An Ode to SEO for Recruiters

If I were to SEO

What would be the way to go?

Would I blog or would I write

A mighty pen to make me bright?

Key word phrases all strung out

Makes my writing all flung out.

Search for hires

High and low

Better with my SEO

20 key words and long tails to sell

If I try and say them all,

will you promise not to tell?

My marketing Director does insist

That all my writing should consist

Of random words

Thrown to and fro

Just so Google loves me so.

And then there’s Mack

I love her too

She’s our queen of SEO

But write a word that sounds just right

And suffer wrath at all her might

So homage to the SEO

Throw those words in, watch them flow.

Add some funky phrases too

Let them know that hiring is what we do.

Have some job postings

And offer up a referral or two.

Get alumni in the game

Contact everyone fit or lame.

Company name, best hires too

JAVA, Lava, and Code Blue

I’ll get those words in as I can

And hope you understand my plan.

So if what I say seems out of sorts

Trust my words to the Google courts

Lines Between Work and Social (Media) Are Blurred

There are several dimensions to the question of privacy and how it plays into trends in human resources, but the one I want to talk about here is what I call the “always there” trend. The trend itself is not all that new. Since the invention of email and laptops employees and managers have felt an increasing obligation to always be available for work: Nothing new there. The new part comes when you start to look at the opposite side of the equation:

How much does our “social life” blur with our work life?

The huge rise in social media has lead to the situation where an increasing number of us are “always there” for our friends and family who want to Tweet Us, Friend Us, Tube Us, Plus Us or whatever else may be the latest social media trend. We are connected to social media the entire waking day (and some don’t seem to sleep much either). http://www.briansolis.com/2010/02/time-spent-on-social-networks-up-82-around-the-wrold/ . While a lot has been written about how the lines have blurred between work and home, very little has been said about the fact that the reverse is now truer than ever: The lines between home (our social media connections) and work have blurred. Keeping track of the kids, catching up with old school mates, seeing what past colleagues are doing – it’s all in a day’s work.

With this blurring of lines – where lies the distinction between what employers should know about your “social media life” and what belongs only to you? Do companies have a right to assess some aspects of an employee’s social network “footprint” when they are conducting a pre employment screening for instance? Can employees make the case that they should be allowed to have access to Facebook, Linked In, YouTube etc. but companies don’t have the right to know what they are doing on these sites?

Let me be clear. I am a strong believer that companies don’t need to meddle in the personal life of their employees. They should focus on things like performance, productivity, and effectiveness, and leave the personal stuff alone.  But I also believe that what we do in this new world enabled by social media has a great deal of relevance to who we are as employees.

The digital “footprint” we leave says a lot about who we are.

If you believe a person’s previous employment, hobbies, outside activities, volunteerism are all areas that impact how well a person will fit into your organization, then why not also assess what they do on social media? I, for one, hope companies do look at my social media profile. I think it only helps define who I am.

I am no longer defined by my job – I am defined by my Linked In profile – so get on board and tweet me!

Dear Facebook I Burned Down A Garage

When I was about 6 years old, my best friend and I almost burned down his garage. Back then the biggest long term repercussion I had to worry about was what would happen when dad got home. (He was a volunteer fireman and boy was he going to be pissed!)

My friend lived across the street and we were playing one summer afternoon in Oregon. My memory is that it was a sunny day – but this was Oregon – so I doubt it. We found some matches and thought it would be fun to start a little fire. Fire was cool. We had a whole empty garage to work with (for that matter we could have done this outside) but for some reason we thought setting up our little fire in the corner of the garage would be best. We piled up some papers and a few other things that would burn and lit it on fire. One of those other things turned out to be a kerosene soaked rag and that fire took off. It was really cool for about 5 seconds, and then we realized something was wrong. Fortunately mothers, and fire trucks, got there pretty quickly and we just ruined one side of a wall. (And the backsides of our butts).

What if my mom would have thought this was a cute story to post on her Facebook account. My little imp, she might say. All my mom’s close friends would get a kick out of it. But then, so would all their close friends. Before you know it, maybe about a 1000 close and not so close friends would know about it. Would everyone think I was a cute little imp? Would everyone think my mom was a good mom? Could this have hurt her career?

My wife works in early childhood development. If this were our son, would this reflect on her?

