Entries Tagged 'Personal Brand' ↓

I finally sat down to participate in the 5 things meme - mainly because I am dying to talk about something else, I finally have a few moments to breath, and I was tagged 3 times by women that I respect very much: Heather, Astha, and Rosie. (Funny how we seem to all stay to our side of the Mechitzah in the Recruitosphere ;-)). Anyway - I have procrastinated a bit about this one as I have been wavering back and forth between, “I am boring as hell - what would be interesting enough to write about?” and “I CAN’T write about THAT - thats TMI!” This would be more fun for me if Julian was tasked with writing 5 things about me and vice-versa…’cause I’ve got PLENTY to tell you about him. Maybe in the next meme.  So here we go:

1. I wanted to be an Art Therapist right up until I graduated from school and feel head over heals for the web. My degree is in Neuropsychology and Art. Art Therapists use different art forms to help people understand and work through their problems through the creative process. I was going to focus specifically on Dance therapy as I took ballet up through high school and wanted to incorporate that into my life.
2. I have a problem with organized religion. My dad’s side of the family is Catholic and my mom’s side - well…not so much. I grew up as the oldest of five children and my mom tried to expose me to various religions so that I could make my own decision one day. I went to a variety of churches every Sunday (with my friends - not my family) and learned about various denominations. When I was about 8 - I was officially baptized at the Wilton Manors Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They do the full dunking there. While there wasn’t one organization that stuck with me - a deep intellectual fascination with religion did. I took so many religion classed at Colgate that I could have double majored. Julian likes to say that I haven’t had something happen to me yet in life to turn it from an intellectual pursuit to a matter of the heart - maybe - I am open to that. I do know that Harry’s second item in his 5 things meme resonated deeply with me.
3. Julian and I met almost exactly 6 years ago in Phoenix, AZ at a Knight Ridder Digital National Sales Conference. It was a messy time in both of our lives to meet. I was just getting out of a really hard break-up and he was just getting out of his first marriage. I am not very sappy, but to this day I can describe it no other way than love at first sight, soul mate, ability to overcome everything type of love (not mean that overcoming everything was easy). Most people don’t know that Jules and I didn’t marry until 3 years ago when we were having our second child. I come from a family full of divorce and a common refrain for me was “I can’t guarantee that I won’t get divorced unless I don’t get married”. Since Julian had a hard time getting a ring on my finger - for my 26th birthday, we got matching tattoos in the shape of an infinity. On my 27th birthday, he bought me an infinity ring from Tiffany.
4. The obsession with the number 8 in our blog names comes from item number 3 above. Turn the 8 sideways, and you have the infinity. Forever.
5. I love to cross-stitch. Seriously. My last project took me 4 years to complete.

So - how did I do? TMI? sorry.

I always enjoy reading discussions about jobs from outside of our Recruitosphere. You know - the place where we don’t have all-expert opinions, all-the-time. It’s amazing what these mere amateurs know about our space.

There’s one such debate over on A-List blog LifeHacker. Go on, go check out the story called Ask the readers: get your dream job. Here’s a post excerpt to get you started:

“Reader Francis writes:

Since the age of 10, I’ve known exactly what company I wanted to work for (incidentally, it’s the Jones Soda company). I’m not 100% sure what I want to do, but I would like to have my foot in the door, have them know that I am out there ready for anything they might need. I am even willing to start at the bottom, working as a temp or whatever need may arise. So my question for readers is this: How would you go about getting your foot in the door at your dream job?”

I know - you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin.’

What the hell do they put in that soda and where can I get some?!#@!

I saw that a commenter also added a couple of links that I haven’t seen before (I feel so ignorant admitting that) and if by some chance you haven’t come across them before they’re well worth a look:

Here is an interesting story.

