When I got my first job with a recruitment company I remember it being pointed out that our business was a lot harder than many others because we were selling a product that had emotions, a mind of its own and could get up and walk away at the drop of a hat.

Just like social networks, recruiters provide a service to one community for free in order to sell it to someone else.

I see a lot of people complaining when a social network makes (or doesn’t make) changes. Then other people telling them how silly they are for complaining because they are getting the service for free. The attitude is that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. can impose whatever they like on their users because those users are not paying for a service.

If recruiters treat candidates like they don’t matter then those candidates usually find another way to get a job. The candidate may not be the one paying the invoice at the end of the day, but they are the product you need in order to satisfy your client.

So, do social networks need to worry more about keeping their users happy or risk having no data or clicks to sell to their clients?

A couple of weeks ago I was offered an invite to the new freemium version of App.net.

If you’ve not heard of App.net (or ADN as the cool kids seem to call it), then simply put, it is very similar to Twitter but with no advertising – ever. Up until now, users have had to pay to have an ADN account. These new free accounts have limited functionality, I can only follow a maximum of 40 people for example. This does give me the opportunity to try out App.net and see what the atmosphere is like before committing. If I choose to stay I will need to pay at some point.

One of the first conversations I stumbled upon in the App.net global feed (anyone been around long enough to remember checking out what all Twitter users were saying by clicking “Everyone”?) was an outburst of rage about LinkedIn from a web developer. He was complaining that people contacted him about job opportunities without having read his profile. I checked out his LinkedIn profile and it clearly stated that he was not interested in approaches from any recruiter. He also didn’t like the user interface – he thought signing in alone was arduous.

LinkedIn have had some impressive numbers in the past year. But who are they really pleasing? Most people I speak to, outside of the recruitment industry, see LinkedIn as a necessary evil at best. Those with the most sought after skills are sick to the back teeth of clumsy approaches from Recruiters – or just too many approaches. Some report stripping back the information in their profiles or deleting them completely.

Inside the recruitment industry, thoughts about LinkedIn are equal measure wonder and panic – but that’s another blog post.

Group managers are worried that charges might be just beyond the horizon, event managers have lost LinkedIn Events…

Who is LinkedIn pleasing? Its shareholders. Ultimately it is selling its users in order to achieve this and they are going to be the first people to walk away. I know people that are already trimming down their profiles to make them harder to find via their skills or deleting them all together. The users with the most hard-to-find and in-demand skills will leave long before the most desperate recruiters stop picking over LinkedIn’s carcass.

The likes of Facebook,  Twitter and Google are not out of the firing line either. Many people in my network were most upset by the announcement that Google Reader would be shutting down later this year. Facebook regularly upsets its users over privacy concerns and voyeuristic creepiness – like the Like button’s ability to track you around the web. But we can’t complain – we don’t pay to use Facebook. Facebook is not the product, we the users are – sold to the highest bidder. Twitter is dipping its toes in the water of advertising with promoted tweets and trends as well as paid brand pages, perhaps the least irritating monetisation strategy so far…?

Which brings me back to App.net. They say that they are selling a service, not their users.

This might put some people off – we have all been spoiled by free social networks. Join, share the love, if things get too commercial or the audience too “mainstream” then just move on to the next new shiny free thing that hopes to make it big.

But what if we could pay a few quid and our Social Network would be what we wanted it to be – always? If the money comes from the users then keeping us happy is top priority.

If App.net attracts a significant audience and the buzz gets big enough then the recruiters, the marketers and the brands will follow. I am already embroiled in a rather tedious exchange with one brand trying to get me to try their product.

But… If all any user can buy is an account, brands will need to be interesting and useful in order to get any attention. No one will be able to hand over a wodge of cash and “machine-gun 100 people with InMails”.

Of course, if the brands do come, they will then form part of the user-base that App.net has to please. Users with more cash – this could take us down an old familiar road.

For now, I am there. I want to see how this one turns out. Will significant numbers of social network users ever decide that free isn’t worth it?

If you want to try App.net’s new freemium version then you will need to find someone with a paid account and ask them for an invite. If I become part of that group then I’ll let you know.

Image based on mcfarlandmo’s photo on flickr.

Not only is the Eddie Stobart Truckers’ rendition of 12 Days of Christmas an explosion of festive joy in aid of a great cause, it’s also a lovely piece of employer branding.

What better way to show that they value their drivers’ other talents than by allowing those with great singing voices to to record a Christmas single and make a video? Genuine Pride in the Eddie Stobart brand shines out.

