As some of you know, Shannon is a Vice President at Bernard Hodes, the online recruitment marketing agency that makes next generation careers web sites and the like. Shannon was very fortunate to hire some former Jobster talent this year and one of those people was Adam Einiger. During a recent video shoot for a client the video and client team were testing the cameras when they asked for someone in the team to get on screen for the video and mic check. This is Adam’s version of a mic video/audio check…
I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed his rendition and I’m pretty impressed by Adam’s creative side (awfully important at an agency where creative solutions are a must). I asked Shannon for a few words about what Adam does and she gave me this…
“Solutions Provider, Interactive Producer, Sales Engineer, Magician, F-bomb dropper, flip-flop wearer, new daddy, all around straight up good guy!”
There’s only one thing missing as far as I’m concerned with this content and it’s easy to fix. Get it front and center on the main Hodes web site. Hodes has some good video content on their site but I feel this content is better because it isn’t staged and it demonstrates (rather then telling) a creative mindset, technical ability, and a healthy culture.
While it’s a great example of personal branding it also represents a fantastic employer branding opportunity. I hear many people lament that they don’t have any good employee video to put on their careers sites. When was the last time you searched on Google and YouTube for your company name or the names of employees with the mindset of finding valuable content you can leverage? Right, social media has much better uses than as a recruiters tool to bust recent college applicants with wild Frat party pictures!
Just because the video isn’t about how great your benefits are doesn’t mean it won’t work when placed in context of an employer branding theme. More and more, there is fantastic employee generated content that employees would be only too happy to have featured in a positive light on your corporate site. Just ask and ye shall receive.
These problems with online friending have captured my imagination and so I put up a post called "Are you really my friend" a week ago on my personal blog julians.name. In my attempts to be spontaneous and unedited (my vlogging policy) I misrepresented some of my true thinking on this topic. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that my current thinking is in flux. I'm feeling my way through this stuff just like many of you.
I intended that post and a follow up (this one) to be published on our business blog exceler8ion. Here it is.
Here's a summary of the content and some show notes.
First, a correction 'You can't teach an OLD dog new tricks." Just had to get that out of the way.
The video is 18 minutes but HOLD on!
Ouch.
That's better.
The good news is that I've made a significant number of my points in the first 6-7 minutes which isn't too terrible. You'll have to watch the whole piece if you want to hear my personal example of attempting to friend a colleague of mine - Shel Israel, co-author (along with Robert Scoble) of Naked Conversations who sent me to his blog to read his Facebook friend policy after I tried to connect with him on Facebook.
Here's the top 5 for people who don't have time to watch:
TOP 5 FRIENDING TECHNIQUES
How to deepen relationships through social networking tools and social media.
Be active not passive
Make one-to-one contact
Respond to questions
Play is central
Pay attention to people (visibly) Thanks to my lovely bride Shannon!
The rest of my video discusses these points in more detail and recounts my experience to date with friending Shel.
That’s the point of a lifestream - you use RSS feeds to get everything into ONE portal page. ONE ring to rule them all. We’re using a hosted service called tumblr to publish our lifestreams and we’re both very happy with tumblr’s servic now that Shannon hacked tumblr to include comments.
Come along for the ride and start a lifestream of your own. It was our friend Ami Givertz who inspired me to get off my duff and create a lifestream. I was lamenting on a phone call with Ami that I often grew discouraged by the difficulty of keeping up with so many blogs and yet still wanted to have them be separate and distinct based on content focus and reader interest. So after I finished bitching Ami said that he felt the same way and had done something about it. You can always count on Ami to be an action oriented cheeky monkey!
You’ll find our last 8 posts from each of our lifestreams right here on the right rail of exceler8ion or you can go to Shannon’s directly by pinging shannonseery.com or aka thegeekmarketer or mine here on Julians.name. If you start your own tumblr then make sure to add Shannon and I as friends so we can keep track of each other.
I recommend tumblr because it’s super simple to use, not the slightest bit technical, you can use your own url (or not) and you can post ALL types of content, including text, video, pictures, and many more. It does all this with a very inviting interface that encourages you to post. Yes, and there’s the aforementioned ability to aggregate all your RSS feeds at the same time. If you’ve thought of blogging but haven’t because you don’t have the time then a tumblelog on tumblr could be just what the doctor ordered.
When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.
“Join Company X, and you not only get a great job, but you also gain a family”
Trite as it may be, employees are expressing a sentiment that is widespread and based in truth. The workplace is a community. A community made up of people that you often see more than your own family. There is an undeniable group cohesion that resembles “family” that the work company-employee work contract generates.
When making a career choice, candidates are searching for information about a potential employer and if they will spend time to look for it. Use your career site as a venue to publicly display your community of passionate employees. Lead the search results by authentically communicating your employer brand and providing a window into the “employee-experience” on your career web site. Openly illuminate your employee-experience by incorporating social features into your corporate career web site and encouraging employees to participate in online communities where your candidates are spending their time. Don’t fight the decentralization of your employer brand… *enable it*.
Controlling the flow of information to employees, customers, partners etc, used to be easy with newspapers, TV, radio, print, email, and the like. Today, your brand is being watched, augmented, and de-located. People are writing their own stories, thoughts, ideas, and developing new products and services using social media technologies. These simple technologies and services: Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Tagging, Podcasts, and RSS are connecting people and information in new ways, conversations, faster than you can say oh shit. (via Advancing Insights).
Companies try to hide what it is *really* like to work for them like they are a secret society that you get to have no real knowledge of until you are accepted and initiated. There is the reality of a group being its own worst enemy, and a need exists to balance the idealistic view that companies will suddenly open up and allow completely public free speech, with the freedom and open spirit needed to create a thriving online community.
Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep. When it comes to communicating what the real employee experience is and helping to foster a public online community that potential candidates can explore when researching your company - do not put your head in the ground and fear your employee experience being public - embrace it and handle it with grace.
I awoke this morning to a subtle reminder to make every minute in your life count. I have a Google Alert set-up for ‘Shannon Seery’ as this last year of blogging has certainly taught me how important it is to monitor your online reputation and personal brand. This morning there was an alert waiting for me. It was a link to an obituary for a Shannon Seery of Bourne, Mass.
There’s nothing like seeing an obit with your name on it first thing on New Year’s Day to make you take stock of how you are living your life. Here’s to a New Year filled with Love and Laughter!
Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
~Hal Borland
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.
When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.
EXCELER8ion is where Julian and Shannon Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 