Culture Eats Strategy

When searching for an opportunity, most job seekers search by industry, geography, salary, and benefits.  An often overlooked, but equally important criterion is company culture.  Culture is defined as the set of shared values, attitudes, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution (Source: Merriam-Webster). At the most basic level, culture is how work gets done in an organization.

If your personal values, attitudes, goals, and practices align with the organization culture then you will likely excel within a given work environment. If there is misalignment, you will wake up every morning regretting your decision to join the company.

Whether you are interested in seeking opportunities at a start-up or a well-established company; learning as much as you can about company culture prior to making an employment decision is time well spent.

Key elements of company culture

As you begin your job search, here are some of the key culture elements that you should consider: 

1. Individual vs. Collaborative Environment. In companies with a culture that focuses on individuals, you will often be expected to accomplish many of your objectives on your own with little help from your colleagues.  In collaborative cultures, colleagues typically work together to accomplish their objectives. 
2. Developmental vs. Self-Taught. In developmental cultures, companies focus on giving employees the training and development they need to realize their full potential. On the opposite end are companies that expect you to figure things out as you go.
3. Results vs. Time-Based. In results oriented companies, employees that consistently meet or exceed their objectives are promoted quickly. Companies that have time-based cultures expect you to also achieve objectives but also add time-based criteria to promotions. 
4. Loose vs. Strict. Companies with a loose culture will often ascribe to a work hard, play hard mantra while those which are more conservative will expect employees to remain serious about their responsibilities at all time.

At this point in your academic career, you have had an opportunity to complete several independent and group assignments while pursuing your degree.  Take some time to think about which of those projects or assignments that you preferred and why.

Finding clues about company culture

Depending on which cultural elements appeal most to your personality, it is important to identify those aspects while researching companies of interest.  The good news is that the emergence of social media and social networking is creating an increased level of transparency for companies to share their culture with prospective candidates.

Instead of solely focusing on career sites or campus visits by employers you can now access real-time dynamic information about companies on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Social media makes it much harder for companies to fake their culture.  By monitoring what information companies share, how they respond to their community, and what current employees share about their work enables one to get a great sense of the culture at companies of interest.

Not only does this information help you figure out how your experiences will meet the needs of an employer but it also ensures that you don’t apply for opportunities that do not fit with your personality.

What steps have you taken to learn more about the culture of opportunities under consideration?

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

Coach K Recruiting

I’m a sports fan. Beyond enjoying the competition of individual games, one thing that I’ve always been impressed with is the continuity of success at certain schools. Although Duke doesn’t win the NCAA championship every year, they always seem to be in contention when it comes time for March Madness.

To me, the success of these teams boils down to one simple thing: recruiting. The coaches know what type of player will likely do well within their system and then they work hard to scour the nation and sometimes the globe to convince these players to join their team. In the athletic world, there is recognition about the importance of recruiting to the success of the program so they have more than enough resources (time, money, and talent) to meet their needs.

At companies, there is a disconnect between the impact of talent on an organization and the associated resources. Just take a look at how Google was punished by Wall Street for investing in the talent they need to make their company stronger moving forward.

However, all is not lost. I think that social media and social networking are creating a virtual environment that enables employers to simulate the success of their more financial powerful peers in athletics. So, what can employers do to build a social recruiting powerhouse?

1. Hit The Streets

When Coach K is seeking his next class of freshman, he doesn’t sit around Durham waiting for these players to stumble into his gym. Instead, he and his staff are out traveling around to where these prospective recruits spend a majority of their time. When he is on their turf, he gets busy telling them all the reasons why Duke would be an excellent place for them to spend their next 4 years.

2.  Know What You’re Looking For

The recent Fab 5 documentary seemed to highlight a bias in recruiting for certain types of prospective recruits. Jalen Rose (University of Michigan) took offense at this. Unfortunately, each organization does not meet the needs of every recruit. The sooner you figure out what type of prospective candidates fits your organization, the clearer your messaging and attraction strategy will be.

3.  Public Sharing

Schools make a big deal about when new recruits sign on to their program. The public sharing of information makes it progressively easier to recruit other candidates who are seriously considering employment at your organization. Imagine if prospective candidates who are weighing your organization see that someone with respected credentials joins your company. They are more likely to accept so that they can have the opportunity to work with a respected peer. Social media provides a great environment for the oversharing of relevant information to reinforce your value proposition.