A few years ago a group of students at Pepperdine University sat around, and had no clue on what to do with their life, so they got a big RV (painted it green) went out on the road to find their own path in life, while interviewing other influential people on how they found their passion in life. The roadtrip evolved into a grassroots movement, a book, and a PBS show, if you are interested they have some videos on their site

http://www.roadtripnation.com/interviews/

It’s pretty interesting, the people they interviewed found their dream job (their passion) in so many ways that no two are alike.

http://www.roadtripnation.com/

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: LifeHacker, life hacks, dream job, dream jobs, Jones Soda Company, roadtripnation, road trip nation

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.

A whole different kind of evolution

A lot of you have heard about the trouble Facebook is having with its new feed and mini-feed functionality. I’ve been meaning to pick up the thread I introduced about social media Darwinism in my recent post about Digg.com and Newsvine, two other social media communities, and then Amitai got me off my rear by forwarding this related link to me on Facebook.

According to a Wall Street Journal article “New Facebook Features Have Members in an Uproar” written by Jamin Warrn and Vauhini Vara, published September, 7, 2006

“Facebook.com, the popular social-networking Web site for students, is suddenly getting the cold shoulder on campus. On Tuesday, in an effort to make it easier for users to keep track of their friends, the fast-growing site rolled out two new features, dubbed News Feed and Mini-Feed. They track users’ actions on the site and then keep all of their friends apprised of those developments..”

Over 300,000 Facebook users have responded to these changes in a most unhappy manner. In my post I made the point that both Kevin Rose and Mike Davidson, respective CEO’s for Digg and Newsvine, are doing a great job of practicing poised social media skills. Like responding quickly and openly to criticism while avoiding any hint of defensiveness. How was I to know that just as I was writing this post Wednesday about Rose and Davidson, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO for Facebook was providing a living, breathing example of what not to do.

As the story started to blow up in the blogosphere and main stream media, the first thing I did was locate Zuckerberg’s blog. I expected to find the same kind of skillful interaction on Zuckerberg’s blog that I have seen exhibited by Rose. As I sat there Wednesday evening looking at the headline of his post I have to admit I was more than a little surprised.

“Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.”

I thought that it was a pretty patronizing way to start a conversation. Apparently, Facebook users felt the same way. Of course, that’s one of the dynamics with this one dimensional world of online social media. It can really fail to communicate your true intent, and in others, it exposes your real feelings in ways that you didn’t intend.

Here’s the big difference between Zuckerberg’s post and Kevin Rose’s. Zuckerberg explained everything away (don’t be concerned, it’s all the same information you’ve already been sharing). Rose, acknowledged his detractors, admitted that part of what they were complaining about was still going to take place, but then went on to say that they were changing their system to address many of the very concerns being voiced by Digg users. In other words, Rose was fessing up, and he was taking action. When it comes to interpreting true meaning whilst it is leaving someone’s lips or fingers, it is what they do, not what they say, that has the most impact. Zuckerberg, was saying he was listening but he wasn’t showing it.

Even though I’m not Facebook user, as I am of Digg and Newsvine, Zuckerberg’s follow up today got him right back on track. We’ll have to see if his damage control will do the trick. I do think he’s moving in the right direction again by taking action, based on the feedback his community is giving him.

I hope that I don’t sound superior in this post. I’ve made tons of mistakes in written communications before, er, I mean everywhere in my life, including my forays in social media. When I stuff things up, I feel badly, and I do my best to try and recover. Sometimes it is easy, other times I have to sulk first because I’m a stupid, overly sensitive man. Sometimes I don’t even do a good job of recovering and I have to chalk it up to doing better the next time (hoping there is one) just like real life. Of course, your online digital dirt doesn’t go away. So, in more ways than one, our very survival, from a professional and personal perspective, depends on how you handle yourself in your parallel online world. People will adapt, or perish, just as Darwin illustrated.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers as to how the proper online citizen should act. In the real world, especially in my personal life, I haven’t exactly found myself in alignment with typical societal values - in business I know how to play the game, I just opt out of that game a lot of the time. Unlike your personal life, I do think it’s much easier to give rules and guidelines for how businesses should handle this world of social media. I could give you a nice long list of social media tips. But then I’d have to charge you. No, but seriously, I would have to charge you a lot! OK, OK, I’ll admit it, I’m just too lazy to type anything up right now and I’m really in the mood for a broad brush, sweeping generalization kind of post, not a how-to guide. See - I can be honest. Now back to how businesses should handle this sort of thing. Two guiding words.
Intent.

