The Crow

LinkedIn - The New Resume

I just discovered Quora. So, because I am a know it all, I responded to a question. It will probably be the first of many. Here is my answer pasted here since Quora and Typepad are apparently not friends.

Q: ResumeResume Writing -- How will curriculum vitae / CVs / resumes evolve in the changing workplace?

I think it's likely that your social media footprint will take the place of the traditional resume. I have experienced several senior level candidates who simply submit a copy of their LinkedIn profile in place of a traditional resume. Additionally, many execs have a web page that, instead of linking to a resume, showcases their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blog.
 
Gone are the days of agonizing over fonts and lining everything up just right. Most recruiters just want the high level information anyway - given the number of resumes they need to plow through, only the key points are worth noticing on a first pass; detail tends to get saved for the phone screen or interview. Let's face it, in a 140 character world, 4 page resumes are history.

Do you agree?

tracy c

Tweet Your Way to a Community Manager Position

image credit: geek & poke

NOTE: This is a continuation of Wednesday's post on re-thinking your position in advertising and considering a Community Management role.

How To Become a Qualified Community Manager
If you're considering a role as a Community Manager, here are three things you can do to build your expertise.

1.  Engage. Create your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, FlickR, YouTube and participate. Immerse yourself in the communities and talk about your passions. Learn about proper online etiquette and language so you don't unknowingly publicly embarrass yourself. Many local chambers of commerce or community colleges are offering workshops about basic social media usage.

2.  Volunteer. Combine your thirst for social media knowledge with the opportunity to help a local non profit organization build an online community.  Cristina Lorenzetti, a Detroit-based freelance copywriter and social media neophyte, volunteered her services to be the community manager for "The Bottomless Toy Chest" a non-profit devoted to pediatric cancer patients. This allowed her to practice community manager skills while benefiting the organization. Prospective employers will now be able to view her writing and community manager skills in real-time on these social channels.

3.  Network. There are many resources for community manager wanna-bes to network with others." Web strategist, Jeremiah Owyang hosts a list of community managers on his blog. Peer groups such as Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelists on Facebook or Online Community Managers on LinkedIn are available to join and learn from those doing the job today.

Likewise, companies should consider these types of experiences as must-haves when seeking out candidates.

Traci Armstrong
@tannarmstrong

This excerpted post originally appeared in Ad Age Talent Works and Organic's ThreeMinds blog.

image credit: geek & poke

NOTE: This is a continuation of Wednesday's post on re-thinking your position in advertising and considering a Community Management role.

How To Become a Qualified Community Manager
If you're considering a role as a Community Manager, here are three things you can do to build your expertise.

1.  Engage. Create your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, FlickR, YouTube and participate. Immerse yourself in the communities and talk about your passions. Learn about proper online etiquette and language so you don't unknowingly publicly embarrass yourself. Many local chambers of commerce or community colleges are offering workshops about basic social media usage.

2.  Volunteer. Combine your thirst for social media knowledge with the opportunity to help a local non profit organization build an online community.  Cristina Lorenzetti, a Detroit-based freelance copywriter and social media neophyte, volunteered her services to be the community manager for "The Bottomless Toy Chest" a non-profit devoted to pediatric cancer patients. This allowed her to practice community manager skills while benefiting the organization. Prospective employers will now be able to view her writing and community manager skills in real-time on these social channels.

3.  Network. There are many resources for community manager wanna-bes to network with others." Web strategist, Jeremiah Owyang hosts a list of community managers on his blog. Peer groups such as Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelists on Facebook or Online Community Managers on LinkedIn are available to join and learn from those doing the job today.

Likewise, companies should consider these types of experiences as must-haves when seeking out candidates.

Traci Armstrong
@tannarmstrong

This excerpted post originally appeared in Ad Age Talent Works and Organic's ThreeMinds blog.

Is Your Workplace The Social Media Gestapo?

