i.e. – DON’T GIVE THEM

Blankets are meant to keep us warm when it’s chilly. But blankets are not made for sending emails or making statements. I’ve seen a lot of my blogging colleagues write ranty posts about how impersonal a generic, blanket LinkedIn invite:

• Marian Sparks: Wrong way to Send a LinkedIn Invitation?
• Tony Faustino: 3 Reasons Why I Rejected Your LinkedIn Invitation
• Bill Ward: A LinkedIn mistake none of us should allow ourselves to make.
• Julia Roy: LinkedIn Invitation Etiquette
• Dan Klamm: Common LinkedIn Mistakes Among College Students

OK – so we understand the importance of personalizing a message via email. Blanket emails / invitations suck. The same can be said about resumes – customization of a resume to suit the job to which you are applying. You should never send a generic resume, and ESPECIALLY a generic cover letter. (“Dear Hiring Manager,” or “To Whom It May Concern” should be avoided if at all possible!) Tailor it to fit the position to which you are applying. Understood. We get it.

So, why isn’t this same concept of message personalization acceptable when making in-person statements? Why is it more politically correct to make sweeping, blanket statements in order not to offend people? No warm-fuzzies from this kind of blanket!

Case in point: it’s December. Hanukkah started this past weekend, and Winter Solstice, Christmas, and Kwanzaa all happen next week. That’s 4 holidays, each quite different from the other. Yet, political correctness, and the socially mandated idea that we have to please everyone, demand that we say ‘Happy Holidays’ now, instead of customizing our greetings and wishes of happiness to our friends and family based on what they observe. And in my personal opinion, when you try to please everyone, as is evident in the above examples with LinkedIn and resume submissions, you in fact don’t really please anyone. ‘Happy Holidays’ in my opinion is a trite statement, kind of like when you pass a co-worker in the hallway and say “How are you?” with no real intent to stop and find out, in fact, how he or she really is.

So, in the spirit of this time of year, and in the spirit of making people feel special, I propose that before wishing someone a generic ‘Happy Holidays’ this year, you pause for a moment and ask them which holiday they observe (if you don’t already know). They’ll most likely be surprised because people don’t typically ask that question, and will probably answer your question. You can then proceed to tailor your greeting based on what they celebrate. My guess is that they’ll be pleased that you took the time to find out that tidbit of information about them, and chances are they’ll return the favor to you. Not only will you have made their day by doing this, but you’ll be remembered for being thoughtful enough to care and to customize your greeting!

I have been doing this for years when I go Christmas shopping. (by the way, I celebrate Christmas!) When I step into the checkout line, and the clerk wishes me a ‘Happy Holiday’ since they’re forced to in order not to offend anyone, I smile and ask them which holiday they celebrate. The clerk is usually surprised by this, but if they respond, say, with “I celebrate Christmas”, then I’m able to say “Merry Christmas to you! I celebrate Christmas as well.” If they respond with Hanukkah, I will wish them a Happy Hanukkah, and so forth. I can honestly say I’ve NEVER had a bad reaction to doing this, and most times I get an extra smile out of the clerk, and sometimes even out of the people in line behind me.

So this year, put your online networking etiquette into practice offline! Customize your greetings to the people you encounter and make them feel special.

I was pointed to a new blog post today by Laurent Brouat entitled “Don’t put ‘Looking for a job’ on your linkedin status“. In the post, Brouat advises those who are in the market for new employment not to place these words in their LinkedIn status because “you position yourself as someone asking for something, asking for a job, waiting for things to happen…”

Say wha-a-a-a-t!?!?! I completely and quite loudly disagree with this!

1. If you don’t ask, you cannot receive. There’s a Book that talks about this quite extensively, actually
2. ANY recruiter, and sourcer especially, worth their salary, knows how to conduct in-depth LinkedIn searches and would be quite pleased to discover someone who’s left word that they’d be open to listening to new opportunities right on their LinkedIn page. Don’t believe me? Just type the phrase “looking for a job” into the LinkedIn search field and check out the resulting 8,000+ individuals seeking new employment AND LETTING YOU KNOW THEY ARE.
3. Guess what? I have automated search agents set up through LOTS of social media sites with key phrases like “looking for work”, “I need a job”, “need a new job”… and I’ll bet a million bucks I’m not the only one!