I love social media and I am even an advocate of using social media in the hiring process, but the one big problem we have to solve before any of us can be comfortable with it is PRIVACY. We have to let people live their lives. It is a lot of fun to keep up with family and friends. Social Media is an easy way to have an extended family even if that family extends around the globe. But not everything that happens in social media is job relevant. If companies are going to start using social media in their hiring process they have to first get that distinction right. My electronic footprint says a lot about me. I like that. But stay away from my personal life – you don’t need to know about that.

To paraphrase an old saying: “What happens in Facebook Stays in Facebook.”

Now, if you will excuse me – I have a neighbor’s garage I need to go to.

The Three C’s of Career Arc.

Over the course of several years – be it 10 or 40 – you leave a wake behind you that represents the impact you've made. Recruiters traditionally relied on your resume to tell them about your career arc, but today a lot is being written about how your electronic footprint may be a better, more complete representation of your professional mark.

I have fully embraced social media as a grand, open marketplace of resource communication, coordination and exchange. I saw early on that this was a quick and easy way for me to display my accomplishments. And while we may have (somewhat) valid concerns about privacy, it really is the best medium to showplace your skills and accomplishments. Both common social media platforms like Linked In, Google+, Twitter (and – to some extent Facebook) and specialized professional sites like HR.com or Toolbox.com provide ideal environments for displaying your talents much more broadly than traditional resumes might do.

There are many defenders of the traditional however.

We can say all we want about how traditional methods of work, of recruitment, of talent management form a solid rock-bed of the human resource process, but these foundations are being shaken to their core in the New Employee Economy. One place where this challenge is heatedly discussed is within the “resume is dead” discussion. For some of these pundits, the new Career Arc, represented in your social media foot print is the way to go.

Why is social media career arc potentially the best way to get a feel for a person? Here are three reasons I believe it is:

1. Context: A good social media footprint can show you the impact of your career activities. It can show whether the things you did mattered to anyone. It can show what kind of influence you have.
2. Comprehensiveness: You can’t say much in a two page resume. Even a greatly written resume has to leave off important things that have happened in your life. Your social media footprint can provide a much more rich detail about who you are and what you've done.
3. Community: We all perform in a broader professional community. How we interact with that community, how we are perceived by that community and how we contribute to that community are important elements of the kind of employee we are.

Obviously not everyone actively participates in social media, but for those who do, using social media to understand your candidate is a great way to help find a better fit.

Presidential Debate: Does Either President Understand the New Employee?

The first Presidential Debate is in Denver. They will talk back and forth about a myriad of ideas. One idea they are sure to discuss is jobs. They will talk about tax incentives, jobs training, labor unions, and off-shoring. They will argue about trickle-down and trickle-up, (they won’t use those terms but that is what it boils down to: Does a really healthy “rich sector” make for better jobs, or does a really healthy “labor sector” do the trick). But they will be wrong either way.

Neither candidate understands the new employment economy.

The major trends driving the new employment economy today are:

·         Rapid growth of self employed

·         Explosion of social media as a “skills for sale market”

·         Emergence of job titles that didn't exist even 12 months ago

·         Rejection of the idea of traditional “employee”

·         Rapid growth of social entrepreneurs

·         Workers who follow a “skills path” rather than a career path

·         Virtual companies that don’t care where the employee works from (or which country)

These trends aren't supported by diatribes about sending work overseas, or shoring up America’s manufacturing, or supporting America’s unions, or even forcing trade wars with other countries.

If you want to help the people hit hardest by unemployment, don’t try and prop up the infrastructure that supported employment in the last 4 decades, support the creation of a new infrastructure that will enable employment for the next 4 decades.

I’d love to hear the debate talk about breaking the traditional bounds of employment and creating a new FDR like “Public Works” project that will build the infrastructure for the new employment economy. (BTW – a short commercial here: one of the biggest impediments to people taking risk, or working in non-traditional employment is the lack of access to health care – I would think both the GOP and the Dems would understand that point!).

How many of us think our sons and daughters will have a career path just like we did? Not many I would guess. So why do we want to create an artificial support system that is mired in past economies?

I have an idea, let’s Crowd Source the Presidency (and the congress). May the best ideas win!

Could Twitter Predict the Next Great Applicant?