Image credit: Ernest Descal

6 Ways Employee Social Media Freedom Benefits An Employer

The Social Media Revolution is seeping into the workplace and employers are nervous. According to social web blogger David Armano, approximately 70% of organizations ban social networks devices. USA Today reports a lower amount but still: an October 22nd, 2009 survey shows 54% of businesses are banning social media from the workplace. Fears and worry about decreased productivity and/or risk exposure seem to be resulting in microcosms of censorship within workplaces.  We all know how well that turned out for East Germany.  

Unless companies are trying to create a Dilbert-like workplace environment of mistrust and oppression, banning social media is simply not a good idea. In fact, allowing employees to access social media could actually result in many benefits for the employer.  Here's how:

Team Building and Camaraderie
US employers spend billions on employee team building activities like picnics, holiday parties and team building exercises. Allowing employees to participate in the virtual water-cooler dialogue of social media - gives them a chance to bond and find subjects they can relate to - free of cost to the employer. Studies show the main reason employees stay in jobs (or leave jobs) is due to their level of satisfaction with co-worker relationships. Social media allows employees to find a common bond and enhance the relationships with those they work.

Productivity Benefits from Brain Breaks
A Discovery magazine article reports that neuroscientists at MIT have confirmed: taking breaks helps us learn and be more productive. A 2006 study observed rats pausing after exploring an unfamiliar maze. The neuroscientists theorize the rats are using the break to re-trace their steps in the maze for memory purposes - thus leading to better productivity during the next maze run. Another example: educators can confirm first-hand the benefits of sending students to recess - and the chaotic results if kids don't get their downtime.

Social media is the equivalent of workplace recess. Mind breaks lead to employee satisfaction and better productivity. This results in increased morale, reduced employee stress, low absenteeism and more engaged, healthier employees.  All of these employee traits help the company bottom line.

On-the-Job Training
Social media can serve as a virtual think tank.  If an employee is embarking upon a new project and needs advice from her peers, it's as easy as posting a question to their social networks. Many professional groups are established on LinkedIn or Facebook and offer a venue for discussion and the opportunity to post specific questions. Polls and surveys enable virtual focus groups. Employees can easily follow subject matter experts on a site like Twitter for a RSS-like feed of relevant content. While many companies offer organized mentoring programs, with social media, employees can choose their own on-line advisor for guidance and knowledge share.

Trust and Transparency
If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest. In September 2009, Facebook reached over 300 million active users. Gen Yer's continue to rely less on email and more on social media to communicate. Banning employees from this widespread communication tool is akin to telling your employees they can't use the phone for personal calls or e-mail friends and family.  It's a signal your company is oppressive and in the dark ages. With the sale of smart-phones on the rise, it's likely that employees would access their social media sites on their mobile anyway - creating an environment of concealment and mistrust.  

Allowing employees to access social media communicates: "We trust you're mature and know when enough is enough."  For employees that do abuse their time on social media, managers and HR departments should address the issue on an individual level - similar to any other performance problem like absenteeism, low productivity or work quality.

Listening / Monitoring
Much like many brands are monitoring customers to address satisfaction issues, employers can apply the same model.  If employees are complaining about their employer on social media, it might hurt a corporate brand - but it at least allows the employer a chance to address complaints or dissatisfaction.  

Many companies conduct internal employee surveys to evaluate morale and employee satisfaction. As an alternative, HR or Marketing staff could consider following and creating user lists / groups of employees on social sites to easily monitor conversation. Or, using a monitoring tool like Seesmic or Tweetdeck on Twitter allows an employer to continuously monitor keywords - like your company name - and immediately address unfavorable messaging. Caution: if your workplace doesn't offer a culture of transparency and openness, employees could misconstrue this as employer stalking.  

Brand Evangelists
Just like unhappy employees complain about their jobs, happy employees love to share their positive workplace experience. And, 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations over a brand's marketing efforts. That holds true for the workplace as well: happy, well-performing employees will attract similar employees - a huge recruiting benefit.

