What would I do without Twitter?

by guest blogger, Arie Ball, VP, Sourcing and Talent Acquisition.

Well I know the answer to that question because 2 summers ago I had no idea what Twitter was and the thought of creating a Facebook profile for myself seemed absurd. I'm a boomer. I thought Facebook was for Gen Y kids. I had a work and a personal email address, a work blackberry and a cell phone, I had a laptop for work and a desktop for home, a land line at my office and 2 land lines at home each with voicemail. I thought I was breaking grounds when I started to use text messaging with members of my family. I remember thinking, "How much more connected do I really need to be?"

But with more than 120,000 employees and the need to hire thousands of managers each year it wasn't hard to realize that we needed to be recruiting for all generations, including the Gen Y's. We knew we needed to be connecting in new ways.

After seeing an NBC Today Show piece with Matt Lauer on Second Life and then taking a guided tour myself I realized it offered intriguing, and dare I say exciting possibilities. This virtual world's potential for recruiting talent seemed worth exploring and it wasn't hard deciding that Sodexo's Talent Acquisition Team would join companies like eBay, HP, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Verizon "in world" for Second Life's first virtual career fair. I knew it was just the beginning for our team. New, as well traditional methods, of finding top talent such as cold calling and "real life" career fairs - there was a world filled with new options.

Did we start off slow? Not quite. We built, what we thought at the time, a strategy to connect with Gen Y. We hired a Marketing and Advertising Manager, Kerry Noone, (@SodexoCareers) to be the face behind Sodexo Careers reporting to Anthony Scarpino http://www.twitter.com/A_Scarpino) our Talent Acquisition Sr Director responsible for Branding and Advertising, and then jumped in.

Blogging, Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube , Flickr -- Sodexo's Talent Acquisition Team were, as the Marines might say, "first to fight!" What started as a way to enhance our onlne brand presence soon became what is now referred to as Social Recruiting. And did we just connect with Gen Y? No way. Social Media is quickly becoming mainstream and connecting people in all generations.

So there I was, a proud baby boomer not quite getting the "kids" who were chatting and socializing online. I stopped saying, "What's wrong with picking up the phone and calling someone?" And started saying,"Guess who friended me today on Facebook?!' It wasn't overnight, but it didn't take long for me to embrace these new forms of communication and start connecting with people I hadn't seen in 20+ years and even connecting with "my people." Through Facebook I friended a woman who was born in Australia and now lives in the UAE who shares my maiden name, Leondakis . It turns out our grandfathers were cousins that grew up in a village in the mountains of Crete, Greece. One cousin emigrated to Australia and the other cousin (my grandfather) emigrated to the US. It was so cool that we made this connection to our roots via Facebook.

And then, just as I was embracing Facebook, Linkedin, & blogging... IT happened. And by "IT" I mean, Twitter happened.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in MONDAY's blog post...

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Building on more than 25 years of operational management experience with Sodexo, in 2004, Arie Ball assumed a leadership role within human resources as VP, Sourcing and Talent Acquisition. In this role, she leads the company’s first-ever centrally managed, cross divisional recruitment organization that focuses on sourcing, attracting and recruiting top talent to Sodexo, and on identifying internal employees for promotional opportunities. The Talent Acquisition Group, a high performing team, has become an award-winning organization, recognized for innovative approaches for attracting and recruiting the best talent the industry has to offer.

Arie invites you to connect with her on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.