Susan Burns
Expanding on Susan Burns' Social Recruiting Presentation in New York
Welcome to a Talent Acquisition channel podcast on Total Picture Radio with Peter Clayton reporting. Joining us once again is the founder and Chief Talent Strategist of Talent Synchronicity, Susan Burns. Susan was a featured presenter at the recent ERE produced Social Recruiting Summit in New York. According to Susan, "Talent Synchronicity is the momentum established when business and talent strategies intersect. When clarity of vision and collective action work together to advance efforts toward sustainable results."
Is social recruiting just another sourcing tool—a way to promote job postings and find potential candidates? Or is it a pathway to building a sustainable talent community and another tipping point in the evolution in recruiting?
The tools we have access to today deliver benefits that you won't find through other sourcing vehicles.
Harnessing the true power of social networking is about active talent communities. Talent communities provide a forum that enhances the relationship between candidates and your brand by inviting talent to engage in conversation rather than transactional activities and messaging.
Questions for Susan Burns
- A lot of people in corporate America look at all the buzz surrounding social networking -- especially Twitter -- and roll their eyes with comments like: This is all hype - how is Twitter going to make me money? What's your take?
- The terms Social media and social networking are used interchangeably. How do you differentiate the two? Especially in recruiting?
- In your presentation at the Social Recruiting summit, you talked about building "talent communities" - can you share with us some direct benefits you've seen in developing these communities?
- When talking about collaboration and innovation, one example you gave at the summit is a site called innocentive.com can you share some of its story with us?
- A bullet-point from one of your slides stated: "Complexity is the new reality - deal with it." How has recruiting changed in the last 5 years?
- From the recruiters perspective?
- From the Job seekers perspective?
- At you session you had the audience divide into 2 groups: one from a job seekers perspective, and one from an organizations perspective. What did you discover from this exercise?
- While we're on the topic, what did you learn at the Social Recruiting Summit?
- If you were in a job search today, how would you approach the process in what is obviously a very challenging environment?
- What haven't we discussed that you would like to share with the audience?
Susan Burns Background
Susan develops talent strategy solutions through an integrated alignment with core business functions and processes. Susan weaves together technology, social media, branding, P & L experience, and alignment with business directives to create intrinsic value in strategic recruitment and talent initiatives. Through hands-on experience in organizations of various size and brand visibility, Susan has delivered successful solutions around developing integrated recruitment strategies, employment brand differentiation, workforce/talent planning, university recruitment strategies, recruitment team structure and processes, and recruitment leader development.
In addition to Talent Synchronicity, Susan is executive director for The Future of Talent - a community of senior talent leaders influencing the future of talent strategies to guide their organizations to achieve sustainable and competitive practices. Through an annual retreat, practitioners come together to design guiding forecasts and strategies in the areas of talent acquisition, branding, knowledge management, employee development, and leadership.
Previously, Susan was Worldwide Talent Acquisition Leader with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, the second largest privately held PR firm. Susan was responsible for leading and developing a global talent attraction and acquisition function, a workforce planning model, and Agency Executive Board guidance. Enabling success in these areas further enhanced the essential relationship between business and talent to advantage this leading strategic communications agency in time-to-fill and talent planning methodologies.
Prior to Waggener Edstrom, Susan was Operating Vice President of Employment Initiatives and College Relations for Federated Department Stores (Macy's Inc). Her contributions included selection, development, deployment and utilization of recruitment technologies, employment brand development, SEO, marketing, change management, and talent-centric initiatives to further educate and align key constituents. Susan established a platform for continued growth and expansion of talent attraction and acquisition strategies through her leadership in creating the Recruitment Leaders Conference and developing the company's employment platform Retailology.com, which included macysJOBS.com and bloomingdalesJOBS.com, among others. Through Susan's leadership contribution to Federated's college relations program the company was recognized by Business Week as one of the Top 50 employers for new college graduates.
About Peter Clayton
Peter Clayton, Producer/Host, is an award-winning producer/director of radio, television, documentary, video, interactive and Web-based media who has created breakthrough media for a wide array of Fortune 100 clients.
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