Welcome to Jobcast


February 24
baby-sea-turtle-marcio-scatrut

Have you ever heard of the expression “Fear Of Success”? Could you be undermining yourself and your career goals simply by not living up to your full potential?

If this is a problem for you, one of the first warning signs you may become aware of is that you begin to feel unfulfilled or unsatisfied in your job role, and might feel pessimistic about your future. Here’s how to unlock your true potential and achieve your career goals in 4 strategic steps and how to know when you’ve reached your goal of living up to your true professional self.

What is “full potential”?

Your potential can be seen as the latent qualities or abilities you might develop which will lead to your future success. These are individual to the person, and are therefore unique. Everyone’s full potential will be different and only you can truly assess what your full potential is. It’s a personal journey which can be useful in the framework of your career and professional goals.

Why is reaching your full potential important for your career?

“Changing your life for the better is about picking a destination and taking one step at a time to get there,” explains Dr Barton Goldsmith, a US-based psychotherapist. “If you try to take shortcuts, you may end up making your journey long and arduous. Being serious about making improvements is a great start.”

“Emotional fitness” can be applied in all areas of our lives but when we focus on unleashing our inner capabilities in a workplace setting we can begin to feel more aligned with our goals, both large and small. “When you stop to remember what you have instead of worrying about what you don’t have or may not be getting, it changes your perspective for the better,” explains Goldsmith.

The time spent doing meaningful work vs. “busy work”

Do you find the work you do meaningful? Are your daily tasks engaging enough to sustain your ongoing interest? Or do you sometimes feel that what you contribute is valueless, or just “busy work”? It’s not essential to assign meaning to every single element of your work but studies show that employee engagement is something that leads to both a company’s and an individual’s success.

In fact, according to a recent Gallup poll, 40% of Millennials says that it’s essential that they are “living their purpose” at work yet 51% of employees polled were “not engaged” in their roles, while 16% claimed to be “actively disengaged” – a worrying metric.

4 strategies to reach your full potential

If you suspect that you are not living up to your full potential and have more to give, there are 4 main strategies you can implement to help you identify your strengths and be more engaged in your current role, or to find your true path in a different role, via a career change.

#1: Set your intention: “People who achieve greatness in their lives don’t get there by chance; they know their purpose when they start their personal journey, and they kept that intention alive as they proceed,” says Kevin Kruse from Forbes Magazine. You can’t get what you want unless you identify it and focus on it. Spend time journaling, plotting or planning – from “big ideas” to the minutiae of life.

#2: Set realistic goals: According to a study by Bain.com the bulk of strategies actually achieve less than 50% of what they initially set out to accomplish. Aim to make small steps towards achieving your goals. “A strategy only 80% perfect but fully implemented almost always proves more valuable than an intellectually perfect strategy that is implemented incompletely.” Give yourself room to move.

#3: Try something new: If you feel your career has stalled, could you train in a completely new area? Could you consider a job in security or gain qualifications as a personal trainer? There are millions of stories online and from history that demonstrate that people can often find their feet within second or even third careers. Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame!) hit his strides at age 65 and Charles Darwin’s breakthrough study On The Origin of Species wasn’t published until he was 50 years old.

#4: Know yourself: Harvard Business Review points out that you are unlikely to really feel fulfilled in life if you don’t know yourself inside and out. Often the things we think we want are not the things we really want or are not the things that will bring us ultimate fulfilment. “Taking responsibility for your career starts with an accurate assessment of your current skills and performance,” says Harvard. “Write down your two or three greatest strengths and your two or three most significant weaknesses” as a starting point.

4 signs that you are working at your full potential

Once you’ve worked on the strategies above you can begin to feel more fulfilled in your daily tasks and your future career. Here are several signs that you can note when you’ve truly reached your full potential.

You feel fulfilled: Your work becomes meaningful and even small tasks take on a new lease of life. You begin to see the importance of the day-to-day tasks such as reporting, meetings and regular time with your direct manager.

