Samara Parker

It's spring. Finally!

Time for barbecuing in the park, colorful tulips and fresh-starts.

A fresh-start can mean a lot of things, from finally throwing away the moldy pesto that's been hanging out in the back of your fridge, to starting a new job, to the beginning of True Blood season 4!

But for those of us interested in social recruiting, a fresh-start means rethinking social media strategy, freshening up our Facebook employer branding, and True Blood season 4! I mean it, there's a lot to be learned about branding and HR from those vampires. You try branding a group best know for their pasty skin, scary fangs, and thirst for blood. Not easy!

Well, here are a few links to help you keep your employer brand fresh and your social recruiting springy:

Do you read Copy Blogger? If not, you really ought to check it out. Even if you don't consider yourself a writer, I'm willing to bet you still spend a fair amount of time writing. Even if it's only job descriptions, contracts and emails, you're still writing. Copy Blogger is one of the best resources to make your writing more effective. And, if your emails, contracts and job descriptions are more effective, then by default, YOU are more effective at your job.

Lorelle VanFossen writes the series "Blog Exercises", featured on Copy Blogger. In the series she provides simple exercises to improve your writing. Technically, the articles are aimed at bloggers, but I've been applying them to content marketing, Twitter, and email with great success. Oh, and her writing is a delight to read, in part, due to her fantastic use of George Carlin quotes!

For those out there who prefer to learn by example, Tim Ferris recently interviewed 5 online businesses that gross over $250, 000+ per month. Tim may not be everyone's cup of coffee, but if there's one thing he knows, it's how to model success. Much of the information gleaned from his case studies is pertinent to Facebook branding and can also be applied to social recruiting.

Speaking of case studies... If you haven't checked out how Gordon Food Service is using Facebook to recruit for their family-run business, or how The Phoenix Group is creating a strong Facebook Employer Brand for the entire province of Saskatchewan, get on it! Both case studies provide great advice and examples of successful social recruiting and employer branding.

LinkedIn is a crucial part of social recruiting success. One of our very favorite bloggers, and social media guru extraordinaire, Stacy Donovan Zapar shares 6 tips to help you spring clean your LinkedIn profile.

If you really want to stay fresh, not just at work, but in life, apparently all you really need is sleep. Encouraging employees and employers to get proper sleep raises productivity, slashes healthcare costs, and boosts moral. What's not to love?!

We saved the best for last! A hot tip from yours truly, exciting huh?

Update your profile pic

With the magic of smart phones, there's no excuse not to have a stunning picture with which to represent yourself. Stand in front of a white wall, where there's natural light and have a friend snap your picture. If you want to get fancy, use a filter app (I like Instagram's "Rise" filter, as it hides how pale I am). Your profile pic is your online introduction. Make it work for you, not against you.

If that didn't convince you to show your lovely face then maybe this article will!

Happy Link Love Wednesday everyone :)

Happy belated Mother's Day! Moms are pretty great. They teach you things, give great hugs, and keep the human species from going extinct. And moms spend way too much time tidying up toys, diapers and sneakers randomly dumped around the house by their oblivious offspring. That's probably why spring is not just about Mother's Day brunch, but also about serious cleaning. And sadly, now that we are all grown up, we have to stay tidy all on our own. But, if you're looking for a way to do some serious spring-cleaning without touching a mop, pail, or toilet, then look no further. Your social networks can always use a little sprucing up, so follow our handy guide to spring-cleaning your employer branding on Facebook. No rubber gloves required! Start using Facebook Lists

Now. Seriously. If you use Facebook for recruiting, branding, or marketing, eventually your potential hires, colleagues, and customers will start to reach out to you via your personal Facebook account. This can be tricky, especially if you are like me and enjoy posting a lot of rap videos and MMA knockouts on your timeline. I don't want to offend anyone, but I also need to show my pals how amazing Uriah Hall's roundhouse kick is! That's where Facebook Lists come into play. FB Lists let you select exactly who sees what content you post, so you can appear squeaky-clean to colleagues, while still sharing cool, but potentially offensive, stuff with your close friends. For a detailed description of how to use Facebook Lists, I highly recommend this article by Jennifer Baker. Freshen up your posts

