Entries Tagged 'Job Search 2.0' ↓

My Dad just sent me a Fortune article called “I got my job through Second Life” all about real people and real companies finding jobs directly through Second Life. It reminded me that most every job I landed over my career was through my small network of friends and associates and how the same has been true for my business exceler8. Here’s an excerpt from the Fortune story.

“And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.”

“People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts,” says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive’s Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life.”

Imagine arriving for your Second Life interview in this little number…

I first heard about Second Life from Jim Stroud and went to check it out after our phone call. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago) SL hadn’t yet exploded on to the front page of every business magazine, blog page and tech site known to man. Despite my complete lack of interest in online role playing communities (which is strange given my dweebiness and love of online community) I recognize that I have to be involved in SL because it is a highly relevant community for my personal and business interests. I am a social media geek after all. While I find SL’s interface complex, limiting and ultimately boring, I’ll keep trying it for the promise that it holds in meeting real people. There ARE interesting people in this community. And just like other interesting communities, our exposure to the new people we meet in them expand our horizons on all fronts.

Hey Shannon, does this qualify for the category you coined “Job Search 2.0“?

Technorati Tags: Second Life, SL, Job search 2.0, social media marketing

From Thursday January 18, 2007

mtv’s online platform for targeting college job seekers continues to grow in leaps and bounds with today’s announcement that mtvU has acquired RateMyProfessors.com. RateMyProfessors.com, is an online community where 10 million college students have posted over 6.6 million ratings on 900,000 professors. Now that’s what I call transparency. According to Stephen Friedman, general manager of mtvU:

“Every time we asked our audience about tools they use online, RateMyProfessor always came up,” he said. “Now we’re talking with them about how we build on this idea–best dorms, best places to eat around campus.”

Continuing their buying spree of college focused social networking and community sites, it appears mtvU is attempting to increase their relevance to students who are increasingly watching mtv less, and interacting on the web more. Yesterday, the rumor was that mtv’s long running hit show TRL (Total Request Live) may be canceled. Holy shit Batman! This news follows recent Nielsen data showing TRL viewership down from it’s height of 600,000 viewers in 2001, to 393,000 today, a 35% drop.

Last year, mtvU acquired Y2M (Youth Media and Marketing Networks) that owns College Publisher who provides the publishing platform and ad network for some 500 college newspapers such as Duke’s The Chronicle and Notre Dame’s Observer. However, a look at some of the job sections on these college newspapers reveals a rather humble jobs selection, more likely catered to part time jobs for active students rather then the cool jobs that graduates will want to land once their diploma is in hand. In contrast to this, mtvU relies on MonsterTRAK to power their college focused job board and has a pretty strong selection of job seeker content to offer students. We’re left to ponder how long will it be before the jobs section for the college news sites part of College Publisher’s network begin to use the aggregated job board and content found on mtvU. Ideally, mtvU should offer a solution that will cater to both in-school part time jobs, internships, as well as positions for upcoming graduates. With the wealth of college internship programs and corporate sponsorships in the market it seems like additional student focused content and functionality could be added to mtvU to increase its relevance and value.

You can start to put mtvU’s strategy together when you watch their acquisitions. Not that they’re hiding it in any way.

“The move ties into mtvU’s larger strategy to connect with college students “on-air, online and on campus,” Friedman added.”

In addition, there is new speculation published by paidcontent.org, citing multiple sources, suggesting that MTV’s parent Viacom has invested in TagWorld. According to the article on Online Media Daily from MediaPost

“Friedman, whose mtvU unit would certainly be affected by the deal, said he had no knowledge of the agreement. A spokesman for MTV said the company was not commenting on the report.”

What mtv and mtvU have to tackle quickly is a real answer to communities like Facebook. If they can leverage enough of their music and reality T.V. content, along with things like the college newspaper network and other acquisitions like RateMyProfressors and TagWorld, maybe they have a shot. What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: mtvU, mtv, TRL, Total Request Live, RateMyProfessors, RateMyProfessors.com, College Publisher, y2m, TagWorld, Youth Media and Marketing Networks

My 2007 Wishes

I am not one for predictions - its not that I mind putting myself out there; rather, Julian can attest to how much I just hate to be wrong ;-). So instead I am going to put out 2 wishes for what will happen with Recruitment Marketing trends in 2007. A company’s employment web site continues to be the top “Source of Hire”. While this fact doesn’t speak to how candidates arrives at careers site destination, we do know that regardless of how they got there - they went there. The majority of candidates will visit the careers section of a company’s web site and it often represents the first opportunity to engage and connect with a candidate. Pair that with the HUGE growth in the popularity of social media like blogs; vlogs; and podcasts and you have the makings of my wishes for 2007:

1. That companies will not spend another dime on media that merely serves to drive traffic to their Corporate Careers web site before they spend that money improving the functionality; opportunities for interaction; content; and design of their sites.