You feel engaged: You have more stamina at work for tasks that used to bore you or that you had to “force” yourself to do. Engaged employees feel better, take fewer sick days and progress up the management chain more quickly.

You feel happy at work: You come to the office or workplace with a spring in your step, ready to tackle what the day brings. You might notice yourself feeling cheerier, talking more to colleagues and generally getting more done.

You feel excited about the future: The most important sign that you are operating at your full potential is that you feel excited about your future again. Having a goal in mind, even if it’s a small goal, can help to keep us focused on forward momentum.


Yvette McKenzie is a writer for Secta Security. She works for a leading online educator and has a background in broadcast media, with a passion for digital marketing, SEO, promotions, journalism and content strategy.

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June 9
Hero jobcast-update-share-to-facebook-groups

Facebook is a great tool to connect with everyone from your family and friends to any of the other 1.65 billion monthly active users on the site. Did you know that there are hundreds of millions of Facebook Groups that you can join? With that much reach and potential, it’s no surprise that Facebook Groups present a great opportunity to share your job postings with tons of people who share common interests with you and your company.

Jobcast knows that more and more people are using Groups to look for new jobs and further their careers. To help you take advantage of this, we’ve introduced a new feature:

You can now share job postings to Facebook Groups directly from your Jobcast Dashboard!

 

To start using your Facebook Groups network, just follow these easy steps:

 

  1. Choose any of your job postings and click “Share Job”.

  2. Under “Pick Your Networks,” choose “Facebook Group”.

  3. Follow the prompts to log into Facebook and then simply choose which group you want to share to.

  4. Write a message to include when you share this link.

  5. That’s it – you’ve just shared your job with everyone in your Facebook group!

Start sharing jobs to your Facebook Groups!

Log in to your Jobcast account today!

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May 17
Hero jobcast-update-dashboard-redesign

Here at Jobcast, our product development team is always looking to build and improve on our product and now, it’s easier than ever to manage your Jobcast account with our newly redesigned Dashboard!

Our users have spoken and we have listened. We know that these are the Jobcast features that you use the most, so we’ve put them on the front page and given you easy access:

  • Post a New Job

      – We know that you want to start finding candidates so we’ve added quick access to add your latest job opening.

  • Manage Current Jobs

     – Have you found a great new employee through Jobcast? Great – just click from the Dashboard to update or close your current job postings.

  • Invite Your Team

    – Give members of your recruitment or management team to Jobcast, it’s as easy as sending them an email.

  • Go to your Career Page

    – Want to check in on your Facebook page or your mobile career site? One click will take you directly to your Career page.

  • Switch Companies

    – Are you a recruiter managing different companies or a serial entrepreneur? Easily switch between your different Jobcast company accounts from your Dashboard!

…all from one page!

Want to see the changes for yourself?

Log in to your Jobcast account today!

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July 1
Jobcast Careers

Timing really is important.

This is especially true when it comes to social media. In fact, other than open-heart surgery, I can think of no other instance in which timing is so crucial. Well, maybe Olympic track and field, or high speed car chases, or…

Moving on.

It’s not just the content of your post that determines how many views, shares, or likes that it gets. The timing matters too. Frequency, day of the week and time of day all play an important role in determining who sees the content you share. The same is true of your job posts.

Your job posts are more effective if they are seen by more people. So, determining when your audience is most likely to be online and posting in that time-frame is a great way to improve your social recruiting ROI.

You can read the article that we posted last week, for a simple guide to finding the best times to post on your Facebook Company Page.

.. but what if you aren’t at work during the hours you should be sharing those job posts? That’s where scheduling tools come in very handy! The Jobcast Facebook recruiting app includes a scheduling tool for all premium members.

Our scheduling tool allows you to set up your job posts to be shared at the optimal time for engaging candidates. It’s also super easy to use.

Here’s how:

Start by going to your Facebook Company Page and clicking on your Careers Tab.