The key for happy tweeps and happy tweets is creating a culture and environment that an employee feels like they can contribute and express themselves. A satisfied employee will be an advocate for your company, might share job openings with their friends and boast about the latest accomplishments. You can't buy that kind of press. Employers that embrace social media and provide employees with a simple policy, best practices, legal no-no's and basic usage / etiquette training will create an environment of openness with lower risk to the employer.  

The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago is a poignant analogy of how closing off people to outside connection ultimately fails.  And it's begging the question: How permanent are your social media firewalls?

Traci Armstrong
@tannarmstrong

Note: A version of this post originally appeared in Advertising Age November 16, 2009.

How to Google-Rank Your Way to a Recruiter's Heart

This article originally appeared in the October 2, 2009 Ad Age Talent Works.

job" mentality, job seekers must focus on being found. Recruiters are holding the proverbial glass slipper -- looking for the perfect match to open positions. Are social media and web tools the digital fairy godmother that introduces you? Here are ways to make it easier for a recruiter to discover you:

1. Expand your glass slipper's footprint. Posting your resume on mega-job boards and searching for open positions on these boards is only a point of entry for job searches today. It's a foundation -- but it isn't a very strategic or holistic approach. To broaden your digital footprint, start with this checklist: Do you appear on LinkedIn? Twitter? Facebook? Delicious? YouTube or Vimeo? Flickr? Do you have a blog, using sites such as TypePad, WordPress, Blogger?

For an even wider presence, create your own website and register a personal URL for yourself; sites such as GoDaddy.com make it very easy and inexpensive to do. There are also services that offer HTML resume solutions like ResumeBuilder.com and VisualCV. By posting your resume as its own web page, recruiters have a better chance of finding it through a Boolean search.

Once your digital footprint is established, include your information on your e-mail signature to increase connections with those in your network. Cross-post your digital-footprint links on multiple sites. Is your Twitter feed posted on your LinkedIn profile? Is your LinkedIn profile posted on your blog? And so on. Most people still have personal preferences of the social media site they visit the most. The wider your reach, the more likely it is that the right people will find you.

2. Define your magic keywords. A recruiter isn't going to find you by your name. They search based on skills, experience, your work history. Take the time to think it through: If someone conducts a search on Google, Bing or a social-media site to find you, what keywords will they use? Which key descriptors specify your unique skills and where you're located?

Start out with 10 words. Include items such as your title, region, area of expertise and your industry. Once you define these words, make sure they appear on all of your digital profiles. Conduct your own keyword audit to check the reach of your digital footprint. Do all of these words appear in the profiles that describe you to a potential employer? If so, that will make it easier to find you.

3. Customize your handle. If your name is common, think about how you might make it more unique. Can you include your middle initial? Maybe initial your first name or perhaps use your full middle name? If you've taken on a married name, does it make sense to use your maiden name as well -- and hyphenate? As an example, if we search for "Traci Armstrong," we find 9,740 results on Google. But, at the risk of snickers, if we initial the first name and use her married last name "T. Ann Cakebread," the results are far more selective: four!

Be cautious, however, on what name you create for yourself: Don't choose something that makes it difficult for people to identify you. And, whatever identity you choose, be consistent so you appear the same everywhere you post.

Another great tool at your disposal is the vanity URL. Many sites offer this feature; both Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to customize your profile in this way, adding your name to your link. You can claim yours on Facebook or, on LinkedIn, click edit on the Public Profile featured in your profile settings. There is an option at the top of this page that allows you to edit your URL.

Job seekers should also take advantage of signing up for a free Google Profile. This allows you better control of how people see you when you appear in Google -- and increases the likelihood you will appear if someone searches you by name by expanding your footprint in yet another direction.

4. Don't be a wallflower. Having a presence on a social-media site without participating is like going to the ball without dancing. Not much fun and no interaction. The key to successful engagement is to create authentic content and connect with others. The more involved you are in dialogue relating to your expertise area, the greater the chance your dialogue has in showing up in a search engine.

There are tools that make it easier to monitor the conversations of those you'd like to be hired by -- try Seesmic for Twitter, Google Alerts for broad web search or Technorati for blogging entries. When you find a discussion you feel comfortable joining, participate. Most bloggers are desperate to find good, consistent content. In situations where you can lend authentic, credible expertise and opinion, offer to guest blog.