In the days before Paul Ryan was chosen as Romney’s running mate the noise level around Paul Ryan was increasing on Twitter. In an article posted on the ReadWriteWeb entitled “How Twitter Predicted Romney’s VP Choice”  the author, Dave Copeland says “Even as some of the men Mitt Romney considered as a running mate waited for a call from the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Twitter had already predicted that Paul Ryan would be tapped for the ticket.” How so? According to the article:

“TweetReach, a unit of Internet analytics firm Union Metrics, released data over the weekend suggesting that Twitter was already onto the Romney campaign as early as last Wednesday. The firm tracked what it calls Ryan’s "reach," defined as total number of impressions, tweets about the candidate and the number of unique contributors.  After racking up numbers similar to other likely nominees for the preceding 30 days, Ryan's reach surged as mainstream media outlets and other politically influential Twitter users began to bandy his name about more fervently.”

That got me thinking – what is it about our social media participation that might help us manage and understand our human resources. Could Twitter help predict the next great job candidate? Could social media be used to identify impending employee morale problems? Can we assess a candidate’s social network to determine if they can really do their job? Would social media participation help us figure out the next great salesman? Some people think so.

At Innotrieve we are looking into just these questions. They want to know if our electronic footprint can be used to help predict employee performance, goodness-of-fit, employee engagement, or any other number of critical elements that help make sure both employees and employers are getting the most out of the human resource potential. I was recently asked to help them with their quest. We believe we will be able to see patterns in the social media footprint that can help employees and employers match up better. Both people and companies have personalities and traits that define them. Understanding these traits and mapping them together might help make better matches. So Tweet away – it just might help you and your employer work better together!

Exciting times.

Social Media Blurs Life/Work

There are several dimensions to the question of privacy and how it plays into our work-life (and I may talk about more of them in future blog posts) but here I want to address the issue of what I call the “always there” trend. The trend itself is not all that new. Since the invention of email and laptops employees and managers have felt an increasing obligation to always be available for work: Nothing new there. The new part comes when you start to look at the opposite side of the equation. How much does our “social life” blur with our work life? The huge rise in social media has lead to the situation where an increasing number of us are “always there” for our friends and family who want to Tweet Us, Friend Us, Tube Us or whatever else may be the latest social media trend. We are connected to social media the entire waking day (and some don’t seem to sleep much either). While a lot has been written about how the lines have blurred between work and home, very little has been said about the fact that the reverse is now truer than ever: the lines between home (our social media connections) and work have blurred. Keeping track of the kids, catching up with old school mates, seeing what past colleagues are doing – it’s all in a day’s work.

With this blurring of lines – where lies the distinction between what employers should know about your “social media life” and what belongs only to you? Do companies have a right to assess some aspects of an employee’s social network “footprint” when they are conducting a pre employment screening or an employee background check? Can employees make the case that they should be allowed to have access to Facebook, Linked In, YouTube etc. but companies don’t have the right to know what they are doing on these sites? Let me be clear – I am a strong believer that companies don’t need to meddle in the personal life of their employees – they should focus on things like performance, productivity, and effectiveness, and leave the personal stuff alone.  But I also believe that what we do in this new world enabled by social media (by the way, I hate that term, since social media is so much more than social) has a great deal of relevance to who we are as employees. The digital “footprint” we leave says a lot about who we are. If you believe a person’s previous employment, hobbies, outside activities, volunteerism are all areas that impact how well a person will fit into your organization, then why not also assess what they do on social media. I, for one, hope companies do look at my social media profile. I think it only helps define who I am. Human Resources needs to get on board with the social media trend and find ways that protect privacy, while also finding ways to add value social media data. I am no longer defined by my job – I am defined by my Linked In profile – so get on board and tweet me!

I Tweet Therefore I Am Hired

In a world where seemingly everyone has gotten involved in Social Media (still hate that term), is it odd when you run across someone who is not? I am not talking about someone in their 80s, but someone in today’s work-a-day world. Certainly there are many people who do not feel they have time, or who may feel that their personal involvement in social or professional networks adds little value to either their professional standing or their company’s performance. But isn't this a dying breed? Don’t many execs’ still make sure their profiles are up to date? In fact, aren't most of these exec’s using staff to make sure their word is heard? Of course they are.

So how does Social Media participation effect career growth? Can this participation help you move up in your current job or help you find a new one?

In a recent Blog post by Matt Petronzio on Mashable he writes about a web site called Jackalope that uses your social media connections to help you find a job. What if you don’t have any connections?

Is this a first step toward social media being part of your professional vita? I can see that day when social media participation is considered a positive aspect of your professional profile – just like the school you went to or the extracurricular activities you participate in. This information gives the recruiter or hiring manager a better feel for who you are. Why not your social media footprint as well? Participation in social media shows you as an active, connected and (hopefully) thoughtful person. Can considering this information as part of the hiring decision not be too far away?