4. Continuous Recruiting

After the offer is accepted might be a time to pat yourself on the back for a job well done. But, Coach K realizes that top recruits have options. If he isn’t meeting their needs they can transfer to another school or achieve financial security by heading to the NBA. So, he reinforces the reasons why they not only chose Duke but should continue to remain Blue Devils. Prospective recruits who are just beginning to consider their collegiate playing options see this and begin to have preferences for the programs that seem to take the best care of their current players.

5. Own Local

In athletic recruiting, a big deal is usually made when one of the top-ranked recruits elects to leave their state for another institution. For many programs, this is unacceptable. The main reason is that they have had more time and access to convince these recruits about their value proposition. If local players who know the state don’t think your program will meet their needs, then it will be much harder to convince those who will have to relocate from another location. Often local talent will be your best recruiting asset as they can better speak to the intangibles of why a prospective candidate should choose your company.

Although, you might not have the resources to pull out all the stops the way a leading athletic program can, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be as successful with recruiting prospective candidates. Emerging social media and social networking tools allow you to discover, interact, and connect with target candidates regardless of constraints.

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

Customer relationship management is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.

What is social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring refers to the tracking of various social media content such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, social networking sites, video/photo sharing websites, forums, message boards, and user-generated content in general as a way for marketers to determine the volume and sentiment around a brand or topic in social media.

The Human Capital Disconnect

When reading through both of these definitions, there is clearly a heavy focus on meeting the needs of the sales, marketing, and customer service functions. In fact, it is rather shocking that talent management is not included within these solutions. This might be because of the clearer relationship between these activities and revenue generation. But, I would argue that talent acquisition is also a great area for these innovative new tools to be effectively utilized.

With this in mind perhaps, a new definition emerges: Candidate relationship management is an emerging strategy for managing a company’s interactions with prospective applicants, candidates, and current employees. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new employees, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former employees back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and advertising.

What do you think? Does candidate relationship management have the potential to play an important role in attraction, recruiting, and retention?

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

Social Recruiting Referral

Most organizations prefer referrals as a great source of prospective candidates. Often, the main reasons cited are quality vs. quantity. There is even so much support for these types of candidates that employees often receive additional compensation for referring the right talent to the organization. So, the key question, is there a way to replicate employee referrals to meet the ongoing hiring needs of the organization?

The Knowledgeable Employee (best recruiting asset)

Employees at a company typically have a great deal of insight about the inner workings of an organization. They have gone through a process that includes: research, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and on-the-job work experience. As such, employees are a natural way of communicating company mission, vision, values, culture, skills, and experience beyond the walls of an organization. This depth of knowledge is what enables companies to receive great referrals from their employee base.

In an ideal world, most organizations would probably prefer to get all their new hire recommendations via referral. However, the reality is that this is simply impossible. Typically employees throughout an organization aren’t privy to the total hiring needs of the organization. They might be aware of hiring at the department or functional level. But, rarely is an individual employee aware of every single open position at a company.

Even if they were aware of every single opening that doesn’t guarantee that they will have someone within their network who would be a good fit. So, in order to meet the ongoing hiring needs, employers must look to a variety of additional methods.

The Porous Organization

In order to emulate the success of employee referrals, it is necessary to understand the basics of what makes the program successful.  The insight into the organization that employees have gained by initially being attracted, recruited, and retained at a company.

To me, one of the best ways to share this information is through the targeted use of social media and social networking. While the data set can’t necessarily be as rich, the behind—the-scenes insights that are provided about the organization can be utilized in a variety of ways.

In addition to the insight, there is often compensation associated with a successful employee referral. While this could also be utilized within a social recruiting campaign, there is also very valuable social capital to be earned by being a great resource for members within a connected community. Those that are able to connect members within their network to amazing opportunities earn a great deal of respect and increased social standing. Augmenting that with compensation would simply be the icing on the cake once those key influencers are identified.

The Referral

By creating broad-based interest in your organization, users connected to your company can share openings with their network. Those who have an interest in your industry and specifically your company’s role within the industry already have gathered a great deal of information so that when there is a hiring need, they will already know that your organization is at the top of their list. Current employees can stay current on hiring needs in a much more natural (i.e. social) way than having to read through internal job postings or hear about openings through the grapevine. So, when positions become open that are outside of their current department; they are much more likely to connect the dots to others that may already be in their network.

