On July 22, 2011, Google+ hit 20 million unique visitors. Of these 20 million visitors, 60% of them are between the ages of 18 and 25 and 63% of them are male. As Google+ continues to grow, users are beginning to find various uses for the fledgling social network. One of these uses is recruitment and job search since most of the users are early adopters and industry experts looking for like-minded people. Here are some early tips for how to use Google+ for you job search.
Announce your job search
Let your network know that you are looking for a job by mentioning it in your "About" section or by posting a status update. Try to communicate your unique skillset and value to the company and job that you want while not appearing desperate.
Create a job search circle
Obviously, you do not want prospective employers to see your weekend party pictures or your sarcastic status updates. One of the primary appeals of Google+ is that you can send out tailored messages to different circles. Create a circle for contacts at companies that you want to work with and demonstrate to them that you are professional and knowledgable in your desired field of work. When other users see who is in your circles, it will portray youself as connected in the industry.
Talk over Hangouts
Invite the contacts in your job search circle to discuss industry topics in a Google Hangout. If you are truly in-the-know with the latest industry issues, you will portray yourself as an expert and someone who is truly passionate about his or her work. Another tactic is to set up an informational interview through Hangouts. Hangouts can save employers time while adding value for little to no cost.
Follow relevant Sparks
Google's Sparks are a great way to stay informed on topics of your choosing. Sparks brings in great content from all over the Internet that you can then share with your network, particularly your circle of prospective employers.
Source: Mashable
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Google+: A New Way to Recruit
With the arrival of Google+, many recruiters who have embraced social media are wondering, "Should I bother or is this another failed attempt at social networking by Google". While the user base remains intentionally small, there seems to be the sentiment among critics and users alike that Google+ has staying power. Some have tried to make comparisons with other social networks by saying that it is "Facebook for adults" or "Twitter with a better interface" but Google+ really is less of a social network and more of a means to share content.
At the moment, Google is still working on its platform for businesses (which won't be ready until late 2011) and have been actively disabling business accounts that have already been created on Google+. The reason, as Google Product Manager Christian Oestlien puts it, is that "how users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands" Oestlien hints that the business version of Google+ will include deep analytics and the ability to connect with products. Google intends to offer a test trial of the business platform to a limited number of companies over the next few months, much like how the personal version of Google+ has been limited to invitees.
That does not mean that recruiters should wait until their company is on Google+ before joining the network themselves. The "Circles" feature, which is Twitter's Lists function, is a great way keep tabs on potential candidates and organize them into groups. For example, you can create circles for each job you are filling and place candidates in as many of the job circles as you wish. If you find a candidate that is worth pursuing further, you can set up a "hangout"to enable voice and video chat with that candidate or with the entire circle.
Google+ can also be a valuable resource for screening and identifying what candidates are truly passionate about. While Google+ allows for more private sharing of content and information than Facebook (by letting users selectively choose which circles to share with), it is fully integrated with other Google products showing images from blogs that the user maintains on Google Blogs and any +1s from Google Search. While you may not be able to see a candidate's scandalous party pictures and controversial status updates, you will be able to get a sense of his or her interests and passions.
At the moment, Google is still working on its platform for businesses (which won't be ready until late 2011) and have been actively disabling business accounts that have already been created on Google+. The reason, as Google Product Manager Christian Oestlien puts it, is that "how users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands" Oestlien hints that the business version of Google+ will include deep analytics and the ability to connect with products. Google intends to offer a test trial of the business platform to a limited number of companies over the next few months, much like how the personal version of Google+ has been limited to invitees.
That does not mean that recruiters should wait until their company is on Google+ before joining the network themselves. The "Circles" feature, which is Twitter's Lists function, is a great way keep tabs on potential candidates and organize them into groups. For example, you can create circles for each job you are filling and place candidates in as many of the job circles as you wish. If you find a candidate that is worth pursuing further, you can set up a "hangout"to enable voice and video chat with that candidate or with the entire circle.
