Over the Hump & Playing in Their New Sandbox

It’s the end of October and also the middle of midterms for college and university students across the country.  I guess you could say we are over the ‘hump’ of the first term.  Getting over the hump means that we have activity in the WhyHire.me portal.  Most students are 60-75% finished their learning modules.  We are starting to see new photos uploaded, pitches being written, blog posts going up and videos being loaded.  And for the most part, unless you are in one of our classes, you can’t see any of it.

You can’t see anything because you are not in a class that has adopted WhyHire.me as a program and learning environment for personal branding.  Those that have chosen to use the program have closed the doors to the public while they learn and explore the world of social networking for personal branding.  Yes, this generation is very aware of social networks because of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube but they are not familiar or comfortable with using social networks for developing a professional presence.  That’s why we have developed a place where they can learn and experiment with their classmates and professors.  We’re also playing with them in their new sandbox.  We have 14 classrooms involved in business programs at Algonquin College, Centennial College and Carleton University.

I spoke to a few classes recently and here are a few comments from students in the class:

“The presentation was great, I really enjoyed it even though it was pretty early on a Friday morning. I can say it was very inspiring for me, gave me new ideas on to what I can do with me as a brand.”

“After your talk today (which very much inspired me), I was thinking I would film an introduction video of myself for the profile. A sort of visual media piece to make me stand out and inform people of what I’m about.”

“I think the lessons and system are very educational. The creativity and thought put into this system is very much appreciated. It’s about time we started stepping away from just the traditional resumes and use technology to help promote ourselves. Congratulations to you and your team for being so innovative and allowing a new perspective into the education system.”

I’m looking forward to the second part of the term, as more students play, experiment and start to understand the power of the developing their own personal brand.

Tempt yourself with green ads and donate!

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!

Recruiting practices in transition. How it’s done at Starbucks.

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.

Will employers respond to online personal branding?

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?

1. They are better equipped to learn more about a candidate before and after an interview;
2. Seeing how a candidate presents themselves online is key – it is getting increasingly difficult to shield anyone on the Internet these days;
3. It offers a candidate’s perspective on industry issues and how they relate to project experiences gained at post-secondary school;
4. 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.

Career Options Magazine – Creating Your Online Brand

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.

The Debate: The Myth of Digital Literacy

Sarah Ormon pointed me towards this TVO segment on Thursday evening.

It raises some very important points about education, literacy and new ways of learning. The panelists discuss the growing gap between how students can learn versus the age old methods that have been in schools for decades.

Is the gap unbridgeable?  Find out by watching the video.  Some key highlights are as follows:

1. Literacy rates are on the INCREASE amongst youth and adults! Thanks to Harry Potter, Twilight and new media (graphic novels), more people are keen on reading and writing.
2. Reading is more social today since people can connect and share views on what they are reading.
3. Students are writing more than ever, but are they writing better? There is plenty of unseen writing going on. When the writing is more visible, it has the potential to be better.
4. Ideas, knowledge and experience can be expressed beyond the written word through videos, photos and simulations.
5. Connectivity and life experiences need to be incorporated into learning.
6. If you can’t say something in less than 140 characters, its likely not worth saying. If your presentation or point can’t be summarized into 140 characters, perhaps the message is not worth promoting.  This generated considerable viewpoints across the panel.
7. Texting will not kill literacy – it is an accepted practice to shorten one’s message to leverage the medium. Don’t sweat the abbreviations.
8. Spelling and grammar – know when and where it is really important. Language is also changing….the word alot did show up in the New York Times as if it were correct!

The next divide is all about who has the power to create media and get it consumed! This segment truly underlines the importance of embracing new media and incorporate it into learning. Our program was built on this premise of taking action, creating content and being found through search and sustained participation in social media.

Creativity Sells!

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!

Digging Deep at Carleton University and Centennial College

Patti and I had the opportunity to present at Carleton University and Centennial College as guest speakers last week. It was a tremendous opportunity to gauge the response of the students and faculty members. There is no question, the underlying content and learning objectives are new and atypical for post-secondary students.

The WhyHire.me program calls on career coaching, branding and social media tools and methods. Many students are not exposed to some of the questions we ask until they get to the career center in their final year. By starting earlier, we are aiming to help students take a more proactive approach to managing how they want to be perceived by future employers and build their confidence.

In short, when we Dig Deep we encouraging them to:

• Understand their strengths and passions,
• Discover their underlying values and personality traits,
• Develop action plans to manage their weaknesses,
• Seek out opportunities to gain experiences to support their brand identity.

With that completed, students are in a far better position to develop their positioning pitch, which is the foundation of their brand.