Granted, Mr. Brouat is from London so the way things are done across the pond could be quite different from here in the States, but I believe a better piece of advice might be to tell job seekers not to simply STOP at putting this phrase in their profile.

Job seeking is essentially self-marketing, and the one thing that you should know about good marketing is that you should NEVER rely on one method to get the job done. The reason for this is that you’ll have different target audiences that will be reached via different methods. So I say in addition to putting a phrase such as “looking for a job” (or perhaps you prefer “entertaining new opportunities”, “seeking a new venture”, or “in transition”?) it’s good to combine other active outreach such as IN-PERSON networking, looking to see who is hiring and then proactively reaching out, etc. In my personal opinion, it certainly can’t hurt to leave a note on a page that I guarantee is going to be visited by actively querying recruiters and sourcers.

It’s perfectly acceptable to ask for something you want – just make sure you do it tactfully!

<insert cliché social media platitudes here>

• Social = marked by friendly companionship and outreach with others
• Recruiting = seek to employ

“Social recruiting” means you’re seeking to employ people through friendly companionship and outreach Last I checked, this wasn’t accomplished solely on LinkedIn or Facebook.

So, what would un-social recruiting be? My guess would have to be the still-ever-popular post ‘n pray method. Not much social about that. Sad to see so many ‘recruiters’ out there relying heavily on this unsociable method of getting candidates.

Just sayin’.

…yeah, it kinda is.

Ever go to someone at your company to ask for help, only to have them respond, without even looking up at you, with “That’s not my job”? Or called customer service to get resolution on an issue, only to be told “I don’t do that” and not even be forwarded to the right person or at least provided with another number to call?

This attitude of “not my problem!” is out of control today, in my opinion. Sure, you might not have the answer, but with networking being all the rage these days, isn’t it possible that you know someone whose job it actually IS? So, instead of saying “That’s not my job”, how about responding with “I don’t know, but let me see if I know someone who does!”

Customer service isn’t a department in your company – it’s a job that belongs to all of us. And that ESPECIALLY includes internal customer service. To jump on the buzzword bandwagon here, nothing speaks louder about employment brand than how we work to help each other out on the inside. Employees of the company can be your biggest allies – or your worst nightmare – for building a positive employment brand.

I’m not saying that you should let people use you – because there will always be those individuals who will try to pawn their work off on you all the time. Make sure you establish a SLA (service level agreement) with your teammates and colleagues so there is an official procedure for getting things done. But if someone asks you for help, don’t just leave them hanging if it’s outside of your scope. See if you can find someone to help them. Even if the issue doesn’t get resolved, you’ve still painted a positive picture by putting forth the effort. Besides, it takes maybe a minute or two to redirect someone. Can you spare 1/10th of a percent of your day to make a good impression? I sure hope you’re not that busy!

“We gotta lock-in the Linked In’zzz…” I couldn’t pass on this awesome video from Current, discussing LinkedIn. The song at the end is hilarious (“you got to link yo’ ass up!”) and there are some valid points regarding recommendations and what people actually do/don’t do on LinkedIn. However – I’m disturbed by the portrayal of the ‘head-hunter’… is that how you all really view us recruiting professionals? If so – we need to seriously clean up our act. Enjoy!

Last Tuesday, Chris Dannen wrote an article on Fast Company giving a brief analysis of Weber Shandwick’s study which found that big companies just don’t get Twitter. At least, that’s what they say. Dannen followed up with an assessment that perhaps companies need a dedicated tweeter who won’t stick just to tweeting about ‘brand awareness’ but also bring more personal flavor to it:

“To succeed on Twitter, I’d bet that companies need do no more than ask those questions–and then hire that person to tweet about anything but brand awareness and product news. Twitter is so popular because it’s so personal and so direct; give one person the keys to your brand’s castle, and they’ll go out and connect. But don’t try to drag the whole board-room table.”

I disagree with this, and I wanted to respond to this post here on my blog in hopes of bringing more attention to the post and soliciting more feedback on this issue.

