Posts Tagged 'Social Media'

Social Media Holiday?

Published March 8, 2010 Social Media 10 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

So my sister flew off to China the other week. We’re not really sure if/when she’ll be back as she hopes to stay a couple years and lots can happen in that time! (I’m thinking rich Chinese husbands here…)

China’s a beautiful country: I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a couple of times and it’s a truly amazing place so I can totally see the attraction. But China is also a bit of a black hole in terms of the internet and social media: No Facebook; no YouTube; no Wikipedia; sometimes access to blogs and Twitter, depending on the mood of the powers that be… To me, that makes it heaven on earth and hell on earth all at the same time! On one hand a beautiful, developing country steeped with a rich and fascinating history; and on the other hand lots of stuff I love banned! 

So my sister’s relocation had already got me thinking, but then I caught up with a friend last week too, and he got me thinking about it even more! He has just returned back from a self-imposed three month social media break. I was surprised – he seems to have survived unscathed (though it’s plausible he’s covering some deeper wounds…!) and all the better for it! So with my sister, my friend, China, and lots of recent talk on Twitter about social media stalking, I can’t help but wonder whether we shouldn’t all take a break from time to time. Take a chance to re-connect with the people and world around us! And  maybe it shouldn’t just be a social media holiday either – maybe it should be a break from technology in general. Smart phones, netbooks and laptops make everyone overly accessible these days. When do we really and truly turn off? I imagine some people do… People with more self-discipline than me… Maybe people with more money to burn or more commitments to keep… 

But I have no wish to stop my social media activity altogether. A lot of people don’t understand it (Mr J included) but it adds another dimension to my professional/personal development, my work life and my social life. When I started out it was more about networking, but as I’ve come to meet more and more people, and learn more and more new things, it’s benefitted me a lot on a work level too. We’ve had job opportunities, the chance to market ourselves more (for free, I might add!) plus I’ve learned so much about business, marketing, recruitment, and so on, and (I think) I’m able to bring a lot more to the table professionally as a result.

Though I personally think there’s a big future in social media, I know it’s not for everyone – the lines between my work life and personal life have never been so blurred as they are now. It’s a grey area made up of many different shades. And not just because of the relationships I’ve forged but also through the 24/7 access that it engenders: Be it helping a client with something on Twitter at 7am; emailing a student on the weekend; or responding to an amusing comment from a contact during work hours. Social media is such a blend of work and personal that I don’t really switch off from anything at all any more, but I’m kinda OK with that.

But social media is an integral part of my life and turning off from it would be difficult. Mr J and I naturally plan to holiday in China at some point during my sister’s stay, but it won’t just be a tourist holiday for me; it’ll be a social media holiday too! But maybe it’ll do me good. Maybe I need one. In fact, maybe we all do from time to time…

Facebook 180

Published February 28, 2010 Social Media 2 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

So you may or may not have read the Facebook post I wrote last year. It basically says bugger off and don’t ask to be my Facebook friend unless you’ve known me since we were, like, five (or something to that effect). Well, as some of you will know, I don’t really stick to that any more. 

The irony of the post is that, after I wrote it, several people I only know off twitter (who I’d not met) decided to add me as a friend. I made one exception. Then two. Then three. Then I needed a whole new Twitter privacy setting. Then I gave up any hope of keeping Facebook as a purely personal place and figured I might as well whore myself about anywhere and everywhere and befriend anyone. 

I’ll be honest though – I begrudge it a little (though it’s my own fault) and I reserve the right to rearrange my account at any time. In many ways I’m torn about my feelings towards Facebook. I like having my own private place where I can hang out with my friends and say dumb stuff. I already publicly say (slightly less) dumb stuff on Twitter, so it’s not like there isn’t already a medium to connect with me on that level. But on the other hand, it was nice to be able to tag people in pics after TRU London last week and it’s fun to connect more informally with those who remain fairly formal on Twitter.

So, for now, I’m available – not in all my glory, but in a carefully limited view of my glory – to add as a friend on Facebook. Do with me what you will…

More Un- Stuff!

Published February 24, 2010 Recruitment , Social Media 8 Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,

Photo courtesy of Tristan Greaves

So you’re all up to speed on my TRU Source experience now, I trust! And so to days two and three! In case you missed them I have a selection of decent photos here, and some rubbishy mobile ones here. Or they’re on Facebook too.

