Free-n-Easy Social Sourcing Tool: BullhornReach

Yes, I use Bullhorn Reach.

Yes, it’s free.

Yes, it’s easy.

I have answered those questions repeatedly over the last week.  I know, I’m a sourcer, what am I doing using a posting tool?  If you’ve ever talked with me at all about sourcing strategy, I do believe you need to post jobs as well as search for candidates.  I started using Bullhorn Reach – in a test scenario back in August. In January, I stopped testing and transitioned the product to our research assistant Billi, who, to say the least, was ecstatic.

Why ecstatic?  Let’s go back to free….and easy.  Easy because you can literally cut and paste your information in and keep rolling.  If it takes you 5 minutes to post a job on Bullhorn Reach, you’re doing it wrong.  It should take 2.

So here’s why we like BullhornReach:

• It hits our Big 3 of Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Fingers crossed it folds in something for Google+ soon.  It did recently add the capability to post LinkedIn groups.  We don’t use that, but we’ve got a different process on how we like to interact with LinkedIn groups.
• It re-posts on a schedule of our choosing.  Re-posting is huge, because you never know when your candidate will be looking within social media for job postings, and its fluid medium, so re-posting gives you a better shot of being seen.
• It will post our job to an additional set of networks – like Oodle.  And if you know Oodle, you know it posts to Facebook Marketplace.  Also hits another favorite, SimplyHired.
• We can post to our Company Facebook page and my personal page at the same time, or we can opt to just post to our Company page.  My friends and family are quite thankful that I’ve given them a reprieve from the job opp’s I’m sourcing.
• If you’re having a proverbial brain freeze and can’t think of a snappy 120 character lead for your tweet, BullhornReach will help you out with sample tweets.

But it gets better….

• BullhornReach encourages immediate engagement.  I’m fairly sensitive to using social media for job postings, especially when job posts go out through accounts with my name on them.  If a candidate applies via Bullhorn, I immediately get an email with their resume attached, that goes into our ATS, and I get back to the candidate.
• BullhornReach tracks stats including click throughs and puts them in a pretty graphic we can use in our weekly meetings.  We do love stats, it’s important for us to see what’s working and what’s not.
• BullhornReach pores through the networks you’ve uploaded and lets you know about potential candidates.
• As we post more and more jobs on BullhornReach, we’re getting an incredible insight into which jobs get the best online response.  It actually surprises us sometimes which positions get the most hits.

Now – just some brief advice about posting to Twitter.  Think about your audience.  If I’m looking for CPA’s in DC Metro I’m going to do some research first on Twitter and find profiles of likely candidates and maybe even seek out the feeds of local associations for these professionals.  Sure – I can approach them directly, but initially I’m looking to get some assistance in making my post viral and using their networks.   Doesn’t take much time and can be accomplished by directly searching Twitter, or one of the many twitter directories or just use a search string on Google or Bing like this:

site:twitter.com intitle:cpa “washington, dc”

There is a bonus item for the jobseeker…they can go directly to BullhornReach here and search the site for jobs.  If you’ve been looking for a solution that’s free and easy and really makes social job posting painless, try BullhornReach.  Even if it’s just because Billi and I like it.