Google+ can also be a valuable resource for screening and identifying what candidates are truly passionate about. While Google+ allows for more private sharing of content and information than Facebook (by letting users selectively choose which circles to share with), it is fully integrated with other Google products showing images from blogs that the user maintains on Google Blogs and any +1s from Google Search. While you may not be able to see a candidate's scandalous party pictures and controversial status updates, you will be able to get a sense of his or her interests and passions.
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Purpose of Social Media Policies [INFOGRAPHICS]
63% of companies with a social media policy believe they are effective in maintaining productivity.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Creative Ways to Create an Online Resume
Your resume is boring. How do you expect to stand out in a crowd of job seekers when your black-and-white, list-formatted resume and formulaic cover letter blend with all the rest?
Luckily the Internet is here to save you. With the coming of social media resumes, video resumes and visual resumes, the world of job seeking just got a lot more interesting.
Your Website
First, if you don’t have a personal website or blog, get one. It’s a great way to showcase your passions, thoughts and experience and portray yourself as an expert, whether you are searching for a job or not. If you name your website after yourself, it will probably rank highly when people search for your name online.
Consider listing your resume (or at least an “about me” page) on your website, so site visitors can learn more about you.
Hagan Blount, a self-described writer, editor and producer, hosts a compelling infographic resume (pictured above) on his personal website. The “Resume” tab on his site includes his resume, alongside a stream of his most recent tweets. The resume is creative in that it includes a non-traditional approach to his professional (and personal) history, complete with fun stats, QR codes and recommendation quotes from influential business people.
Document Sharing Websites
You probably already have a .doc or .pdf format of your resume in your job-searching arsenal. To get the most out of it, upload it to document-sharing websites such as SlideShare or Scribd as Erica Swallows has done.
Both sites enable viewers to download, embed and share your resume, giving it the opportunity for many more eyes to see it. As a bonus, these sites ranked highly on search engines so the next time someone is searching on Google for your resume, it’s likely he or she will stumble upon your uploaded versions on these sites.
Both sites allow users to upload revisions of a document. As you change your resume, you can replace it on SlideShare or Scribd to keep it up-to-date. This is particularly useful because the URL never changes, so you won’t lose search engine optimality or confuse recruiters who already have links to previous versions. Furthermore, the view count on each document never starts over, and the upload date, tags, description and document title stay the same.
Slideshare tends to have the best upload quality, because the formatting of the preview stays true to the original document. But it’s advisable to use both sites, as search rankings can vary.
Try to get creative, like Chris Ferdinandi, a human resources professional based in Boston. His visual resume has nearly 29,000 views and showcases his “not-so-traditional” approach.
LinkedIn
Of course, there’s always LinkedIn, a staple of the professional’s online presence. LinkedIn has become the standard online professional network, and like Facebook and Twitter, it often appears near the top of search inquiries involving people, as a result of its high ranking across search engines. When a potential employer searches for information about you online, you’ll want some semblance of your professional life to appear in search results.
Once employers find your LinkedIn profile, you’ll want it to be flawless and 100% complete. For the most part, you can bling out your profile by filling in the basics, asking for meaningful recommendations, using value-added applications and becoming an expert with LinkedIn Answers. For more detailed tips on creating a picture-perfect LinkedIn profile, check out my recent post on “HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile.”
(via Mashable)
Luckily the Internet is here to save you. With the coming of social media resumes, video resumes and visual resumes, the world of job seeking just got a lot more interesting.
Your Website
First, if you don’t have a personal website or blog, get one. It’s a great way to showcase your passions, thoughts and experience and portray yourself as an expert, whether you are searching for a job or not. If you name your website after yourself, it will probably rank highly when people search for your name online.
Consider listing your resume (or at least an “about me” page) on your website, so site visitors can learn more about you.