You can listen to the whole song on Spotify and I defy you not to be grinning once you’ve listened.

As of this week, I am the owner of Sourcing Hat Ltd. Working for myself is definitely the way forward for me. Variety keeps me inspired and sharp as a Sourcer.

It has been an exciting eight months since I finished a contract with Capgemini Consulting and went freelance again. Here are just a few things I have been up to in that time;

UK Sourcers

I have been spending more time putting love into the UK Sourcers community. I started UK Sourcers at the end of 2009 and it is already well established on Twitter. We now have a blog (that is looking for guest bloggers…) and a LinkedIn group. We have also started a series of “hack” events… join the LinkedIn group to be the first to find out about those.

Training

I have provided lots of training with some great recruitment businesses in all sorts of fields as well as some direct employers. The biggest difference I have noticed since I was working for myself in 2010 is that a lot more large corporates are trying to improve their direct hiring efforts.

The most popular topics for training have been the optimisation of using LinkedIn and basic search engine skills. More recruiters are starting to spend money with LinkedIn and this means they want to know how to get the absolute maximum out of it for their investment. Many are also seeing that as more and more people dabble with online sourcing it is becoming more difficult to find those fresh candidates – this is where really strong search skills make the difference.

All my training is bespoke to each client so training can look radically different for different groups of recruiters, depending on how much they already know.

Research

I have a couple of clients that I have got to know quite well (and managed to get a feel for their clients too).

This is really where I keep my day-to-day sourcing skills sharp. If I did not keep sourcing then my training provision would start to feel tired and out of date pretty fast!

Ochre House

Over the summer I spent three months working with Ochre House and their Talent Attraction Specialists (TAS). What a fantastic group of recruiters and sourcers!!

I met with at least one person from all their on-site RPO teams, tried to understand their sourcing challenges and help out where I could. In a lot of cases I returned to individuals and teams several times. We ended up with a lot of resources, an online space for the TAS community to share and learn from each other as well as some ideas for training programs going forward.

This project culminated in the creation of a sourcing challenge open to all Ochre House employees called #OchreChallenge. I’ll let them explain that to you in this blog post by Andy Curlewis.

What’s Next?

Verizon

I just started a series of projects with Verizon that will see me working with them over the next six months. They are on a very interesting journey with a relatively new in-house recruitment team here in the UK.

I can’t wait to get stuck in!

Game Wagon

A friend of mine has recently launched Game Wagon, an events business for those who love gaming. They are just a few months old and get most of their business from putting on children’s parties. They bring one of their Mercedes Stretch Sprinter vans to your house and up to 16 people can game on all the latest games and consoles within. The vans are “pimped out” as one Gadget Show Live attendee said last week.

It is a nice juxtaposition to all this recruitment malarkey! I will be helping them with their online marketing and Social Media strategy.

I will be trying my hand at schmoozing with Mummy bloggers in an attempt to get some coverage of Game Wagon’s Kids’ Parties as well as trying to make contact with PR folks in the gaming industry – Game Wagon has a lot to offer at game launches. All in all, I think I can learn a lot here!

More of the same

I’ll still have time for my research clients and hopefully time to meet and train some more recruiters and sourcers – but get in touch quick as the dairy tends to fill up fast!

UK Sourcers is very close to my heart. I am committed to putting on more events and generally getting the UK Sourcing community together learning and sharing on a regular basis. Keep an eye out for our next event announcement!

A couple of years ago I wrote down my rules for connecting on Social Networks and published them here on my blog’s Contact & Connect page. It was a great way to cut out any of the anxiety associated with not accepting or reciprocating someone’s connection request or follow.

I have recently returned to working for myself and decided to relax my rules for connecting on LinkedIn – it seems silly not to connect to someone that could one day become a client. With that in mind I’ll accept connection requests from just about anyone in the recruitment space in the UK.

I still, however, find it difficult to accept an invitation from someone I’ve never met and have no idea how they came across my profile. All too often I receive a request from a recruiter simply stating “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”. Everyone knows this is the default text for an invite. I worry that recruiters might be doing this to those they consider potential candidates. I try only to use this text if I know the person REALLY well or I’m actually sat next to the person when I send the invite.

I usually send them a quick message before accepting their request to see how they came across me – some even reply.

Why not personalise the message up front? Those default invites tend to sit in my LinkedIn inbox for weeks or months while I try to convince myself to add these strangers to my network. I like connecting, I like meeting new people, but connecting just to make the numbers go up is very unrewarding. I want more conversation, more interaction; I actually want to KNOW more people.