It's easy to fall into a bit of a social media rut. Sharing nothing but Seth Godin quotes and cat pictures, no matter how amazing, does eventually get old. Make sure you post a variety of valuable content on your Facebook Employer Page. Intersperse job posts with brand updates, images, and informative links. Using an RSS aggregator like Feedly makes finding great content much easier and a bookmarking app like Pocket helps you save links to content for future posting. Keep your content relevant, short, sweet and varied by posting valuable advice, links you have actually read and vetted, attractive images, and relevant updates. This Infographic gives 18 specific tips for making your Facebook posts sweeter. It's also super cute. Win win! Yes, use that big data, but don't forget to ... Experiment

Why is Facebook always testing out new, occasionally weird icons, page layouts and call-to-actions? Because experimentation is the only way to find out if something works. Sure, we can theorize as much as we like about Facebook best practices, but the only way to know for sure is to try things out. If your cat pictures haven't been getting any Likes, try a Ryan Gosling meme. If you post mostly case-studies, try throwing in the occasional inspirational quote. The internet loves inspirational quotes! Your employer brand will benefit from a little experimentation. This article shares some solid advice about getting into customers' heads. Just replace the word 'customer' with 'candidate' and it transforms into a killer social recruiting piece! Magic.

Think back If you haven't used it in the last three months, throw it away. I apply that rule when cleaning out my cupboards, closet, and fridge (maybe three weeks is better rule-of-thumb for the fridge... eeew.) It works for your Facebook content as well. If you've been posting three times a day for the past three months and only your morning and evening posts are getting any attention, maybe it's time to ditch the afternoon post. To improve your social strategy, it's important to understand what works for your employer brand, and what doesn't, by studying your previous successes and failures. Any good Facebook Recruiting app will supply you detailed metrics. Keep things under control

If you want to keep your future social network spring-cleaning to a minimum, staying up to date on the never-ending stream of changes that Facebook makes is mandatory. It's a daunting task, yes, but it is doable! My personal favorite way to keep tabs on Facebook news is to use Feedly to follow InsideFacebook, AllFacebook and TechCrunch's #Facebook. I also follow Failbook, but this is sheerly to boost moral. Check out this blog post for even more ways to stay on top of the latest innovations from Facebook. Let technology do it for you

Using a smart Facebook recruiting app can give your employer brand a clean sweep. Branding your Career Page with custom colors, embeding recruitment videos, and provided easy to use metrics should be part of any premium app, so it's an easy, affordable way to improve your Facebook Recruiting and employer branding. We Hope these tips help freshen up your Facebook efforts and that your Mother's Day included waffles!

Everyone can use a little more awesome in their lives.

Last week we wrote about great ways to improve your Facebook Talent Community by being more like Ryan Gosling, who is basically the epitome of awesome.

This week, we’ll share some links to our favorite Ryan Gosling memes!

Just kidding — that would be silly for a recruiting-themed blog to do. Instead, we’re going to share the link to this incredible new app that allows you to “Snoopify” pictures of yourself! I mean, really the only thing that could make your LinkedIn profile better is if you were wearing a rasta hat, giant gold chain, and dope shades. Obviously!

Oh, and here are some other links that will make your social recruiting more awesome. They are just icing — Snoopify is recruiting gold.

Being famous on Twitter, if you’re not a hot young starlet or stand-up comedian, is hard! The Cynical Girls gives us regular folks 6 tips to get us there.

What could be better than 6 tips. 7 tips of course! Improve your social media engagement. Tip number one: “Highlight current employees on your company Facebook Page” sounds awfully wonderfully familiar.

Maybe perfect isn’t so awesome. Check out Seth Godin’s musings on how your best is kind of boring, and definitely not your most creative.

Quote of the week:

“Move mountains for them. All of them. You move all the mountains for all of them.”

It’s from a stellar article on how to be awesome at HR. Despite what the hyperbolic quote implies, this article has some of the most practical/fantastically blunt advice for HR I’ve ever come across. Awesome.

Corporate culture. It’s so important when it comes to recruiting great talent. Here are six ways to ensure your corporate culture is awesome. Other than the fact that the author doesn’t make buying a foosball table tip number one, this article is pretty darn great.

Happy Snoopifying! And trust me, foosball = key to better corporate culture.

Unless you are Ryan Gosling, being charming is hard work. You have to brush your hair, make the right amount of eye contact, and refrain from telling terrible jokes, even if someone sets you up for a killer pun. Tricky stuff!

Things get even trickier when networking online. Sure, you can skip the hair brushing and eye contact, but you still have to engage people. And without the assistance of intonation, facial expressions, and firm handshakes, this can be difficult to say the least. Without these physical signs of congeniality, it’s easy to become a bit robotic with our online interactions.

