Hey Guys,

Hireplug users around the globe – India, US, UK, Germany are pretty happy with the ‘We Are Hiring’ Facebook App. User Interface.

But…We did receive the complains about the Hireplug.com UI and now we are working exactly on this.

Hireplug.com Home Page is almost ready. Attaching here a screenshot.

Your early-feedback will highly appreciated.

Let us know you views about your new UI. Thanks in Advance…Cheers.

What is Hireshot?
We define Hireshot as an attempt of hire on of your social network connection.
Ideally, The connections which are closer to you will have higher chances of responding to your
opportunity.

We recommend leveraging the employees’ social networks because – A Job recommendation from a
friend is more effective than an opportunity from a recruiter. People today rely on their friends for crucial
decisions of their lives as per a recent Nielsen study.
Our technology helps recruiters and associates alike to send out Hireshots or ‘Opportunity’ emails on 40+
Social Networks effortlessly.

Hireshot Friends Wizard
The Hireshot Friends Wizard is a simple and fun way to forwarding opportunity to connections without
much effort involved. It consists of following steps.

• Click ‘Hireshot Friends’
• Select Target Social Network from 40+ Social Networks
• Login to the selected Network to retrieve a list of connections and select a few.
  
• Check/Modify the automatically generated ‘Opportunity’ Email and send it over.

Step 1:

Click on ‘Hireshot’ Friends.

Step 2:

Select the Target Network for Sending the ‘Job Opportunity’.

Step 3:

Login to your Target Network.

Step 4:

Select your connections…Modify the ‘Hireshot’ Message (Only if you want!!) and send the Hireshot.

What’s next?

Now, The opportunity has been sent to your connections.

They can forward to their friends or ‘Apply’ to it. If they apply to it…You’ll get referral bonus.

We track both – Referrals and Source Social Networks – This helps in understanding the ‘Source’ or Hire from over 40+ Social Networks that we target.

I hope you enjoy the post. Feel free to let me know your views on this.

Why people Network Online?

Lets understand the science behind the whole thing. ‘Connecting’ with people and things is a basic human need. When you ‘friend’ someone on Facebook, You are actually making a new connection or ‘digitizing’ an existing relationship. It becomes a lot more easier to keep track on information when it is digitized.

Moreover, when you comment on your friend’s status or reply a message – You are actually ‘deepening’ your relationship. The way software has revolutionized the businesses in the first place…Software is now revolutionizing our personal and professional lives. This helps us conclude that people can fulfill that needs and helps get in touch with people we need – It probably is an asset for the people.

Impact of Social Networks on Businesses

We are on a business blog right now. Lets look at it from a business standpoint for a while. Although it feels good to keep in touch with people and grow our networks..How much business sense would it make? It has been a crazy ride. People have been *wasting* a lot of time, energy and bandwidth for social networking.

This has brought serious criticism from businesses around the globe. There have been survey reports on 12.5% productivity loss at work due to use of social networks. Taking all this information into account…We may consider that – Social Networks can be a Liability for a business!

Is Blocking Social Networks at Work ‘the’ Solution?

Around 50% companies at USA had blocked social networks in the last few years (96% when it comes to Indian IT companies). This might sound like a legitimate decision as ‘productivity’ is the priority of any business. At the same time, If your company is blocking Social Network – It is probably blocking your ‘Basic Need’ to connect. You have all your friends on your Cell-phone – What if your company blocks it all? Will you like it? NOT AT ALL…right?

I would like to take a stand here. There are some serious cons of blocking ‘Social Networks’ at work as mentioned below.

• Loss of Moral: The employees working a firm which allows social networks will feel much better at workplace than the firm which blocks. This is because the firm is blocking the ‘basic need’ of being connected with people.
• Lack of Trust: The company blocking the ‘Social Networks’ essentially is not trusting their employees. They believe that their employees are not going to work, If Social Networks are allowed at work. This results into distrust by employees and hence a possible lack of productivity.
• High Attrition: The above to factors may result into serious attrition rates. This is because your competitor is proving social network access as an extra ‘incentive’ to the employees. Your competitor will have a higher possibility of attracting Top Talent.

Free Tips for Businesses

If you are too concerned with social networks killing your productivity – Here are some Free Tips for Businesses on Social Networks Access at Work.

• Companies don’t block their employee’s cell-phone but people do block it themselves in the meetings. So, There can be timings when Social Network be blocked at Work.
• We recommend to allow it in the morning one-hour before the official work begins..This helps employees to check their status/messages etc..and also helps companies get the employees on time easily
• Allowed during Lunch time and say in the evening after 4:00 pm. This provides employees ‘enough’ of freedom while ensuring the ‘productivity’ for the Business.

Feel free to let us know what you think – Is Social Network an ‘asset’ for ‘liability’ for you. Looking forward to your comments!

You must be wondering why it makes most sense to have ‘Company’ Branded Job-Board on Facebook?

• Facebook has 10 times more users than LinkedIn. This means that those 70% ‘passive’ candidates are certainly on the Facebook – Who actually doesn’t have a LinkedIn Profile yet!

• We can also spread Jobs on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook with One-Click Posting Feature right from inside the Facebook.

• Facebook is most engaging and clean social network in addition to being the largest one. There are high chances that all your future hires will have a Facebook Account.