5. Use blogs to show off more than just writing. If you're a writer, blogs are a terrific way to showcase your writing. But blogs can also flaunt visually creative work. If you're a photographer, illustrator or designer, post your recent work on a blog and describe it in short detail. Tag your visuals with keywords that could lead someone looking for your visual style to your posting. Use the vertical your visual category is for (such as automotive or consumer package goods), the style, the client as key words. Well-known blogging sites like Typepad and Wordpress allow for video postings -- if you're a film or video producer, post reels of your work on your blog. And then, make sure all of your digital profiles link to your blog, driving traffic to it and improving your Google ranking.

One rule of thumb: Any time you post something on your blog, invite your connections from social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to read your posting. And forward a link of your postings to influencers: those that have a strong following themselves and may pass your info along.

6. Tweet and encourage re-tweets. Encourage re-tweets with a trackable URL shortener and keep your tweet short. Remember, the more click-throughs to any site within your digital footprint will increase your Google ranking. When promoting your social-media postings through Twitter, Organic's group director-search, Marshall Clark, recommends keeping your original tweet well below the 140-character limit.

7. Join groups. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter's group version, Twibes. Look for like-minded people in your industry and find ways to interact. Be open about your job search, join discussions, answer questions and post links to valuable content you may be blogging about.

Iron out your Profile!

Would you wear a dirty, tattered, or mismatched suit to an interview? Of course not! Yet many people allow their social media profiles to be a mess when looking for a job. Maybe they don’t know any better. Don’t let yourself be one of those people!

More likely than not, you will need to clean out your social media closet in order to get it ready for prospective employers to review. Unfortunately, there is no version of the Container Store online that can help you. So you’ll have to help yourself, and you may need to ask trusted friends and colleagues to help proofread your social media profiles. The list below is a Social Media Closet Clean-up Guide for job seekers at all levels.

There are four simple things you can do to ensure that your social media closet is ready for prime time viewing:

1. Google yourself. Whatever you find is exactly what your prospective employer is going to see. If there is something horribly embarrassing out there, try to eliminate it. If you absolutely cannot get rid of it, try adding your middle name to your profile or resumé so the undesirable results are less likely to pop up when someone searches your name.
    
2. Go to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t have a LinkedIn account? You should! It is the primary tool recruiters now use to find people for all kinds of white-collar jobs. Post a decent picture of yourself and have someone proofread your bio. Keep it simple and professional—this is not the place for personal stuff. Join some relevant groups to show you know what you are doing, and are industry savvy and connected.
    
3. Examine your Facebook profile. What’s on there? Who can see it? There are Facebook settings that allow you to control who sees what, so decide if you want everyone to see your information, or if you want to limit it to your friends. 
   
   A prospective employer—if they know someone connected to you—may ask them to check your profile out. So keep the politics as neutral as possible, relationship-related drama to a minimum, eliminate any pictures of yourself doing anything embarrassing, and consider whether or not you want a lot of family pictures in the public eye.
   
   On Facebook, job seekers should also reduce the number of goofy quizzes they’ve taken, as people who do a lot of those look like super slackers. And if you really must know which Disney Princess you are, I suggest that you delete the results from your feed once you realize you are really Jasmine!
   
   Be sure to post a decent profile picture. If you’re not comfortable putting a profile picture up, you don’t have to. And if you do, just don’t put anything ridiculous up (instead consider posting a conservative image of your avatar).
    
4. Got Twitter? Should you get on Twitter if you aren’t already posting there? Definitely! A lot of recruiters are experimenting right now with Twitter as a potential candidate-sourcing tool. And just like with any other social media profile, you should word your bio carefully and choose a good picture.
   
