Last year, I wrote about how job-seekers in the UK seemed a little behind the curve when it came to using social media to help their job search, even as every week brought us yet another infographic detailing just how powerful social media could be in finding a new job. m-Recruiting (mobile recruiting) seemed to have some of the same characteristics:  On the one hand, you had all kinds of evangelists telling you how crucial it is to have a recruiting plan for mobile devices; on the other, we’ve never actually met a candidate who said that mobile job-seeking was a key pillar in their job search.

It all reminded me of the Cluetrain Manifesto, actually.  The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 2000, when the dotcom era had well and truly begun but people were wondering just how to use The Internet for marketing.  Essentially, the Cluetrain movement was all about how the internet was going to allow consumers to choose the ways in which they would communicate with the organizations who wanted to sell them stuff, rather than the other way around.

In other words, organizations could no longer dictate the terms on which they communicated with consumers:  Instead, consumers would set the pace.   And I think this is what’s happened – and happening – when it comes to recruiting:  We need to let candidates tell us how they want to engage with potential employers and recruiters.

The numbers are growing – but they’re lower than you thought

A recent study of more than 30,000 job-seekers by Potential Park clearly demonstrates that young job-seekers are engaging with potential employers and recruiters online, but the data still skews to the corporate website:

• 96% use the internet to look for employers
• 77% primarily use companies’ career websites
• Only 38% actively use professional networks like LinkedIn
• Only 36% think employers should be present on Twitter, and only 5% use Twitter for their career

What’s particularly interesting is that while 81% of job-seekers could imagine using their smartphone for career-related purposes, only 20% are actually doing so, and this includes emails to and from potential employers.  mRecruiting just isn’t (yet) as important as many recruiting professionals think.

More importantly, these young job-seekers aren’t necessarily in a huge hurry to get in bed with potential employers via social media:

“Job-seekers are cautious towards, but not dismissive of the idea of using social media for career-related purposes”, says [Potential Park researcher] Ziesing. “Slowly but surely they start to discover the power of social networks and take control of their candidate brand.”

What does this mean for recruiting?

Recruiters, as natural networkers, have long been early adopters when it comes to social media, so it’s not surprising that we’ve long advocated for the rise of social media for recruiting.  However, this misses the point: Candidates are the ones who truly have the power to determine the rate of adoption.

The study ranks the top global organizations in terms of their ability to attract and engage with candidates via social media, and here’s what the top companies have in common:

• The top orgs don’t try to be everywhere at once.  They tackle one channel at a time and try to get it right before moving to the next
• Social media for recruiting is a learning process.  Not every channel will be equally effective for every organization or opportunity, and trial and error is part of the process for everyone
• Different strategies/approaches are required for different channels.  What works on the corporate site isn’t what works on social media or mobile
• It’s all about responding to the actual needs of the job-seekers – not trying to anticipate or make assumptions

Yes, social media will continue to grow as a way to reach job-seekers, and as tablet computers become more common, mRecruiting will no doubt grow as well.  However, before you get yourself over-extended into every social media channel going, it might be good to ask your potential candidates how they’d like to find you.

This week, Yahoo’s CEO of just 4 months was asked to leave the company, after an apparently disgruntled shareholder discovered that his official corporate bio wasn’t accurate: Thompson’s bio said that he’d graduated with a degree in accounting and computer science, but in fact his degree was only in accounting.

The ‘degree in accounting and computer science’ line has been following Thompson around for years, at least since his time as President of PayPal.  Did the line get added by a headhunting firm – or by Thompson himself – in order to make him seem more appealing to a high-tech company?  It seems odd that someone who is apparently so successful – think what you will about Yahoo as a going concern, becoming the head of these two high-profile organizations means you’ve done something right – would deliberately lie and continue to lie through any number of vetting meetings and SEC filings that are required for the head of a public company.  Surely he could have cleared up the computer science ‘inaccuracy’ at any point during the vetting process without everyone suddenly deciding he was the wrong guy for the job.

Thompson has tried to pin the blame on a headhunting firm, who he says ‘embellished’ his bio with the computer science information years ago and it simply went undetected for 7 years, but I think this misses the point:  No one is saying that Thompson was incompetent or incapable of doing the job; none of the coverage of the fiasco so far has indicated whether or not he ever took any computer science courses during his time at university.

