talentline411

Are you giving a fair shake?

2010-07-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so being a complete Internet nerd it may sound from time to time like I think nothing exists outside of the aether, but I've always maintained that personal contact is the bedrock of establishing a good working relationship, especially in hiring situations.

Central to establishing a good working relationship in a business context is the handshake, often practiced, seldom mastered. I've shaken hands with the sweaty-palmed and dead, cold fish hand alike. It appears that some scientists over in the UK have actually spent some time and money figuring out the twelve parts of what makes up an optimal handshake. Highlights of the twelve points of a perfect handshake appear in this article over at Discovery News.

Hire the Forerunners: Professionals with a Disability

2010-06-23T06:00:00.009-05:00

For more than a few years, I have involved myself in the work of nAblement (disclosure: I work for the parent company) as well as the Milwaukee-based Goodwill Services group AbilityConnection in finding work for professionals with disabilities in Information Technology. As someone who has one foot planted firmly in the communications / marketing discipline and the other in the recruiting world, I've struggled mightily with terminology that is both accurate and acceptable to the communities of people who live with various disabilities. "Professionals with disabilities" or "people with disabilities" (PWDs) seem to be the most accepted ways I've learned to refer to these communities but the problem is how unwieldy it is to use in communications. The abbreviation, PWD, is no better since it looks like an abbreviation for "password" and could, according to Google, stand for "Public Works Department" or "Portuguese Water Dog!"

This unwieldy terminology hurts efforts at Search Engine Optimization and, therefore, is an obstacle to raising awareness about this underserved, underutlized workforce. Someone entering PWD in Google, for instance, could end up finding a picture of this cute little puppy as opposed to discussions about people with disability.

Last night, I attended the premiere of a documentary about hiring professionals with disabilities titled The Forerunners. You can learn all about the movie and get some great resources about employing professionals with disabilities over on my friend Pat Maher's nAblement blog.

In the documentary, one of the individuals interviewed really hit on something when he brought up how his efforts to push boundaries in the workplace and overcome challenges through the use of technology and by pursuing a technology career. He referred to those disabled individuals who right now are paving the way to make life easier for future people with disabilities to enter the workforce as "forerunners" and it unsurprisingly became a very fitting title for the movie.

From now on, when I'm talking about anyone who is a professional with a disability in the workforce, I'll refer to him or her as a forerunner. It fits, it provokes conversation (What is a forerunner you ask? I'll tell you!), and it works as a respectful, optimistinc, and powerful name for the community of PWDs.

The forerunners invitation

View more documents from pmaher59.

The movie is going to be posted soon up on YouTube and is a terrific short watch that speaks volumes about the viability of careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

By the way, I know of some truly great Information Technology-specialized forerunners who are available for internships, part-time and full-time employmet in both the Milwaukee and Chicago areas. Know of some opportunities for them?

Recruiting Innovation: LinkedIn Now Lets You "Follow" Companies

2010-05-10T10:30:00.002-05:00

In case you’ve missed it, LinkedIn now supports a really useful new feature that allows you to “follow” any company updates. How do I do it, you ask? Just search for any company profile:

When you get to the company profile, notice that you can just click “Follow company” over on the right:

From here on out, that same section of the site will offer you options for notifications about the following:

Obviously, this is a hugely practical way for recruiters to keep tabs on our key competitors.

I am wondering, however, if LinkedIn will begin to get pressure from companies wanting to turn off the ability for individuals outside off a company to follow, namely because of the competitive intel it provides anyone interested about company direction or if a large number of employees happen to be leaving. Imagine how that might affect stocks?

If you've enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing. Have you started using this new LinkedIn feature? Tell us your thoughts about it in comments!

Posted via email from my meandering stream of consciousness

8 in 10 Companies Use Social Media to Recruit

2010-05-07T07:14:00.008-05:00

This morning, I came across the Socialnomics video update via my friends over at ChirpUp. The statistic that stood out for me was that 80% of companies use social media for recruitment and that 95% of them are using LinkedIn.

As a job seeker, you really cannot afford not to be on LinkedIn. As much as I like sites like Brazen Careerist for making the job search more accessible to recent grads, you really need to be on both.

According to the Socialnomics web site, that statistic is drawn from a Jobvite Social Recruiting survey. Unfortunately, the link there is broken. In fact, the survey was posted back in August 2009 and specifically states that 80% of companies are either using or planning to use social media for recruiting--slightly different but still an arresting fact to ponder if you are a job seeker.

Here is the rest of the survey.
2009 Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey

The survey also mentions that 59 percent of the recruiters are using Facebook and 42 percent are using Twitter for recruiting. The survey went out to 438 human resources and recruiting professionals, but I have no idea of that's a statistically relevant sample. It was at least sent out via email and the company's Web site, though, and not distributed via social networks themselves, which would almost certainly have skewed the results.

If you're a job seeker, it's probably most interesting to note that of the hiring professionals polled, 68 percent said that they have indeed hired someone through an online social network. I know that from my personal experience, I have done so as well on many occasions.

