Archive for August, 2008
Finally, Discussion Groups on LinkedIn have Arrived!
Posted by JasonYou’ve heard it before… LinkedIn has over 21 million professionals worldwide representing 150 countries, and is receiving over 9.5 million unique visitors monthly. Did you know the power networking site has 121,051 groups?
The biggest advantage in belonging to a group (a majority of them) is the ability to search, contact, and network with other members (on your own initiative). There are a rare few who do send out newsletters too.
I am excited to hear on Friday this week, LinkedIn is releasing group enhancements, including discussion capabilities.
Here is a quick overview of the enhancements:
- Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
- Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
- Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
- Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.
This is great news for both group owners and members. If you haven’t joined our group yet you can do so by clicking here. We’ve added over 2,000 new members in the past 3 months - and are looking forward to taking advantage of the new group capabilities.
See you on LinkedIn.
Are Job Boards Obsolete? An ERE Webinar…
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
What started as a blog post - “What Would Happen if Job Boards Were Obsolete?” turned into one of ERE’s hottest discussion board posts.
Be sure to sign up and tune in for the free ERE Webinar this week on “Are Job Boards Obsolete”?
Date: August 27, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
Networking was never one of my strongest skills. I am sometimes shy when it comes to meeting new people, and as a 23 year old who is just two years out of college, I don’t have much of an address book or LinkedIn network (but I have a ton of Facebook friends). The first stage of building my company, One Day, One Job, didn’t require much networking, for I was trying to get college aged job and internship hunters to visit my site. Building personal relationships can certainly help build traffic to a website, but it’s not the most efficient method. Recently, I have started to focus on the second stage of growing my business — encouraging entry-level employers to work with us as advertisers and consulting clients. For a while I sat around waiting for people to find me. I figured that companies would see the potential in One Day, One Job as a recruitment tool and would throw themselves at us. A few companies approached us out of the blue, but I knew that improving my networking skills could speed along the process. I recently joined Twitter, and I realized how valuable the micro-blogging/social networking service can be in terms of business development. Within the span of 2 weeks, I was able to get meetings with 3 CEOs and one VP of Recruiting (who also happens to be the owner of this blog) through relationships initiated and built on Twitter.
Here’s how I did it:
I Joined
This is self explanatory. Social networks do you almost no good if you don’t participate. You can use them as informational resources, but participation increases their value by an factor of ten.
I Sought Out Interesting People
You need to test the waters before diving into Twitter (or any social network). By finding interesting people to “follow,” you can learn the ropes and proper etiquette while instantly reaping the best informational benefits that Twitter has to offer. How do you find interesting people? You wander around Twitter. I have no idea how I came across each of the 4 people mentioned in the title of this article, but I can ensure you that it was through other Twitter users. If you’re new to Twitter, you can start by following me @willyf and Jason @jjbuss.
I Listened
Pay attention to what other people are saying. By learning about them through their tweets, you can determine who are the people that you want to build personal relationships with. After listening for a while, you can chime in and join the conversation by tweeting @ someone to ask or answer a question or make a comment.
I Talked About Myself
Nobody is going to follow you if you’re boring. Everybody has something interesting to say, so talk about what you’re passionate about. You might be surprised at what people find interesting, so be yourself — don’t try too hard. It’s much easier to initiate meaningful conversations when you have lots of followers.
I Interacted
As you follow more people and gain more followers you can start getting involved in more conversations. If you have something interesting to add to someone else’s conversation, jump in! Just make sure that you’re being genuine and not self-serving. The biggest mistake that people can make when using a service like Twitter is asking someone for something before they have built a relationship. That doesn’t mean that you should go through pleasantries just to ask someone for a favor — you need to be honestly interested in the people whom you follow on Twitter if you want to build meaningful relationships.
I Took the Relationships Offline
Two of my meetings were in person and two were on the phone. Twitter is a great way to introduce yourself and build the foundation for a relationship, but it’s not a great tool for in-depth communication. By taking the relationship offline and having face to face (or voice to voice) contact, you completely change the nature of the relationship. It instantly becomes more meaningful.