The problem here for Thompson – other than the disgruntled shareholder, who seems to have made it his mission to get rid of Thompson, for reasons unclear to me – is that Yahoo has a strict code of ethics, which Thompson has breached.  He may be a fantastic CEO, a smart guy, and otherwise completely ethical, but to leave him in place when he’s been so publicly exposed as a ‘liar’ not only leaves Yahoo exposed to shareholders, but also to morale problems with employees who feel it’s unfair to be held to higher standards than the CEO.

The consequences for Thompson may also prove to be financial: Depending on how he and Yahoo decide to handle the departure, he may have to repay the $7 million in upfront compensation he received for leaving PayPal to take on Yahoo.

I just heard a commentator on BBC radio taking a very hard line about Thompson and his lies; I find myself less convinced of his implied inherent lack of morals.  (I have enough credits for a political science degree, for example – even though I ultimately got a degree in English – and if I’d ever been up for a job where those credits would have given me an advantage, I might have highlighted them on a resume or bio, and never worried that I was really doing anything wrong.)  However, the story is a good lesson for everyone:  In these days where biographical information is easy to double-check, we should all err on the side of caution.

When companies talk about implementing managed or insourced solutions, they’re often excited because they’re transitioning to a new model, process or technology, and they think that this new technology or process will be the ‘magic bullet’ they’ve been looking for to improve the bottom line, customer service ratings, or performance. I understand this feeling: After all, it can be tempting to think that if we just install a new enterprise technology system, or establish a new set of process directives, all our problems will be solved.

Except that the data shows that more than 75% of the budget and resources of a managed solution is spent on the ‘people’ portion of the equation. And that begs the question: Shouldn’t we be spending more time on people than on the process or technology?

People have the most potential to affect success of a managed solution

We do a lot of work in the IT insourcing/managed solutions space, where the emphasis is often on specific metrics: Speed to Answer, First Call Resolution, Ticket Resolution Time, CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) scores, number of tickets opened/closed per day/week/month, etc.   It’s easy to get caught up in the data.

But the biggest influencers of that data – and whether a particular model, process or technology actually works – are the people who are involved in the process.  Ensuring that  you have the right people in the right roles, and that their performance is effectively managed will ultimately have the most effect on the success of a managed solution.

Here’s how to make sure that the people component of your managed solution is set up for success:

1.  Choose a model that fits existing resources

When it comes to managed and insourced solutions, one size does not fit all.  Most organizations have existing staff who will be retained regardless of the solution model (because they have unique skills or knowledge, or to provide a seamless bridge from the existing function to the new one), and it’s important to take this into account.

2.  Choose a model that will blend well with existing corporate culture

Not so long ago, ‘outsourcing’ the helpdesk function was considered a hallmark of smart business decisions.  But many organizations found that a pure outsourcing model caused internal backlash, declines in service standards, and decreased morale – all of which contributed to lowered productivity and meant the solutions failed to achieve the desired efficiencies. Managed solutions can bypass these issues – but only if you work with existing corporate culture and expectations.

3.  Recruiting should be as important as it is for the rest of the organization

Attracting, screening and recruiting the right people for a managed solution is just as important for a managed solution as it is for the rest of the organization.  So when you’re choosing a managed solutions partner, ask about their strengths in recruiting, employment brand building, and assessment.

4.  Performance management is more than just data

As we mentioned above, when it comes to IT-related managed solutions, it’s all too easy to get caught up in key metrics and scorecarding. Yes, these are important measures of success – but people perform better when they’re recognized as more than a list of monthly metrics.  Your managed solution will deliver better results over time when performance management also includes ‘soft’ metrics like leadership, innovation, initiative and career growth for top performers.

5.  Make sure the transition process addresses the impact of change on employees

Humans are hardwired for homeostasis: A big organizational change – like moving to a managed solutions model – can cause anxiety even in your best employees. By taking the time to acknowledge the impact of the change on employees affected, and addressing it with communications, training and support, your managed solution initiative will happen more seamlessly and deliver better results, faster.

As most experts will tell you, it’s best to think of your resume (or your LinkedIn profile) as a sort of ‘teaser advertisement’ for you and your skills and experience.  After all, the goal of the resume is to get a recruiter or potential employer interested enough to call you for an interview.  You have just a few moments to capture the reader’s attention.

Recruiters typically review hundreds of resumes every week, and the truth is that 90% of them contain statements like “Passionate about delivering effective results in innovative ways while leveraging my skills in a dynamic environment.” Quite apart from the fact that a line like that actually says very little about your unique skills and abilities, it also doesn’t do much to help you stand out from the competition – because everyone’s using the same words to describe themselves.