This will direct you to your Career Page.

Next, from the Admin panel, select ‘Manage Jobs’.

This will take you to the Job Management section of Jobcast. From there, click on the “Customize” button, located in the menu at the top.

This will bring you to the Settings Tab. The panel with the gear is where you can create a customized URL for your Career Page. The clock icon will let you schedule a job post.

Click on the clock!

Next, select Add Scheduled Post and choose the network you’d like to share your post with.

For this demo we’ll choose to schedule our post to be shared on Twitter.

From here you can fill in a message that will be used for your Tweet. For example: Jobcast wants you!

There is also space here to attach some hashtags to your Tweet.

Then you may choose to only share jobs from a particular category.

And to only post jobs that are located in a specific country, state, or city.

Next, select the days of the week you want to post on.

Then you can select the frequency. This will stop you from appearing to be Tweet-bombing your jobs, and instead will stagger them out. Believe me, your followers will appreciate this.

You can select a ‘sharing window’. This means that the jobs will only be automatically Tweeted between these hours on the days you have specified.

Finally, decide if you’d like your previous jobs to be re-shared if no new jobs are available (a great option to keep your Page looking active)

There you have it. Regularly scheduled posts to effectively target the candidates you’re looking to attract.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.

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June 17
Hero why-your-social-recruiting-must-go-mobile

We’ve been talking a lot about staying relevant on the blog lately.

Because, when it comes to social recruiting, staying up to date on all the latest trends in media and technology is crucial to being successful.

Right now nothing is more relevant than mobile.

Last year alone saw the use of mobile increase by 103%. More than 2 out of 3 Facebook users log on via mobile, and even more importantly, about 1 in 6 users use Facebook from mobile exclusively.

And not only are people using mobile more often, they are using it specifically to hunt for work. According to a recent article on Mashable, 77% of  job seekers surveyed were using mobile for this purpose. This is not only because of the increased use of smart phones and tablets for searching in general, it is also because people do not want to look at career sites from their work computers. They use personal devices to keep their searches private from their employers.

If you want those candidates to apply for, or even to view your job posts, you must optimize your Facebook Career Site for mobile.

And yet, far too many Facebook Career sites are not. In fact, in a recent survey, we found that only 1 in 20 of the career sites we looked at were mobile-friendly.

This is why we think it is so important to provide mobile optimization for Jobcast Premium users!

Facebook won’t allow apps to work in-site on mobile devices, this makes mobile tricky. To work around Facebook’s rules, and ensure that your job posts are mobile friendly, you can use Jobcast to set up a fully-branded custom URL.

Your custom URL is smart, so when a candidate clicks through it, if they are using desktop, they’ll see the desktop version of your job post, and if they are on mobile, they’ll be directed to the mobile version of your Facebook Career Site.

The mobile version of your app uses ‘responsive’ design.

Responsive design means that your Career Page will detect the gadget that your visitor is using, how big or small their viewing screen is, and then responsively redraw the Page to make it easiest to read.

This is extremely important because job seekers are looking at your posts from all different sizes and types of devices, so responsive design is essential to candidate experience.

No more awkward, squinting, pinch/zoom job hunting!

The easier it is for candidates to find jobs on your Page, the more applications you’ll get. It’s as simple as that. As we’ve already shown, more candidates than ever before are searching for jobs on Facebook using mobile devices. This means you need your Facebook Career Site to be responsive and optimized for mobile.

Here’s how to get your own custom Smart URL!

First, pour yourself a cup of delicious tea, hot or iced, it’s up to you.

Go to your Facebook Company Page and click on your Career Tab. This will direct you to your Career Page.

If you are logged in as an admin (which you must be in order to make changes) you will see an Admin Menu Bar. Click on Manage Jobs.

This will bring you to the Job Management section of Jobcast. Click Customize at the top of your screen to go to the General Settings page.

On this page you will see a space to enter your very own custom URL.

