Don’t Just Bug Me..Engage Me!

I came across some interesting research on this WhyHire.me story found on Informationexec.ca

“In its recent job search study, AfterCollege found that social media ranked last among respondents (10.9 per cent) asked to gauge the effectiveness of job search methods. At the top of the list were more traditional methods like online job boards (71.9 per cent) and applying directly to the organization (70.7 per cent).”

Students will eventually catch on to the fact that selling themselves requires several “marketing methods” besides job boards and sending emails.  Social media opens up a whole new set of personal selling dimensions that cannot be conveyed in a job board, direct email message or letter.  Students and job seekers should be telling their story and conveying their brand across a web site (such as a WhyHire.me profile), emails, letters, a phone call, printed resume and interviews. Why? Its proven to work.

One can draw a parallel from the real world of sales and marketing in corporate North America. The tried and true salesperson will call and email with some kind of offer, hook or appeal – just like everyone else. After a while, the customer is inundated and all the callers start sounding the same. If the marketing department is cleaver and thinking about their value and the customers requirements, they can change the game with social media.  It can engage the customer over the Internet with authentic content, commentary and other engaging materials. How real is this trend?  Social media spending is forecasted to outgrow traditional advertising over the next five year. Corporations have figured this out – they finally picked up on the Cluetrain Manifesto – a tremendous book I ready seven years ago.

Hiring managers are expect to be emailed, called and given resumes pulled from job boards.  Graduates and students coming out of post-secondary have a tremendous opportunity to leverage social media and truly stand apart and differentiate themselves. They can no longer count on age old methods – the world has changed (again) and new methods will become the norm.

Online personal branding is a huge LATENT need that is awakening. This is why we packaged up our 30 years of marketing, branding and technology experience into an integrated program. In time, it will become conventional wisdom, must like using job-boards and direct email techniques for job search. Passionate channel partners are more then welcome to work with us!

The Four D’s of Online Personal Branding: Dig Deep, Declare Your Brand, Display Yourself and Deploy Your Brand

When we set out to build our program, we knew it was much more than just an online portal for the world to use. The early feedback we received from students suggested education, coaching and incentives were integral components to online personal branding. Many were unclear about their strengths or how to exploit their passions. Others were fearful of blogging and not certain how Twitter could enhance their job prospects. In many cases, students were not seeing how a school assignment can be more valuable than a summer job painting houses or slinging brew. Professors where throwing up their arms and wondering, “why are students posting THOSE PHOTOS on Facebook?”

For these reasons, we elected to develop a program, not simply a web 2.0 portal. We drew on several experiences and formal education from each of our partners. Patti for her depth in coaching, teaching and product branding. Rob for his engineering, creativity and passion and finally, Andy for his vision, depth of online marketing skills and many lessons learned. The program calls on decades of experience in mentoring, branding and building Internet software.

The foundation of WhyHire.me includes:

• Career Coaching – we challenge our students to ask themselves key questions and gather essential data about themselves
• Branding – we call on 35 years of cumulative marketing experiences in large brands and small upstarts companies
• Social Media Tools – we call on our own social media experiences and lessons from today’s social media Brand Masters

The program curriculum rolls up to the four D’s of Online Personal Branding. They are as follows:

• Dig Deep – Key questions and exercises aimed at understanding ones personal characteristics that define ones positioning and overall theme of ones brand
• Declare Your Brand – Defining one’s positioning statement and overall strategy to close the gap on one’s brand image versus brand identity
• Display Yourself – Develop the underline story and linkages to put ones best professional foot forward on the web. After all, the Internet is your resume!
• Deploy Your Brand – Learn how to embrace industry issues using social media to demonstrate passion, show initiative and leadership.

Online personal branding for post-secondary students is all about revealing one’s potential. We hope you will follow us on Twitter to keep up to date. For those that like the plain old phone, hit our home page to reach us on the blower or by email.

Great Positioning Discussion

Today, I had an email exchange with a recent post-secondary graduate. When I introduced him to WhyHire.Me, the following Q and A ensued. It was fascinating. I had internalized so much, I finally got the change to jot down some differentiating points about WhyHire.me.

His questions in BOLD, my answers in italics.

What is the biggest difference between WhyHire.Me and having an open and searchable profile on facebook?

We have presented WhyHire.Me as a place for upcoming graduates to share their professional brand that should be developed and shaped through post-secondary education. Our students have been given the opportunity to present their profiles, experiences and engagement in social media around their course of study and professional interests. Mixing social with professional posts can be a risky endeavor…since personal posts, photos or comments can be out of context…and on occasion, not something you would share with a prospective employer. My Facebook updates contain inside jokes…or items of a personal nature that I would only share with friends.

Our V1 product is a push model – students can post, publish and email their PURL as they start looking for work or getting feedback and comments from peers, clients and summer job bosses. That being said, one of our students, Ashley Ferguson got found by a Toronto firm via a google search and was hired. Check out the kudos from her at this link.

Your online digital assets are impressive, but spread out across several sites and links. Imagine being able to shape it through one unified interface…that speaks to WHY someone should hire you? By packaging this up in WhyHire.Me, you would be in a better position to ask your senior level contacts to comment and offer testimonials on various blog entries that speak to your accomplishments. Can you count on these people having Facebook accounts…or an interest in setting one up just to make a comment or offer a living, in context reference?

What is the incentive for students to create a profile? (vs facebook which is already established)
We have a highly declarative URL – whyhire.me/andy_church is pretty much to the point. Think of whyhire.me as the paring knife for job search outreach…Facebook, Linkedin have great uses for a wide range of applications. The free-agent model of employment has arrived. WhyHire.Me is an open rhetorical question that speaks very specifically to future employers or clients.

Educators have the opportnunity to help guide and mentor students by weaving WhyHire.Me into their course of study – professional branding requires thought, strategy and sustained execution. Much like how athletes have coaches, we believe WhyHire.Me needs mentoring through post-secondary education. FYI – one’s profile can be private until the student is good and ready to start promoting their PURL through social media outreach.

We also get great search results because we leverage SEVERAL other sites (Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, any site with RSS feeds). Check out Jennifer Spruit at this link!
What is the incentive for prospective employers to browse this site? or is the hope that they will use a search engine and whyhire.me will be one of the top results?
Right now, if a student embeds their purl into a cover letter, or blog post that get’s searched, it creates an inbound click into the student profile. At some point, we expect to have a critical mass of students and make WhyHire.Me a destination end-point for employers.

What is the next step for whyhire.me?

Keep following me at Twitter goandychurch or bookmark my purl – whyhire.me/andy_church