Since Facebook recruiting is all about engaging potential candidates via the internet, what is an employer to do when trying to build a Facebook Talent Community?

Let’s bring it back to Ryan, or the Gos as we like to call him. He is pretty much the most beloved actor in Hollywood today, by both men and women. Sure he’s good looking, but come on, there are many more modelesque male actors out there (looking at you Channing Tatum!). He’s talented, but he’s no Johnny Depp. And yes, he’s funny in interviews, but a comedy genius he is not.

So what makes him so appealing? (Other than the fact that he is Canadian). It’s his humanness. The Gos is basically the male version of the girl next door. He’s nice, kind of goofy, handsome, but not too perfect, and is willing to make fun of himself. He is the opposite of a robot.

How exactly does that apply to building a Facebook Talent Community?

Simple.

Be a Ryan Gosling. Don’t be a robot.

With that in mind, here are some tips to make your talent community more awesome:

1 – Know your audience

You can’t please everyone. Ryan will never appeal to my dad, so why would he even try? He wouldn’t. Nor should you. My dad is retired.

Posting super-generic content in an attempt to appeal to everyone comes off as robotic. If your main hiring focus is for construction positions, then focus on appealing to construction workers. Find out what kind of content your target audience likes, how best to interact with them, and what kind of language they respond to. A great way to accomplish this is by asking current employees their opinion and even getting them to spend a little time on your company Page.

2 – Build on what you’ve got

No, I’m not going to reference Ryan’s biceps (okay, mentally maybe). Instead I’m going to take us all the way back to 1997 when the Gos was just a scrawny teen with a mushroom-cut. He played a girl-chasing nerd on Breaker High. Not exactly a role to brag about, but he built his career up from that terrible, terrible show to star in respectable movies like Lars and the Real Girl (my favorite Gosling endeavor).

For Facebook recruiting, having a base to build upon is really helpful. If you have a Company Page, even if you haven’t been using it to grow your employer brand, it’s a fantastic starting point.

Some companies start new Pages just for hiring. This means losing the Likes and community you’ve already established. With a quality Facebook recruiting app, you can capitalize on what you’ve already built by adding a Career Page to your pre-existing Company Page. This means you don’t have to start from scratch, and lets you grow your company brand alongside your employer brand, with all of the content you post.

3 – Flaunt what you’ve got

Unlike most Canadians (see Kids in the Hall), Ryan does not have perfect comedic timing. So what did he do when he was cast as a lead in a blockbuster comedy? He did the best he could with the dialogue, and then took his shirt off. A lot. His abs made up for anything he was lacking in comedic chops. Even straight men were impressed. Be like the Gos: Don’t hide your shortcomings — distract from them with your strengths.

Maybe you don’t have the best comedic timing either, and that’s cool. Instead of trying to be funny, just be super friendly and helpful. If you don’t have slick products to showcase, post images of company BBQs. Share the things your company does well, the knowledge that you’re proud of, and remember, everyone likes a good BBQ!

4 – Diversify

From trashy teen TV, to dramatic lead, to real life super-hero (seriously — he saved a lady from being hit by a car, for real). The Gos has tried it all, and so should you!

Take risks with your social strategy. Try posting a range of content, interacting more, maybe less, or just differently. Perhaps your candidate pool doesn’t respond to a lot of business-related links, but they freaking love Dilbert cartoons. Maybe they really like it when you reach out and chat them up, but then again maybe they don’t. You won’t know until you try.

To keep track of what works and what doesn’t, make only one big change to your recruiting strategy at a time, and pay attention to how your talent community responds. Even better, use an awesome Facebook recruiting app to track your metrics — just sayin’.

That’s all for now. May all of your recruiting be fruitful. Oh, and if by some slim chance you are Ryan Gosling, my contact info appears at the top-right of this blog post.

Oh that age old question: What makes a perfect Facebook post?! Alright, so it’s not exactly an age-old question, but it’s certainly a good one. Making your Facebook page engaging is a top priority for social recruiting. That’s why we spend so much time on this blog writing about Facebook best practices, but words can only help so much. Which is why sometimes you simply need to consult an Infographic. This picture’s definitely worth a thousand words: Blueprint For The Perfect Facebook Post (an Infographic from Salesforce blog)

I am a university-educated North American in my late twenties.

So I love and value three things over anything else:

• My iPad

• Hip coffee shops

• Instagram

I also spend an inordinate amount of time taking photos of my coffee with said iPad to post on Instagram. Don’t judge me — choosing a filter that makes my image look cool-for-school is how I justify my arts “education”!

