WhyHire.me and Amy Chamberlain talk up WhyHire.me with CBC Radio

The CBC took an interest in WhyHire.me thanks to the ongoing branding efforts of our initial pilot students from Algonquin College in Ottawa. We have had little time to take a proactive approach to telling our own story – so the story found us. This is an underlying point we make to students that go through WhyHire.me. If you take the time to put yourself out there through active branding techniques, jobs and story opportunities will find you!

Click here to listen to this three minute story that aired on June 30th. Amy did a great job in the interview. She is a model graduate!

Friends versus Contacts – its not about volume…its quality

On occasion, I do get people asking to be friends on Facebook that I don’t know socially.  The test I apply is, if I would go out for drinks or have the person in for dinner, then they are likely a friend I would confide in, tell a self-depreciating story or offer support during a tough time.

If I ignore a friend request from you, please don’t take it personally. Link to me in WhyHire.me and in Linkedin once you establish yourself and we have done some work together. Over time, we may very well become friend in life and online.

For those that collect friends like vendors collect business cards at trade shows, remember, you are making a social contract with these people. If you post items of a truly personal nature – a goofy photo, a self-depreciating comment or anything not professional, these posts can be misunderstood, or taken out of context, since your new “friend” does not really know you. Case in point, if you use sarcasm online and the friend does not really know about your sarcastic humor…they will misinterpret your post.

An extreme oh-o, is when someone copies and pastes your Facebook items and puts them in a blog entry for the world to see. Check out this story on Audra Sigler Shea and what happened to her racist remarks she posted in Facebook alongside her trusted friends. In this case, her nasty remarks were simply copied and shared with the world.

Keep your personal and professional world separate. This way you can keep up your sarcastic humor with your buddies and not worry about wierding  people out.

Ian Ford Shares His Thoughts on Personal Branding

Ian Ford was one of the 47 students in our first pilot project at Algonquin College in the Business Administration program. Now that Ian is out looking for work, we thought it would be helpful to get his thoughts on how learning about personal branding and using the WhyHire.me portal have changed his approach to his own job search.

Interview with Ian Ford, WhyHire.me user on YouTube

Branding and Lovemarks

Yesterday, I reached for a Redbull in the corner store. I needed something to pick me up since it was warm and I needed a boost before a KEY meeting. Jim Carrey’s Redbull Rant may have had something to do with it.

When I went to open the can, I noted the Redbull logo cut right into the tab on the can.  That did get me thinking…I was I about to unleash something wild, unpredictable and potentially dangerous? Were the bulls of Pompeii just around the corner? In truth, I was walking into a pretty important pitch meeting to a potential business partner. Drinking down my Redbull did give me a boost and a devil may dare attitude – just what I needed! In this case, I really did connect with the brand…and the meeting went great!

I tip my hat to Redbull – this is clever branding. Kevin Roberts penned a fantastic book coined the future beyond brands (Lovemarks). A key quote from the book truly reinforces the essence of what we are doing at WhyHire.Me.

“Lovemarks of this new century will be the brands and businesses that create emotional connections with the communities and networks they live in.”

I could not have said this more eloquently. WhyHire.Me is all about creating emotional connections with ones buyers…in this case, hiring managers. Our program is all about teaching students how to develop their online presence and underlying brand as they develop their potential through post-secondary education. The end game is all about establishing an emotional connection – this is the essence of personal branding.

Personal Branding List – Using all Three Dimensions

I submitted an article to Career Options Magazine early this week and now I have been asked to send a ‘call out box’ that could be a part of the article. At the same time, I have been reviewing a blogging ebook by Darren Rowse AKA ProBlogger.  My article needs a list and the second step of ‘31 Days to Build a Better Blog’ was to create a list post.  Here I go, killing two birds with one post.

Creating Your Personal Brand Using Social Media Tools, title of article

1) Manage Your FaceBook Account. Be conscientious of your privacy setting and what you are using FaceBook for.  What’s your objective and strategy?  Mine is just pure play and socializing with close friends.

2) Grab Your Digital Real Estate.  Grab your name in the popular social media sites including; Flickr, Twitter, Linkedin, Technorati, YouTube, Vimeo, and even FaceBook, I suppose. And if you know you are a natural entrepreneur or moving in the direction of independent consultant, check into buying your domain name. Your name is your brand.

3) Develop Your Positioning Pitch – What makes you different and what can you offer future employers?

4) Tell Your Story.  And make it dynamic like you are.  Use text, photos and video but also include blog posts, Twitter and social commentary. Make yourself 3 dimentional.

