I used to get really upset that people like you have been stealing my content to make yourself look good.
Then I came to Asia.
In part, it was a piece in Charles Cham’s Orangutan house that inspired this post.
I realised that no one cares about authentic things.
It’s a big world but most people are the same. Success for 99.9% of the world involves flash cars, oversized houses, designer clothes and swanky dinners out. Most people think that faking it till you make it is the way to do it. I know, I made that mistake.
Everyone tells you to be successful you need to hustle. They tell you this is the key to this happiness.
So you don’t have the creativity needed to build and develop your own things so you steal to try to get to the top. Sadly this won’t lead you to happiness or success.
Me getting upset at you won’t allow me to be happy.
So feel free to steal my content.
As growth hackers, pinching ideas and optimising them for our own benefit is at the core of our mindset. Looking at what works and replicating the techniques used is killer when you start getting it right.
Just copy and pasting will only get you so far.
Understanding why things work is what differentiates the true creators from the spammers and thieves. Having your own voice and being you is what generates the fans you are looking for.
If stealing someone else’s content is what starts you on the road to understanding this.
To get good at this you should read the book steal like an artist… and observe some art in the wild. Not comparing myself to Picasso here but innovators like Picasso were working and developing themselves and their art over years and years to find their voice.
If you ever learned to draw, like Picasso did, you first start by learning techniques and classics composition before adding your own flair to it. Picasso didn’t steal ideas, he was inspired by classics to develop new techniques and eventually find his own voice.
Artists work around themes and develop them with their own creative flair. That’s how I see myself. I have been studying this stuff for years, avoiding the mega growth hacks to instead going for a creative development based on themes that work. My writing skills is something I have worked in a lot. I spend hours practising and learning how to do it better. You stealing my art, my creativity and my voice, of course, results in nothing because people will see through you.
But if it helps you on this road, then I am happy to have helped. Your thieving has finally helped me find more peace!
This post was originally written as an email to a thief and then posted in my Facebook Group Growth Hacking Recruiters. Join us if this stuff interests you.
This is for anyone wanting to have an amazing 2019. Take your recruiting career to the next level with this simple to follow the guide on how to be an awesome recruiter in 2019. Last year I wrote a list of things that I thought would help recruiters be amazing in 2018, this year I am back with an updated version. Some of the things are the same as last year, same, same but different. A simple to follow a collection of ideas, methods and hacks to help you in 2019.
2019, Recruitment isn’t broken, we all just need to get better at Recruiting!
I have spent a lot of nearly ten years of my career under the black cloud of HR PR claiming Recruitment is broken. I have watched many entrepreneurs crash attempting to fix recruitment with Blockchain, AI or some other tech hodgepodge only to realise that the real problem in Recruiting is how hard it is to actually is to hire someone.
Recruiting isn’t broken. Recruiting is hard. Anyone building a team these days needs a unique set of skills just to hire efficiently.
Recruitment as a skill needs to be recognised and developed. Recruiters that hire should be proud with what they do. Recruiting will get better if we share more with each other. Tech can’t fix our problem, we can. I believe it’s down to every member of the global recruiting community that recruitment is getting better.
If we really want to fix recruiting, its up to all of us.
That’s why I wrote this post, to share what I know with the world. I hope this will help you be awesome at hiring in 2019.
Please share this link with everyone in recruitment you know. Everyone on your company slack, email lists and if you’re feeling rebellious print it out for the people that still don’t have the internet.
It is up to all of us involved in hiring to fix Recruitment. Here is how you can start being a better recruiter.
Get to know who you recruit
The biggest complaint I hear about recruiters is they don’t understand the jobs they recruit for. Every mistake I have made during my recruiting career could have been avoided if I had just spent more time getting to know who I was recruiting. Get to know who you recruit, spend time with them they will help you fill all those jobs you are trying to hire for!
TIP – Find some people who you want to hire and ask them, how would you like to get your new job?
Partner with your hiring manager
Your hiring manager is your end client, it is their team you are hiring for. Get super cosy with them. The best recruiters I know, are never annoyed at their hiring managers but see them as complicit partners that they are trying to help grow. Recruiters success in 2019 will be down to how well they know the team they are hiring for. Get close to them today.
TIP – Set up weekly check ins, show them who you have approached, ask them if they can do your follow ups for the people who didn’t reply!
Tell people you are hiring
Yes, so new for 2019. Tell people you are hiring! Advertise the Jobs you are hiring for. Not crappy job ads with 40 bullet points and a wall of requirements. Get out there and tell people who you are hiring and what they will do. Don’t forget to tell them what they will get out of it. Crazy to think it’s 2019 and the best way to hire people is still to advertise!
Stop hunting for perfection and worrying about getting everything right. Start messing things up. The best manager I ever had taught me that he was happy when I was failing 20% of the time. If you have never failed, you have never done anything. Start Doing, Start Failing.
There is so much power in asking questions. Not questions you could have just googled, but the complicated ones or the ones that need input from elsewhere or from someone with experience. There is a forgotten magic power in asking people questions, it helps you make new friends and helps you leverage the expertise in your own org and your network. Don’t think you know everything, ask more questions!
Odd that I should tell people people this; but please be sociable on social media. Stop hiding behind highly filtered Instagram posts and corporate headshots, start commenting, having discussions and being your weird ass true self. Your lurking is putting your people off. As recruiters we need to be more social, we are after all in the people business. Stop Lurking. Comment on your audiences content. Built your online tribe. Be social.
TIP – Tweet me or comment, its easy!