Okay, now before this turns into a gen-Y bashing session, let’s talk about something us gen-Yers love that is actually super useful. Some might even say makes the world a better place.

Podcasts.

If you are not yet on the podcast train, get on now! There’s no better way to get a free education. Seriously, you can get a free education. Check out iTunes University. This podcast from Cornell is life-changing, and Harvard shares business lectures. Bet you never thought you could get a Harvard education via your iPhone!

Getting your info from (reliable) podcasts is more efficient than from journals and newspapers, as you can listen to them while doing other things. You can listen to then while commuting, cooking, and exercising (although I still think for the weight room, you can’t beat rap).

Recently Suzanne Lucas, The Evil HR Lady herself, interviewed Steve Montako of the Boss Show. Don’t let the title fool you, the show isn’t just from the employer-perspective. It cover tons of different topics related to HR like productivity, working from home, and job interview screw-ups. The shows are nice and short and the two hosts have an obvious rapport. It’s no This American Life, but out of all of the HR podcasts I’ve heard so far, the Boss Show is hands down the most enjoyable.

Another popular HR podcast is the CYA report put out by Fistful of Talent. I’ll be honest and say it’s not my favorite. But, having worked for several years as a college radio jockey, I’m quite picky. I urge you to check it out for yourselves.

My personal favorite business-related podcast is Planet Money. They always manage to be engaging, even when covering ridiculous topics. Their explanation of the Motza Economy is fantastic, although I still think the best episode is the one on lard.

As far as non-business / non-HR Podcasts go, RadioLab is Amazing. I have actually cried while listening to episodes of RadioLab on the Subway, and was too captivated by the storytelling to even care.

Do you listen to podcasts? If so please, please, please share them in the comments.

Today is the most important holiday in my new home, Utrecht. In fact, it's the most important day in all of the Netherlands. It's Queen's Day, or Koninginnendag in Dutch. To an outsider, Queen's Day sounds like any other boring statutory holiday. Well, at least to this Canadian it did. But, here in Utrecht, it is anything but. The Dutch are completely, utterly, head-over-heels in love with their queen. The royal colour orange is featured in every window display. Dutch men wear orange pants, Dutch women wear orange dresses, and Dutch kids wear orange everything! Orange flags hang like canopies over the parks, there's a party on every block, a flea market on every street, and people everywhere sharing bright orange pastries. The Dutch know how to do a party. They also seem to really understand community. How to build it, how to keep it strong, and how to enjoy its many benefits. We've been focused a lot on community lately at Jobcast. It is in part because we believe social recruiting is all about engaging with one's online community, but also because we're working on some cool additions to our Facebook recruiting app! Our last two posts have sought to give our readers some practical tips to grow their social networks and Facebook communities. Today we're going to look at every recruiter and employer's most important type of community:

The Talent Community

A talent community is different from a talent pool, in that it's not just a spreadsheet filled with data on potential candidates. It is in fact, a type of network created by employers and recruiters for the purpose of improving their talent pipeline (here's a definition of a talent pipeline — sorry for all the jargon!). This network usually consists of potential hires, current employees, former employees, and past applicants. This group forms a community that can engage with each other to give referrals, stay up to date on job opportunities, and simply share information related to their profession, all via social networks. Cool eh? Facebook is the perfect place to foster a talent community. Its very nature encourages engagement, and you (hopefully) already have a strong employer brand presence on Facebook. Maybe (ideally!) you even have a branded Facebook Career Page with listed jobs. Now, before we get too excited, keep in mind that unless you are hiring chocolate-tasters, potential candidates are unlikely to spend a great deal of time engaging with your talent community. If you are not offering immediate employment, active candidates will probably be more inclined to spend their time looking at specific job postings. Passive candidates will, as always, be more inclined to spend their time on Facebook Liking pictures of kittens in fancy dress. Okay, so that's the cons out of the way! Let's look at why Facebook talent communities are awesome: Easy to join

People are busy. And aren't we all sick of filling out online forms? That's a huge part of why only 10% of people who visit career sites fill out applications. To join your Facebook talent community, all they have to do is Like your Career Page. 'Nuff said. Encourages a Good Fit

The key to a successful talent community is your current employees. Get them on board, engaging with your Facebook Page, and they will be a testament to your company culture. The way they interact, and what they post, gives potential hires insight into what your company culture is like. And vice-versa. Encourages Referrals