A quick reminder that my audience is college and university students and that there is a complete 2 page article that this list is attached to, not to mention, 8 hours of training plus a software portal.

I will post the article when it is published.

The Evolution of Textbook Publishing

Seth Godin stepped into the education ring with a recent post about the textbook model and how overdue for change it is. He rightly points out the fact that books are expensive and in the case of some subjects, quickly out of date.

Books are bulky, need to be stored, shipped and managed by several parties in the production and supply chain. Add the fact that a textbook run is going to be smaller than a mainstream novel, and you have a perfect storm – a $250 book at the retail level.

His suggestion of having profs build textbooks online does present some interesting possibilities. I think the challenge to that model is the balance of risk and reward.  College and University professors are facing considerable change they need to work into the curriculum. Will a full-time college professor be willing to take the risk in terms of their precious time and reputation? I could see part-time instructors doing this – my partner and I are a living example with the development of WhyHire.Me.

The challenge in stitching together chapterettes is just that. Instructors are going to need additional time to properly stitch them into something meaningul. Imagine hundreds or thousands of chapterettes on a web site. A teacher will simply become an editor in order to pull something together that is useful, meaningful and helpful. What percent of profs will do this? Don’t know.

There is value in someone taking an editorial perspective on lots of content. If this was not the case, then new services such as Twitter or the Huffington Post would not be so popular. I think today’s publishers are well positioned to do this. They simply need to rethink how they broker content into its final, bound form that ends up on a desk or computer screen.

Summer Classes & Experiences

We’re over 1/2 way finished our pilot with the Algonquin Sport Business Management program. I have to admit there is a very different vibe on campus in the summer time.  I have been told by students that absenteeism is extremely high which is what I am finding in my class.  I don’t blame these students.  They started the program in September and are in their final term of a 12 month program and we live in a city where winter never ends.  It’s not easy to sit in the classroom for 4-6 hours but…….

Last class, the few of us that were there, talked around transparency issues (putting yourself out there), Facebook privacy, and the basic text elements that are required in a profile.  The focus was on defining ‘experiences’ which includes jobs, internships, projects, and volunteer work.  Many students forget about the project experiences they have pick up while in college. These projects are what make up the ‘Applied’ nature of a college diploma.  And there are often co-op placements, internships or client projects that provide our students with real life experiences that need to be documented in their profiles.

For the students that missed the class, I have added audio to the slides and it’s now available in our Group on WhyHire.me.

Personal Reputation Management – a shared responsibility

I had a new follower this morning – the account name was BrigitteHaney42. I immediately noted the number of followers was well over a thousand and the last tweet was clearly written by a greasy person looking to make money from some form of adult content site. I have since blocked this account and I have reported the account to lawenforcement@twitter.com after drilling into Twitter’s contact us section of their web site. What I find disturbing is Twitter does not appear to offer any form of Report Abuse button, right on someone’s profiles.

There is no doubt that the women in the profile is not Brigitte Haney. The account holder has simply hijacked this person’s identity for their own gain. Where is Twitter in all this? Do they have a shared responsibility to help manage people’s reputation? Can they honestly afford to stand by and let people’s reputation be tarnished?  I for one think they do have a duty of care to help preserve one’s online brand.

Here is what they should do:

1) Under the Actions section, they should have a link that says, Report Likely Fraud.

Why the strong language?  Fraud is defined as an act of deceiving or misrepresenting. In this case, I have no doubt that the women in the photo, has nothing to do with the account holder. If I am wrong, then Rome is burning…get me out of here.

2) Investigate the user that was reported. In this case, Twitter could create their own fake followers and start interacting with BrigitteHaney42. Within minutes, Twitter can find out exactly how truthful the account holder is being. As soon as BrigitteHaney42 starts sending links that link off to porn sites, they close the account and report the IP address to the authorities. Such a method would be faster than having the account holder fax in a copy of government ID with a picture…that can be photoshoped.

This particular Fraud is very disturbing. If someone posted the photo on an Interstate billboard, the advertiser would be severely fined or hopefully, put in jail.

Twitter and other sites with weak user provisioning cannot shirk their responsibilities and blame the world wild web so to speak. Being a good netizen means reporting abuse and fraud and taking action. In this case, Twitter could simply add the button and pay some interns to track, monitor and act on fraudulent, misrepresentation. The women in the photo deserves such a duty of care.

Personal branding requires careful attention to what photos you share with the world. That being said,  Twitter should take on greater responsibility. PLEASE RETWEET and vote with your mouse.

Follow me at @goandychurch…but please, only real people interested in personal branding!