While organizations can not hire all of their employees through referrals, social recruiting seems to be a natural evolution of the model in that the information shared about an organization simulates that which current employees have gathered through an ongoing relationship. By building a social media and social networking powered recruiting function, the number of quality hires should increase as digital filtering and social principles begin to dominate the web-based interactions.

What are your thoughts? Can Social Recruiting be a valuable addition to organization referral programs? What do you think would tip the scales for success? What will be the biggest challenge in socializing the recruiting process?

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

Charlie Sheen, The Best Social Recruiter Ever?

Recently, Internships.com posted a beautiful infographic suggesting that Charlie Sheen’s paid tweet about his search for an intern was a historic day in the history of Social Recruiting.  While the job opening certainly got a lot of attention, it’s not exactly social recruiting.  Instead, what Charlie Sheen’s tweet demonstrates is the timeless power and widespread appeal of a celebrity endorsement.

On the surface, the numbers appear impressive.  Charlie Sheen sent a single tweet to his 2.2 million followers.  Within the first hour, the corresponding link received 95,333 clicks and resulted in over 74,000 applications.  Keep in mind that Charlie Sheen holds the Guinness World Record for being the fastest Twitter user to amass 1 million users (25 hours, 17 minutes). It is also important to note that the top 10 Twitter accounts based on number of followers are all celebrities. I would imagine that pretty much any link a celebrity shares (implied endorsement) is clicked on, retweeted, or shared by a small percentage of their followers.  For example, Lady Gaga (the #1 most followed Twitter user) shared a link to a video on YouTube on March 5^th that was clicked on more than 200,000 times.  In Charlie Sheen’s case, 3.6% of his followers found his call for an intern interesting enough to click through.  Due to their massive number of followers, the aggregated results look impressive especially when compared to the average Twitter user. However, these baseline numbers are disconnected from the metrics that really matter to an organization making a serious hire.

Digital Filter or Resume Avalanche

With recent advances in technology, companies have found it harder and harder to filter the avalanche of resumes from prospective candidates. Technology has made it almost effortless to quickly search and apply for an opening. This is even more pronounced at companies with well-known employment brands, like Google, as candidates are willing to take a chance in hopes that their application will make it through regardless of qualification. By looking at the application, it is not hard to figure out why prospective candidates applied with such ferocity. The application only seeks 3 pieces of information: name, email address, and why you should be the intern (75 characters or less). However, these pieces of information are relatively disconnected from the skills that the job description highlights: hard-working, project management, strategic, self-motivated, creative, resourceful, and social media savvy.  One of the major ways that using social media and social networking can help companies is by using these emerging tools to communicate culture, employer value proposition, mission, vision, values, and target skills so that only the most well-qualified, best-fit candidates apply. Instead, this process has created a process where a huge amount of resources will be spent sifting through 74,000 applications to find the 1 candidate who will become Charlie Sheen’s intern.

Where’s the social?

Simply using the social media channel or social networking tools does not automatically make a recruiting process social. The converse is also true.  Despite having more than 2.8 million followers, Charlie Sheen only follows 32 tweeps. Unsurprisingly, the majority of his follows are also celebrities. While it is certainly his choice about how he decides to use Twitter, it is pretty hard to engage when you are reciprocating signifcantly less than 1% of your followers.  His arguably anti-social behavior is confirmed by scanning his timeline.  His most recent tweets suggest that he has found Twitter to be an effective tool for maintaining his presence (since being fired from his hit television show) through primarily one-way broadcasting. If Charlie Sheen would have performed his search for an intern with a commercial on television, we would have correctly identified that it was an advertisement.

What do you think? Is Charlie Sheen the best social recruiter of all time?

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

Google PacMan Doodle

Over the last few months, Google has been in the news fairly frequently.  And, no I’m not talking about their awesome homepage doodles. For a company founded just 13 years ago, they sure do command a lot of our collective attention. In November 2010, Google made news when they decided to give their current staff a 10% raise.  Just 2 months later in January 2011, Google announced that Larry Page (one of the original co-founders) would be returning to the CEO position replacing Eric Schmidt. While some have questioned these decisions, I think Google is continuing to prove that they are interested in being a successful company that will be relevant for a very long time. A few days ago, I came across this job posting on LinkedIn. Google is currently seeking a Director of Employment Marketing & Branding. Is this a visionary decision or one that is unnecessary considering the considerable strength of their current employment brand?