Here are some words you should avoid if you want to make sure your resume doesn’t sound like everyone else’s – and some suggestions for alternatives:

Passionate

10-15 years ago, ‘passion’ and ‘passionate’ may have been unusual words to use in a job-seeking context; today, they’re so overused that they’ve become wallpaper. Instead, try statements which begin in different ways:

“I do best when I’m…”
“Very interested in…”
“I get excited by creating…”

Innovative

Unless you actually work in a think-tank which is designed to pursue scientific innovation, ‘innovative’ is another word which has become chronically overused, especially when describing skills.  Using more varied language will do a better job of highlighting your achievements:

“Developed a more cost-effective method of…”
“Used web-based technology to transform…”
“Created a proprietary system to…”

Dynamic

Most people use ‘dynamic’ in a resume/profile context as a sort of shorthand to convey that they’re comfortable with a fast-paced environment, but like many overused words, it can lose its meaning through overuse. Try these instead:

High-productivity
Entrepreneurial
Brisk
High-change
Growing

Utilize

One of the worst offenders in the jargon stakes, ‘utilize’ just makes you sound like you’re trying too hard, and if I could delete one word from your resume, ‘utilize’ would be it. Go for simplicity instead:

“Put my skills to work…” (instead of “utilize my skills”)
“Used existing resources to create…” (instead of “utilized existing resources”)
“Developed new process…” (instead of “utilized research to transform existing processes”)

Extensive

‘Extensive’, in a resume context, is one of those words that can mean anything – and therefore tends to mean nothing. You don’t have to state that you’ve got ‘extensive experience’ in something if the skills and experience you’ve listed clearly outline your achievements. For example:

“Managed 5-person client services team…” (instead of “extensive experience in managing people”)
“Coordinated $500,000 marketing initiative…” (instead of “extensive experience with marketing”)
“Implemented enterprise-wide supply chain management system…” (instead of “extensive experience with supply chain management”)

BONUS TIPS

• Avoid repetition of adjectives – it can suck the excitement right out of your resume, and make it look padded with description rather than facts
• Opt for verbs (managed, led, completed) over adjectives (pro-active, forward-thinking, innovative)
• Don’t use long paragraphs. Describe each job you’ve had in one sentence, then list accomplishments in bullet points.  This makes your resume an easier, more compelling read

Remember: As with any advertisement, resumes are best when they’re simple, straightforward, and go easy on the jargon.

I don’t know about you, but in the past few days I’ve had a whole bunch of invitations to connect to people on BranchOut, the “#1 professional network on Facebook“.   It’s strange, because after an initial flurry of invites when BranchOut launched last summer, I hadn’t heard much about it, from job-seekers or recruiters.

According to yesterday’s media release, however, BranchOut has just raised $25 million in funding, has 25 million registered users, and is signing up new users at a rate of 3 per second.  So someone thinks this application has potential.

BranchOut is supposed to make it more easy to connect to professional contacts by leveraging your Facebook contacts, and by providing a more ‘sexy’, user-friendly interface than LinkedIn.

There’s no question that BranchOut’s look and feel are more appealing than that of LinkedIn, and if you’re the sort of person who has a lively Facebook profile, it’s easy to import/invite your friends to your network:

(I borrowed this screenshot from this website.)

But…

That’s still a far cry from LinkedIn’s 150 million users.  More importantly, it’s not clear what BranchOut offers that LinkedIn doesn’t.  Yes, there’s a theoretical efficiency in having your professional network connected to your personal network, instead of having to visit Facebook and LinkedIn separately.  Except that:

• Until everyone in your professional network switches from LinkedIn to BranchOut, you’re still going to have to use both
• Lots of people are uncomfortable with merging their personal (i.e. Facebook) and professional (i.e. LinkedIn or BranchOut) networks
• Facebook doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to privacy.  Even if BranchOut is a ‘separate’ application, the fact that it’s contained within Facebook makes many people nervous

Some bloggers have suggested that BranchOut may make it easier to access professional information of friends – people you often interact with via Facebook but not via LinkedIn – but that seems a limited use at the moment, given the disparity in numbers.

What this means for recruiters and job-seekers

If you’re a recruiter who specializes in recruiting social media and communications specialists who tend to be early adopters of new social media channels, BranchOut may prove useful – but not to the exclusion of LinkedIn, at least at the moment.