Many times, when I present to a group about social media for the job search, I advise that you need to pay close attention to what's showing up about you online. That advice was borne out in one significant survey result that showed that most hiring professionals research candidate background via LinkedIn and search engines even ahead of calling on references. With online social network privacy on Facebook opening up and the relative erosion of online privacy overall, it's more critical than ever to audit your online footprint (using something like Google Alerts to check for mentions of your name online) and make sure that there's nothing that that could be viewed as a red flag by a potential employer.

The rest of the Socialnomics video is, of course, eye-opening and entertaining, so I post it here for your viewing pleasure.

If you've enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing. Have you found a job or hired someone using social networks? Tell us about it in comments!

Use "Why" To Nail the Job Interview

2010-05-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

In a recent TED Talk, Simon Sinek explains how great leaders inspire action. Most of his talk addresses how businesses can apply the principal of the "Golden Circle" to truly differentiate themselves.

In essence, most companies will talk about what they do and how they do it and never even get to the "why." The fact that they do not misses a fundamental biological principle at work that's the basis for our so-called gut instincts or intuitions that fly in the face of how our rational brains tend to work. I'll leave the more in-depth explanation to Sinek's talk, embedded below.

What companies like Apple do correctly, he argues, is talk about why they do what they do first. It's an articulation of belief and that supports how and what the business does. Instead of being a mere computer company, they instead make a statement that challenges the status quo and seeks to, in Jobs' words, "put a dent in the universe."

How can we do anything less in a job interview? In most of the interviews I conduct, I get around to asking why you started working in Information Technology. Sometimes I phrase it as a question: What keeps you in this field? It's a question that stops many candidates cold. For one thing, it's something they don't get asked very often. I receive some pat answers now and then about "I've just always loved working with computers," but that never really gets around to the meat of it. Why do you love working with computers? Yes, it's a bit of a philosophy question but it's one that's seeking to get at motivation, what we hope to accomplish by choosing the career we choose, and how we stay inspired.

Sometimes our careers choose us. I didn't set out to be a recruiter, but I've stayed in recruiting for as long as I have because I enjoy the challenge of finding that elusive person for the job and building a company with the right mix of talent. At its core, recruiting is for me a social experience, a way to connect people with rewarding work and establish friendships that I'll carry with me for years to come.

Try applying the golden circle principle to your own career and be ready to use it in an interview. By expressing why you're in your chosen career, what you've done and how you've done it will fall into context for your interviewer. Even better, by revealing your excitement / holy mission / obsession about your field, you'll be sure to stand out from the rest of the candidates interviewing for the job. In some cases, that may cost you a job, especially if the company's values don't mesh with your own, but consider how uncovering such a company's biases can save you from making a poor job choice if you hadn't articulated your "why" and gotten an offer there.

If you've enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing. I'd also love to hear from you in the comments section about why you've chosen (and stuck with) your own career.

Degrees vs. Certifications? Two key considerations for IT professionals

2010-05-04T06:00:00.005-05:00

I've been considering the ever-changing nature of Information Technology skills and the role education plays in helping people stay current.

It's a difficult situation in Information Technology. As you become increasingly specialized, the need to stay current with new technology developments increases and that's true whether you're into software development, database work, software quality assurance or infrastructure. Old technology regularly falls to the wayside in favor of something newer, though not necessarily better, but relentlessly and needfully for the companies whose bottom line depends upon getting other companies to invest in them.

For consultants in Information Technology, the road of upgrades is relentless. My employer's Microsoft business unit, MPS Partners, is in the midst of migrating our current SharePoint MOSS 2007 instance over to the new SharePoint 2010. And so it goes with the rest of the tech sector.

I'm frequently asked by job seekers, both experienced and not, about how they can be most marketable for their next job in Information Technology. In my experience, the answer comes down to two key considerations: how much expertise you've already got in IT and which technologies you're looking to be educated about.

How Much Experience Have You Got?

If you're already in the IT profession, you're in a better position to land the next job anyway. Many IT professionals who are asking me the question are individuals who have gone through several years of college, whether for an associate's or a bachelor's degree, and ended up taking full-time employment before finishing up. They have frequently been in a job for a number of years, maybe quite a number of years, and were in an IT shop that didn't upgrade or use new technologies. As a result, they've been left behind and are finding that the job market is unfriendly.

But the advantage is that they have real world experience solving customer problems using technology. That skill is broadly applicable, so the challenge becomes the simpler matter of becoming conversant with a new or upgraded tool set.

As you might expect, there's not a right answer here, but in many cases it's just fine to go and pick up some training or certification in the latest technology. For example, if you've already got a solid foundation in Object Oriented programming and have been working in C++ successfully for many years, it's probably not worth your time to go back to college for a two- or four-year degree when you can pick up some books or take a class at the local community college on Java or Ruby on Rails.

On the other hand, if you are looking for an opportunity to break into the IT profession, there is no substitute for a solid foundation in IT concepts that you will get from a four-year degree program at an accredited college or university. Provided that you have the time and resources to pursue a degree, you will be in a better position to advance your career later on if you can not only understand how to do something with technology, but why it works.

Pick Your Poison: Technology Drives Whether A Degree or Certification is Best

The second large consideration when weighing certification against a degree is dependent upon the technology in which you're interested.

Some technologies, such as SAP, may be too specific to be carried in the curriculum of local schools, so you may need to look into training or certification programs held regionally or nationally by training companies or the companies the built the technologies. Other certifications, such at the PMP or ITIL Foundations have become such a given for certain professions that not having them has become a reason for ruling out a job candidate from consideration.