Rather than dropping a bag of money on media - driving candidates to your site - and then having them leave because the site is horrible; difficult to navigate or boring enough to make the experience rate up there with going to the DMV…take a step back and spend that money where it will count - THE destination - the Employment Web site. If you have $250K budgeted that you plan to spend on media - i.e. print, trade pubs, job boards, Google AdWords etc - the best thing that you can do for your company, and your Employer Brand, this year is take 50% of that and put it toward overhauling your careers site.

2. That corporations take the leap and begin incorporating participation and conversations into their corporate careers sites. Companies do not have to have a separate blog, rather it is the easy-to-publish ability to generate real content and the two-way conversation that is the hallmark of blogging that should be incorporated in to the overall careers site. Employment web sites could be rebuilt on platforms that allow for the integration of blogs; private-label social networks; employee videos and even *gasp* the upload of video-resumes. This is something that most HR departments are not willing to do, as it is perceived as too risky. On the other hand, candidates are DYING for real information and real ways to connect to potential employers and even future coworkers to help them make their career choices. If this wish is going to come to fruition, then it will not start in HR. The companies that are using social media effectively are the ones that have had it sanctioned from the top down.

So there you have it. For 2007 I wish to see better Employment Web sites that balance the ‘process’ with interactivity and ways to connect - for real. What are your wishes?

Technorati Tags: career site, careers sites, careers web site, employer brand, employment brand, employment web sites

You may be a reader of blogs. You may even participate in blog conversations through commenting. But, starting your own blog and becoming a ‘blogger’ may be daunting. Such apprehension is often driven by a real fear of the unknown. While I can only speak for myself, there are a myriad of natural reactions / assumptions that may keep you from starting a blog:

• No one would care about what I have to say
• In some circles being a blogger has a stigma attached and the word is almost a pejorative
• People will think that I have too much time on my hands
• What would my employer think
• I am not technical and would never be able to set up a blog
• I don’t feel that I can safely write in a real and authentic way

When I hit ‘Publish’ on my first blog post in December of 2005 - my stomach dropped - I even felt a little nauseated. Naked is how it is often described in the blogosphere. And honestly, for me, blogging is a lot of work - work that I love, but work nonetheless. But, I never hesitate to emphasize, that I am so glad that I took the leap as the rewards have come in heaps. Having a blog has provided an outlet:

1. to publish what I think about Interactive Recruitment Marketing and Employer branding. The public nature of blogging has forced me to think in ways that I may not have if I knew that no one could see it.
2. to refine (and often rethink) my ideas.
3. to engage with others from inside, and outside of, my industry. When people are gracious enough to share their point of view on a topic - negative or positive - I have the privilege of learning from their ideas.
4. to connect with people that care about the topics I am writing about. These are not just virtual connections. I have been able to meet and talk with many of the people I have connected with online - at various industry events and via phone.

These connections are immediately deeper upon initial live contact because we already know to a certain degree what one another stands for. Further - the live interactions may have never taken place, we may never have met one another, had we not connected online in this type of forum first. We actively look for opportunities to meet live. I have learned more, and met MORE real people with which I share similar interests, than I did in all of those years of acquiring a top notch education.

Even though I still feel that I am relatively new to blogging professionally, I get asked often if I have any tips for a new blogger and wanted to put together a top-ten list of what I have learned. Creating this list was inspired by a recent post covering 21 tips - you can find that here.