Your current employees are always an asset when it comes to referrals. Facebook talent communities make it even easier for them to recommend their peers to you. It also creates a place where you can actively ask for referrals and get real-time answers. There's also the potential to crowdsource referrals by finding connections between potential candidates and current employers or peers. You Can Snoop

(a little, don't get creepy!) Unlike with spreadsheets, you can engage with potential hires who are part of your talent community. You can ask them questions, either as a group or selectively, to get to know what kind of talent is out there. Try asking candidates what they think constitutes a positive work environment, or what they look for in an employer. That's a whole lot of pros! Oh, and not to mention that positive interactions on your Facebook Page help to strengthen your employer brand. If you still need convincing about the awesomeness of talent communities, check out this article by Lou Adler. I'd stay around and try to convince you more, but I have a queen to celebrate, and my face won't paint itself orange.

There are lots and lots and lots of rules. In recruiting, in HR, in social media. In life. Although we like to say that rules are meant to be broken, for the most part, they're not. The rules are there to keep us safe from speeding cars, bad grammar, and to prevent us from alienating those around us. In general, the rules are there to keep us from becoming unpopular, well-spoken, and out of the hospital, but they do occasionally warrant a little stretching. Maybe even the occasional breaking... And sometimes, it turns out, those rules are just plain wrong and it's time to re-examine why they became rules to begin with! This week's links have a little something for the goody two-shoes, for the rebels, and also for those of us that fall squarely in the middle. Of course it's best to lead with your most controversial content. Such as, this list of productivity boosters that go against everything that general wisdom would advise.

Buffer explains how we can improve productivity through procrastination, saying no and just plain giving up. The rebel in you can rejoice and be more productive, which means more time drag-racing and shopping for leather jackets. Awesome! After waaaay too many social media gurus wrongly declaring the death of job boards, it has become pretty taboo to challenge their importance for recruiting. It may be time to break that rule though, as it looks like the popularity of job boards is starting to wain. You should probably start using the Jobcast app to recruit with Facebook, just sayin'! This next link speaks to those of us lodged firmly in the middle. More specifically, to those of us who like a good dirty joke, but only if it's both hilarious and appropriate. It discusses K-Mart's viral commercial and how, despite being attention-grabbing, it wasn't a great move as far as their branding goes. It also makes the case that humour in HR is pretty risky business and should be used with caution! Lastly, here's a gift for those of us who love rules, rules, and more rules! New rule number one, never cross your arms again, never! This Ted Talk breaks down the rules of powerful body language and how to make it work for you. Oh, and I simply can't resist. Here are some important "rules" thought up by comedian Paul Rust... His New No-Nos are so funny, you'll bust a gut. A gut is not a rule, so feel free to bust it.

Let’s talk about community.

No, not the show. Although that would be a lot of fun.

Instead, we’re going to talk about your Facebook community. It will be just as engaging, I promise. Well… maybe not as engaging as that infamous chicken finger episode, but I’ll try my best!

Last week we learned about online tribes. We learned what they are, how they work, and what they can teach us about running our own online communities.

This week we’re going to focus more specifically on Facebook communities.

Your employer brand and Facebook recruiting efforts are dependent on this thing called reach. In order for candidates to apply for your jobs, your job posts need to reach those candidates. Your employer brand grows when it reaches a greater number of users than it has in the past. The more active your Facebook community, the better your reach. It’s your online community that shares your posts, links back to your content and refers job-seeking friends to your Facebook Career Page. As such, you should love your community as much, if not more, than hilarious sitcoms and chicken fingers.

You should also do everything in your power to make that community as active as possible. Sure, you could bribe them with hot chicken fingers, but implementing the following tips into your Facebook strategy will be far less messy:

Know what you’re working with!

By determining what stage your Facebook community is at, you can come up with a better strategy for growing it. Use this template to figure out if your community is in the On-Boarding, Established, Mature, or Mitosis stage. It’ll help you decide how to interact with your community members and what types of content to post.

The On-Boarding stage is the earliest stage of your community’s development, and it requires the most hands-on managing. You’ll need to court new members and set the tone for future interactions. This TNJ article has some great advice for this stage of online community building.

If you’ve been working on your online community for awhile, it’s probably moved on to either the Established or Mature phase. Now, you can be a little less hands-on, as you’ll want to let your community begin to dictate the kind of content you post. Pay close attention to consistency. This article covers 10 ways to accomplish this.

The Mitosis phase is when your community gets so big, that it is no longer cohesive, and has to split into smaller factions. This is something most of us will never have to deal with, unless we work for Apple or Coca Cola, in which case, refer back to this article for some advice.

