event this is very spontaneous and short-term.  But from the beginning #TRU events were very spontaneous and even a bit (actually quite a bit) crazy.

And this time I’m organizing this event with my friends from Joberate, who already did a great job organizing #TruMadrid, #TruHelsinki (I was there, it was awesome!) and #TruBaltics.

When I promoted #TruGeneva earlier this year I stole the tagline from the Terminator TV show: Will you join us?

So here’s my question regarding #TruZurich:

Will you join us?

PS: #TruMontreal is happening today. If you master/understand French, then please follow #TruMontreal on Twitter and say “hi” to my friend Sandrine (@LaSourceHumaine).

Just for giggles: who is the bestest and cooltestest Social Recruiting chap? Click and join the fun!

Of course the above sentence was written for this blog post’s “meta description”. But since Google is currently changing the rules on a regular basis, lets ignore what I just said. After all, I don’t want to find a Panda lying in my bed when I want to get some ZZZ’s or have a Penguin handing me a towel when I step out of the shower.

So lets get back on track. Who’s cool in Social Recruiting?

Frankly, I don’t know.

There’s a lot of people I like, many I love and some I admire.

And no, I won’t provide you with an Excel list with columns titled “LI”, “LO”, and “ADMR”.

But lets say we had the following categories:

1. Social Recruiting in General
2. Direct Sourcing
3. Recruiting via Mobile
4. Employer Branding

Who would you vote for? Just close your eyes, think about it for 10 seconds and then add a comment.

Just create a comment, mention 1, 2, 3 or 4, and then add a name.

See you in the comments!

Here are some of the topics discussed during the 2nd HR TweetUp Zurich (11 September 2012) at the VBZ headquarters in Zurich.

But first of all,

What is the #HRtweetupZH?

It’s an informal gathering of professionals from the People Space (aka Human Resources) who want to share ideas, information and viewpoints about online recruiting. And of course social recruiting is always a hot topic. You can join the #HRtweetupZH group on MeetUp.com if you want to get automatic updates about upcoming events.

When I approached the headquarters of the VBZ (Zurich Public Transport) I saw the huge “When are you getting onboard” sign (German: “Wann steigen Sie bei uns ein?”) live for the first time. What I totally love is that it’s obviously targeting potential customers, but can also be used for job advertisements and employer branding.

And if you still haven’t seen the interactive VBZ job ads, go to their open positions and click on any job.

Even if you don’t understand (Swiss-)German, watch the first minute of the video to get an idea of what’s going on. Usually the line manager introduces himself, gives basic information about the job and then shows places of work and introduces future coworkers.

But now back to the topics discussed at the #HRtweetupZH:

Website Analytics And Little Black Books

We quickly agreed that JetPack for WordPress was much more convenient for tracking website visitors than a Moleskine. But we couldn’t fully agree whether the really professional thing to do was using Google Analytics or a paid service.

Klout Scores And Vanity

After everybody had agreed that Klout wasn’t important and that it was just meant to satisfy one’s vanity, we still spent quite some time discussing how much Klout was good. Some may even have discreetly checked their own score on their phones (I had lost 2 points!!!). One of us was a bit sad when we realized that he had “only” 47 instead of 74 points as he thought at first.

But we agreed that for Swiss HR Professionals a Klout score in the 40’s is actually very good.

Ignorance Of HR Professionals

Another topic was that (Corporate) HR professionals still don’t know much about the online world. Even many young people (Gen Y) don’t even have an acceptable Xing or LinkedIn profile.

Furthermore, an important number of HR pros don’t understand marketing and show no interest for the topic. This is unfortunate because recruiting and employer branding will certainly require these skills from future HR practitioners.

Online Recruiting Studies

Another hot topic was the new online recruiting survey by Eva Zils where she included for the first time data for Switzerland. We all love and respect Eva although she never misses an opportunity to remind us that Switzerland is behind in terms of social recruitment. But I think that what really bugged us is that she now has facts and figures to make it sound more credible.

So of course we all remembered that other studies came to different results and wondered if maybe the design of the study was flawed. At the same time, it’s very difficult to compare the different studies since the questions sound similar but are always different. And in the end we even wondered what studies are good for anyway

But although the Swiss are a very proud people, we also try not to (always) take ourselves too seriously. So of course this was a fun topic to discuss.

Eva Zils’ study about online recruiting in Switzerland is available here in German and French.

In the meantime Jörg Buckmann published his blog post trying to defend Switzerland’s honor (in German).

Job Boards

What I really liked was also how the representatives from two job boards got along. This seems to be usual in Switzerland and when we asked them about it they seemed even a bit surprised by the question. So it seems like the #HRtweetupZH was personal, not business.

The next morning the acquisition of jobs.ch by Ringier and Tamedia was announced. I have no idea if some of the participants had any knowledge about this, but this confirms that the ability to keep a secret is not just a bank but rather a Swiss thing

Mobile: Traffic, Design, Applications

Of course we also had to discuss mobile! Some job boards already get 10-15% traffic from mobile devices. It would be interesting to know if there are peaks at specific times of the day. Interesting examples from abroad are London: people look up jobs while commuting leading to a higher mobile traffic in the morning and early evening. Dublin on the other hand is completely different since most people go to work by car.

A quick on the spot survey showed that 75-100% of HR professionals in Switzerland think that mobile content will be viewed more and more in a browser rather than through single apps. Of course, this study may not satisfy the strictest scientific requirements

Will We Ever Apply For Jobs Using Mobile Devices?

This was another hotly discussed topic. Obviously current mobile devices are not ideal for creating and optimizing cover letters. The logical thing would also be to make the mobile application process and quick and easy as possible.