If you’re a job-seeker, well, BranchOut says that they have 3 million job postings. And I’m all for spending an hour or two populating a profile, because you never know when a recruiter may be searching BranchOut for someone with your skills and experience.

But overall, I think it’s safe to say that BranchOut’s status is a lot like Google+’s status at the moment:  Keep your eye on it, but don’t feel compelled to spend a whole lot of time there, because they just haven’t achieved critical mass yet.

“Make your own luck” may look good scrawled on a graphic t-shirt and paired with a snap-back and some Vans, but it makes less sense as a (non-fashion) statement.  Given that luck is, by definition, beyond your control, how can you make it?

Apparently, the respondents to a recent LinkedIn survey have the answer:  Over 70% felt that things like work ethic and communication skills contribute to the amount of luck we receive.  But if that’s true – if tireless effort, networking and taking advantage of opportunities are the things that lead to big breaks – what’s the difference between ‘luck’ and ‘hard work’?

I don’t mean to wilt the leaves on your clover, but I think there’s a danger in linking effort and luck, as it disassociates success from control, undercutting the hopeful spirit of the article.

Let’s say it’s your dream to become a management consultant specializing in corporate social responsibility.  One day, your boss decides to launch a ‘Green Workplace’ initiative and needs someone to lead the committee.  Though your boss may be completely unaware that you’re the Jeremy Lin of corporate social responsibility (hopefully with stronger knee ligaments), you happen to run into each other one afternoon at the coffee shop next to the office.  Your boss, who can’t be bothered to go through an interview process, arbitrarily offers you the position of committee leader.

Was it by luck that you were given this potentially career-making opportunity?  Not necessarily.  There’s obviously an element of timing involved – but let’s say you’d strategically chosen to choke down coffee shop sewage every day to match your boss’s break schedule, increasing the likelihood of getting some one-on-one time.  Can we really call your good fortune ‘luck’?

Those who apply the concepts identified in the survey – a strong work ethic, good communication skills, acting on opportunities – are likely to be the kinds of people who would come up with these types of strategies.  In doing so, the line between ‘luck’ and ‘reward for effort’ is suddenly blurred.  In our example, you clearly took action to put yourself in a situation to succeed, so, in a way, your new undertaking should be credited as an accomplishment, not just dumb luck.

Let’s just admit that we have more control over our careers than we’d sometimes like to believe

The survey results are meant to give the apparently unlucky reason to believe there are ways to turn their fortunes around, to restore faith in our ability to control our careers.  To me, if you want to empower someone, you should be making them feel that they control the breaks they get.  To keep calling it ‘luck’ even though you’re making calculated decisions to bring about certain results seems to snatch power from the individual, instead attributing it to random cosmic forces.

I don’t mean to get all Freudian, but if luck is driving our careers, what personal responsibility do we really have?

In spirit, the article is trying to debunk the notion that we are powerless unless we fill our briefcases with horseshoes and rabbit feet.  My issue is not with the message, but how it’s framed.  I’ll be the first to admit that luck plays a role in career success, but strong work ethic, communication skills and opportunism should also increase your career trajectory, and give you a better chance of catching breaks.  What they’re really saying is that we can’t increase our luck, but we can increase our odds.  Putting ourselves in more potentially luck-bearing situations increases the likelihood that, at some point, we’ll catch a break.

By thinking of it this way, we can disconnect luck from success and re-establish the notions of control and responsibility.  So maybe it isn’t the number of bowls of Lucky Charms you scarf down at the breakfast table – maybe it’s where you’re going, or who you’re eating with, that’s actually going to help your career.

Guest post by Geoffrey “Don’t Call Me Lucky” Gilbert, Recruiter at Poly Placements

(This clip is from The IT Crowd, a very, very funny show about 2 IT consultants and their not-so-tech-savvy boss.  If you haven’t seen it, you really should.)

In 1999 I met with a senior executive recruiter at an ‘exclusive’ recruiting agency.

“We know the future is with the internet,” he said, correctly.  ”That’s why I’m going to be specializing in recruiting people who are focused on internet marketing.”

He saw me looking at his desk.  ”Oh, yeah,” he commented, very seriously.  ”I’ve ordered a computer – it should be arriving next week sometime.”