Enter your desired domain name.

HOT TIP: Make it the name of your company, otherwise applicants will be very confused!

Share this new custom URL with everyone you know, link to it on your company site, put it up on LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram, and Tweet the heck out of it.

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November 5
Hero facebook-ads-and-you

There is a lot of controversy over the effectiveness of Facebook ads for small business. Most of this controversy seems to be about its lack of effectiveness for hard sales, which is a problem, but only if we’re approaching Facebook as we would Amazon.com. Soooo… Let’s not and say we did, okay?

Instead, let’s continue to view Facebook as a place to grow brand awareness, increase talent pools and nurture brand loyalty. Let’s see it as a place to create community, be social… as a social networking site. We know that Facebook ads do a great job of targeting specific demographics, increasing visibility and fostering relationships over time.

If we look at Facebook ads as a way to accomplish these tasks, then there really isn’t much controversy over their effectiveness — especially for small businesses. Small businesses, more than any other, need to get their message out there and become visible to a larger community. Facebook ads are a great way of doing this.

Still not sold? (I swear I am not getting paid by Facebook. Why am I not getting paid by Facebook?!?) Here are some more reasons why Facebook ads and small business make an awesome team:

  • Facebook ads increase likes. You can then message these fans periodically and incentivize them to share your Page with their peers.

  • Facebook ads let you target a very specific demographic. If you are promoting your real-estate company, you probably do not want to waste ad money on 13 year-olds. Unless you’re based in LA. Then you’ll only want to be targeting 13 year olds, specifically 13 year old pop-stars named Justin Bieber.*

  • Facebook ads let you build a list to track the success of ad campaigns.

  • Facebook ads have less keyword competition than Google ads.

  • Facebook ads reach users in their comfort zone. They never have to leave the warm Snuggie-like zone of Facebook in order to visit and like your Page.

  • Facebook ads are better for increasing word-of-mouth sharing. Only my mother-in-law sends cut-outs from newspapers these days. Other people share things via, you guessed it, Facebook.

  • Facebook ads direct people to your Page, where other customers, users, friends, mother-in-laws have left nice comments about you, which makes you more trustworthy.

How do you make an effective Facebook ad? By following this tutorial, obviously! (I used the best bits of everyone else’s tutorials and mashed them all together, saving you time, because I’m nice like that)

Tutorial

I’m half-assuming you already know this part: Log onto Facebook, go to your Page, select “Build an Audience”, then click “Create an Ad”. Facebook loves to change these steps — just try watching a tutorial from last month and you’ll see what I mean — so be prepared for slight variations.

Choose your destination: Select the page or URL that you want advertised. Simple.

Facebook will pull info from your selected destination. Easy peasy. Then you’ll need to choose what you want your ad to do. For our purposes we’ll choose to “Get More Likes” (don’t worry, we’ll talk about promoting page posts in the very near future… okay, okay, next Monday!)

Next, we create the ad itself. Facebook will provide a headline, and then below that you can enter text. Keep the text short and sweet, as you don’t get a lot of characters. This is where you enter your call to action (Do NOT use all caps, Facebook hates this and your target audience hates this — no one likes being yelled at). You’ll select a “Landing View” which is where users who click on your ad will be directed. It’s often better to choose a specific tab and not just your timeline. As our goal is to have people download the Jobcast app, we’ll choose to direct people to the tab where they can do exactly that. Then, you’ll need to upload an 100 by 72 pixel image. Luckily for us, our logo is awesome and Facebook auto-filled our image selection — thanks guys!

Next you get to select your “Sponsored Stories”. For this we’ll keep things simple and choose “People Liking Your Page” which plays into that trust-concept we talked about earlier. Nice!

Now here’s the most important step, “Choose Your Audience”.