Recruiting Landscape

Google has never had an issue with attracting talent. In fact, they recently received a record 75,000 resumes in one week after announcing they are planning on hiring more than 6,000 new employees in 2011. It is rumored that they annually receive more than 1 million resumes for their openings.  For a company with 24,000 worldwide employees, this level of attraction by prospective candidates is astounding.  In addition, Google is often named amongst the annual list of top employers.

Despite all this obvious magnetism, Google stills thinks they can do a better job at shifting the balance of power in their favor by hiring a Director of Employment Marketing & Branding.

Talent As Competitive Advantage

In order for Google to continue to develop amazing products, they need to continue to attract, recruit, and retain talent.  Google’s head of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, is well known within the HR & Recruiting community for his innovative thinking with respect to talent acquisition and management.  So, the creation of this new role should be no surprise given his focus on pushing the envelope when it comes to getting the right talent on the team.

While I’m not aware of any initiatives like this that are underway, I think that eventually companies will be evaluated as much on their talent acquisition practices as they are on their financial results. I don’t think this is Google’s motivation, but I do think there is increasing recognition that talent is and will continue to be important to their long-term success.

Recruiting & Retention

Google thinks that in order to continue to be an attractive employer they need to not only communicate better with prospective candidates but also their current employees.

The Director of Employment Branding will work closely with our People Operations, Product and Global Communications teams to assure that we have consistent marketing plans and initiatives that will appeal to untapped, prospective and existing employees.

This is such an important area to recognize because oftentimes current employees are what create amazing companies in the first place. Let’s face it; Google has a lot going on in numerous geographic locations around the world.  The only way to maintain continuity of communication is by tying it together so that all employees will know what makes Google special.

Marketing Reinforcing Recruiting

Within the job posting, one thing becomes clear; Google is not looking for someone who has a background in recruiting. While I’m sure they wouldn’t be averse to this skill set, they are far more concerned with the strength of the prospective candidates marketing expertise. In fact, the position is within the marketing department although there is close collaboration with the People Operations team.

This is an important shift, as typically marketers are asked to effectively position a product or service to the target customer. In this case, the prospective candidate will be tasked with marketing employment at the company as the product. I think we will start to see more companies taking this approach given the importance of communicating a unique value proposition.

Unified Communication

Google has come a long way from the startup that Larry and Sergei founded in 1998 with the bold mission of organizing the world’s information. Their sheer size makes it really difficult for employees around the world to know what makes the organization special.

By centralizing their messaging with a single point of contact, the Director of Employment Branding & Marketing is better able to aggregate internal wins and share that with members of the team. In addition, those same things that excite current employees are also extremely relevant to prospective candidates. By selectively sharing these stories which at their core are what make Google special enables the company to deliver on their goal of successfully attracting, recruiting, and retaining the best of the best.

What do you think? Is Google taking the lead in attracting, recruiting, and retaining talent by seeking a Director of Employment Branding & Marketing? Or, is this an unnecessary over-extension of resources?

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

What do you believe about social recruiting?

Whenever a new idea or concept presented, there are typically two sides to the story. On the one hand, evangelists tell you why you need to get on board of the latest trend yesterday. On the other hand, doubters tell you that the idea is overhyped and doesn’t have a chance for success.  Only time will prove who is correct.  The key question is, what are you going to do about it?

In February 2009, Ford Motor Company stock dropped to $1.58/share. Many people thought the company would have to declare bankruptcy. In fact, just a few weeks before, Ford reported their worst operating results in their 107 year company history; $14.6 billion dollars in losses. This was just a few months after the financial crisis had brought the economy to its knees and mismanagement had destroyed well known firms like Lehman Brothers.  At this point, most people would have sold their shares in the company.  No one would’ve said, you are an idiot for getting out now. Quite the contrary, you probably would’ve been patted on your back for being a savvy investor. At the core, most difficult decisions are the result of imperfect information.