Why Does This Matter?
Whether you are an entrepreneur like me, a job searcher, or a business professional, Twitter and other social networking services can provide amazing opportunities to meet new people and build business relationships. Although I haven’t yet done business with any of the people mentioned in the title of this blog post, the conversations that I’ve had with each of these people have been valuable enough to make me consider Twitter an essential tool in my networking repertoire. Without Twitter I never would have met these 4 wonderful people (and many more) who are willing and able to help me as I build my business. I’m sure that the relationships that I have developed and will develop on Twitter will be essential to the success of One Day, One Job.
Submitted by Willy Franzen for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest. Willy Franzen is the founder of One Day, One Job and One Day, One Internship.
5 (free) tools to cure your Social Network Fatigue and get your life back!
Are you… Busy? Someone who finds value in Social web stuff? Overwhelmed with the myriad of social networks and web 2.0 doodads? Not wanting to be left out, but want a life too? Feel slightly guilty even taking time to read this?
Fear not gentle traveler, SNF (social network fatigue) is not incurable. You can have your cake and eat it too. Here are 5 (free) tools to soothe the conflict between your work and your social (net)works.
WARNING: setting up these tools requires a small time investment initially. If you do it, you will have time returned to you by tenfold. If you enjoy complaining about not having enough time, then don’t do it, you won’t have anything to complain about.
Flock - a ‘social browser’ built on the Firefox platform.
Aside from the easy download and transition from IE, tabbed browsing, intuitive interface and better protection against spyware/malware, with Flock you’ll wield webnipotence as with one or two clicks you can:
- E-mail the page you’re on to a friend
- Search Yahoo, Live, Google, Amazon (or any search engine you add to flock) from the upper corner of the screen
- Drag and drop sites to your favorites toolbar
- Drag and drop RSS feeds to Flock’s integrated RSS reader
- Share content to your social bookmarking sites, or favorite media sites
- Create a blog post using anything you’re viewing
- There’s a lot more, but I only get 850 words for this thing
When treating SNF one of the things you should strive for is a ‘write once, post everywhere’ capability. Ping.fm does exactly this. I can put a message into either IM or email that will reach my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Plaxo, Plurk, Friendfeed, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, and Pownce accounts all in one stroke. It’s also reaching every other place I have connected to Twitter.
I can broadcast jobs, news about my company or me to all my people in less than 30 seconds. Ahh, feel that? Its your shoulders relaxing because now you know that with Ping.fm you’ll never have to actually go to Plaxo.
Ping.fm is in beta right now, so if you don’t want to wait for a beta code, email me, and I’ll get you one.
Xobni: pronounced ‘Zobnee’, its inbox backwards. Xobni is a free download that plugs in to your outlook. Ever search for anything in your email folders like a person, a phone number, a document, a conversation or thread? Watch this video (3:45 mins) then do all that in a fraction of the time with Xobni.
Gonzo ain’t it? The video doesn’t show the integration with LinkedIN which helps uncover the LinkedIN connections of the people with whom you exchange messages.
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
If you’re a complete newbie to RSS and techie acronyms scare you, take a quick look at this and feel better. (Old way – boo! New way – yay!).
So now you know that RSS brings your commonly visited sites to you in your RSS reader (in Flock if you follow tip #1.) With your reader you can browse, look deeper or ignore completely all your desired content at once in a fraction of the time.
Once you’ve got your reader set with a few feeds you can start down the road toward becoming an RSS ninja. Here are two things to set your mind on fire with the possibilities.
- Use feedmysearch.com to turn your Google search strings into an RSS feed. Have a great string that you use regularly to find candidates or maybe information on competitors? Take the string to feedmysearch.com, create a feed then pull it into your Flock RSS reader.
- Use Twitterfeed.com to push content to your Twitter people. Recruiting? Go find or create an RSS feed for your jobs, then automatically broadcast them to your network. Automatically. That means you spend zero time doing it. Zero.
Diigo: (Dee-go) your web-based brain.