Find a trusted advisor who has worked in the technology of your interest to help you make the determination whether a given tech will be easier to break into with a certification. You could also talk with any experienced IT recruiter who has experience working in your area.

Build a Smart Career Foundation

It's easy to let your head be turned by advertisements about certification programs and high salary jobs landed by those who earned them, but those statistics are by and large bogus or, at the very least, highly exaggerated. Refer to the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The best way to break into the IT field is to get a solid educational foundation, supplemented by an internship or two.

And if you're already in IT, you should at least pause to consider whether the company you're at will afford you the opportunity to work your way into a new technology that's of interest. If it's a large enough shop, you may be able to volunteer for new projects or to evaluate new technology directions. These practical tryouts may open up new directions to you and ease your transition into the technology of your choice.

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Is your resume a museum or a warehouse? 3 critical steps to being a curator

2010-04-22T06:00:00.005-05:00

Is your resume a result of careful decisions about what to include or a cluttered, overburdened mess?

As I'm picking my way through Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (and illustrated by my friend, the awesomely talented Mike Rohde), I came across one section which really struck a chord with me from a recruiting standpoint. Actually, I find that the book has given me more than one such moment, but this one made me think about resumes in a new way.

As somebody who has thought about resumes long and hard, it's rare that I get a new perspective that sparks my imagination, so I thought I'd pass it along.

In the section called "Be a curator," Fried and Hansson suggest:

You don't make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That's a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that's not on the walls. Someone says no. A curator is involved, making conscious decisions about what should stay and what should go.

Spend some time thinking about your resume as a museum. To extend the metaphor, consider yourself its curator. When a curator puts up an exhibition, he or she decides upon some theme or context. There's intention behind what appears there and if the curator is any good at the job, it will be apparent to most people who visit. As the author of your resume, you bear the same responsibility to your readers. Present an inviting entry, making it clear what you do and what the intention of the resume is. In other words, if you're applying for a position as a Java software engineer, then your resume had better reflect that intention and signal it to any reader that you know the tools and terminology of the profession very well.

Nobody loves a "warehouse" resume

I've read well-curated resumes and I've tossed quite a few "warehouses" in the garbage can. A warehouse is more like the academic or medical profession's Curriculum Vitae (C.V.), something far more comprehensive in nature. Literally, a C.V. means "the courses of life." Resumes that meander along for five or more pages are begging for curation. They are dusty storerooms of dry, repetitive information that signal any employer that you really have no idea about what's going to be important to them. In fact, it demonstrates that you have zero respect for your audience and have made it the reader's responsibility to rummage around and make sense out of the chaos that is your life.

Curator 101: A three-step program

Getting the resume in order doesn't need to be an incredibly painful process. In fact, with just three steps you can at least begin to get control of the problem. Recognize that your old 10-pager just isn't going to cut it and is probably hurting you out in the job market. Here's how to start:

Step One: Have a Collection Policy for Your Career Data

Curators for museums follow a policy for collecting and formally accepting new objects into the museum's care. Consider taking an inventory of all the things that you might possibly say about your career and spend some time categorizing things like industry experience, accomplishments, and responsibilities. Chances are, if you've held several jobs in the same general career area you'll begin to see ways to group these items together. Think about ways you might present that data that you hadn't before putting them together. For instance, your resume may reveal that you have demonstrated a trend of accomplishments in a given area. Or, it may suggest to you a new way of talking about your industry experience.

Once you've tallied up all of the things that might go in your resume and spent some time thinking critically and seeing connections or correspondences you'll be in a better position to start discriminating about things you want to include and exclude from the resume itself. Let's call this full inventory of what you've got the warehouse resume. Nobody will ever need to see it but you and it can serve as a place for you to enter new bits of career data and suggest new ways that you might portray your experience to an employer.

Step Two: Remove What's Irrelevant

It may be tempting to hang on to your original overly-long resume, even if you've just gone through the process of creating a warehouse resume. Chances are, there are probably parts of your resume you really like but you just don't know where to cut.

Don't take it all on yourself. Sit down and talk through the resume with a family member, friend or colleague who is a good writer. And that's right I said talk it through. You should not just dump the resume on your hapless friend--say, what kind of friend are you anyway? Set aside an hour and read the resume aloud, line by line. I know it sounds tedious but by reading it out loud to someone else, you'll discover all sorts of things about your writing, including really important things like whether you're being vague or sound pompous or timid. Have a pen and scratch paper handy to take notes.

At the same time as you're reading aloud, pause after each statement and talk with your friend about why that statement is important. Maybe it won't be readily apparent but as you work through the resume you may find that you're spending too much (or not enough) time on one topic or another.

You may find that you need to do this with more than one person and may get varying opiniions. And it may leave you with a resume that looks a little anemic. That's okay. Remember that you've got the warehouse resume with your other accomplishments at hand.

Step Three: Curate A Job-Winning Resume

Before ransacking the warehouse resume for more "stuff to say" that will beef up your resume, take pause to consider the individual job or jobs for which you're applying. Take some time to really read the job description available for the position and consider the themes and patterns you've identified in your warehouse. Rate what's most important to include, thinking about what will make the greatest impact on an employer.