Ford Stock Appreciation 2/1/2009 -- 2/1/2010

By February 2010, Ford Motor Company stock had risen to $11.29/share. In just 12 months, your investment would have increased 614%. This means that $10,000 dollars invested in February 2009 would have been worth $71,454 dollars in February 2010.

Over this period of time, Ford Motor Company was unsurprisingly one of the best performing stocks in 2009. It is easy to look back at the stock performance and kick yourself for not investing.  But, that’s not how fortunes are made. In February 2009, you didn’t have the benefit of knowing what would take place over the next 12 months. All you had was the current information about the economy, information about Ford’s historical performance, and future predictions by evangelists and doubters.  This is the information that you had to evaluate in order to make an investment decision.

In many ways, social recruiting is at a similar inflection point. Everyone is privy to the same information about the overall performance of the economy, although your interpretation might be different. We also know about the historical performance of social recruiting through case-studies, internal performance, and other anecdotal evidence. And, there is no shortage of evangelists and doubters who are willing to share their opinion about where social recruiting is headed next. The real question is, “What will you do with the information in front of you?”

However, it is important to note that there is one key difference between investing in social recruiting and investing in a stock. With a stock, the ultimate outcome is entrusted to the company. Their ability to have correctly identified the environment, develop a plan, and execute on that plan is what determines whether or not your investment will be a winner or a loser.

Investing in social recruiting does not have the same limitations. When a company chooses to invest their resources in social recruiting, they have much greater control over the ultimate outcome. It is their team that must map the recruiting landscape, develop a strategic plan, and execute on the plan to achieve results.

Will you take precious company resources and make a committed investment in social recruiting? Or, will you decide its time to sell? Let me know what you think in the comments.

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

The Social Web, Matrix Style

The speed of innovation creates a very powerful discounting effect. We are often so spoiled by what technology enables that we don’t realize how many existing barriers had to be removed or eliminated before these changes could become commonplace. The ultimate outcome is that once an innovation becomes mainstream, we view the change as evolutionary not revolutionary.

When I started getting credit cards as an undergraduate, I automatically began to pay my bills online. For me, it was no big deal to share my bank information with my credit card company. And, it sure beat having to get an envelope, a stamp, and remember to leave enough lag to mail my payment so that it would arrive on time.

However, the psychological shift for me arrived well before I first chose to pay my bills online. In fact, I had used computers throughout much of my childhood. We had a green screen IBM computer with giant floppy disks that my parents used for word processing. A few years later, I took my first computer programming course on a Macintosh in high school. Our teacher taught us how to write computer animation programs. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

By the time I arrived on campus as a freshman in college, our dorm had an internet-connected computer lab that anyone with a student ID could use. All these seemingly random interactions with computers during my formative years created an inherent trust of computing.

Yet, quietly behind the scenes lots of changes had to happen. Secure web-based clients had to be developed, banks had to invest in developing their online payment systems, encryption technology had to be improved, credit card companies had to invest in developing their systems, computer programmers had to build user interfaces that would be trusted by users, and servers had to be capable of quickly and accurately handling numerous client transactions.

The current generation, especially those whose formative years are being defined by the socialization of the web will view web-based communication and interaction much differently than I do.

The Power of Socialization
Socialization is defined as the process of inheriting norms, customs, and ideologies. It may provide the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society; a society itself is formed through a plurality of shared norms, customs, values, traditions, social roles, symbols, and languages. Socialization is thus the means by which social cultural continuity are attained. Source: Wikipedia

The most interesting thing about the socialization of the web is that the changes appear normal to some and absolutely ridiculous to others. Don’t believe me? I’ll bet you can name a handful of people who are not only refusing to join Facebook but also believe that only the devil could have created something so useless.

These people see no point in publicly sharing information about their lives and consuming personal details about their friends.  In fact, quite often they will advocate that if one is truly a friend, then they should be called on the phone. On the other hand, if you know someone who happened to be a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior in high school/college in 2004; there was never even a formal decision (weighing pros & cons) about joining Facebook. They joined because everyone else they knew signed up.

Yet herein is the key insight about socialization of any chance, the ultimate result doesn’t deviate in a major way from broader societal norms. This is why you’ll often hear people creating mental models that are related to extremely basic concepts when explaining big technological changes. In fact, the genesis of the idea behind Facebook is the school yearbook. Doesn’t seem so revolutionary anymore, does it? This concept simplification creates the necessary understanding and subsequent acceptance that enables the innovation to take hold.