Like Video > words? Here’s a short video on how Diigo works.
If you watched the video you’re probably already blown away. In case not, read on…
You ever see stuff while browsing at work that you want to…
- Access later?
- Add to a list of things to access later?
- Share with someone or a group to access later?
- Quickly create a slide presentation from your bookmarks?
Diigo does all that and quite a bit more. Watch the video.
Like gardening, getting value from social tools takes time. If you do it right, the most significant time is spent on the front. The time thereafter is spent harvesting the rewards.
If you can’t figure it out, or get stuck, let me know and I’ll help you out.
So now, go do it, get your time back, be productive again, re-introduce yourself to your kids, your wife, your pets, your bridge club and your sanity.
Submitted by Josh Kahn for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
The Party on the Interwebs
Posted by JasonI’m a prolific blogger, video maven, twitter lover and chat junkie. I also like to attend conferences, parties, barcamps, Tweetups, you get it. I’m a networker. I believe that has a lot to do with recruiting people (since I meet a lot of them through allll these mediums). Anyway, as I “put myself out there” both F2F and on the NET, I’ve noticed (and I’m not the first) that there are whole set of standards that apply at parties that you can apply to the wild, wild west of social media.
Most of these I’ve learned the hard way, BTW. I’ve bulleted them for ease of reading:
- Don’t be lame - Hopefully, you don’t go to office parties or even conferences and talk about nothing but work. If you do, please don’t come to any parties where I’m holding court. Yes it’s important to “push out” what you’re working, relevant links to industry buzz, etc. But if that’s all you do it’s akin to being Rain Man at the company BBQ.
- Say it with me. Discretion. Just as you wouldn’t share you bathroom habits to possible clients, don’t share them on Twitter or FriendFeed. I use the belt rule. If it has anything to do with things below my belt, I don’t tweet it, even foot tweets. Because no one wants to hear about your feet.
- Listen. I loathe (and the rest of the web does too) people who jump on the “newest thing” and use it solely as a distribution channel. It’s so inauthentic. If you went to a dinner party and talked the whole time with your mouth full and never let anyone else get a word in edgewise, you wouldn’t get invited to that many more parties. Your loss.
- SHUT it. At first glance this may seem like the same as listen. It’s not. For example, since my “followers” consist of some social media folks, some HR and recruiter folks, some local folks and my church friends, there are very few times when Twitter is appropriate as a “live-tweeting” tool. For 1/2 my followers, seeing me update literally every minute or two from the Recruiting Roadshow in Minneapolis was too much. It would be similar as listening to your sister in law talk about her time in the teen beauty pageant. You don’t care and every time she brings it up you care less.
Say “you’re grounded”, to yourself. There are people that matter and people that matter. Social Media (especially in the heady honeymoon period when you’re connecting with everyone and their brother that you never thought would give you the time of day) is not real life. It can often be (wisely) backed-up by real relationships but like actual parties, there will be loud talkers, debators, bullies and victims. Don’t worry about them, unlike when you are at a party, you can “delete”!
Submitted by Maren Hogan for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
Can you Find the Right Job Based on Your Past?
Posted by Jason
There is no room for error anymore. When I was 16 years old my football coach would constantly drilling into my head they I need to be bigger, fast, and stronger. That was coach’s famous “Bigger, Faster, Stronger.” speech. Now, years later I am getting the same speech from boss at work. “Team, you need to have better material, quicker sales, and stronger customers.”
O’boy, high school all over again. Instead of 4 hour practices, its 8 hour days of office work. Instead of going on away games, it’s going on out of town for business meetings. Uniforms go from jerseys and cleats to black coats and ties. Teams meet up at the water hole and the office meets at the coffee machine.
Through college I was constantly reminded that history repeats itself. So am I going to experience four years of déjà vu now? I didn’t sign up for this. If I would have been told that four years of college was going to get me less then 10 years to find the right job I would have started searching years ago. Teacher, professors and business men and women say college students have a better chance of find a job they like, but the problem is everyone goes to college. The kid working at McDonalds down the street has a degree in History for crying out loud! It might not be much to some but to a company it tells them he is educated. Big Deal!