I have to wonder if individual user accounts who tweet on behalf of these companies were taken into consideration in Weber Shandwick’s study, or if the only Twitter accounts that were considered were officially endorsed accounts, created by the companies themselves. I for one know that many companies have employees who represent them, on a rather official basis, but they aren’t ‘branded’ as a company account because the companies realize the need for personalization of their Twitter presence.

Furthermore, each company is going to have a different purpose for using Twitter. Some perhaps don’t need/want to engage there. Anyone who understands marketing and social media strategy knows that the shoe doesn’t fit everyone in the same way. I saw that the Weber Shandwick study discusses that briefly.

As to the original question of this post, I don’t think a dedicated “tweeter” could/should be a full-time job at this point. It should be part of many people’s jobs, not just one person. The idea of having one dedicate person reeks of the antiquated “spokesperson” concept, and if you take a look at the way business is done today, there is never just “one voice” of a company any more, especially not within the walls of social media.

I think it’s better to ask several people, who understand your company (i.e. NOT a brand-new intern), to participate in some degree. This doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t, in my opinion) rest solely with one internal team or individual. It should be a collaborative effort – after all, if the purpose of a company being on Twitter is to engage, shouldn’t the entire company be represented, not just one person or group of individuals which has decided that they ‘own’ the company’s social media presence? (a whole other issue itself…)

How about you – what do you think about this? Should companies hire a dedicated tweeter or team of people whose sole function is to tweet (and I’m sure engage on other social media)? Leave your thoughts in a comment below.

Twitter recently released Twitter Lists which allow you to group people together based on whatever subjective categorization method you want. For example: since its rollout I’ve been made a part of 107 lists, including: Networking Rockstars, Human Capital Peeps, Movers and Shakers, Gators (go Tebow!), and my favorite – Women. (I looked down and checked; yup, that’s an appropriate group for me to be in)

This is great that Twitter has created these lists – however, Twitter is a bit late to the game with this upgrade, and there are some limitations/downsides to its current functionality. For starters, I’ve had “lists” of people in my TweetDeck groups since 2008. I know other Twitter apps have also provided the opportunity to categorize our flocks of tweeple. In addition, when you ‘follow’ a list, all you’re following is the list. And to the best of my knowledge, in order to view the list updates, you actually have to go TO the list instead of having it automatically update like with TweetDeck groups. You can’t subscribe to an RSS feed of the list yet, either, like you can for individual Twitter users. (unless you know how to manipulate Yahoo Pipes) AND – if you want to actually follow the people in the List, you know, so they can DM you and so forth, you have to manually click through each person and follow them. I don’t know about you, but I’m too lazy busy to do that these days.

Of course, you also can’t ’share’ your TweetDeck groups so Twitter Lists has a leg up here. But I found something better a couple of months ago, long before Twitter launched its lists feature…

My list-builder of choice is a sweet little service called TweepML. TweepML is “an XML format used to represent a list of Tweeps (Twitter users).” Basically, you can add people to a list, share the generated link, and allow other people to actually follow those individuals, not the list itself. In addition, you can add buttons to your website to provide an easy one-click follow to all of the people on the list, or you can select who on the list you want to follow by checking the box beside a name.

The best part is that I’ve actually found a great way for the two of these listing services to play together! A very cool feature that TweepML has is a quick import tool, so if you have a link to a page with a list of Twitter users that you want to add to a list (let’s say, oh, a Twitter List) it will automatically extract the Twitter users from that site and put it directly into your list builder.

For example: we recently had our first Bellingham Social Media meet & greet, and I wanted to create a list of people who were interested in the group on Twitter. I created a Twitter List of these people, copied the URL, and pasted it into the field that TweepML provides to automatically find Twitter users:

I finished creating the TweepML Bellingham Social Media list and posted the link up on our Facebook group page so that everyone there can follow each other without having to constantly click through to the Twitter list. Simple, quick, and no extra steps!

Now – something that would be even more of a value-add would be an integration between TweepML and say TweetDeck to automatically associate people from a certain list with an existing group….how ’bout it guys? Can you make that happen?

