David Henry, VP of marketing UKIE at Monster Worldwide, started the afternoon with a look at the potential of big data in recruitment. Henry told delegates that recruitment is no stranger to data – job boards alone generate millions of job search queries each month.

The issue, he said, was to make sense of the data that we generate. He talked through Monster’s semantic search tool SeeMore, which sits over the Monster suite of recruitment services.

This aims to makes sense of unstructured data from a variety of sources. Henry said there was a huge potential for employers to use data to place internal candidates but that internal performance data on employees was poor. He said employers spend huge amounts of money finding out about external candidates when they should be looking to get good data on internal candidates to help internal mobility and to provide predictive analytics for workforce planning i.e. using data to understand when people might leave and the skills that would be required.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld shared the story of his company and the work it had been doing making a great mobile experience for candidates. To do this, Jibe employed 11 engineers to build APIs for US applicant tracking systems. That means Jibe can work with the ATS to provide a seamless mobile application process. This includes the ability to upload a CV in one of five ways – via copy and paste, email, Dropbox, PDF of Linkedin profile or Google Docs.

Essenfeld said Jibe was working with UK clients and said they would be announcing a major new client in the UK in the next few weeks.

John-Paul Caffery shared this video to help explain the changing world of recruitment. He explained that agencies can use the Job Post platform to pitch their candidates to employers (crowdsource them), many of whom they would never get to pitch to because they would not be big enough to get on their preferred supplier list.

Caffery said the recruitment agencies were still relevant and there were thousands more today than there were 10 years ago.

Listen to conference moderator Alan Whitford review the afternoon sessions:

The morning sessions at today’s Social, Mobile and Recruitment Technology Summit took delegates from the macro trends affecting the global workforce to how Unilever is using Linkedin and Facebook to the mobile aspirations of Linkedin.

Jason Corsello, VP of marketing and corporate strategy at Cornerstone OnDemand, told delegates that the bigger picture of global resourcing is shaping recruitment trends.

Forty years ago the brightest students were graduating out of the US. Now they are graduating from Korea and Finland and a whole range of other countries, but no longer just the US and the UK.

Corsello shared this slide on where Google is hiring its talent.

Add this global talent pool to the fact that the growth of working age people around the world will be flattening in the coming 50 years and you see a picture of resourcing becoming a global discipline rather than a local one.

You can see Carsello’s presentation here:

This global local point was picked up by Charu Malhotra, global resourcing projects manager (employer branding) at Unilever. Charu said the FMCG giant had focused its efforts on Facebook and Linkedin to drive its number one channel for recruiting – referrals.

Hers was a story of content, marketing and data. For both Facebook and Linkedin she worked closely with the networks to understand how to deliver content to local communities through global pages. For Facebook this involved delivering targeted content via the IP (i.e. Russian IP delivers Russian content).

On Linkedin, Unilever developed one global page and four global functional pages. By talking with Linkedin and understanding the data, Unilever started to target content based on user preferences. It uses updates to help build longer-term relationships with users.

Linkedin also scrapes jobs twice a day from Unilever’s careers site to ensure all jobs are displaying on the network.

Despite the complexity and scale of networks, Charu advised delegates to choose a network based on where the audience lives (fish where the fish are is the term Charu used).

She also advised using marketing teams from the outset, using internal experts to help provide relevant content to candidates, asking candidates what they would actually like to see content-wise and to also be agile.

Richard Ward, enterprise sales manager at Linkedin, ended the morning session by talking through the mobile app, which receives 16 million monthly page views a month. Ward said Linkedin focuses on three core areas: identity (personal profile), insights (news updates, groups etc) and everywhere (mobile).

Mobile is now the big focus for Linkedin, he said, sharing a slide on the impact of mobile on Likedin usage (see below).

The three areas of thinking driving app development at Linkedin are simplify, grow, everyday. He likened the role of there LI iPad app to that of a personal assistant, providing you with meetings, news, who has been trying to contact you (via viewing your profile).

Conference moderator Alan Whitford shared his highlights from the morning sessions:

From automated job board posting to source analytics, applicant recruiting technologies have made the lives of recruiters a lot easier — especially as more job seekers rely on their social and referral networks to find jobs.

Social networking sites have fundamentally changed how recruiters and candidates are connecting and sharing information. It has also begun to redefine active and passive candidates who maintain a presence on sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed.com, and various alumni professional networks. To keep up with the pace of the technological and social changes, today’s talent acquisition teams need to build a recruiting strategy that combines modern social networking with the overall talent expectations of their organization.

SOCIAL SOURCING

Easy and efficient for everyone in the organization to explore their networks for talent.

Why Social Sourcing Matters:

• 9 out of 10 organizations are using social media in their recruiting efforts, if that’s not you it’s your competition.
• Segment, target, and reach the right audiences (millenials, GenX/Y, or any other specific skilled groups) by the types of social media they prefer.
• Eliminate the need for contractors and external agencies to ‘try’ to understand your organization and blindly target candidates.

Drive Social Sourcing initiatives with Cornerstone:

• Candidates can apply or forward the job requisition – a viral way to extend your reach in talent networks.
• Matching technology suggests contacts for the job based on social profile information.
• Automate and track publishing of jobs to social networks, online communities, and job boards.

EMPLOYEE REFERRALS

Empower your team to grow referrals – the highest quality, lowest cost

Why Employee Referrals are Key:

• Look to your best performers, they have their own personal networks of candidates with similar training/education, interests and skills.
• Current employees can detect whether a candidate they know personally would be a cultural fit or meet organizational expectations.
• Dramatically reduce your cost-to-hire conversion rates and focus on-boarding the candidate.

Employee Referrals get a boost from Cornerstone:

• Engages all employees in helping out with referrals.
• Easy for employees to initiate referrals – and use their social networks to spread the word.
• Automatic tracking of referrals, so you can recognize employees for their contributions.

Find out more, today @ www.csod.com/recruiting or visit Cornerstone Ondemand at the Social, Mobile and Recruitment Technology event on 17th January 2013 in London.

Mobile Recruiting was a hot topic in 2012 with a wider recognition of value of engaging with candidates on the move, via Mobile websites, Mobile apps and Mobile job applications.

JIBE, a SAAS recruiting company that has built the first and only solution that allows a jobseeker to submit a complete job application from any device – mobile, tablet and desktop, published an infographic on the State of Mobile Recruiting in 2012. In case you missed it, click here.

Come hear JIBE’s CEO Joe Essenfeld speak about Mobile Recruiting and Job applications via Mobile at the Social, Mobile and Recruitment Technology event on 17th Jan. 2013 in London.