If you’re a bit intimidated by a blank message box then here are some ideas from the Undercover Recruiter blog on what to write in your LinkedIn invitations.

As LinkedIn matures, I think  candidates are getting better and better at sniffing out a lazy approach. I even find most InMails to be lazy – especially when I receive one from somebody I already share a group with. I’m a member of so many groups, it would be easy for someone to join one and message me for free – why waste an InMail?

I’m being overly picky on that last point but, as recruiters, we should know LinkedIn inside out. It is one of the most important tools in modern recruiting. When you send a default connection request to someone you have never met you are being lazy and it is obvious.

There has been a lot of talk about trains today. Twitter has been all of a flutter over Virgin losing the West Coast Mainline to First Group.

I made a change to my journey today. I traveled to London from Swindon today instead of my usual journey from Reading. It cost me £56 one way. I knew it would be that much, I was prepared. But when the barrier ate my ticket at Paddington I actually felt a tug and stopped – a little voice in my head said quite clearly “…but, I paid fifty-six pounds for that.” It suddenly felt very silly to have paid that much for a tiny rectangle of flimsy orange card.

I can get a peak time ticket from Reading to Paddington for £20.60 and an Anytime Travelcard (there and back + unlimited travel around London on buses and tubes) for £45.50. How can it cost so much more from Swindon, a journey that takes just twice the time? With most things, the more you buy or the further you go – the more you save. Not with train travel.

When we reached Reading, the commuters piled onto the train as I usually would, one or two of them getting seats and the rest standing in the aisles and the vestibules.

I tweeted last week (on my journey home to Reading from Paddington) that cattle on their way to slaughter got more room than I had on the train.

Cattle on their way to slaughter get more room than this… @fgw

— Katharine Robinson (@TheSourceress) August 7, 2012

I wondered this morning if there was any truth in that hastily written criticism of First Great Western.

A train carriage seats 80 people, I read a piece in the Guardian at Christmas time that reported the average commuter train between Reading and Paddington is 306 people over capacity. Divide that by the 5 standard class carriages (you can’t stand in 1st class unless you have a First Class ticket) and you get an extra 61 people per carriage. This sounds absolutely accurate to me as a regular commuter on this route.

I found a generous estimate of the size of a train carriage online giving it a floor area of 9ft x 65ft. That’s 54.3 square meters between 141 people. That’s 0.385 square metres of space each.

Defra give the following guidelines for transporters of cattle:

Are we all crazy?

I can get the megabus to London from Swindon for £5 – I bet that would get me a seat. I’m going to try it. I have to for the sake of my sanity.

UK4Business were brought to my attention by my Dad. He had received an email offering ‘LinkedIn for Business’ training to his company and had decided to consider the idea for his sales people.

Knowing that I use LinkedIn as part of my job and regularly train recruiters to use it, he wanted to ask me about the email and about LinkedIn in general.

The email from UK4Business was very detailed. It listed all the things covered by the training and seemed very comprehensive. It also told me that they offered other courses in Facebook for Business and Twitter for Business.

I decided to look at their website before telling him to “go for it”. I only had a print out of the email, so couldn’t follow the hyperlinks within. I Googled UK4Business Linkedin Training in an attempt to find their website. They didn’t come up on the first page of results. That was my first alarm bell.

I eventually tried the domain that had sent the email and checked out UK4Business.com. It was the right site and it looked pretty good. Details of the courses, dates, prices, contact details and testimonials. Everything seemed to be in order.

I wondered if I had heard of or met their trainers so headed over to LinkedIn and searched for UK4Business. I found one profile for a David Miller with no picture, no work history beyond UK4Business, no connections and no company page at all. Quite peculiar for a business offering LinkedIn training and stressing the importance of growing a network and making the most of your company page. I couldn’t find a LinkedIn group or any LinkedIn event pages for the business either.

They provide other training in Social Media for business but I could find no Facebook page for UK4Business. A Twitter account called @UK4Business does exist but at the time of writing it has no followers, no following, has never tweeted and its avatar is the default egg image. I have no way of knowing if this is anything to do with the training supplier of the same name as the profile has no bio or link back to their website. The bottom of their website lists “Knowledge 4 Business” and “UK4B” as other trading names, they don’t have a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter either.

I decided to look for David Miller on Twitter. As there were a lot of results for this common name, I used Followerwonk to look for profiles in the name of David Miller that mentioned LinkedIn or Social Media in their bio. I found one in the UK with the username @mbwconsulting. He claims to be a social media consultant, ready to help your business. He has sent some tweets, but not since January 2010 and no replies, mentions or links are visible in his most recent updates. The vast majority of his tweets are quotes from famous people. He also had the default egg avatar image and does not link to a business website.