Once you've selected the points to include the real work of writing a cohesive resume begins again. Like all curators, an exhibition isn't just a jumble of art lying in a pile. Consider how each bullet point of experience fits with the rest. Does your top third of the resume provide an inviting and impactful introduction of your experience as it relates to the job? Do you use bullet points for emphasizing accomplishments and not as an instrument to bludgeon a reader into submission? Have you simply and directly told your story, who you are, and what you have done?

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Live at TRU USA Unconference on Recruiting

2010-04-19T12:16:00.005-05:00

I'm here at the kick-off of the TRU USA recruiting conference at the Brink Lounge in Madison, WI. This is the first TRU event to take place in the United States and it's awesome that we could have it here so close to home.

Aside from the opening session pictured here, we've had two breakouts so far, one on the future of HR and the other on compassionate HR. The unconference is light on attendance, partially because the giant ash cloud over the UK prevented a number of people from flying out to Madison, but we've been having some great discussions anyway.

I attended the compassionate HR session guided by Margo Rose (@HRMargo). It was great to hear about ways that HR and recruiting professionals are giving back to their communities and making national and international impact through volutneerism such as Steve Levy who his helping support armed forces personnel returning to the workforce through 1,000 Recruiters of Light. And, of course, I also got to chat about the Milwaukee JobCamp event, too. On the downside, we're poorly represented by the Wisconsin crowd of HR and recruiters but it does give those few of us locals a chance to strut our stuff on a national stage.

The event opened with a Social Media Circus event, an open discussion of social recruiting practices that turned to the issues of sourcing and tracking leads through building ad hoc communities for certain skill sets. For instance, if your organization hires a lot of software quality assurance professionals, you might wish to create a LinkedIn group or Facebook page with live feeds and information about that particular profession and its interests.

Recruiter Advice for Recent Grads

2010-04-14T06:00:00.003-05:00

I came across this piece by NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, with some straightforward advice about the job search for recent grads. It's still a pretty tight market for new and recent graduates and the topic has been on my mind because of some recent work I've been doing as a curriculum advisory board member for Kaplan College in Milwaukee.

In my experience, new graduates tend to sell themselves short on what they know. It's more a matter of not knowing what is going to be of interest to an employer. What is? While classroom work does not equate to real-world work in a business setting, there are certainly correspondences. Most students I talk to tend to feel that their experience setting up a new computer lab or solving a difficult interpersonal problem on a school project team is not worth sharing with an employer until it's pointed out to them that it would be a Good Thing to mention.

The other biggest issue I notice is the tendency of all new graduate resumes to look much alike. The source of the problem is that many Career Services departments at colleges and universities take a cookie cutter approach, but you cannot blame them for doing that. As a graduate looking for work, it's nobody's responsibility but yours to present yourself effectively.

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Make Sure Your Resume Will Attract Goldfish

2010-03-29T06:29:00.008-05:00

On this morning's Twitter feed, I saw a posting from CD Van (@thatwoman_soho) about a blog article on how our attention spans have suffered:

Sally Hogshead - Is your attention span the same as a goldfish? http://bit.ly/aHef8b (Sally is #unGeekedElite)

It turns out that according to a recent BBC article, we have the attention span equivalent to a goldfish--about nine seconds.

While the article was applying the alarming comparison (yes, I think it is alarming to have our attention span compared to that of a fish with a brain the size of a shrivelled pea) to Web surfing habits, I think that we need to apply it as a rule to the way resumes get reviewed. We used to say that you have 30 seconds to get a reviewer's attention. From personal experience, I think nine seconds is more accurate. I tend to scan the sections and look for criteria that either qualify or disqualify a candidate. It's simply a matter of screening out the noise.

Nine seconds.

It it sad? Unfair? Maybe so. However, it's a good enough reason to get better at marketing basics like writing good copy and following some basic rules of layout and design--even if you are not a marketer by profession.

In the realm of professional career management, where personal brand is each person's responsibility, we are all marketers.

What do you think? I'd like to hear about how you write your resume in order to get attention. If you're a recruiter, tell me how you go about scanning a resumes that land on your desk.

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Illinois Technology Association Human Resources Roundtable Topics

2010-03-25T15:16:00.007-05:00

This morning's roundtable discussion for Human Resources in Technology at the Illinois Technology Association could not have been a better match for the kinds of topics I cover in this blog. I got to meet a terrific group of participants and enjoyed a variety of perspectives about how social media impacts the business of hiring.

The discussion was led by Tom Hazlett and Chuck Smith of NewHire and covered an array of topics regarding the use of Social Media and your Web site to drive hiring.

Illinois Technology Association HR Roundtable on Social Media from Todd Nilson on Vimeo.

How Does Social Media Impact Your Talent Pipeline?

David O'Brien of Infogix facilitated the HR roundtable today and brought up the first topic of discussion, apparently something that has been a hot topic for a while... namely, the question of whether you as a recruiter maintain a talent pipeline. A talent pipeline, as defined by the ensuing discussion, is a group of qualified, interested candidates you regularly have calls with and who are available to join your company on short notice.

