At High Road Communications, we are known for having an incredibly talented team, and this week our very own Ian Buck was featured in the Globe and Mail talking about how we harness the power of social media to recruit the very best in the business.

The article, written by Lynn Greiner, rightly explores how recruiting quality staff is “no longer a matter of placing an ad in the newspaper and then wading through a mountain of (horror of horrors) paper resumés. Today’s tech-savvy candidates expect to find jobs the same way they do much of their social interacting – online.”

For us, using social media to recruit is a no-brainer, says Buck.

“Everything we do in our work life – for our clients and for our own company – goes through the social media filter and recruitment is a natural fit,” he says.

“We’ve found that social media actually gets a much higher quality of applicant versus job boards and career websites,” says Buck, adding that we also use social media and search engines to scan for extra information about candidates and check for existing connections to our team. “By starting with our own network and that of our employees, it’s a quick way of attracting candidates with the right skills, experience and background. Even a three- or four-times removed connection on a social network is already a better qualified lead in general.”

High Road’s stealthy Office Ninja even received a bit of attention in the article, for his creative face-to-face recruiting methods.

“High Road also puts its own playful spin on good old fashioned person-to-person networking,” writes Greiner. “At the 2010 Mesh Marketing conference, the company sent in a recruiting ninja, who somersaulted around the halls stealthily setting his sights on Digital Ninja recruits and handing them High Road branded Ninja Stars. It worked, according to Mr. Buck, resulting in what he calls ‘an amazing hire we never would have achieved via career websites.’”

Please visit the Globe and Mail to read the full piece: “How to use social media as a recruiting tool”.

Ian Buck’s top tips for job-seekers

Looking for a new job and want to make sure you put your best foot forward?

Here is a bit of advice from Ian:

1. Check your online footprint: Search your own name to see what comes up, and do your best to fix it if there’s something that’s not appropriate! It’s pretty much guaranteed that employers will be doing the same search.
2. Build your personal brand online: Do more than just clean up your social networking profiles before you start applying for jobs, engage in the field that you’re interested in joining. Share your expertise. Connect with key players in the business.
3. Market yourself: Don’t be afraid to feature links to your social profiles on your CV, it gives potential employers a lot more insight into you than what goes into a one- or two-page application.
4. Be proactive: Shooting, uploading and sharing a video CV or “about me” to YouTube shows initiative and creativity; following the company on Twitter and LinkedIn shows you’re interested in the job.

You can find High Road online on our LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. See you there!

To recapture mindshare and online discussion for webmail service Hotmail (which turns 15 this year), Microsoft launched a series of influencer events in late 2010. The first two Hotmail & Cocktails events – informal networking and demo sessions designed to highlight how new Hotmail can help people de-clutter their digital lives – were held in Toronto.

Now Toronto is a large market, with an ever-expanding base of bloggers and online influencers. Marketers recognize the value and relevancy of reaching consumers through influencers in this market, as evidenced by growing the number of blogger events held on any given night in the city. But it’s important for organizations to remember that there are high-reach influencers outside of Toronto – and they’re hungry to engage with brands at events that bring their online communities together.

Based on online conversation in regional markets sparked by our Toronto-based Hotmail & Cocktail events, we decided to take the format on the road in 2011, starting with Ottawa. What we discovered was a largely untapped and underserved market with a highly engaged online community.

As our event host, award-winning Canadian author and social media personality Kathy Buckworth brought together a group of professional moms, many of whom knew one another by Twitter handle only and had never met face-to-face. With a hashtag (#HMCocktails) in place to track online conversation pre-, during and post-event, we watched the Twitter chatter build from excited “can’t-waits” a few days prior to the event to a crescendo of buzz at the event, which became a trending topic on Twitter in both Ottawa and Canada that evening.

This regional market test not only reinforced the value of the Hotmail & Cocktails format, but also some advice High Road CEO Mia Pearson gave on making the influencer connection in a recent Your Business column, Smart Marketers Make Friends with Bloggers:

1. Do your research: Identify relevant influencer groups in both large and small markets;
2. Be unique in how you reach out: A third-party host admired by your target community can be a draw;
3. Provide something of value: Often as simple as the opportunity to connect with other members of an online community offline;
4. Work together: Find ways to engage; and
5. Have reasonable expectations: Understand that the Twitter chatter will focus on the food, the venue and the members of your target community as much as it will on your product/service. Have a designated Tweeter on hand to monitor the conversation and add to/gently direct it.

Mia’s last two columns were very different, but both featured some great communications insights.  

The first – Art that appeals to the masses – featured Lisa Diamond and Shira Wood, co-owners of Toronto Gallery Art Interiors.

Diamond and Wood started their small business out of a basement in their early 20s, and now, 17 years later, it is still going strong. 

“When these two women opened their gallery they wanted to do something different: make art appeal to the masses,” Mia writes. “Their goal was to make artwork more accessible to homeowners – they believed there were many up-and-coming, talented artists with nowhere to exhibit other than coffee houses and community centres, but also that there was no place for the average person to buy original work.”

The tactic they’ve been using to drive their business forward is pretty simple: in exchange for public acknowledgment, Art Interiors lends its artwork to home and décor magazine shoots and television shows.

“Most art galleries were for people who already knew something about art – and that is a small percentage of people,” Wood said. “We wanted to try and get outside of that and be much more practical. We wanted people to be able to visualize the art in their homes … so we worked with designers and stylists.”

For the gallery, having its art featured in the pages of Style at Home or on Citytv’s CityLine delivered what Diamond called “third-party validation” from the influencers. But it also introduced their target audience to accessible, original art.

“Art Interiors works closely with a range of well-known design icons, including Kimberley Seldon, host of HGTV’s Design for Living, and Suzanne Dimma, editor-in-chief of Canadian House & Home. They’ve also jumped on social media, host an active online store, and engage online influencers and their audiences by providing free art for blog giveaways,” Mia writes. “Their success has been about much more than just a good marketing decision at the outset – Art Interiors continues to effectively and creatively manage its relationships over time.”

Mia’s second column – Give first impressions the royal treatment – was about how in business, and in life, you only have one chance to make a first impression.

Drawing on the buzz surrounding Prince William and his fiancée Kate Middleton’s first official outing, Mia talked about what it takes to ensure you leave a good first impression.

“The impression [Middleton] left with the media and the general public was a statement about whether or not she could be expected to succeed in her new, very public, role as princess,” writes Mia. “That’s got to be a lot of pressure.”

“Though you almost certainly don’t have the same number of eyes on you when you make official appearances on behalf of your business, the pressure to leave a good first impression is very similar,” she writes. “The confidence with which you handle yourself in public will translate into the confidence that people will have in your leadership abilities and your personal brand. Depending on how you do, the public and the media will either love or hate you – or, almost worse, not have an opinion about you at all.”

With that in mind, Mia offers up four tips on how to ensure you leave a good first impression:

1. Do your research
2. Establish your key messages
3. Connect with people
4. Be yourself

To read the full details on each tip, click here.

Check out Mia’s column every Thursday in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.