Steven Cox - Founder of TakeLessons. Build Something You're Proud Of

Using Social Media to Recruit Employees

Here's a slideshow from Fred Wilson, a smart VC from Union Square Ventures, on using social media to recruit new talent. 

At TakeLessons, we've hired twice in 2009. The first time, we posted ads on Craigslist and Monster, sifted through 400 resumes, and invited 35 candidates to come wow us at an evening open house. It took a lot of effort for our team to meet the candidates, and even more time to narrow the candidates down to the final three. We eventually ended up hiring a person and found out within a couple weeks that we'd made a mistake, as the person didn't seem to share the same values we did.

It was a lot of wasted time, and we were right back where we started. 

Recently, we hired again. This time, our team members used Twitter and Facebook to gather 15-20 solid resumes from our network. What I liked about this process is that my network knows how hard we work and that we require someone willing to give 110%. I had a few people who had initially emailed me with someone, then retracted because they could not, in good faith, recommend this person to a friend. To me, this social filtering was extremely useful.

In the end, we spent about 10% of the time and was able to hire a rockstar for our team. She started yesterday. Another benefit is that we now have another three solid candidates when the next position comes up. Perhaps they might not be available, but it allows us to start with people we've already vetted.

View more presentations from fredwilson.

Do you have a customer support problem? Make a video.

A couple days ago, I needed to buy a couple shirts from Paul Fredrick, a men's quality clothier. I opened their website and tried to view some of the shirt details on my computer, but their zoom function wasn't working, and the100x100 pixel image wasn't giving me enough detail to make a decision.

So, I went through their customer support contact box on the site andlet them know. The next day, they politely wrote me back to let me know it was probably my cookies. I erased my cookies to the site and tried again, but no dice. The site was having a problem, and since they didn't know about it, that led me to believe it was probably isolated to the users of Mac/Firefox.

Rather than to write them again, I decided to make a short video and post it so they can see what was happening. It worked great and they are know aware of the problem.

First, I recommend you download Jing. Jing is a great little tool that allows you to immediately make videos of what's happening on your screen and I suggest you get the Pro version as it allows you to save files in a easy to use format. Then, just post to YouTube.

The next time you're trying to get help with a site, make a video and post it. It will save you a lot of time and will help the site out. 

The site was happy I made the video as well. Here's their response:

HI Mr. Cox,

Thank you for taking the time to report the Issue with our Product Zoom
feature. We did notice the issue on Friday and we are working to resolve
this issue. This issue is isolated to FireFox and Flash 10.0 on the OSX
platform... Until we resolve this issue you should be able to utilize the
Zoom feature using Safari.

We really appreciate you taking the time to create the video..what a
creative way!

Again Thank you
Shaifeez S.
Sr. Web Project Manager
PaulFredrick.com

-----Original Message-----
> Received: 11/14/2009 1:21 AM
> Subject: FW: Feedback : Website Comments
>
> Feedback from the website
> Date : 11/14/2009 1:21:09 AM
> User Name : Steven Cox
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hello. I wanted to tell you about a bug that I am continuously getting on
PaulFredrick.com. I`ve made a 1 minute video of the bug and posted on
youtube so you can see it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxCCPX1iISs
>
> Let me know if you have any other suggestions. I`d like to buy a shirt or
two, but I can`t see the details of them.