For my part, I draw a distinction between a candidate inventory, which is names, phone numbers and resumes, versus a group of contacts with whom you have active and regular contact. It isn't easy to keep such a pipeline. Despite the downtrodden job market, the top IT talent has continued to stay in pretty strong demand. Nobody in the space I hire for stays on the market for very long. A good recruiter gets a personal meeting and even if that potential hire leaves the market stays in touch every so often.

There are some candidates I keep in touch with every six months, some I keep in touch with ever six weeks, and others every six days or so. How often I keep in touch with them depends on how good they are at keeping up networking contacts, how likely it is that I am going to have a viable position for them, and how often I have those viable positions. Others are simply high priority networking contacts because they refer lots of other talented people my way.

The question of the day was whether social media can have an impact on such a talent pipeline. I think that the foregone conclusion was a resounding "of course!" However, just how to do that is, I think, something that a future roundtable could address more specifically.

Twitter Topics from the HR Roundtable

Here are just a few other topics I hastily jotted into a Twitter stream during the event:

When you say how much a job pays in a job description, it increases response rates across all sources. - Chuck Smith, pres. of NewHIre
Biggest problem in recruiting? A lack of imagination. Put the day-to-day into your job descriptions. - Chuck Smith, pres. of NewHire #ita
7 Reasons to work at Netflix http://bit.ly/2rjpSn Can you articulate your Employee Value Proposition?
Can you express the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) for working at your company? #recruiting #ITA #hrroundtable
How do you define your talent pipeline and how does social media impact how you manage it? #hrroundtable #ita #recruiting
The best people aren't looking. Best way to get attention of a new hire? Via a trusted friend. @technexus HR roundtable
Social Media trend: It's going to be that much easier to find me, but that much harder to get my attention. @technexus HR roundtable
Lively discussion about recruiting C-level talent from the Social Web. @technexus hr roundtable
Is anybody using pay-per-click advertising in @LinkedIn? Results?
Listening to some criticism of how cluttered @LinkedIn jobs is at @technexus HR Roundtable on social media
Did you know? Monster and CareerBuildrer are paying Indeed and SimplyHired to post jobs. @technexus at HR Roundtable talk on social media.
@technexus "Do you monitor your company reputation online?" Chuck Smith, pres. of NewHire
Is your applicaiton process onerous? Do you hate your candidates? Clean it up. #itatechnexus

The Social Web and Recruiting CXO's
Toward the end of the event, we had a particularly interesting conversation about whether the Social Web (or the Web itself for that matter) was a good place from which to recruit C-level talent. M. Zak from The Consulting Consortium took the position, from some experiences he has had with clients, that Web-based hires are not nearly as effective as interviewing members of the current executive team and pursuing their referrals thereby ensuring a continuance of the company culture.

Chuck Smith from NewHire argued that the Web is going to reveal more candidates than an internal referral system. I also argued the point briefly that while hiring based solely upon referrals may ensure a fit with the company culture, it also enforces a homogeniety in the company that could ultimately lead to stagnation. Zak's contention was the he had to work with a company that did its hiring via the Web and that's why they had to replace certain members of the executive team.

It was a thought-provoking discussion and it underscored for me the reminder that the Web is not the be-all and end-all for business. I know, I know it is anathema to say that. The social technologies that the Web enables are helpful and expand our capabilities for working in certain ways, but it's not the only set of tools we have. As much as I have to disagree politely with the sentiment that C-level hires should come primarily from a strong referral process (sure, they could and should be one source of many), it's good to keep in mind that the tail does not wag the dog, the tool should not dictate our interactions and certainly not to the exclusion of other ways of working. Social media's great, but a larger-than-usual segment of the predominantly male and 45+ population from which the executive suite are drawn are still Internet holdouts when it comes to joining and participating on networks.

That "good old boys" club mentality sucks and it's wrong and it should change and it's a situation the Web should help change (along with the inexorable march of time). But I get it.

Human Resources Roundtable at Illinois Technology Association

In all, I thought that the event was enjoyable and useful on a number of fronts. It's a free event and the ITA facilities are a pleasant professional environment. The noise from the ventilation systems was sometimes a little distracting but it tends to fade into white noise the longer you are in the room. The rooms themselves have fast wi-fi access but you need a password to log in, something I had to ask for. Some better signage would help. The group itself is extremely friendly and open, the networking opportunities were very good, and the presentation content interesting (the tidbit I took away from it was some interesting new information about Pay Per Click advertising on LinkedIn and Indeed).

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Network Visibility: Use online networks to see and be seen during your job search

2010-03-14T11:25:00.004-05:00

This week, I heard about the launch of a new social network for The Brazen Careerist. Penelope Trunks started the Brazen Careerist as a blog and it has quickly grown into its own destination for Gen Y job seekers and others who are looking for career management advice and a place to network.

The new site is a great place to build your "social resume" (more on that to come) and hook up to various networks (think LInkedIn Groups or Facebook Pages) to discuss issues of relevance to work. The network has a steep climb ahead of it if its ever to compete with LinkedIn or Facebook, but I don't think that's its goal to be honest. They did make it dead simple to sign up for (it uses Facebook Connect) and I was up and using it in about ten minutes.

After having a few days to think about it, however, it made me realize that its real value is the direct, live conversations resulting precisely because it is a new, small, yet growing community. The site has been built in a friendly enough way that it attracts the Facebook crowd and uses a similar information architecture. Usability is definitely something they thought about. The site is a touch on the slow side, but I expect that's something that they will fix soon. But the navigation and interaction is promoted by its design.