But, no matter what stage you’re at, you’ll want to …

Post great content

Your content should be helpful, varied, entertaining, and in line with your employer brand at all times. Obviously that’s easier said than done. Here’s some tips:

1. Divide your posts into categories. For example, your strategy could be to make 25% of your posts into links related specifically to your field. 25% could be witty observations (this is where Seth Godin’s blog comes in super handy) or questions posed to your Facebook fans. 25% interesting non-business related content (blogs like Lifehacker are great for this type of post). And 25% self-promotion.

2. Only post content you’ve vetted. If you haven’t read, watched or listened to it — don’t post it!

3. Post content that you would want to click on. Think about what shows up on your own personal news feed, what you like about it, and what words make you click through to a shared link. What would you share with your own colleagues and friends? Let this inform your own posts.

K.I.S.S. it

Always aim for the minimum. I know it sounds a little weird, but posting non-stop is kind of annoying. Having a presence on every single social network tends to water down your efforts, and responding to every comment someone makes on your Page with multi-paragraph answers is exhausting.

So, aim to do the minimum, but do it really really well. Post solid content consistently, but not constantly. Use Facebook as your main hub and select only a couple of other networks to use, instead of trying to spread yourself thinly over every social platform out there. Keep your interactions short, friendly, and to the point.

Engage and listen, but not too much

Always respond to your community members’ questions, ask them for input, and re-post interesting comments that they leave on your Timeline. People love to feel heard and you can learn a lot about how to grow your Facebook employer brand by listening to what your current community has to say.

But, (there’s always a but!) don’t listen too much. There will always be differing opinions, overly critical comments, and people with terrible ideas. For some reason, there’s even more people like this on the internet than in the real world. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone, just pay attention, engage and always stay true to your brand. You’ll do fine.

And the final and most important bit of advice is…

Be a human

No one wants to interact with a machine. That’s why thousands of iPhones are smashed every year due to Siri’s inability to understand me as an individual… Moving on… Don’t make your Facebook Fans karate-chop their laptops. It’ll really hurt your recruiting efforts (and their hand), and they will no longer be able to email you their resumes.

Be yourself, not a machine. Respond to people in a conversational tone. Own up to mistakes or gaps in your knowledge. Avoid jargon. Make bad jokes, or even better, make good jokes.

In other words, do as I say, not as I do!

Happy Facebook recruiting.

The new Superman trailer is out and it’s dominating my news feed.  The “Man of Steel” is taking up valuable real-estate that ought to be devoted to stories about the latest social media trends, Facebook Recruiting, and cat pictures. Doesn’t Mashable.com know that Superman is the most boring of the heroes, and that I have a very important Link Love to write!?!

Apparently not.

Superman is my least favorite hero. He is just too … well … super. It’s too unbelievable. Unlike a tortured man, who decides to dress up like a bat and get into epic battles with overly-smiley green-haired fellows. Now that’s realism!

Okay, so maybe believability isn’t the best reason not to like Superman. But really, you’ve got to admit he’s just not the most practical archetype to aspire to. No amount of martial arts training, voice modulation, nor fancy gadgets on your belt will transform you into Superman. Whereas there is still a part of me that thinks, if I work extra hard on my Jiu-Jitsu skills, I could totally take the Joker!

Practical skills, that’s where it’s at.

So, for this Link Love, let’s look at some recent articles in the blogosphere that will help you develop some practical social recruiting skills and make your recruiting a little more super!

Our very favorite post this week just happens to be about our favorite subject: Facebook recruiting! This nifty Infographic breaks down 10 easy steps to make your Facebook Page better.

Best quote of the week has to go to Michael Schrage for:

“Resumes are dead. Interviews are largely ineffectual. LinkedIn is good. Portfolios are useful, but projects are the real future of hiring”

And it’s not just this quote that’s awesome. His argument that having candidates work on actual projects is more efficient and effective than any interview could possibly be is bold, smart and practical.

TalentHQ breaks down how to set the stage for recruiting success. Hint, it’s all about planning.

Another of our favorite topics: better employer branding! Jodi Ordioni (best name ever) helps you avoid three major employer branding pitfalls. Tip number three is copy-writing gold!

And what list of practical advice would be complete without some app suggestions? None. So here are some recommendations from Inc. for apps that your business really should start using. We also, highly recommend Buffer.

Oh, and one last little piece of advice: Don’t hire the kid with lime-green hair. Trouble.