I think the whole point of this is, I hated football and I hated working hard for something I’m not going to achieve until I’m forty. I remember spending all that time at the gym, running drills, and watching video tape of other teams and not having that much fun. I was a zombie to the norm that was high school. I didn’t even care that I was playing the game anymore. I was just doing what was expected of me. I remember the highlight of my football career when I caught three interceptions in one quarter and my coach was so happy with me and I just stood there num to his reaction.
I don’t want to the same thing to happen to me at work now. I want to go out and have fun on the field (office space) now. I spent 5 years of my life practicing (college) to get here and I want to feel like I’m making a difference in my life. Is there a job out there that is willing to take the challenge? I’ll find out soon enough I guess.
I just want to tell myself it was worth stepping out on the field today.
Submitted by Alex Cantu for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
Is it Time for Back to School for Your Organization?
Posted by JasonAs a child, September is a time for a fresh start as you enter a new grade with a new teacher, possibly make new friends or maybe even start at a new school. It is ingrained in us to see September as the “beginning of the year” from the time we are four years old, but along the way, we get caught up in New Year’s resolutions and fiscal year ends and all the fun they can bring.
As the summer winds down, I’ve been thinking a lot about how September is really the perfect time for HR to get back in touch with what’s important for their organization and that we should all consider treating September as time for a fresh start. If your organization runs on the calendar year – you have four months to check back on how your “plan” for the year is coming along. From a retention and talent management strategy standpoint it’s a good time to look at where the organization is with yearly appraisals, or succession plans as a whole group of workers gets one step closer to retiring. If you’ve not been doing these things, it isn’t too late to start now! You just have to tackle it one step at a time.
Speaking of schools, what about the classroom? What training do you need as an HR professional to continue to grow and achieve? If you haven’t already, maybe you need to sit down and set some professional development goals for yourself. Also, this would also be a great time to check with managers and employees to see what their development needs are through the end of the year and get everything on the calendar.
And finally, the next four months is apt to whiz by just like the rest of the year, so why not start thinking now about your organization’s requirements and needs for 2009? Do you have a recruiting, retention or another HR program that needs work or extra time to get to the next level? Now is the time to lay the groundwork for new programs and secure buy-in from your team and executives.
Let’s all take a few minutes and set at least one back to school goal for our organization this “school” year and work towards getting a good grade.
Submitted by Sean Conrad for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest. Sean is a senior product analyst at Halogen Software. He is a frequent blogger, author and speaker on talent management trends, issues and technology. He can be reached at sconrad@halogensoftware.com.
Recruiter’s Digital Secrets - Exposed
Posted by JasonAccording to an article written by Selena Dehne of Jist Publishing 83% of recruiters leverage search engines to uncover information about potential candidates. But, did you know that these same candidates are conducting the same type of research on you?
Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that feel recruiters have a bad reputation in fact; in the world of job searching recruiters are often called “the necessary evil”
The old saying “perception is reality” is pretty much true when it comes to the information found online. A recruiter’s time and reputation are their most valuable commodities, are you doing all you can do to protect your own personal brand?
Online Reputation Management Basics
Online reputation management is a process of managing how you /your organization is perceived online by monitoring & responding to the conversations that occur around your brand. Be knowledgeable about what information people will find about you in the search engines by regularly doing searches for yourself. You might be surprised at what you find.
5 Tips to Keep your Integrity Intact
- Subscribe to Google Alerts – Probably one of the easiest tools for tracking what search engines know about you is through alerts. Subscribe to a Google Alert for free and receive an email as soon as your search phrase (like your name or company) enters the search engines index. The result emailed to you is just a snipplet (below). I recommend clicking on each of your results to ensure its positive buzz you’re receiving. Tip: Choose the “comprehensive” option to get the most coverage. Comprehensive covers news, blogs, web, video and groups”
- Sign up for Naymz – Naymz is one of my favorite free online reputation management tools. Start by building your professional profile by adding a bio, photo, employment and contact information. You’re also given the ability to publish a directory of links and feeds to your company website, personal blogs, social networks, online photo albums and any other items that define you. Naymz gives you the ability to control what potential candidates, employers and friends find about you in the search engines. When someone Google’s your name, your Naymz profile will be displayed in search results.