• Facebook has the best Technology Platform to build ‘Social Applicantions’ in the world. This means the users will have best experience and we have the most power to build great recruitment technology.

• Facebook is new COOL. This means branding on Facebook will make the company more attractive to ‘Passive’ Talent who are already ‘friending’ on the Facebook.

• Putting Job Board out there on Associates’ Facebook Profile makes it easy for the associate and her friends to access your Jobs.

• People spend 3X more time on Facebook than google. We need to be where associates and the talent is spending their time. Certainly your target talent is spending a good deal of time on Facebook.

• The relationships on Facebook are deeper than any other social network. The deeper the relationships more effective the referrals and hireshots(Opportunity Emails on 40+ Social Networks).

Feel free to express your views as a comments on this blog post.

Many of my friends asked me – We have Linked In… Why do we to send Job Opportunities to 40+ Social Networks?

Let’s discuss some statistics.

• Facebook is 500 million+ Monthly Active users. Real number of users are more than that. Real Number is a secret.
• Linked In has only 65 million+ users. This means Facebook alone has approximately 10 times more users than Linked In.
• There are quite number of social networks which are popular in different geographies, interests and more. We need to be targeting connections on each of them.
• Linked In is great for semi-active candidates who would be easily accessible on Linked In. Not everyone wants to hang-out on Linked In all the time.
• 40+ Social Networks gives us access to 98% relevant candidates online – We can ignore rest 2% from a recruitment standpoint.

We can have connections on multiple social networks and these connections are an asset that can be leveraged for win-win. Employees’ connection can get exciting Job Opportunites and employee can get referral bonus.

I personally have accounts on 20+ Social Networks and hence good relationships out there.

Consider all these aspects – Hireplug is designed to easily target connections on over 40+ Social Networks.

Let me paste a few icons of these networks for quick review.

A few top social networks that Hireplug can target below:

How many Social Networks Do you belong to? Are you connections valuable on those social networks?

Looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Social Media has changed everything for the better. People are spending more time on facebook, orkut, Linked In, Twitter and other Social Sites.

People are building their social and professional networks to stay connected, communicate, share and much more. Everyone is more approachable now than before.

Now, It is easy to reach out to others with similar interests on Linked In, Facebook or Orkut by searching profiles, groups, communities and blogs. Let’s look at the Growth of Major Social Networking Sites people spend their time online.

Facebook’s strong growth and ambition is ready to take over google in Traffic Rank. The growth of LinkedIn and Twitter is also remarkable. The Orkut rank has suffered bit after addition of photograph privacy feature and facebook sucking up their users. Orkut, although not growing, has been steady.

Everyone looks happy with Social Media. Is someone really suffering from Social Media? Let’s take a look at the Alexa graphs of Major Job boards of India over last two years.

India’s #1 Job board Naukri had Alexa traffic rank of around 300 before mid 2009. Now, It has a traffic rank of 437. The change has been consistent over last 2 years.

Monster India had a traffic rank of around 600 before mid 2009. Current Monster India traffic rank of 1029 reflects a considerable loss. Apart from loss in the traffic rank, the ‘page views’ have also reduced significantly.

If the same trend continues, we can question the popularity and value of big Job Boards over the next 2-4 years.

Why is this happening?

Now with a large number of people becoming easily approachable on social media. The mechanics of ‘Post Job and Pray’ (for people to apply) doesn’t work well any more. The quality talent is already being approached by a bunch of recruiters on Social Media.

The professional has been won with social media. The professional has the choice of choosing the right company and companies need to work to get to the right talent.

Recruiters can search and directly reach out to potential job candidates on Social Media with ‘Job Opportunity’ messages. It is a win-win situation. Candidates receive the relevant Job Opportunities in email and Recruiters don’t have to wait for people to ‘Apply’ to it.

This results into talented people not needing to go to the job boards.

Some Tips for Professionals

• Connect with the best in your company, industry and skill-set. If you’re a best an IT professional connect with other IT Professionals. This helps you build your ‘Social Graph’.
• It is recommended to keep your Social Network profiles updated on Linked In, Facebook and also Orkut. You can put down professional information for others to approach you.
• Social Media is about conversation and engagement. It is also a good idea to join professional communities and groups on Social Networks that you may use. You may get noticed and approached with high paying job offers.
• Open Source Contribution is good idea for programmers. It becomes easy for your next employer to verify your strengths if you’ve major contribution online.
• Blog is one of the best way to express yourself without a doubt. You can write articles on your subjects on interest, technologies or ideas.

All these will help recruiters and other people with similar interests to reach out to you and connect with you.

Sounds great? – Get started soon

Tips for Recruitment Managers

Although Job boards are a proven value proposition and easiest way to reach out to the ‘Active’ job seekers, excessive dependence on job boards may result into receiving of many unrelated profiles,  heavy dependency on agencies that will incur high costs.

Social Media has increased the work of bringing talent on board. Companies will need to work smart to anticipate the change.

The recruitment managers may need to devise a good social media strategy to reach out people on the social media in general and social networks in particular.

I am sure very soon you will hear Job profiles with titles like Social Media Recruiter, Talent Attraction Manager and Sourcing Strategy Manager

The Social Media has emerged as a new way to connect with people, stay in touch and also get new opportunities.

So, what do you think ? Is social media the next job board? Looking forward to your ideas, views and comments.