Not another social network please!

Yes, I know what you're thinking. You already have too many social networks and keeping up with another tiny one hardly seems to be worth the effort.

As a job seeker, what can a new, relatively small network like this do for you? Well, think about the demographic. They have managed to attract a crowd of users who are for the most part savvy about social networks, career-minded, and early adopters. They haven't yet been swamped by hordes of users. They are currently sitting at somewhere around 45,000 unique monthly visitors according to Compete.com. If you look at that in comparison to about 15 million monthly unique visitors to LinkedIn.com and you can see that this is a much smaller pool.

Want to stand out and get noticed faster? Looking to promote your blog? Seeking advice from a group of dedicated peers and employers who adopt new technologies early? Sites like Brazen Careerist are a good bet for managing your own personal brand and being seen. Plus, from an image perspective, Brazen Careerist oozes a younger, more design-conscious demographic. Whether you are a Gen Y / millennial or not, you want to be here if you care about visibility. LinkedIn will remain the de facto spot where you create your virtual resume, but it's a stuffy older brother by comparison to Brazen Careerist.

It's worth checking out.

I'd love to hear your experiences about using Brazen Careerist or other new social networks. Like them? Hate them? Sound off! Also, if you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to my feed and becoming a regular reader.

CNN calls social networks a challenge to cable news. Job boards, however? Fearless.

2010-03-11T12:30:00.002-06:00

Social networks a challenge to cable news: CNN US president

(AFP) – 1 day ago

NEW YORK — The biggest challenge to Cable News Network is not other 24-hour television news stations but social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the president of CNN US said Wednesday.
"The competition I'm really afraid of are social networking sites," Jon Klein said at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek 2010 Media Summit here. "That's an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us.
"The people you're friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information," Klein said. "You click on links they send to you and you trust them.
"Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news," he said. "We don't want the 1,000 people you follow in Twitter to be the most trusted sources for you.
"That's a challenge and we have to rise to that challenge," Klein said.
"So I'm far more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox," the News Corp-owned station which is CNN's major competitor in the cable news arena, Klein said.
The CNN executive said his network's "mission" is to drive social network and other Web users to "link back to something on CNN."
Besides expanding its footprint on the Internet with news and video, CNN is looking at mobile devices, Klein said.
"Online is a big growth area for us, mobile has enormous growth potential and domestic US cable is actually a growth area," he said. "There's a lot of room to grow.
"We're in a lot of places and I think that's the model that can be very successful for us," Klein said. "Everyone in the media business is actively loooking for multiple revenue streams, that's no secret."
Klein, a longtime producer at broadcast network CBS who took over as head of CNN's US operations in 2004, also said that with the explosion of news outlets and the Internet just being at the scene of a news event was no longer enough.
"Simply getting there used to be a big achievement," he said. "Nowadays, you've got to provide more than just being there.
"Offering the depth and analysis is harder," he said. "It takes more brainpower, it takes more work, it takes more thought, it takes more creativity.
"People are pretty up to speed on what happened today," he said. "You've got to give them more insight about what's going on. That is where we are going to try to continue to make a difference."

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

via google.com

Okay, so CNN is afraid of social networks and the potentially damaging impact upon their business, but job boards are clearly not. Who are the dumb guys here?

Posted via web from my meandering stream of consciousness

Squidoo: A Simple, Free Tool That Can Help Recruiters Tell Compelling Stories About Job Opportunities

2010-03-08T20:52:00.003-06:00

It's free, it lets you embed multimedia, and you don't have to be a Web developer to set it up and use it. Squidoo, the brainchild of Seth Godin, allows you to create multimedia pages called "Lenses" that can be about nearly any topic you can think of.

I've known about the site for some time, but a few weeks ago I got inspired by the idea of creating a better online job advertisement. In past blog entries I've made it clear that I'm not enthusiastic about the vast majority of online job ads. Generally speaking, they extinguish interest rather than create it. Instead of recruiting interested people, they spout incomprehensible Human Resources department jargon at you. Instead of talking about the benefits of working for a company in a great city, they bludgeon you with laundry lists of requirements.

For a while, I thought that perhaps the antidote is to write intriguing, short job adverts in status updates like Twitter or Facebook with a link to an application or more complete descriptions. The 140 character limit for Twitter is perfect for forcing you to distill the essence of a job opportunity for a reader.

Squidoo lenses are something entirely different. Imagine being able to put together videos, pictures, copy, PDF's, PowerPoints--in short the best rich media experiences the Web can offer--quickly and simply at no cost. You can create something far more compelling and interesting than just text (that will cost you hundreds of dollars on a job board) and leave the reader with a call to action.

I put together a sample Lens here about some positions I'm sourcing for at a client in Springfield, Illinois. The big challenge of recruiting for Springfield is that it's not a big metropolitan market and has a pretty limited pool of technology professionals, so it needs to be appealing enough to draw in people from other parts of the country. I took a stab at showing some of the great things about living there like the beautiful buildings, information about cost of living, and even some video to show that it's not as small of a city as you might initially think.