- Online Community Participation – Most professional and social profiles have great search engine visibility. Creating profiles on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Zoom Info allow you to control even further the information that people can find about you. Remember to keep your profiles G-rated though.
- Leverage Flickr – Sign up for Flickr and upload pictures you’ve taken from events and conferences.
- Register your domain name – For under $10 bucks a year, you can register your personal domain name through Godaddy. If you’re not skilled at website design, don’t worry. You can use the blogger platform and set up your personal domain name to redirect to your blogger blog –just like magic, you have a website presence.
Defend When Necessary
The web empowers people to share their opinions and write reviews. Anybody can write anything in the world, whether it’s true or not it is affecting your business. A survey completed by Deloitte said that 99% of internet users deem consumer generated reviews as creditable – Yikes!
Sites like Indeed offer forums that help people make employment decisions based on others feedback; this is a great tool but can have negative impact to those not actively managing what is being said.
In the below example, you’ll see that “Robert Half” is being described in this forum as: “A waste of time” “a joke” “liars” “cheats” and “unprofessional”.
Granted, you don’t want to add fuel to the fire, but you should respond to negative remarks, a blemish is much more manageable then an outbreak of bad information. Keep in mind an appropriate response is not one size fits all; they must be tailored to the particular situation.
A Tool to Your Defense
Reputation Defender is a great tool to have at your finger tips. For $9.95 per month. They will attempt to remove inaccurate, inappropriate and slanderous information about you.
Look Out for Identity Theft
Be cautious with what information you’re willing to post online. Once something is indexed and available in search results, it can be there forever.
Personal data can be an open invitation to identity theft. In some countries all you need is a name, address and date of birth to open a bank account, take out loans, request credit cards, buy a vehicle or even create a false passport.
That said you can protect yourself by following two very simple rules when creating online profiles.
Rule number 1: Never post your home address. Using your work address is always a safer way to go if you must use one.
Rule number 2: Never post your date of birth on the Internet. Even if a site says you can make it private, there’s always a risk. If the date-of-birth- field is mandatory, use a fake one.
_______________
There you have it, online reputation management in a nutshell. Preserve your recruiting credibility and start working towards better buzz today!
Submitted by Nicole Bodem for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
Keep in Touch
Posted by JasonMost of you would be familiar with this trend. You make some great friends at work and develop this fantastic sense of camaraderie with them when one of them decides to leave and go on to another job. You have a tearful farewell party for them and sign their goodbye card with an endearing message that ends with something like “I hope we keep in touch.” They leave and then you never hear or speak with them again.
There are plenty of excuses why keeping in touch does not happen. Fast-paced living makes it difficult to reach out to those outside of our immediate lives. Often, I feel like I don’t have enough time for my family or time just to be alone with myself. And as a day rushes by, even if I was deliberate enough to include checking up on people on my daily calendar, the task gets pushed back until weeks have gone by. Once enough time has elapsed, the excuse then becomes that it would be too embarrassing to contact them out of the blue, since you have previously been so rude for not keeping in touch with them regularly. Of course every now and then the fond parting words are just polite formalities, as you might be dealing with somebody that you genuinely do not care to keep in touch with—but why be so cynical?
If this pattern sounds familiar, I encourage you to aggressively step out of it. When you say “keep in touch,” really do mean it. Your relationships are VITAL. And in this day and age, there are countless ways to keep your network alive. For some, I have them on my LinkedIn network. Others, I am able to keep tabs on with Twitter. Those closest to me, I make sure to call every once in a while. For many, it’s just a holiday card to let them know annually that they are still on my radar. You never know when a relationship will come in handy, and it is good to practice keeping your friendships alive.