UK4Business also plan to offer training in Google+, YouTube and WordPress. I can’t find them on these platforms either. A user called UK4Business does exist on YouTube but it seems to belong to someone based in Egypt.

I am always deeply suspicious of those offering training in something that they do not use effectively themselves. The UK4Business website seems so thorough and has lots of testimonials from satisfied customers though – it couldn’t be all bad. Two of the recommendations came with links directly to Twitter profiles, so I tweeted to them asking what they thought of the training.

I have waited for over 12 hours but have had no response as yet.

I decided to call the phone number on the website and ask UK4Business what the thinking was behind having no presence on Social Media themselves.

I was told that Social Media Bureau provide the Social Media training. It was also explained that UK4Business paid a company to set up a lot of their Social Media properties when they first formed and have now entered into a dispute with them, meaning that nothing is currently set up.

I would have thought that a business actively selling these services would have been able to set up their own accounts on Social Media.  Employing someone else to do so on their behalf seems odd.

Having looked at the trainers from Social Media Bureau, I have no doubt that the training offered is very reasonable, as the testimonials suggest.

The gentleman I spoke to on the phone accepted that they could very well be losing business due to people like me looking for them on Social Media and not finding anything. I imagine most companies would perform this bare minimum of due diligence.

The moral of the story? If you offer services in something as public as Social Media – make sure you are seen to use it! If not, you might lose business for no good reason.

Have you taken any UK4Business training?

Tomorrow evening at 8pm, Crexia are hosting their first Social Recruiting Twitter Chat. The topic will be “Social Recruiting on Facebook – Networking or Job Posting?”.

The chat will feature guest speakers David Henry, VP of Marketing UKIE at Monster, and Stephane Le Viet, CEO & Co-founder of Work4Labs. So follow @hoorayhenry and @work4labs ahead of the chat.

I am delighted to be joining #SRCHAT as a co-host, I’m sure it will be a great opportunity to engage and share knowledge with professionals who are passionate about Social Recruiting.

I recommend Twubs as a great tool for taking part in Twitter chats.

Crexia’s #SRCHAT will take place every Wednesday at 8pm BST, 3pm ET and 12pm PT for a whole hour.

Don’t forget the #SRCHAT hashag

As if an auto DM when you follow someone on Twitter was not irritating enough, some people use TrueTwit Validation.

This isn’t a new phenomenon – the service has been irritating me and other Twitter users for some time. What really annoys me is that TrueTwit is a robot for checking whether or not I’m a robot!

If someone does not have time to take 30 seconds to cast an eye over my profile then I would question their motives for even being on Twitter. It wouldn’t wash on other social networks.

I definitely don’t want to waste my time filling in a form in the hope that someone I’ve only just discovered on Twitter might maybe perhaps follow me back.

I wonder how many Desperate Dans actually fill in the form?

As you may have noticed, my contract with Capgemini Consulting came to an end a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed working with their recruitment team in London, I learned so much from some fantastic people. I wrote about some of the success we had with Social Media here on my blog a few months ago. It was really rewarding to witness the whole recruitment process from beginning to end, actually getting to see new hires join.

I have my ear to the ground for anther suitably interesting long term opportunity, but in the meantime I’m making an enjoyable return to the self-employed life. This has already given me the opportunity to work with some great recruiters in the last couple of weeks. I have really missed getting to see how others play the game!

I am also planning some new things for the UK Sourcers project that I started about two and a half years ago. If you are interested in Internet sourcing and would like to be one of the first to hear any news then be sure to join the UK Sourcer’s LinkedIn group.

I guess all that remains for me to say is; if you think you might need me – get in touch

You cannot know me and not be aware that I love Percy Pig sweets from Marks and Spencer.

I tweet about them. I eat them in bed, on the bus and at the office. I have Percy on my key-ring and in my Christmas stocking. I know that a lot of people feel the same way. For a little foamy, gummy sweet, he inspires a lot of love and smiles.

I was beside myself when he joined Twitter, and even more delighted when I was the first person he mentioned!

OMG!! I’m the first person @ImPercyPig spoke to on Twitter. This may be the proudest moment of my life!! #PercyPig

— Katharine Robinson (@TheSourceress) December 6, 2011

A few days later though, I expressed my disappointment with his tweets. I was expecting something as charming as @Maudthecow from anchor used to be, but also as epic as @bronxzooscobra still is with his keen eye for current events.