The downside is the risk of getting lots of non-fitting applications. In the end we almost agreed that it shouldn’t be too easy to apply for easy-to-fill positions. Simplified and mobile application processes could however be used for very specialized positions and it could also be more of a “lets get in touch and talk” approach rather than “send us your CV, diplomas, cover letter, recent pictures and we might get back to you”.

#TruZurich

I also mentioned the possibility of the first #TruZurich (The Recruiting Unconference Zurich) as soon as this November. Of course my Swiss colleagues recommended to postpone it to a later date

But #TRU events are spontaneous and a bit crazy. So as soon as we find a venue, I’ll announce that the first #TruZurich will take place on 13 November 2012.

Twitter

Although the event is called a “TweetUp” we didn’t tweet during the event. But every time somebody shared information while asking to keep it confidential, one or several participants reached for their phones mumbling something like “just a sec, I need to quickly tweet this”.

On my way home I thought that it had been like a mini Unconference. But instead of having multiple tracks with one topic each we had a single track with a (sometimes chaotic) variety of topics. The second #HRtweetupZH was definitely a very interesting evening with fantastic people.

You can join Join MeetUp group here. Don’t worry, there’s no spamming or lengthy discussions. But you will get a message when we organize a #HRtweetupZH.

This is part 2 of my interview with Cornel Mueller, co-founder of the job search engine Jobagent. In this part we cover copyrights of job ads, the future of recruitment and whether Evenbase is trying to cut their losses?

Check out part 1 where we discussed what job aggregators and job search engines are and what makes them different from job boards.

Job boards must acquire customers and employers must write and publish job ads. Some might say that aggregators just steal what others have created. How well do you sleep at night?

The question of copyright and authorship of digital content is indeed a hot topic. However, can you imagine the owners of Google not sleeping well at night? Fact is that we’re only collecting and structuring what is freely available in the internet – pretty much how Google is doing it but on a much smaller scale. In addition, our own job aggregator jobagent.ch does not use job ads posted on job boards, so we are not “stealing” job ads from our competitors.

Neither are we stealing intellectual property of employers. In fact, we are doing the employers a huge favor. We make the job ads they post on their website available to a much larger audience – for free! After all, employers want their job ads to be found and read and that’s exactly what our job aggregator does: route traffic to the job ads on company websites. Besides, a lot of customers, employers and recruiters simply copy or adapt job ads they find on the internet instead of writing a new one. So, there isn’t much original content out there to start with, is there?!

In your opinion, what will be the biggest change for recruitment in the next 3-5 years?

I’m convinced that there will be several changes in recruitment in the next few years. Not only will job boards more and more disappear from the market but also the whole recruitment process will fundamentally change for job seekers as well as for employers.

a) The development in the job market in the US has shown clearly that job boards are becoming obsolescent and squeezed out of the market by job aggregators. Job seekers will favor the qualitatively and quantitatively stronger job aggregators over job boards. In the US this change has already taken place: Of the five top job sites there are four job aggregators (e.g. Indeed, Careerbuilder) but only one job board (Monster).

However, this change is not only due to the new requirements job seekers pose to a job site but also to a change in focus on the employers side. In the near future, the goal of employers won’t simply be to attract great number of candidates but also to present themselves to candidates in the best possible way. This cannot happen through a job board that only publishes the employer’s job ads. Candidates need to be lead to the company’s recruitment website where all the important information about the company is located. This is exactly where job aggregators bring a distinct advantage since they bring traffic (i.e. candidates) to company websites.

b) Nowadays, the application process seems to be getting more complicated instead of becoming simpler. Instead of simply mailing out their CVs, candidates are kept busy filling out long and repetitive application forms. In order to disgruntle potential employees, employers as well as recruitment agencies will have to redesign their application process and create a simple, fast and effective way for candidates to apply.

c) New recruitment strategies and tools will be developed by and for recruiters. On one hand do regular job ads on job boards or on company websites many times not suffice to find an adequate number of good candidates for a job opening, especially for highly skilled employees. On the other hand, do they produce extravagant numbers of candidates for a single job opening that swamp the recruiters. Therefore, recruiters sooner or later will have to change their approach to recruiting and start playing a more active role (e.g. contacting candidates directly through social networks, CV pools, etc.). In addition, there is a need for smarter tools for finding potential candidates as well as for a smart pre-selection of candidates that will facilitate the recruitment process.

If you feel like playing the SWOT game, what are for aggregators the main:

• Strength: quality (especially in the case of semantic job search engines) & Quantity (ALL job ads)
• Weakness: level of familiarity depends on business model
• Opportunity: Decline in prices and margins (price for a job ad in the 90ies: ca. 5’000 CHF, in the 2000s: ca. 500 CHF, in the mid 2010s: ca. 50 CHF on job aggregators) and related cannibalization of job boards through job aggregators
• Threat: Google producing their own job aggregator

Bonus Question: Evenbase, who also owns job boards like jobsite.co.uk, recently bought the Italian aggregator Jobrapido. Assuming that job boards and aggregators are competitors, isn’t it a bit too disruptive to add Jobrapido to their portfolio? Or is it a sign that job boards are going down and Evenbase are getting ready to cut their losses?

Evenbase is most likely observing job market trends in the US where job search engines (and aggregators) overtook the leading positions in the online job market. Buying a big job aggregator like Jobrapido might be a sign that they think of replacing their job board with a job aggregator or at least complement it with job ads through an aggregator.

Thank you Cornel for this fascinating interview!

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Cornel Mueller (@jobagent) is the co-founder of X28, the company that created and runs Switzerland’s biggest job search engine jobagent.ch.

Furthermore, Cornel will also be present at the very first HR TweetUp Zurich Tuesday, 24 July 2012 (event to be held in German).

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Here’s part 1 of the interview with Cornel Mueller in case you missed it.

And of course, you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS.

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