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.