Hagan Blount, a self-described writer, editor and producer, hosts a compelling infographic resume (pictured above) on his personal website. The “Resume” tab on his site includes his resume, alongside a stream of his most recent tweets. The resume is creative in that it includes a non-traditional approach to his professional (and personal) history, complete with fun stats, QR codes and recommendation quotes from influential business people.
Document Sharing Websites
You probably already have a .doc or .pdf format of your resume in your job-searching arsenal. To get the most out of it, upload it to document-sharing websites such as SlideShare or Scribd as Erica Swallows has done.
Both sites enable viewers to download, embed and share your resume, giving it the opportunity for many more eyes to see it. As a bonus, these sites ranked highly on search engines so the next time someone is searching on Google for your resume, it’s likely he or she will stumble upon your uploaded versions on these sites.
Both sites allow users to upload revisions of a document. As you change your resume, you can replace it on SlideShare or Scribd to keep it up-to-date. This is particularly useful because the URL never changes, so you won’t lose search engine optimality or confuse recruiters who already have links to previous versions. Furthermore, the view count on each document never starts over, and the upload date, tags, description and document title stay the same.
Slideshare tends to have the best upload quality, because the formatting of the preview stays true to the original document. But it’s advisable to use both sites, as search rankings can vary.
Try to get creative, like Chris Ferdinandi, a human resources professional based in Boston. His visual resume has nearly 29,000 views and showcases his “not-so-traditional” approach.
Of course, there’s always LinkedIn, a staple of the professional’s online presence. LinkedIn has become the standard online professional network, and like Facebook and Twitter, it often appears near the top of search inquiries involving people, as a result of its high ranking across search engines. When a potential employer searches for information about you online, you’ll want some semblance of your professional life to appear in search results.
Once employers find your LinkedIn profile, you’ll want it to be flawless and 100% complete. For the most part, you can bling out your profile by filling in the basics, asking for meaningful recommendations, using value-added applications and becoming an expert with LinkedIn Answers. For more detailed tips on creating a picture-perfect LinkedIn profile, check out my recent post on “HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile.”
(via Mashable)
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Ins and Outs of a Social Media Policy
Whether you like it or not, users online are talking about your brand - postively and negatively. More and more organizations are realizing that they need to be proactive with handling their brand online by establishing a social media policy. Your corporate social media policy is a set of guidelines that employees will be able to turn to when they are unsure about how to approach social media.
However, this does not mean that you should write a social media policy as a first step before venturing into social media. "It might be beneficial not to create some arbitrary rules without first seeing where the opportunities and risks really are” says Chad Houghton, the director of e-media and business development at the Society for Human Resource Management. The social media policy should be tailored to your organization's unique culture and presence on social media and address company-specific issues.
Many companies already have communications policies that provide guidelines for how employees use the phone or e-mail. A social media policy can simply be an extension of the communications policy, adapted for the online world. Scott Monty, the head of social media at Ford Motor Company, agrees that if there are existing policies in place, "amending them to include the changes to communications platforms and anticipating future changes should occur ASAP” Eric B. Meyer, an Associate in the Labor and Employment Group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, emphasizes that employees “should be made aware that company policies on anti-harassment, ethics and company loyalty extend to all forms of communication both inside and outside the workplace.”
Writing a Social Media Policy
Like most rules, an effective social media policy should focus on what employees can do as opposed to what they can not. Shannon Seery Gude, VP of Digital for Bernard HODES Group, believes that they key to a successful social media policy is for authenticity to exist "without the need for what may be perceived as forced company morality” You want to provide a guide to best practices rather than a list of punishable offenses.
The policy should set boundaries for personal content, especially with corporate accounts. Your employees should understand that although they have the right to freedom of speech, companies have the right to monitor employee use of social media, even if it occurs outside of the office. The Internet expression "dooced" is used to describe when an employee loses his or her job because of something that was said online. One of the most recent and well-known examples of someone getting dooced is comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was fired from his job as the Aflac spokesduck after tweeting a joke about the devastating earthquake in Japan.