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post about how I believe that sourcing is not dying, but evolving. I ended the post with a teaser about what I believe sourcing will evolve into in the coming years. I certainly don’t think the need for the skills which sourcers possess will go away, but I feel like other aspects of a sourcer’s repertoire will become more in-demand as our communication methods continue to change.

As I mentioned last week, human interaction is an integral part of any profession that falls into the same classification pool as sourcing, talent attraction / acquisition, recruiting, HR, etc. To ignore the fact that our jobs are very ‘high-touch’ would be foolish, no matter how deep into the technical aspect of sourcing we may be. In the coming years, and I think especially over the course of 2010, I see sourcing taking on a huge role of proactive communication. Since the accessibility of information via social networks keeps getting easier and easier, I believe being a good relationship-builder is going to go up in value. Please note: I do not believe this means that sourcing will inevitably equal recruiting. The reason I know this is because not all recruiters know how to build relationships. You all know what I’m talking about – we all know at least one recruiter who is a script-reading robot with the interpersonal skills of a rock.

Sourcers who are good communicators are going to be the goodwill ambassadors and (I hope Glen will forgive me for this) the talent pipeline builders. Sourcing is going to take on a very proactive marketing-type role, involving such things as interaction in discussion forums, posing questions on LinkedIn, writing for and selecting content for a company blog, getting involved in the Chamber of Commerce, attending networking events, and getting the word out about either their companies or their clients.

We have seen throughout the history of recruiting how important building true relationships is, and sadly I feel that recruiting, and thus sourcing, has become more transactional in recent years. Sourcing of the future will move away from the transactional and more toward the strategic, as people become more web savvy and numb to blanket messaging. Sourcing, I believe, will begin to take on more of a proactive than a reactive role. Since more of the technical search aspect of it can (and will) be automated, this opens up a window of time to start being proactive. Consider this: traditionally, sourcers wait to research until they receive a search request from a recruiter. I think the future role of sourcing will be for sourcers to continually have their ‘antennae’ up for good talent, and to also take the opportunity to start developing those initial relationships so that when timing is appropriate, the recruiters can approach them warmly with job opportunities.

There is no cookie-cutter mold into which a sourcer fits. At SourceCon 2007, during my presentation about what true research is, I stopped for an interactive portion and polled the audience of researchers for their educational and professional backgrounds. I asked 5 people to share, and not one of them had the same educational OR professional career path. So, when thinking about who would be the best types of people to hire for this future sourcing role, two in particular come to mind. They might surprise you a little:

• Public relations specialists: In the ‘entry level’ years of PR, traditionally individuals will conduct research and create ‘pitch lists’ for their companies or their clients. While they’re honing these research skills, they are also taking lessons on pitching, managing campaigns, and client interaction from their senior coworkers. Translate this into a sourcing role: you’ve got someone who knows how to find the right people, and then who knows how to interact with them professionally and get them excited about a company or a job opportunity.
• English majors: I am the daughter of an English teacher, and I used to help Mom grade her students’ grammar papers. But earning a degree in English goes well beyond knowing proper grammar – you learn to master the high standards of accuracy, clarity, and finesse of the language as well as information synthesis, summarization, and analysis of literature. As search engines strive toward semantic comprehension, a person who has studied sentence mapping and understands the historical progression of the meanings of various words and phrases will be able to pair this with searching a social network to find the right people. And with the increasingly lackadaisical attitude toward proper grammar and punctuation in communication due to spellcheck and text message abbreviations, someone who has mastered these skills will be highly sought-after in a role where good communication is so crucial.

I have mentioned the PR job description in a couple of blog postings, discussing the similarities between its and recruiting’s job duties. English, on the other hand, I would guess is a bit of a surprise to some, but I truly believe that will be a sought-after major in the coming years.

As we observe and experience the change in our job functions, let’s not forget the importance of knowing the basics. Understanding Boolean will always be key to successful sourcing. But understanding the rising value of strategic proactive relationship discovery and development will help you evolve with the position. Work on GOOD networking skills. Start learning about semantic search. Educate yourself on professional communication skills. Study the people who really know how to cultivate relationships. And don’t believe for a second that sourcing is dying – it’s just getting a facelift.