Top Ten Tips for Launching a Recruiting blog

1. Don’t be afraid to let readers know that you are a real person. Include information about you and about why you blog. This can take the form of a ‘Welcome message’ on a side rail; a full ‘About Us’ Page; Pictures; Contact Info or all of the above. One of things that makes blogging so compelling is that it is usually content written by real people - not just company PR; White papers; or brochureware. ‘No bullshit’ is core of true blogging. The more readers can connect with a real person - the more people can relate to you.
2. Go ahead and turn comments on - for better or worse (just be sure that you have a good spam protector installed or activated. We use Akismet.). There are many blogs that have turned on comment moderation for various reasons or even require people to register before commenting. We have done neither of these as we just aren’t inundated with comments (that would be a great problem to have) and I believe that commenting is a bit of an impulse buy. I don’t want to introduce any kind of delay in gratification for the commentor.
3. Make Sure that you have your RSS feed turned on and visible on your blog. If you have some control over your feed - I recommend changing it to a FeedBurner feed as it provides a friendly nontechnical interface for readers that are grabbing your feed and it provides feed metrics. Further - I encourage the use of the universal orange RSS icon and use easy to understand words like ‘grab my feed’ vs. ‘Syndicate my site’. The goal is to make your content updates as easy to consume as possible for anyone interested. To that end - services like FeedBurner even allow you to offer blog updates via email. For those that feel the geek factor is too high with RSS - offering an email option breaks down that barrier.
4. Build some content before you proactively notify the blogosphere or search engines that you have a blog. 5 posts is a good rule of thumb. You may even want to do a little future content programming by making yourself a list of topics that you hope to cover on your blog. While there are posts that come during moments of pure inspiration - most bloggers get to a point where they ask themselves - “so now what do I write about”? It is bound to happen - that is why there are so many blogs that have “gone dark”. If you’re really going to be a ‘blogger’ - it gets into your blood and you will work through those moments. How you work through that is a moment of truth for bloggers.
5. Add a “Submit to Recruiting.com” bookmarklet to your posts. Read the post that I just linked to to get the code and insert that code in the HTML for your post. In WordPress - you click on the HTML icon in your rich text editor bar to bring up the HTML code. In Typepad, you click the HTML tab when you are writing this post. This will make it very easy for readers to submit your post to the recruiting.com community site where your content exposure will increase dramatically.
6. Once you are ready to launch - go claim your blog on here is a great link for tips on doing that and other SEO tips. Get the Google Sitemap plugin available for most blog platforms and turn it on.
7. Begin connecting with other bloggers - start commenting on posts in the Recruitosphere. Most bloggers LOVE comments and thrive on the interaction. By adding to the conversations on recruiting blogs, the authors will often recognize you and seek out your blog (this should go without saying, but be sure to add your blog address to the URL field in the comment form).
8. If you link to other bloggers via your posts or your blogroll - the blog that you linked to receives a notification. This is another action that will often prompt a blogger to notice you and check out your site. Often people will reciprocate with a post that mentions you along the lines of - “I just found this great new blog in our space”. Not everyone will do this - so don’t be offended. In addition to interacting and adding richness to the community - these inbound links directly affect your search engine rankings as well.
9. Frequency. This is an issue where every blogger needs to figure out what works best for them. The more often you post - the better your traffic. For those of us that work during the day and/or blogging is not a sanctioned part of the job - keeping up that kind frequency can be hard. There are bloggers that have to be disciplined about it and set aside a specific time every day or every week to blog. My posts tend to happen on the weekends or after my kids are in bed - so between 10pm - 2am
10. Promote your blog in as many natural ways as possible. For example, put a link to your blog in your email signature; add it to comments on blogs and forums. Add it to your LinkedIn profile. Add a link to your RSS feed as well. Put links to both in your MySpace or Facebook profiles. Participate in Recruiting Blog Swaps when they are happening. Be a guest author on other blogs - most bloggers love good free content, and if they respect your ideas, offering up a guest post can be a match made in heaven.

There is my top ten gathered from what I have learned this last year. Of course, I forgot the most important one - have fun, connect to others, and make it a continuing learning experience that enriches your life and work. OK, that was more than one.

Next, we will follow up this post with a top ten list of “What Not To Do” when blogging.

Blog on.

As a person who focuses on employer branding and recruitment marketing everyday - I get excited when I see companies doing really smart things online to build their employer brand and attract talented people.

Tonight - I came across one of the SMARTEST tactics to date, and it was by Yahoo!. Here is how it happened: I am giving a talk on Thursday called ‘Creating Great Employment Brands Online’…so I sat down and did a Google search on ‘Employer Branding’ on my new Google Custom Search Engine - popula8ion - to see what my peeps are saying about this topic. Then I did a technorati search to see if the ‘blogosphere according to technorati’ had anything else to offer me.

Here is a screen shot of the Technorati SERP and look what I found in their Sponsored Links:

Do you recognize that URL from the recruitosphere? If you don’t - that is http://www.jobsearchmarketing.com - the terrific blog by Matt Martone, a Recruitment Media Sales Executive over at Yahoo!.

My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe Matt was buying text ads on search engines to promote his blog. After all, he works for Yahoo! - what could he possibly gain personally by paying for an SEM campaign to attract readers to his blog? If you have your own business - that is one thing. But if you work for a company - what would make it worthwhile to spend your personal money like this?

I am so intrigued. So I click on his ad (sorry to skew the numbers Matt ;-)) - and here is what I see this time:

If you aren’t connecting the dots the way I did - the text ad on Technorati links to a specific post on Matt’s blog called - “What’s it like to work at Yahoo!“. I think that this is a recruitment marketing campaign!

Yahoo! is leveraging the fact that their employees blog and using Matt’s to recruit talent. (OR Yahoo! has a KICK ASS employee referral program and Matt IS using his own money as he is betting that he will make more money from an ERP bonus than the cost of this SEM campaign). Yahoo! is leveraging their employee bloggers to recruit talent. SO smart. I love it. The post is complete with a recruitment video that you can see here if you’re interested:

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, recruiting blogs, employer brand, employment brand, employer branding, employee blogs, recruitment marketing