Although a goal of social media is to establish transparency, Meyer states that organizations need to "make employees aware of any obligation they may have to protect confidential or proprietary information.” Although this can be accomplished with good judgment on the employees part, it is much easier to simply state what information is confidential in the social media policy.
Below is an example of a social media policy from Headset Bros. Most organizations post their social media guidelines online such as Canada Post, IBM, and Intel.
HEADSET BROS – SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
Sources:
Mashable 1 2
However, this does not mean that you should write a social media policy as a first step before venturing into social media. "It might be beneficial not to create some arbitrary rules without first seeing where the opportunities and risks really are” says Chad Houghton, the director of e-media and business development at the Society for Human Resource Management. The social media policy should be tailored to your organization's unique culture and presence on social media and address company-specific issues.
Many companies already have communications policies that provide guidelines for how employees use the phone or e-mail. A social media policy can simply be an extension of the communications policy, adapted for the online world. Scott Monty, the head of social media at Ford Motor Company, agrees that if there are existing policies in place, "amending them to include the changes to communications platforms and anticipating future changes should occur ASAP” Eric B. Meyer, an Associate in the Labor and Employment Group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, emphasizes that employees “should be made aware that company policies on anti-harassment, ethics and company loyalty extend to all forms of communication both inside and outside the workplace.”
Writing a Social Media Policy
Like most rules, an effective social media policy should focus on what employees can do as opposed to what they can not. Shannon Seery Gude, VP of Digital for Bernard HODES Group, believes that they key to a successful social media policy is for authenticity to exist "without the need for what may be perceived as forced company morality” You want to provide a guide to best practices rather than a list of punishable offenses.
The policy should set boundaries for personal content, especially with corporate accounts. Your employees should understand that although they have the right to freedom of speech, companies have the right to monitor employee use of social media, even if it occurs outside of the office. The Internet expression "dooced" is used to describe when an employee loses his or her job because of something that was said online. One of the most recent and well-known examples of someone getting dooced is comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was fired from his job as the Aflac spokesduck after tweeting a joke about the devastating earthquake in Japan.
Although a goal of social media is to establish transparency, Meyer states that organizations need to "make employees aware of any obligation they may have to protect confidential or proprietary information.” Although this can be accomplished with good judgment on the employees part, it is much easier to simply state what information is confidential in the social media policy.
Below is an example of a social media policy from Headset Bros. Most organizations post their social media guidelines online such as Canada Post, IBM, and Intel.
HEADSET BROS – SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
Sources:
Mashable 1 2
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
How Facebook Affects Your Relationships [INFOGRAPHIC]
Online Dating University and AllFacebook have teamed up to create an infographic about how Facebook affects your health, personality, and relationship with others.
Friday, May 27, 2011
10 levels of intimacy in today's communication [INFOGRAPHIC]
As recruiters, it is important to understand and adapt to the correct level of intimacy when communicating with candidates across all stages of the recruitment cycle.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The young demographics of the Canadian digital media economy
This morning at the Mesh Conference, Justin Kozuch of Pixel to Product presented his firm's report on the state of the Canadian Digital Media Economy, which was funded by digital experience agency Teehan Lax. The report surveyed over 200 companies and 1,050 indiviudals over the past seven months.
The survey found that the average age of a professional in the digital media industry is 28.2 years old with 60% of the Canadian digital media workforce under the age of 34.
The survey found that the average age of a professional in the digital media industry is 28.2 years old with 60% of the Canadian digital media workforce under the age of 34.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Bulls and bears debate over LinkedIn's IPO
On Thursday, LinkedIn's stock (NYSE:LNKD) skyrocketed to over $105 a share from its initial offering price of $45. During its first day of trading, the stock reached a peak of $122.70, a 173% gain. In comparison, Google, the last major US Internet services company to go public, was offered at a price of $85 and rose only 18% in its first day.