I’ve seen the topic “sourcing is dying”, written in a couple of different forms, in a couple of articles over the last year. Without any disrespect to my colleagues who have penned these writings, I must disagree with your sentiments. Here are some of those articles:

• Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The Death of Sourcing (February 2009)
• Is Sourcing Dead? (March 2009)
• The Death of Sourcing (November 2009)

Sourcing is not dead; it’s not dying; it’s not even on a respirator. It’s simply evolving.

Where sourcing over the last several years has been about finding the hard-to-find folks by manipulating complex Boolean strings, with the growing popularity of social media technology, finding profiles, resumes, and contact information online has gotten easier. But this absolutely does NOT mean that sourcing is dying. All it simply means is that information availability is changing and the role of sourcing must change with it. This is not unlike any other job function – when certain aspects of a job function become automated or simplified, it means that other aspects of that function grow in importance. Hence, leading to job function evolution.

Sourcing is not just about digging up information, regardless of what some (including myself! yeah I admit it) have said over the years. Any profession that falls under the umbrella of recruiting, talent attraction, talent acquisition, HR, or however you want to classify it, contains an element of human interaction. Thus, communication plays a role, with varying degrees depending on where you stand. With the automation of SOME parts of sourcing, the communication aspect of the role is being amplified. Notice the emphasis on “some”, because you cannot, and SHOULD not in my opinion, automate personal touch.

With social media technologies becoming more mainstream tools in a sourcing toolbelt, the difficulty of finding people is diminished. However, as Glen Cathey states in his article, finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is hard. We’re not just sourcing for a needle in a haystack these days. With the economic downturn and unemployment in the double digits now, we are all of a sudden searching for a needle in ten haystacks. Though finding people in general has been made easier, we still must find that right person.

With that being said, I believe that over the next several years, sourcing will evolve into a new role – retaining of course the technical elements of Boolean search, but to a smaller degree. With tools that can automatically generate complicated Boolean search strings and query multiple search engines or networks at once, much of the technical knowledge needed to be a successful sourcer can be automated. I will stress here that knowing advanced Boolean as a sourcer is still, and I believe always will be, a must. You wouldn’t want a teacher who didn’t know her ABC’s, or a physician who couldn’t pass basic anatomy, would you?

So, what will sourcing evolve into? Well – in the interest of encouraging you to come back and read more, and just because I love the suspense, I’m going to leave you hanging until next Monday Stay tuned for part 2 on the Evolution of Sourcing.

There was a LOT of great feedback from my post on why recruiters should care about marketing, advertising, and PR. I hope that everyone who read it got some new knowledge and possibly some ideas on how to improve your overall recruitment strategy by grasping the functions (and the benefit) of each of these important components of running a successful business.

There was one particular comment I wanted to pull out and focus on, because it takes the importance of marketing and ties right back to my original love, which is research. The commenter, Steve, is a former executive VP of Sales and Marketing for a Fortune 500 company (and he’s also my boyfriend’s dad!). Here is what he said:

“…I am only going to touch on the marketing phase. The true function of marketing is research. The job of the marketing department is to search for products or services needed by the end user(the customer). It is their job to work closely with the engineering and sales departments, giving these the departments the proper research and data needed to have a successful launch of a product. Of course there is the glitz of coming up with the proper slogan, packaging and promotional items, but these are very minor compared to the mountain of research which must be done first if a product or service is going to be successful.“

You can’t read this assessment and not fit it right into recruiting! The glitz of recruiting is building the relationships with the candidates and the clients, and ultimately making the hire, but there would be no candidates if there were no research done to find them. Anyone who functions as a researcher knows and can absolutely relate to the vision of a mountain of research, whether for leads or for industry knowledge. These are both vital for a recruiter to perform at his/her peak potential and match ideal candidates to their clients. Having said this, we know that the research would be worthless if it weren’t put to good use, such as a recruiter turning it into a hire. Researcher needs recruiter as much as recruiter needs researcher. So, as Steve observed, all parts of the business operation must work closely together and in harmony in order to have a ’successful launch’ – i.e. a new employee.

Thanks for your keen observation Mr. D!