Action.

I think that if you have a good intent, even when you blunder, that you’ll survive it. If you have the wrong intent, people will sniff it out and reject any manner of prose or impassioned speech on your part. I think it is key that you also act in a manner that is consistent with your intent. When you don’t - you’re not really hearing people, or you’re choosing to ignore them. And if you’re going to disagree, just come out and say it. I think Zuckerberg’s first post would have been a lot better if he had just said that he didn’t really think that users understood his actions yet and that they might be acting a little hysterical. They are after all, acting like someone had stolen their bank account number and broadcast is everywhere. At least, that’s what I took his piece to mean, because of how Zuckerberg acted. Give it to them with both barrels. The truth that is. Take action. Even if all you can say is that you’re forming a team to reevaluate your position and you end up coming back to the same position.

But enough about what I think. There are no true experts yet in the field of social media. We’re all beginners, with varying degrees of actual experience. What do you have to say about all this?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

In closing, I want to say that in no way do I mean to make light of Mark Zuckerberg’s unpleasant experiences. This guy is running a highly successful effort. He must be very smart. I would guess that he’ll be just fine. I’m sure I have NO idea what he’s really like in ‘REAL’ life but I still have to constantly remind myself of that because the only data I have on him is his company and his blog. I recognize that there are aspects of his ‘real’ personality that come to light in places like his blog, but that they’re also limited by their singular dimension. This online world is a real world, but it’s not the most important one. Not yet anyway. Not until it can dive in front of a bullet for a friend or hold a baby girl in its arms and say everything that needs to be said, with just a touch and a look.

And I promise I’ll get back to further defining what I mean by social media Darwinism more in some pieces coming down the pike. I’m still mulling it over. Until then, go out and kick a dog (not really) or kiss a baby or something.

Technorati Tags: social media, social media Darwinism, social media optimization, digital dirt, online branding, word of mouth marketing, online communities, Facebook, Newsvine, Digg, Kevin Rose, Mike Davidson, Mark Zuckerberg

As part of what I am calling Job Search 2.0 (see post just below this one) - there is a push for creating a standardized way for people to control their resume data. Instead of having to enter their resume into numerous job boards in a million different formats - there is a standardized online format that has been created and is gaining in popularity called hResume.

What the heck is hResume and why should you care?

hResume creates a new page in your blog specifically designed to present your resume in a visual form that is viewable by people and computers. The hResume Project has developed an hResume plugin for WordPress (sponsored by SPUR) that automatically embeds semantic markup as specified in the hResume Microformat. Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. By using this semantic markup, resume content can be read by computers operated by employers and employment websites. Additionally, the format will allow search engines to easily index resume content and return resume data in search results.

New and progressive sites like Emurse already accept hResumes. If this gains in popularity - it may force the big boards to accept resumes in this format as well. This puts the control of the content back in the hands of the job seekers. They are free to include only the information that they are comfortable sharing publicly. There is no *required* info to submit. Resume content can be housed and updated in ONE place (and then just ping job boards to advise of an update - just like posting a new blog post).

Given the ease of indexing the content - the adoption of hResume formats by job seekers would be quite a windfall for recruiters and sourcers. You can see how it works on our EXCELER8ion blog. Take a look at the nav bar at the top and you will see that there is now a tab that says ‘resume’.

Technorati Tags: microformats, hResume, semantic markup, job boards, emurse