I rllaey hpoe taht Hrary Peottr wnis bset mvoie tnogiht at the MTV Mvoie Arawds! #ParseltongueTweet #MTVMovieAwards — Bronx Zoo’s Cobra (@BronxZoosCobra) June 6, 2011

On reflection, I think that I am so disappointed because being the voice of Percy Pig on Social Media would be one of my dream jobs. Someone else has that job and they are not doing it in the same way I would. I am frustrated and also very jealous.

I have found myself thinking about the kind of online presence I might craft for Percy.

I imagine that the ultimate goal of Percy’s Twitter account must be to sell more sweets and merchandise. This could be done by both further inspiring current fans and making others curious about Percy Pig, perhaps even bringing new shoppers into Marks and Spencer stores.Therefore the account must bring some value to its followers in order to keep them. Even an account tweeting out a cycling list of Percy Pig merchandise would be more enlightening than “Oink”.

If it were my job to represent Percy online, I’d let any main M&S communications take care of product news. Percy’s voice is too potentially valuable to turn into a link feed.

I’d confidently say that everyone (who isn’t currently a spam-bot) following the @ImPercyPig Twitter account is mad about the sweets, just like me. There were Percy Pig money boxes and novel cases full of sweets available this Christmas, making perfect gifts for the Percy Pig lover in your life. Did they know to ask for them though? Twitter could have given those fantastic items more exposure to both Percy fans and their friends/family.

Before crafting Percy’s Social Media strategy, I’d do my research into Pig related current events. It would be easy to get pig related news straight to my RSS reader or inbox each day and then provide Percy’s unique spin on the (fizzy pig) tale. A day on a farm might be a good idea too. I don’t have much experience with real pigs and would need to learn how they behave, what sort of personalities they have and would surely get loads of inspiration for Percy’s personality. As the sweets appeal to those of all ages, so should the tweets. Percy is a boy, he is sweet, pink and totally fruity. I think that would also help guide in crafting his voice.

There is no shortage of Percy Pig lovers on Twitter – back in the summer, Percy Pig trended on Twitter when Marks and Spencer launched his Ice Cream. I’d definitely follow back all the real people that chose to follow Percy – if they are interested in him, I would think he’d be interested in them. I would look at who uses the #PercyPig hashtag most and I also notice that nine people (at the time of writing) actually mention Percy Pigs in their Twitter bios – I would definitely try to contact them and ask for opinions and ideas. They could end up being Percy’s biggest Twitter evangelists.

I have found myself wondering why Marks and Spencer did not obtain the  unused @PercyPig Twitter handle. As Percy Pig is their trade mark, Twitter should have given it to them. I found a number of parody accounts, like @thepercypig and @Percy_Pig1 (the latter is the top result when I Google “Percy Pig Twitter”). Although not used much, both show a nice bit of personality and a humorous rivalry with Colin the Caterpillar.

@ImPercyPig gets a lot of great tweets sent his way, both directly and via the #PercyPig hashtag. He rarely responds though and never employs any wit when he does. For example, he could tell Hannah that her new travel card holders are very “sty-lish”!

LOVING my new travel card holders (and the bags of @ImPercyPig that came with them) Thanks @marksandspencer xxxx twitter.com/hannaheichler/… — Hannah Eichler (@hannaheichler) December 21, 2011

… and let Suze know that Percy doesn’t encourage cannibalism.

Just offered a copper a #percypig He said yes please but was I trying to tell him something – didn’t think of that! — Suze Endean (@racer09) December 18, 2011

Percy hasn’t sent many tweets in his first 4 weeks. Despite this his followers still enthusiastically respond to his questions, only to get no further interaction. This could be a real force for spreading love and awareness if only harnessed.

The Percy Pig suit that is beautifully modelled in his Twitter avatar looks like an opportunity for lots of visual fun. “Where’s Percy” and “Percy Spotting” are just two ideas that come to mind when I wonder how to use the suit to engage fans and get them sharing…

I am bursting with too many ideas to share here!

Percy needn’t just share his thoughts and feelings on Twitter. Percy Pig’s Facebook page has managed to amass a quarter of a million fans, even though it doesn’t feature any news from the pig himself, a vanity URL hasn’t even been claimed for the page. Facebook would lend itself well to lots of visual media and Facebook questions would be a fantastic way to get light touch interaction from fans and lots of feedback. Percy could be a very platform versatile pig.

What would you do if you were the voice of Percy Pig?

:@)