I put about an hour of work into the site and I’m definitely not holding it up as a paragon of what could be done but as an example of what’s possible.

Do you have an experience using Squidoo as an employment branding tool? Have you used other similar tools on the Web? Tell others about your idea or experience in the Comments section!

Posted via email from my meandering stream of consciousness

Feeding America collected almost 1,000 pounds of food at Milwaukee JobCamp3

2010-03-04T21:01:00.002-06:00

Feeding America collecting food and donations (almost 1000 pounds collected),
originally uploaded by Milwaukee JobCamp.

I'm proud of a lot of things about the Milwaukee JobCamps and one of them that I am extremely proud of is the charity component. For the price of a non-perishable food item, about 2,000 campers got a day full of career advice, hands-on practice with social media, resume and interview feedback and so much more.

Feeding America of Eastern Wisconsin collected almost 1,000 pounds of food for hungry families due to this event. And that's not even including the online and cash donations, which were also significant.

The people of Milwaukee can be incredibly cool and generous. Look no further for proof.

ProConLists Helps Weigh Decisions Before You Make Them - web applications - Lifehacker

2010-03-02T23:43:00.001-06:00

via lifehacker.com

Looking for an eye-candyish way to decide whether to take that job offer or not? ProConLists is a fun way to get all of those pro's and con's down and weighted.

Posted via web from my meandering stream of consciousness

Beyond Experience: How to best present top candidates to hiring managers

2010-03-02T09:21:00.003-06:00

via recruitingtrends.com

Yves Lermusi makes a closely reasoned argument about how to verify candidate achievements via references that check on past behaviors and achievements. I was interested that he asserts how there is a low correlation between past "experience" and future performance but didn't cite any research to back it up. I'm sure that it exists, but would like to know from whence the fact is drawn.

Posted via web from toddnilson's posterous

May 2010 Staffing Symposium: The War for Talent is Heating Up Again

2010-03-02T07:54:00.002-06:00

Download now or preview on posterous

2010_May_Staffing_Symposium_Flier.pdf (104 KB)

I received this invitation to Chicago’s Staffing Management Association of Greater Chicago event coming up in May. Sounds like it may be an interesting day.

I wanted to pass along a great group to consider joining/networking with in Chicago. The SMAGC has been considered a leadership group the talent acquisition/staffing space for a number of years. Please note the upcoming Staffing Symposium in May. This event is a real value in learning cutting edge information...exchanging ideas ...and ample time to social network as well. Feel free to share this information with your friends in the Milwaukee and surrounding area.

Kevin Farrell and Colleen Bader are the contacts listed for the event.

Posted via email from toddnilson's posterous

Should There Be a National JobCamp Day?

2010-02-20T13:31:00.003-06:00

Recently, Michael Vandervort over at The Human Race Horses wrote a blog about how HR professionals need to take more responsibility for job creation in this difficult market and said some really nice things about the upcoming Milwaukee JobCamp.

Namely, he brought up an interesting idea about how our grassroots event here in Milwaukee could be a model for events like it across the country. He was even calling for a National JobCamp Day. Cool. Obviously, this is something near to my heart and I’d love to see it.

Posted via email from toddnilson's posterous

Testing Posterous

2010-02-12T16:58:00.002-06:00

Blogging has been getting easier and easier from a technical standpoint. Provided that you aren't afraid of writing, getting a blog under way about your recruiting work or your profession has never been simpler thanks to Posterous.

Posterous makes it as easy as sending an email to get a blog started. I'm writing this message from my Gmail account and sending it to my Blogger blog. You can also start a brand new blog or multiple blogs with it. You can also send it out to several other services at once, including Twitter and Facebook.

So start writing about your profession, your job search, or whatever. Attachments like video or pictures are all hosted easily, so you don't even need to know about manipulating or hosting files.

Yahoo! Sells Hotjobs to Monster

2010-02-04T22:58:00.004-06:00

I'm sure many heard the news today of the long-rumored sale of Yahoo's HotJobs property to Monster. My first impression of the story was to imagine two stranded travelers stuck in the wild who turn to cannibalism. I've never been a fan of the job board model. If social networks haven't yet killed them off, they have certainly turned them into a back alley resource.

Why? Mainly because job boards are a holdover from the days of classified ads in newspapers. The really cool thing about job boards in 1999 was that, hey, you can write as much copy to describe your job as possible! Neat, huh? Unfortunately, that has led to job description bloat, creep, and rot.

When social networks arrived on the scene, they supplied the one element most important to anyone who really wants to join an organization--the opportunity to connect. Why would I want to submit a copy of my resume into a faceless portal when I can actually learn the names and a little background about the people I might find myself working with?

Okay, I'll admit that Monster still has LinkedIn beat when it comes to unique monthly visitors:

However, with this downturn, you didn't see anybody clamoring to be more skilled at using job boards. It was all about LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and learning how to promote your personal brand.

I suspect that it is with a certain degree of arrogance that Monster can look at the unique monthly visitor statistics and see long term stability in what they offer. However, while it may not be LinkedIn that topples the dominance of the job boards decisively, it will very likely be a social networking application that does the deed.

What do you think?