As more of these people begin to take an active role in defining future industries, social web interaction and engagement will be seen as the starting point. Entrepreneurs, visionaries, and other creators from this collective group won’t be looking for ways to simply connect people online. In fact, their socialization tells them that this problem has already been solved. Instead, they will be looking for ways to take these social engagements and interactions to the next level. I’m looking forward to seeing how they are able to apply their inherent understanding of the emerging norms/customs/ideologies to change NOTHING about a wide variety of industries.

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

If we think about how work gets done within an organization; we intuitively know that while everyone has the same access to resources, there are some employees who are better skilled at marshaling these resources to achieve measurable results.  These are the employees who are typically promoted to take on even greater responsibilities that have a broader impact on the overall success of the organization.

The Social Media Landscape

In social media and social networking, the dynamic is really no different.  There are potentially millions of people that we can connect with on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or other niche sites.  Some people have done a good job at building large networks from a numeric standpoint.

However, the real challenge isn’t simply building a large network.  Everyone knows that there are automated programs or other tricks and hacks that one can utilize to quickly build a large following.  On the surface, the numbers appear impressive.  But, once you dig deeper, you begin to see that unengaged networks, regardless of size, deliver extremely low value. Even without these manipulations, simple connection is a relatively low friction activity.

In the early days of social media and social networking, people were relatively open to connecting with a majority of people who reached out or were loosely affiliated.  More recently, people have become overwhelmed with the information overload. To combat this challenge, some people have taken to digital diets or other filtering strategies to cull their growing networks.

As people begin to gain and exert more control over their growing digital networks, the key challenge will be the ability to motivate those whom you are socially connected with to take action.  This isn’t nearly as easy as most social media evangelists have made it out to be.  Just like with any other channel, people are selective.  In other words, mere connection doesn’t guarantee that one will become a customer or recommend your service to my friends.

Managing Without Influence

In many ways, social-enabled relationships are about managing without influence. Within an organization, the hierarchy is well established.  If your boss tells you to do something, you do it.  If your colleague needs help on a project, you help him.  If someone from another department requests information, you prioritize it a little differently; but in the end, you still help her.

Unless your network is made up of those who work for your company or that you otherwise have a partnership with; there is no intrinsic motivation for someone to respond to your request.  Yet response or action is precisely what drives the measurable business results that many users of social media and social networking are seeking.

Those who are able to successfully manage their digital networks without direct influence are who will truly become influential.  At its core, I believe that this at the heart of emerging influence measurement tools like Klout.  These tools analyze social media and social networking community behavior for signals to help best identify which people are getting their connections to take measurable actions.

While the CEO of Klout admits that their algorithm is imperfect, they are tackling an important problem namely how to effectively navigate the social web to deliver results for your organization. As the underlying logic improves, properly quantifying influence will be extremely important as businesses seek to leverage the social graph to connect with customers, employees, prospective candidates, and other partners.

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.

This past weekend, I finally had the chance to watch The Social Network.  For the past several years, I had the opportunity to read several accounts of the founding and growth of Facebook.  However, if a picture is worth a thousand words then a movie is probably worth a lot more.  After watching the movie, I gained a new found appreciation for the social network that Mark Zuckerberg has built over the last 7 years.  The one thing that stuck out to me more than anything else is not the uniqueness of the idea (the core idea has been around for decades), but the development and execution of an innovative plan supported by a great vision of how the space would evolve.

When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, Myspace already had a 2 year headstart. In 2005, MySpace was purchased by News Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, for $580 millon dollars. They used the advantages of the incumbent (mainly network effects) to continue to gain market share.  Through 2007 and 2008, Myspace was considered the leading social networking site. Yes, just 3 years ago, Myspace was considered the leading social networking site.  At that point, Facebook could have accepted their fate. They could have complained that Myspace has Fortune 500 resources at their disposal. Instead, Facebook decided that they could beat the competition with innovation.  Zuckerberg had a clearer vision of where social networking was headed than anyone else.

Innovation is simultaneously dependent and independent of resources.  Without any resources, it can be very difficult to innovate. Yet, having resources is no guarantee that innovation will follow.