And is it really so bad if you neglect somebody for a long time before reaching out to them? Whenever an old friend calls me out of the blue—even if it is only to ask me a favor–I am invariably elated to be back in touch with them. Why shouldn’t I then hope and anticipate that it would be the same if I allow years to pass before I take initiative? The person on the other end failed as equally as I did, as they did not keep in touch either. So why continue to punish them by maintaining your own silence. Life is too short not to endear the good relationships we are fortunate enough to have. Keep your friendships alive. Keep in touch.
Submitted by Craig Houston, The Careerguyd for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
Options:
Resumes, Resumes, Resumes
Posted by JasonLike many job searchers in the social media field, I have more than one resume. I have the one that highlights who I am in the social media and online spaces. I have one that highlights my technical skills. I have one that shows every job I have held since 1991.
I recently went to a job fair that offered resume advice. I decided to test out what they would do with a resume like mine. I had three goals:
- To see if they had any ideas on how to create a resume set that showed both the technical and non-technical sides of my career.
- To see if there was any way to shorten the resume other than going to a font size smaller than 9.
- To see if they knew of any new ideas in creating resumes for today’s online world.
The first thing the woman said when I sat down was “You do design work don’t you?” I don’t really. I mean, I do PPT for a living. But design? Nope, I am a technician – not a designer. What caused her to ask then? My resume looked different than any she had seen:
Beautiful design, isn’t it? I can’t take credit for it. I started from the “Professional Resume (Streamlined Layout)” from Word 2007’s template set. Yes, I played around with it. But not much. And the changes I made were minor enough that you could do it too.
Ok… So that is the first lesson learned:
Create something from a start that no one else has thought to use yet.
Question 1: Creating a multifaceted resume set
I know that I need different resumes for different jobs. I get that - really - I do. But… that doesn’t really work for what I need. When I send in a resume that has been targeted for one or the other of my career foci, If I get a response, it asks, “What about all these gaps? What did you do then?” Or (worse yet), “You know about the software creation process? How come? You don’t show anything about that in your resume!” Not a solution at all… So, I asked the expert.
Her response? Along the lines of “Well… you could take out some of the details, but I wouldn’t want you to take out these, or these, or these, or…”, all the while pointing to the smallest sections in the resume.
Not much help there. But the conversation led to…
Shortening my resume
Here, we did come up with an idea that I liked. She suggested that I make the front page more of a “landing site” style. She thought that a business card with the URL for my social media landing site and my blog on it would do the trick. As I walked around the room, I tried it. Being a good business owner, I always have business cards on them. Most of that info was already on the card. The result? “Do you have one of your resumes with you as well?”
I think that the problem at that job fair was that people weren’t looking for people who do what I do. I got some interest, but no strong leads. I have gotten more responses from this online. I have created a version of my resume that follows the look above, but adds my online stuff before the job details. That section looks like this:
But that gives us the first second learned:
Rearrange your information. Put the interesting stuff on top. Even if you are doing a chronological resume.
As for new ideas…
I was really looking for some new way to make my resume stand out and sparkle. She didn’t know any or any ways to make the resume submission process any faster.
I wouldn’t have even gone to the job fair if it weren’t for a good friend who wanted company on the drive across town. Once there, I learned that I am further ahead of the game than many - I have a resume that works. I can get people enthused about connecting with online communities. I need to be patient until the right job comes along.
What’s more…
My connections online and offline will come through for me. Like the friend who encouraged me to join her at the job fair, other friends make sure I am motivated and keep chugging. Even with all the hassles of doing an online job search, connections will keep you smiling and chugging and trying. After all…
Thanks to a set of connections on Twitter, I found The Talent Buzz and learned that there (finally) several recruiters on Twitter. Guess it is time to pull out the old 160 character job search tweet and repost it.
And… Thanks to Jane Chin, who I know via Plurk, I checked out VisualCV.com. I like the idea of a non-traditional resume style. It was work to get my information in there right, but hopefully it will get noticed.
So that is the third lesson learned:
Connections help!
Submitted by Kathy Jacobs for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.
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