Online Privacy is a Real Issue for Job Seekers

2010-01-30T09:26:00.004-06:00

A friend passed along this link to me today of a Microsoft survey about how online reputation can impact job seekers:

A full 70-percent of surveyed HR workers in the U.S. admitted to rejecting a job applicant because of his or her Internet behavior. Meanwhile, about 60-percent of surfers admit to being concerned that their online behavior may affect their professional or personal lives.

On the upside, "86-percent of U.S. HR workers said that a good online reputation can have a positive impact on a job candidate's chances," the article goes on to say.

How do you get a good online reputation? By building trust and not continually referring to yourself.

Are you managing your online reputation thoughtfully?

Instapaper for Lightning Fast Online Resume Sourcing?

2010-01-25T10:11:00.006-06:00

This morning I came across mention of a nifty, fast tool for clipping online articles that you can read later at your leisure. The tool, called Instapaper, is free and easy to sign up for and works beautifully when you see something interesting but don't have the time right away to review it in detail.

Perfect for collecting online resumes and contact information, right? It's even better than that.

If you're on a sourcing expedition for new contacts and you're in a hurry, this clipping tool is a real asset in your arsenal. (If you're a job seeker, it's pretty cool, too, since you can use it to quickly clip job openings on boards or elsewhere that look interesting and return to them later.)

Getting Started

Sign up for an account. All you need is a valid email address and you're set to go. Then drag the "Read Later" button up to youlbr toolbar.

Any time you are on a web page and see an interesting article, just click the button and it will quickly and automatically be sent over to the Instapaper site for later reading.

Once it's there, you can opt to read it in its original HTML format or in plain text. It also looks like you can pull up any of the materials there on your Amazon Kindle.

Now, I suppose you can make the same argument for any web clipping tool. I've used and use both Microsoft OneNote and Evernote and they are both wonderful apps. However, for speed and simplicity when I just want to clip something and go--this is the speed demon I was looking for.

I have a feeling that I'll be getting a lot of use out of this tool. Have you used it? How do you like it? Got an alternative tool? Let's hear about it in Comments.

TalentSeekr Passive Candidate Sourcing Engine

2010-01-19T21:59:00.001-06:00

I came across a really slick video demo for TalentSeekr today and thought I'd share it. I have no affiliation or special interests in the company--it just looked interesting and thought I'd see if anyone has had an experience with it.

As an alternative to job boards, I have to say that the product at least looks pretty good. It looks like they are getting some good press, too. The dashboard features remind me a lot of the social media listening tools that are out there. What looked most interesting to me was the simple landing page / application that can supposedly feed directly into your Applicant Tracking System (ATS). And of course targeted Pay Per Click is nothing new, but the learning model here whereby one source is discarded in favor of one that's working is interesting.

A Sourcing Checklist for Recruiters: 21 Ideas

2010-01-17T08:00:00.002-06:00

Undertaking a new job search for a client or internal customer? While Ralph Waldo Emerson may find a foolish consistency to be the hobgoblin of little minds, a sensible consistency leads to effective hiring practices. As the 2010 market heats up and recruiters start getting more and more purple squirrel hunts, it's important for your own peace of mind to have an approach that is repeatable and efficient when approaching a brand new candidate search.

With that in mind, I've compiled a checklist of sources to approach when trying to identify communities where your next hire is coming from. Some of these are net-based while others are live events. I keep track of a new checklist for every customer using a tool called Backpack from 37signals, but a simple notebook works too. The items below are in no specific order and I welcome feedback or ideas about additional resources.

A Recruiter's Sourcing Checklist

Have you checked your own internal database?
Have you checked your personal database? (You know you have one, so cop to it)
Search your LinkedIn network of contacts.
Search relevant LinkedIn Groups and post the job there.
Search LinkedIn Answers for people with expertise relevant to your search.
Update your LinkedIn Status about who you're looking for (and cross-post it to Twitter if you're set up to do so).
Search Facebook network of contacts.
Search relevant Facebook Pages and Groups and post the job there.
Update your Facebook status about who you're looking to hire.
Update your Twitter status at least four times over the course of a day or two with the position description.
Search Twitter for users who are talking about topics related to your search and network with them.
Look for recent blog posts on Technorati mentioning skills you're looking for. Post replies where it seems relevant.
Build a Boolean search for Google, Bing, and Yahoo with skills, job titles, and geography information relevant to your search. Look for resumes, blogs, speakers from trade shows, and other events relevant to your search.
Search tertiary social networks like Plaxo.
Search for candidates on relevant private social networks like Ning.
Find relevant user groups or events you can start attending to identifying and connecting with viable candidates.
Try reaching out to organizers of groups or events to see if they will allow you to post a job to their web site or make an announcement at their event. Many such groups are always looking for sponsors for food or swag in exchange for a brief commercial announcement.
Find relevant professional associations that your target hire might join. Look for member directories or areas to post jobs.
Set up Google Alerts for mentions of relevant keywords related to your search and have them delivered to your Inbox.
Search SlideShare for relevant presentations about subjects related to your search. Contact the users to discuss their presentations and network to find relevant candidates.
Use tools like Indeed or Simply Hired to identify companies where employees with similar qualifications may be working. Using the tools and techniques above, start looking for candidates from these organizations.

Got a technique or tool not mentioned here? I'd love to hear about it. Please sound off in the comments section.

You can download a handy PDF of this list here.