In many ways, employers are in the same position when it comes to social recruiting.  There are certain companies that have what might seem like an infinite amount of resources.  These companies can easily staff, generously fund, and patiently incorporate social recruiting into their broader talent acquisition strategy.  There are also companies that are starved for staff, don’t have the budget, and are forced to do more with less. In both of these situations, there is challenge and opportunity.

However, if we take a step back, we realize that social recruiting is simply an idea.  It is the idea that you can utilize social media (channel) and social networking (interconnection of people) to better attract and recruit prospective candidates.  As most of us know ideas have relatively little value.  The real value comes from taking the idea, developing an innovative strategy, and executing upon it.  This is why Facebook became the industry leader in social networking.

In many ways, value creation is independent of company size. One only has to look to startups to find numerous examples of this fundamental truth. Microsoft. Google. Facebook. Zappos. Groupon.

Do Fortune 500 companies have an advantage in social recruiting? Yes! But, that doesn’t mean that your company can’t create and execute upon a strategy that completely eliminates their resource advantage.  It is more about gaining an inherent understanding of the tools and how they can be used to achieve success. This is the fundamental determinant for whether or not your organization can attract and recruit talent with social recruiting.  So, what can Facebook’s success teach us about social recruiting?

1. Have A Vision

In The Social Network, they highlighted Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a more social online experience.  At the time that he began building Facebook that was certainly not the norm.  In fact, I’m sure most people thought that members would never be willing to share their private information in such a public way.

7 years later, it seems like Mark Zuckerberg was right. So, the question is, “What is your vision of social recruiting?” Where do you think the puck is going? How do you think prospective candidates will use these tools not ever the next 6 months, but over the next 6 years?

This vision should guide your strategy development. Your company should actively seek out resources which help you implement the vision for how you see talent acquisition evolving.

2. Make A Plan

In order to make the site more attractive, initial membership was restricted to students with a .edu address.  This created the psychological exclusivity that was mirrored in the fraternities that Zuckerberg studied while at Harvard.  To attract large schools that were already using competitors, Zuckerberg would roll out Facebook to lots of small schools nearby.  Once there was saturation, the large school would beg for Facebook to add their school to the network.

These strategic elements demonstrate that success is not just about having a clear vision for the direction of an industry.  You must also have a clear strategy that will you help you achieve results.

Building up to 1 million members was a significant milestone for the Facebook team.  However, it was no surprise that they reached 1 million members. Instead, this goal was part of their strategic plan.  This goal is what helped the team members execute upon their individual roles and responsibilities on a daily basis.

Within your organization, there should be similar high level goals to guide the strategic plan.  Do you want to successfully recruit the top candidates across all business lines?  Whatever the ultimate goal, it should be clear to the team what your company is working toward.

3. Focus on Execution

Having a vision and making a plan are great starting points.  But, without execution nothing will be accomplished.

One part of executing is making sure that you have the right people in place. Mark Zuckerberg did this by creating innovative programming challenges for prospective developers.  In this way, he could see which prospective candidates had the raw skills needed to build an industry leading social networking site.

He also made sure that his team was dedicated to coding.  During development sessions, programmers would be ‘plugged in’.  This meant that they were to be completely focused on writing code and no one was to disturb them for any reason.

With social recruiting, you must work hard to create an environment for your team to execute within.

4. Be Patient

Even though everyone else wanted Mark Zuckerberg to incorporate advertising very early, he thought that it would dilute the value of the network.

Mark said he wanted to focus on continuing to make the site cool before making money.  In social recruiting, the temptation might be jump quickly try to fill open positions by taking advantage of the increasing interconnectedness of the social web.

However, it is important to distinguish between social distribution and social recruiting.  If you believe that the true value in social recruiting comes from engagement and uncovering actionable insights, then it is best to figure out how to gather this information through the channel.

Once you have learned how to use the tool, then you can extract long-term value in much the same way as Facebook’s patience enabled them to become the incumbent.

Even though, it might seem like companies with more resources have an advantage; startups have proven that there is no monopoly on innovation.  Social recruiting is simply an idea. It is up to your team to figure out how best to capture the value from this new tool.

-Omowale Casselle (@mySenSay)

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About the Author: Omowale Casselle is the co-founder and CEO of mySenSay. We help top companies and future leaders make better employment decisions.