   If you already have a Twitter profile that recruiters can find (by searching your name or because you included a link on your resume), really think about what you’re tweeting about. As with Facebook, you can control who follows you and sees your tweets. Twitter is interesting, and in progressive industries—if you are a good communicator and use the tool effectively—it can make a great impression. However, it can also be a kiss of death if you’re not. So if you’re looking for a job and you use Twitter, delete any inane tweets and start building up educated sounding ones.

It’s Clean Up Time!

Now that you’ve read through these Social Media Closet Cleaning Tips, you can clean up your image and not let your unattended social media profiles reveal a tattered Internet closet. Just follow the above four simple steps and when recruiters find you online, they will find all of your online “suits”—clean, pressed, and interview ready!

tracy

This was originally posted on the TalentZoo.com Career Oxygen site on July 17, 2009 under the headline, "How Organized is your Social Media Closet?".

Is Your Personal Brand Contagious?

Yesterday, as I was driving through Oakland, CA, I noticed a hair salon called “Contagious Studio”. I know the word can be used in a positive way, i.e. her enthusiasm was contagious, and if you're an R. Kelly/Isley brothers fan, you might have a positive connotation due to the song; but alas, I think most of us associate the word with a spreading illness. Another favorite is a shop in Chico, called “Tedious Repairs” (this one submitted courtesy of my mother). One wonders why they thought that name was a good idea, as tedious pretty consistently means…tedious.

Despite these unfortunate examples, most employers are well versed in the importance of a good employment brand. However, as a candidate, there are a myriad of things to think about in terms of your own brand, and unfortunately, most of us don’t have the benefit of an army of experts and PR people and executives providing advice and help. In the old days (or so I hear), life was simpler. I am not sure that’s true, I think we may have traded one set of rules for another, but regardless, there are several layers of personal “brand” to consider:

1. Your online presence
2. Your resume
3. Your look
4. Your answers

Online: For some industries and jobs, online presence is more important than for others. Increasingly, this is not only where recruiters check you out after you have interviewed, it’s where recruiters find you. Take a serious look at your online brand. Are you on LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? Make sure your bios are descriptive and error free. Think about who you “friend” and who can see what on your profile. If you update your status or tweet consider talking about something work related at least occasionally. Be aware of whether you set your profile to be public or only viewed by your “friends”, because if a future employer can see a picture of you beer bonging or notices that you play Mafia Wars all day long while at work, I can guarantee that is NOT going to be impressive.

Resume: Your resume is a key introduction to your brand, and for many hiring managers, it’s your first connection with them. There are thousands of websites out there that offer advice on how to improve your resume. Go to one. I am pretty sure your resume could use some work. Or, ask an HR professional to look it over. Because although it’s been said before, it has to be said again…If your resume has serious issues, it’s likely you won’t make it to the next step. I have 86’d resumes for typos in a job that required attention to detail. And if you are pulling together a video resume, there’s a whole world of do’s and don’ts out there on those.

Appearance: Like it or not, culture fit is important. Figure out what the cultural “code” is at the place you are interviewing for. If you are currently employed, do this for the place you currently work at. People who fit in will do better, whether the goal is to get hired or get promoted. Never try to be something you’re not, but there’s no harm in doing as the Romans do if it doesn’t hurt anyone. Determine what the prevailing style is, either by talking to someone who works there or stalking the lobby area, and dress accordingly. Don’t do Dress Barn if it’s a designer label type of place. Some flair might work better in some industries than others; but keep it low key in any interview situation.

Prepare: I can’t tell you how appalling it is when I interview a person who has not bothered to prepare for their interview. Do a little sleuthing on the Company. At the very least, familiarize yourself with their website. Know your area of expertise and have a few key responses ready that are forceful, clear, and hard to argue with. Numbering things is always good (i.e. “There are three things that are important in sales: selling, selling and selling” or whatever), because it keeps you from rambling and it sounds like it’s something you’ve really thought about.

People paint their houses before they sell. Spruce up your personal brand before you look for that new job or promotion! By taking just a few simple steps to improve your online and offline presence, you’ll ensure that you don’t have an invisible “Tedious” sign on your head when you go in for an interview, or when you are up for a promotion.

tracy c