My friend Faisil recently got http://dogoodhq.com/ off the ground. DoGooder turns everyday web browsing into donations for green initiatives and charity by allowing end users to opt-in to see green, charitable, and health and wellness advertising on web sites they enjoy going to rather than the generic advertising prevalent on the Internet today.
Why do this?
1) DoGood donates FIFTY PERCENT OF ITS PROFITS to green initiatives and charity.
2) Tempt yourself with more meaningful messages and calls to action. Since I started using it, I am clicking into great messages and calls to action.
3) Now you can browse and navigate ULTRA conservative web sites and get a dose of environment friendly messages. Now that’s balance web surfing!
Its free, easy and simply. Download the DoGooder Browser plug in here!
Kirsti Stubbs, Recruiter at Starbucks Canada, offered her perspective on how social media is changing the recruiting landscape. This five minute Q and A video offers details as to why she uses tools such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Linkedin and now WhyHire.me to source and learn more about potential candidates for retail management positions and regional positions across Canada.
An online profile and active engagement in industry topics helps her get a better impression of what a candidate is all about. Our goal is to teach students the finer points of how to build an effective online profile and presence that will help tomorrow’s graduates connect with people like Kirsti.
She represents the traditional early adopter that is working out the best way to leverage all these great tools. Over time, her methods and tools will change, but the take-away points are as follows:
- Students and working professional have to embrace online personal branding – the traditional job search model is fundamentally changing;
- Employers will be using job boards increasingly less;
- Job seekers must have a personal branding strategy and associated platform they can use to develop and maintain their online brand;
- Over time, students and working professionals can attract employers to their profile, provided they stay committed to Deploying Their Brand on a sustained basis.
A seasoned HR professional I met today was keen to understand how employers were responding to online profiles being development by students and working professionals. I offered him personal evidence of the impact that online personal branding had on my consulting business and I pointed him towards new age recruiters like Kirsti Stubbs at Starbucks Canada. Ashley Ferguson also offered this feedback about her initial entry into the job market last spring.
Since I started web marketing at Oracle in 1997 (in Redwood Shores, CA), I was lucky enough to be on the forefront of experimenting with email campaigns (before Constant Contacts), web seminars (before Webex), landing pages and content management systems (before Vignette, HubSpot). It was all pretty bleeding edge and exciting. At the time, the sales organizations at Oracle were skeptical as to how all these new tools could help generate leads. The prevailing marketing wisdom was all about direct marketing – calling, emailing and generally, interrupting people.
Marketing went off and started experimenting with communities, blogs, and engaging customers online. The ClueTrain Manifesto was a great book that really fired us all up and challenged us to rethink what “engagement” was all about. By engaging with customers and prospects with authentic content, offers, and two-way dialogues, marketing was able to establish a conversation with a prospect, before a sales rep called. All of a sudden, sales were emailing and calling into prospects that were interested in sales conversations.
Online marketing and social media have changed the sales and marketing game. All you need to do is look at the change in marketing spend that is predicted over the next several years. This rather long winded parallel suggests that online marketing will be embraced by hiring professionals and their internal clients. How the web evolved in the B2B and B2C sectors is a strong indicator as to how this will unfold in our daily lives as job seekers and hiring managers.
Students and working professionals can add web marketing/social media engagement to their job search methods. What is the payback for a hiring manager?
- They are better equipped to learn more about a candidate before and after an interview;
- Seeing how a candidate presents themselves online is key – it is getting increasingly difficult to shield anyone on the Internet these days;
- It offers a candidate’s perspective on industry issues and how they relate to project experiences gained at post-secondary school;
- It presents entirely new ways to gauge a candidates passion, initiative and leadership potential.
The web changed everything, including personal job search and ongoing career management.
Patti submitted a contributed article to Career Options Magazine early in the summer of 2009. Here it is, hot off the presses. Here is a link to the original story as written by Patti.
Here is a guy in Kentucky that shared the results of his $10 investment in Sharpie markers. Look how he finished his basement! His story is spreading across the world thanks to social networks, Twitter and the like. Check out the link to see a 360 degree shot of the room. It is amazing.
The next time you think about presenting your ideas, be it a school project, proposal or oral presentation, go beyond the research and facts you present. If you take the time to creatively sell the concept, your audience will take note and get all the more excited about your recommendations. Why is that?
When something catches your attention visually or through your imagination, the underlying proposal or idea behind the creativity simply resonates more. I have walked away from some great presentations really fired up because someone took the time to educate and entertain me. Interestingly enough, I discovered this Vancouver based company exclusively focused on creativity at work. They help business people through arts-based training, coaching and research-based consulting.
Keep this in mind as you think about your school projects and the content you build for your online profile. Creativity sells!