How you narrow down who sees your ads will be a determining factor in their success. Be specific. We’re choosing to target The USA, Canada and Mexico with this campaign, because I want to see if we get traction in these regions. Then I’ll select an age group. Ageism is bad! But you know who your audience is and there’s nothing wrong with targeting them specifically. You can select to target men, women or “All”. Again, sexism = bad! But being realistic about who you’re targeting is not. I encourage playing with these options, watching your metrics, and adjusting in future campaigns. The data you uncover may surprise you. We have selected women here, but we could eventually run three campaigns: one targeting women, one for men and one for both. Then we’d get some interesting data about that campaign.

Next, we can choose specific interests (see screenshot above). Type in a few and Facebook will suggest more options.

Now Facebook asks us to select how the target audience is connected to our page. As we’re running a campaign to get more likes, we don’t want to target people who already like us. Unless by the time I publish this article Facebook starts allowing double-likes.

Finally, painfully, budgeting. Yuck. You can choose between a “Daily budget” or a “Lifetime budget”.  This is pretty self-explanatory: one sets a budget per day, while the other is set per campaign.  You can choose to run your campaign until your funds run out with the daily budget, or choose to run it within a certain time-frame, which works with either option.

Next we get to selecting optimization (see screenshot above). This is one place you’ll really need to go into the advanced options. We’ll want to optimize “Per Click” rather than impressions. It may be a bit more expensive, but it’s worth it, as otherwise we could be paying for an ad that pops on the screen of a person who has left their computer to make a sandwich. Facebook will suggest a bid per click — it’s best to offer a bit more than the minimum suggestion to ensure your campaign gets the go-ahead from Facebook. No need to go high with this first round of ads. If your bid is rejected, or you know that you have a ton of competition, you’ll bid a little higher.

Now all that’s left to do is review our ad and click “Place order”.

All done, time to check Twitter!

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June 12
Hero job-sync-no-one-should-have-to-post-a-job-more-than-once

Many of our clients have expressed that they use Jobcast as their Facebook Career Page while still using their existing ATS or career site. If you have an existing solution for posting your jobs on the web, maybe you're asking yourself, "why should I have to post this job twice?" With our Jobcast API  your ATS can now send jobs to your Jobcast Facebook app. But, if your ATS provider isn't ready to use our API, that still leaves you with the pain of manually posting jobs. For those situations, we can help!

Job Sync. Provide us with a link to your jobs page, RSS feed or XML feed and we'll have your jobs synchronizing on Facebook daily. Pricing starts for as little as $99 a month and varies depending on job volume. To sign up for Job Sync, click here and log in to your Jobcast account.

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June 12
Hero facebook-career-pages

Many of our clients have expressed how important it is for their branding to show consistent design and messaging on all of their social platforms. We couldn’t agree more!

To help build your brand presence, we’ve added some great new features that give you complete control over customizing your Facebook Career Page.

When you upgrade to a Premium subscription, you will unlock these additional features:

  • Brandable color scheme

  • Custom banner placement

  • Embeddable YouTube videos

  • Welcome messaging

Brandable color scheme Customize your Facebook Career Page’s colors to match your company’s brand.

Custom banner placement & embeddable YouTube

  • Add a banner to your Facebook Career Page to build your employer brand with consistent design.

  • Showcase your company culture with a YouTube video embedded directly within your Facebook Career Page.

Rich text editor Create personalized welcome messages.

Your own branded Facebook Career Page Once you’ve finished styling your career page, here’s an example of the finished product.

We’re really excited about the new design customization options and we hope you enjoy using Jobcast Premium!

To upgrade, click here and log in to your Jobcast account.

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May 16
Jobcast Careers

We recently added more search engines to our list:

By simply enabling the Include Jobs in Search Engines option, your jobs on your Facebook Page will automatically distribute to these new search engines, which we hope will greatly increase the exposure to your job openings.

Just like sharing your jobs to your Social Network, you will be able to measure the success of these search engines through our reporting tools:

We will monitor the quality of candidates referred from these search engines and add and remove from the list to continue improving the exposure to your job openings. Happy recruiting!

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