(sigh)

If you’re an IT consultant – especially if you’re good at what you do and take pride in your work – the recruiting process can be frustrating.  Maybe you position yourself as a Java expert but are constantly fielding calls from recruiters offering you ASP-only jobs; maybe you find yourself having to defend your resume to someone who couldn’t HTML their way out of a paper bag.  It’s easy to get exasperated and start to tune out all recruiters entirely.

But you shouldn’t.  Recruiters may not know as much about IT as you do, and you may think they should have done more homework before they called you, but it’s important to remember that they do in fact have a vested interest in helping you get a job you like.  When they place you in a position, they make money; when you stay in that position, and excel at it because it was the right move for you, their reputation improves and they know that you’ll tell your colleagues.

How to work smarter with recruiters

You never know when a recruiter is going to contact you with an opportunity that may turn out to be your ‘dream job’.  So instead of just ignoring all those calls and emails, try these tips:

• Respond with correct information. If a recruiter has called you about a database development position, and you’re strictly a PHP person, let them know.  Maybe the next time they come across a great PHP opportunity, they’ll put you at the top of the list.
• Try to build relationships. When you come across a recruiter who seems friendly, interested, and connected, take a few minutes to speak with them.  One of the biggest misconceptions about IT consultants is that they struggle with ‘interpersonal’ skills, so demonstrating that you’re a good people person can ensure that you’re first in line for the best opportunities.
• Don’t get angry. Yes, it’s annoying when you keep getting calls for jobs that don’t have anything to do with your skills and experience, but don’t get mad – think of it as a compliment.  It could be that the recruiter thinks you’re a  great candidate and is calling just in case your skills have changed since the last time you spoke.
• It’s okay to stand your ground. If a recruiter is pushing you to change your resume in order to ‘fit’ a certain position, and you don’t feel comfortable about it, it’s okay to let them know.  A good recruiter will appreciate that you’re being honest with them.
• Take the time to explain. Keep in mind that a typical IT recruiter is working on several roles, often for specialists in several different coding languages.  They may not realize what you can tell from the job description (i.e. that your two years of experience in a Microsoft environment isn’t sufficient for the senior role they’re proposing to you).  Instead of just refusing the opportunity, explain why it’s not the right fit for you.
• Tell the recruiter what your perfect job looks like. It’s easier for a recruiter to match you with the right opportunity if they know what you’re looking for.  So tell them!  If your dream job is a Linux-based environment where you can configure servers all day, let them know – you never know when they’ll come across the right opportunity for you.

In the past week or two we’ve seen a whole lot of media coverage of a supposed new trend:  Employers demanding access to the social media profiles of job-seekers as part of the ‘vetting’ process for new hires.  It’s gotten so bad that Facebook, in a somewhat ironic defense of personal privacy, issued a statement reminding users that sharing usernames and passwords was actually a violation of their Terms of Use.

But is the practice really so widespread?  According to a new study by Employee ScreenIQ – and, frankly, our own experience – employers haven’t suddenly started demanding Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter passwords:

• 52% of employers say their screening process never includes social media channels
• Only 9% say they always use them
• That 9% doesn’t mean ‘asking for passwords’ – it could mean just doing a Google search or checking a public LinkedIn profile for accuracy compared to a resume

In Canada, particularly, recruiters have to be concerned with PIPEDA (privacy laws) and the Human Rights Code, which prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.  A recruiter who spends a lot of time researching a candidate on social media and thereby learns that a candidate is GLBT or a person of colour could find, when they don’t hire that candidate, that they are accused of discrimination.

The exception: Social media on behalf of an employer

Where things get a little tricky is when an already-hired employee is responsible for managing social media channels on behalf of an employer.  If you’re the Sales Manager for an organization, and spend a lot of paid work time building a large LinkedIn network of sales-related contacts during the course of your employment with that organization, it’s possible that when you leave, the employer could ask for those contacts.

If you’re the social media manager for an organization and spend a lot of paid work time building a Twitter following that is associated with the company, who owns that Twitter account when you leave?

These questions are a little tougher to answer – and probably won’t be, definitively, any time soon.  Best advice?  If your employer asks you to start tweeting on behalf of the organization, open a new account – don’t just do it from your own personal Twitter account.

A few months ago, we sat down and articulated our Core Values – the things we stand for, the qualities we value, and the goals we strive for.  I thought we’d share them with you.

There’s a whole booklet that accompanies these, but I think this probably speaks for itself.  (If you’re interested in reading the booklet, just send us a message on Twitter @PolyPlacements!)