I recently had a conversation with the folks at an innovative new company called
mynextgig.com. They offer a non-traditional job board experience where you can use video and social media profiles to apply for jobs.
What were some of the challenges in the college hiring process that you saw before starting up?
A. The biggest challenge was trying to find the crossroad between how the job seekers of today want to look for jobs and be found as candidates, and how business can leverage this new hiring technology to achieve speed, cost, and accuracy with their hires.
A. MNG took the already adopted social networking model, added some video, integrated video conferencing, real-time job posting and application options, and created an interactive destination for job seekers. On the business side, after months of working on this, it became clear that businesses needed to be able to conduct the entire hiring process in one place (which is what MNG offers) and be able to do it for just about free! We only charge $25 to post a job!
What are some of the results your users have seen?
A. Well, we are only 6 weeks post launch and we already have 12,000 users. The MNG concept is spreading like wildfire. Businesses and job seekers have always begged the question… “isn’t there a better way?”… there is, and we created it.
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Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I’m a big fan of blending the personal and professional on Facebook and Twitter to create engagement and conversation. But Francesca Holdings CFO, Gene Morphis, recently went a bit too far with his blended approach on his
public pages and he was
fired because of it. Morphis posted several status updates where he shared proprietary company information such as “Board meeting. Good numbers=Happy Board” and “Roadshow completed. Sold $275 million of secondary shares. Earned my pay this week.”
Top brass at Francesca Holdings certainly isn’t happy about Morphis’ social media blunder, but at least they can take comfort in the fact that their stock jumped 5% since Morphis’ departure.
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Social Media Stats
A recent article by
Talent HQ indicates the following social media statistics from Spring 2012:
Users
- Facebook – 850 million
- Twitter – 500 million
- LinkedIn – 161 million
- Google+ – 90 million
- Foursquare – 23 million
- Pinterest – 10.4 million
Daily Stats
- Facebook – 31% of users check-in daily for an average of 20 minutes
- Twitter – 175 million tweets per day
- LinkedIn – 11.5 million searches per day
- Google+ – 5 billion g+ buttons served each day (served, not clicked)
- YouTube – 4 billion video views per day
Personal Branding: Why These Stats Make It Relevant
“So what,” you say? “What do these social media statistics have to do with my personal brand, my IT resume or technical resume, and my job search?” It’s simple. Companies are going to expect to find you on one or more of these sites when considering you as a candidate for a job opening. As such, it opens the door for opportunity.
I suppose you could try to be like everybody else out there is SoMe (social media) land. That’s easy enough. Just sign up for a few of these services and write the standard description of yourself that makes people reading it fall asleep within 3 seconds.
The alternative is to craft a strong, compelling personal brand statement that is real to who you are, what you do, and what you want to do. Then put some creative messaging in place to effectively communicate this brand across all of the social media forums you’re a part of. Just keep in mind that these forums are all different, and the demographics are distinct for each…so the style you use to communicate your brand message should correlate with the site you’re on.
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The Harvard Business Review published an article on April 3, 2012 by Michael Fertik entitled,
“Your Future Employer is Watching You Online. You Should be Too.” Before I read this article, I had not fully considered all the different ways employers might be researching candidates. I had seen statistics, which Fertik also shares, that more than
75% of employers actively research candidates online (note this was a December 2009 statistic from Microsoft and is probably higher now), and that
more than 70% of employers have decided not to hire a candidate based on what they have found online. I assumed that recruiters were looking at major social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn; but according to this HBS article, recruiters dig much more deeply, looking through “shopping profiles, online gaming sites, classifieds and auction sites (think eBay and craigslist) – and even in virtual worlds like SecondLife!”
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Social media may be the key to our economic recovery. At least that what Marketing Expert Chris Brogan feels in his recent e-book called, “
Using the Social Web to Find work”.
With social media, “there are ways one can connect to like-minded people and perhaps find the job they need to keep themselves afloat in the coming months and year.” he states.
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Many of you are likely subscribed to a number of feeds providing the latest blog posts on executive career management, Monster’s job posts or a daily inspirational article. Recently, I opened one of hundreds of articles that I have been subscribed to for the past few years and quickly deleted it. When I realized I had barely looked at the content prior to deleting it, it suddenly occurred to me why this particular blog post didn’t resonate with me.
This is a favourite blog post which I often share on Facebook or retweet on Twitter. As an inspirational post, many of the authors are recognized for their courage in sharing their own personal experiences touching on failures and successes to offer advice. The key word is personal! It denotes a genuine and authentic impression lending credibility to the content...
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There are certain areas, when training people on using LinkedIn, that always seem to cause controversy. The first area of controversy is about profile pictures. But the second, and I think most misunderstood area, is your professional headline.
Your headline is the area just below your name in the top-most blue box of your profile. Every time you send an invitation to connect, or send an inMail, or comment in a group, your headline appears below your name.
So assuming that your first impression with a recruiter is probably going to be on LinkedIn, those first 120 characters must have sufficient impact and clarity...
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I’m not trying to be negative about Klout. I’m not a hater. In fact, I’ve largely been
a supporter of Klout as a way to measure the effectiveness of a brand or person to engage others. As a
life-long brand marketer, I appreciate ways to better understand effectiveness of a brand strategy.
I like it when people tell me I have influence. A little validation goes a long way.
I’ve written about Peer Index and
Empire Avenue as other ways to understand
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Originally posted on
onlinecolleges.net:
Before social media became popular, new grads and college students did most of their networking in person and on the phone, or none at all. And while there’s nothing wrong with an in-person, hands-on approach, today’s grads know that there’s a more efficient way to get connected with people who are important to their future, namely social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn. That’s why we’re sharing a series on The New Networking, focusing on how 2012 grads can make social media a major part of their post-grad networking strategy.
Today, we’ll focus on Facebook, hands down the most
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Sporting a moniker of Canada’s Career Strategist, you have to know that I take
my responsibility seriously. So, I thrive on developing meaningful relationships with like-minded professionals — the kind of professionals who understand the value of sharing their expertise. These are the people I follow.
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