Investors are certainly not that surprised and triple digit gains in a single day are not unseen in technology IPOs. In fact, Chinese websites Baidu.com and Youku.com, China's equivalent to Google and Youtube respectively, both had triple-digit percentage gains on their first day of trading.
Jeffrey Weiner, LinkedIn's Chief Executive Officer, was not among the skeptics who raised an eyebrow at LinkedIn's phenomenal IPO. "To be honest with you, I didn't give a lot of thought to what the opening would be like... this isn't necessarily indicative of anything. The market will do what it will do. What we are completely focused on is our long-term plans and our fundamentals, and getting that right."
LinkedIn differs from other social media in that two-thirds of its revenue comes from selling recruitment services and premium access rather than being dependent on advertising fees like Facebook. In this respect, analysts believe that LinkedIn is more like a software-as-a-service company like Salesforce than it is a straight-up social network. However, only 0.5% of users have premium accounts and LinkedIn's future success still hinges on monetizing its massive unpaid user base through better advertising.
Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital believes that "the issue is the turnover of the users on the sites: the stickiness of the user, the reliability of the repeat user. You want a sticky user base for ads and revenues" She worries that users only use LinkedIn when they need to find a job and ignore it after they do. To LinkedIn's credit, the website has anticipated these concerns by unveiling new features such as LinkedIn Answers and the home feed to make its experience more social.
"The market will do what it will do. What we are completely focused on is our long-term plans and our fundamentals, and getting that right." -- Jeffrey Weiner, LinkedIn CEOThe big question is whether LinkedIn is the exception or the rule when it comes to valuing social networks. Tom Donino, a partner at First New York Securities wondered "why people were so enamored to buy this stock on the open," adding that LinkedIn's underwriters "had already ratcheted the price up to what everyone thought was a pretty high price." With major social networks like Twitter and Facebook preparing for IPOs of their own, it will be interesting to see how investment bankers value those companies after LinkedIn left nearly $500 million on the table.
Sources:
Wall Street Journal
Huffington Post
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
The Social Media Job Search Checklist
In today's ever connected world, our lives are increasingly more public and susceptible to outside judgment. For those who are currently searching for a job, their social media profiles may actually hinder their chances if a hiring manager screens something that is not desirable. Not only is it important to optimize your social media profiles to avoid getting screened out, but a well-polished profile can also differentiate your application from countless other faceless candidates.
Regardless of whether you are currently looking for a job, you should continually work on maintaining your social media profiles in case a recruiter or hiring manager finds it while sourcing. Ask yourself the following questions:
Do you...
...on LinkedIn...
...have a 100% complete profile?
...consistently update your status?
...have a full and diverse network?
...have a professional profile picture?
...have genuine recommendations from peers, managers, and colleagues?
...ask for introductions to recruiters or hiring managers at companies that you would like to work at?
...participate and highlight involvement in non-paid projects (open-source, community, volunteer, etc...)?
...list hobbies and personal interests related to life outside of work?
...link to your employer, blog or other projects of interest?
...join groups that are relevant to your desired profession?
...ask and answer questions in LinkedIn Answers?
...add value to your profile page with applications?
...add value to your profile page with applications?
...on Facebook...
...respect the overlap between personal and professional lives?
...post pictures of family and friends that are suitable for work
...update your status often with text, multimedia, and links?
...keep interactions non-controversial and respectful?
...join groups and like pages that are relevant to your desired profession
...have links to your other social media profiles?
...on Twitter...
...tweet frequently and consistently?
...have a decent following of industry people?
...keep a healthy balance between personal and professional tweets?
...respond and interact with other Twitter users?
...utilize conventions like hashtags and @mentions?
...on your blog...
...have interesting insights about your profession or industry?
...provide glimpses into your life outside of work?
...have links to your other social media profiles?
...have a link or page for your current resume?
...create blog posts regularly?
...stick to non-controversial topics and opinions?
...have a blogroll with links to other interesting blogs?
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