Know your market
If you are going to be an expert recruiter in Python or the next inhouse recruiter at Yodel. Your market knowledge will help you build better relationships with the people you recruit. Recruiters are uniquely positioned to speak to hundreds of people a week, that gives them market knowledge. Get to know your company, get to know your competitors, get to know your candidates. Recruiters should be able to offer everyone a slice of the information they get to see in the market.
TIP – Use reviews on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor for market knowledge, or try Owler or Blind to find out about companies.
Get REALLY GOOD AT Finding stuff out!
Seriously the number of people that can’t find stuff out on the internet still blows my mind. You are a recruiter, your job is to find people. That means you have to get good at looking for people. Learn how to search for anything quickly. It will make your life so easy..
Measure everything. Use Data Religiously in every part of your life. Its 2019, big data is everywhere. I still find recruiters who’s FitBit’s and supermarket know more about you than you do about your recruiting process. Learning how to measure things from eyeballs to time
Design for Privacy
As a Recruiter you have a lot of private data. CV’s are seriously sensitive information, so is interview feedback and salary info. Get your head around the fact that you are dealing with a lot of private data and start treating it like such. Don’t leave people’s CV’s lying around.
Seriously, no one cares about your brand values. Authentic content is shared by the people that actually work in the place. Everyone knows that your “employer brand” is a lie. Let your people tell their story.
Dear Mr ten-page email writer. If you fall asleep writing the email, I wont reply. Short one/two paragraph emails that are to the point are going to make life so much easier and will get you so many more responses. Also, can you stop DM’ing me with just hey. Tell me what you want in that first message so I can figure out if I can help!
Getting really good at documentation is an important skill for every recruiter! This not only helps us share knowledge and collaborate better, but at the end of the day its core to our function.
From taking interview notes to sharing new techniques. This starts by learning things like how to touch type and finshes with how to write better tutorials.
Documentation is a key skill everyone in recruiting needs.
Read more
Well you got this far so you must be doing something right! What I really mean by read more, is consume more content! Consuming long form content is the differentiator in todays world. Sure, you can learn a lot watching 2 minute videos. To be an expert you need to consume more long form content.
Every recruiter I spoke to in 2018, when I asked them why they are a recruiter told me it was to help people. Nuff said.
Help people.
You will reap the rewards in the long run.
Find a community
A network is Key to everyone’s career success. Communities are key to getting the latest hiring knowledge and learning about the easiest ways to hire people. It’s 2019 people you can explode your network and your career. Spend time asking questions reading, learning and soaking it all in. If you are an InHouse recruiter join DBR, if you like Growth minded recruitment, join the growth hacking recruiters.
I thought it was a bit arrogant of me to just post my own thoughts, so I asked the worlds largest community of recruiters. The Facebook Group “Recruiters Online” to also share their thoughts on what will make recruiters better in 2019 and I was overwhelmed by the responses. Go check out the post here, I have screen grabbed some of the top responses below.
Top tips for being a better recuiter in 2019 – this is how you become an awesome recruiter
Hires = Growth. A Growth Hacking Recruiter has a growth mindset and curiously and confidently leverages media, technology, data to hit hiring targets with minimal financial investment. Simply put, they help companies hire more effectively with fewer resources than their competition.
A fine-tuned hiring machine, growth hacking recruiters have mastered the art of targeting and engaging with job seekers at scale. Leveraging advances in technology, communication and information availability. Growth Hacking, when applied to recruitment, allows recruiters to become more agile, rapidly evolving and fixing hiring processes to increase satisfaction for everyone involved.
A Growth Hacking Recruiter has the data skills to analyse what is happening with a role (funnel hacking), the marketing skills to optimise and attract the right candidates (SEO, PPC, UX, Content marketing etc), the technical chops to automate the process (scraping, data enrichment, bots, AI etc) and the mindset that constantly drives growth!
Having a Growth Hacking Recruiter on your team will make you more hires, grow your brand and optimise every element of your hiring process.
Growth hacking is a mindset, so are the Growth Hacking Recruiters; A new breed of recruiters who can find the information they need to help companies scale teams successfully. Constantly adapting and adopting, the growth hacking recruiter is taking advantage of the newest technologies, data sources, marketing tactics and shared consciousness to rapidly test things, finding what works and exploiting them to make more hires.
I adopted the growth hacking mindset and applied it to hiring and it worked. By adopting the guidelines below, you can do it too!
Hires = Growth
This stuff is not new, it’s old.
It’s 2018 people, if you can’t use the internet to make hires, you need to learn NOW. Growth Hacking applied to recruitment was first written about by Nick Marsh in 2014 in an attempt to coin the term Talent Hacker. At the beginning of 2018 Jan Tegze, predicted growth hacking would be more important in recruiting than AI in 2018.
This is because it’s EASY and FREE to implement.
Having now been working on this in companies since 2014. Soaking in knowledge and building a network of recruiting experts around the world in my search for Talent Hacks. Jan and my vision was that to accelerate the adoption by building a group focused on this we would have a way to share growth hacking tips and tricks that actually work for recruiters.
The community has grown to more than 1500+ members, all recruiters actively engaging in growth hacking the hiring process and there way
They share articles focused around;
Information retrieval & Scraping
Automation and Bots
Digital & Content Marketing (SEO, PPC, Virals, Blogging etc)
The dark arts of Engagement & Hacking
As well as questions, real-world hacks, personal growth stories, life hacks, productivity tricks, collaborative projects and challenges.
As a growth hacking Recruiter, I have chased growth in all elements of my life. If you would like to receive all of the information I have learned. Everything I think you need to succeed as a recruiter, growth hacking your way to success, sign up on our landing page.
Still not convinced? Here is one of the first ever video’s we made to explain how Growth Hacking Recruitment works and how to start adopting the mindset.
