Un-notes From #truBoston

In the days of incandescent bulbs, instant-on brilliance was a good analogy for an idea. Since the introduction of compact fluorescent curly thingys, we have the luxury of a slower start-up and it may be several days before everything lights up in that cloud over my head. Looking over my notes from two days of #truBoston it became clear that I had spent way too much time learning stuff instead of making a record of what I was learning. I’m not sure if there is a scientific name for the fear of forgetting something important, but I think I’ll call it Holyshitphobia after my knee-jerk reaction while trying to decipher my disjointed un-conference un-notes.

Anyway, without any spell-check or syntax refinement here are some of my ramblings.

In General:

• I suck at taking notes in class. How did I ever get a degree?
• Touch screen typing was invented by Satan!
• Bluetooth keyboards are a gift from God!
• Regardless of source of ten-digital input to an iPad, I still suck at taking notes.
• Speaking of gods, Bill Boorman is a t-shirt wearing self-confessed social media whore. “Let there be disorganization!”
• Bullhorn Rocks! (figuratively and literally)

Monty Python: Now for something really different:

Bill Boorman: Please leave your cell phones on during the conference.

Snippets of stuff to remember later when the bulb warms up:

• Unconference rules: Party horns = bad. Paper umbrellas = good. Most umbrellas wins!
• “Just do it?” or “Planning First” that is the question. Hmmm. In the middle on that one.
• “Platform” or “Content” Leaning toward content on that one, but maybe…
• “Return on Investment” or “Return on Inspiration” Clearly ROI is more important ☺
• Which came first? Candidate or Consumer. Great question! Great discussion by group!
• Rule: no more than three two clicks from company page to career site.
• Must get candidates past first 3 steps in the application process or interest falls off.
• Whoa! Facebook application directly to ATS?
• Professional videos do not draw more than inexpensive personal videos.
• Video job postings give 3 to 9 times better results than blah blah blah.
• Novel idea: Apply directly from video rather than drive traffic to career site.
• [There is a trend here: it complicates the process to use attractive means to point to boring and complicated job sites]
• SEO videos on YouTube to trending topics to get better draw, i.e. Google first page.
• Sharing videos is popular! Share with six points of contact who then also share can make video go viral.
• [Note to self: look into streaming video #HFChat live]
• Facebook as a CRM. Now there’s an idea.
• Get employees to create content. Great idea and brave move.
• Secret Sourcing: (can’t publish in blog or I have to shoot you).
• Two truisms: 1. Sourcing is much more powerful than most recruiters know, and 2. Geoff Webb and Steve Levy can probably find anybody, anytime, anywhere.
• Old School and New Kool: the best social media tools are still the phone and the handshake.
• Idea: purge resume database after 6 mo but only after query to candidates to update their information is so much better than passive acceptance.
• T-shirt marketing – referral bonus does not have to be cash. Give away an iPad.
• Sodexo’s branding is real. Kerry Noone confirmed my suspicions that they do it the right way.
• Sodexo use of social media was not a hard sell to senior management. They get it.
• Use jobs2web for tracking.
• Alumni community [most companies treat departure as death or excommunication].
• A good metric is “speed of present candidate” All others not in my control
• “Random Acts of Wildness” Most tweetable this hour.
• Some recruiting sources: LinkedIn still best, then Twitter, then Facebook.
• Use indeed! And tweetmyjobs.
• Career Blogging as a track doesn’t mean we have to talk about career blogging. Tru un-conference concept w/lead from the floor.
• Google+ able to use multiple circles by discipline.
• People love to share blog links in LinkedIn Groups.
• Empire Avenue sourcing tool. Farmville sourcing: give them a cow.
• Skype is a sourcing tool.
• Fact: people who travel a lot are more likely to be on Facebook.
• Advocacy=Employees (don’t understand why I wrote that down, but it sounds cool)
• Online Predictive Behavior – not just for advertising. Emerging trend usable for recruiting e.g. change in LinkedIn profile means person is looking for job even if not advertising it. Or some other big change like untagging photos and changes in Facebook profile.
• Difference between referrals and recommendations. [Note to self: commenting that I’ve never seen a bounty system work well is a minority opinion, but most agree T-shirt can be better than thousands of dollars]
• Don’t replicate job board in Facebook. Yes!
• Wrap up videos: I was having a terrible hair day. [Note to self: Next trip don’t forget the hair gel]

Quick and dirty…but I’m actually still trying to read some of my notes. Maybe there are several blog posts in there somewhere, but for now I’m going to follow the other people’s posts and gain more information from them. If I learned anything in these two days, it is that there are some incredibly smart people in our world and you can learn better from smart people than on your own.