My first taste of an unconference was TRU London I in November of last year. It was totally different to TRU London II in many respects. For a start, I think the venue has a big impact on the feel of an event: TRU I was in a massive atrium-style room in the Barclays Building at Canary Wharf, and had little pods where the tracks were held. The pods were too small really and the acoustics for anything non-pod were pretty abominable so I think Bill and Geoff were right to change venues. TwitJobSearch provided the Soho venue this time, but having the rooms so far apart did make it feel a little less joined up though, IMO. I didn’t always know what was going on where and, if you got a bit bored or fancied a change, then it wasn’t quite so easy to sneak off elsewhere, as office security was fairly tight! I did, however, feel the big room was very conducive to networking. There were plenty of seats, a Twitter Fountain of #trulondon tweets, refreshments and so on.

Track-wise, I also felt that things were a lot more interactive this time. At TRU I it felt to me as though it was mostly the track leaders doing the talking, but at TRU II there was a lot more interaction and opinion sharing, which was really nice.

I attended a variety of (official) tracks including:

  • The Candidate Experience
  • The Future of Recruitment
  • Recruiting Communities
  • Employee Vs Employer Branding
  • Sourcing
  • Social Media Circus

As well as some more unofficial ones including:

  • The Unattending Track (a personal favourite!)
  • The Pub Track

And I also attended an HR Happy Hour radio show with Steve Boese and met a ridiculous number of wonderful people from the UK and overseas - some of whom were new to me and some of whom were familiar in name and avatar if nothing else! To me, while the learning and sharing of ideas is obviously key, a big part of this kind of events is about the networking and that is one area in which TRU London II delivered 100%!

The organisation wasn’t perfect on day one, but by day two it felt as though things had been ironed out. I actually much preferred day two for a variety of reasons – for a start it felt more relaxed, there were less people so it was a bit less chaotic, and it just felt more… well… unconferency! I also won a Flip Video Camera from Jobsite which increased my seratonin levels somewhat! :)

So it was a busy few days, all in all, and there’s too much content to talk about for one blog post, so once I’ve assimilated everything and tried some new ideas out I’ll report back on my learning from my three days of TRU events. In the meantime though, there’s a few little thank you messages I’d like to pass on:

Thank you…

  • To Bill Boorman and Geoff Web for organising the event;
  • To Jobsite for my Flip Cam;
  • To Peter Gold for sharing (IMO) the most excellent ideas, all of which I intend to use;
  • To Matt Alder and Sara Headworth for the never ending and highly amusing soundbites at the Unattending Track;
  • To my twitter buddy Mervyn Dinnen for keeping me in a constant supply of lattes, smoothies and diet cokes, despite receiving not one drink in return! (Next time it’s on me – promise!)
  • To everyone who RT’d my copious tweets;
  • To all my non-recruitment Twitter followers who didn’t unfollow me!

See you next time! :)

Unlearn

Published February 23, 2010 Recruitment 9 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Photo courtesy of Craig Fisher

So last week was, for me at least, three days of TRU events; all arranged by Bill Boorman and Geoff Webb. First of all there was TRU Source, and then there was two days of TRU London. And what a fab three days it was!

But let’s start with TRU Source, and I’ll do a separate post for TRU London…

Wednesday saw me hauling my suitcase up some narrow stairs in an office in Covent Garden (actually, that’s somewhat of a lie – Brendan Murphy carried both mine and his bags most of the way up… What a gent! :) ) to be met with a room overflowing with people. The group was split into two and (on the grounds that there was no way I was lugging my bag back down the stairs, plus it seemed unkind to ask Brendan to do it for me again having only just got it to the third floor) I stayed put!

We started the morning with Marie Journey and Jim Stroud. What a pair! Now I hate to get all gushy, but I have to say, TRU Source was an excellent event IMHO and I loved everyone there. Both Marie and Jim just had this unsurpressable energy and passion for sourcing, combined with an infinite knowledge of resources. I’d cleverly left my notebook and my netbook in the bottom of my suitcase so resorted to taking notes on the back of my old shopping lists until my kindly neighbour lent me half his notepad (and believe me I needed it!)

We broke for lunch early (Marie was hungry!) and had a chance for networking and chit chat. I got my first hug from Jim Stroud (the first of many, I might add – he’s such a hugslut!) and then Geoff Web did a bit of ad libbing and a Q&A session with us while we waited for the second session to start.

The afternoon brought with it a change of faces and we had another fantastic session with Katharine Robinson and Irina Shamaeva. Irina is, like, the goddess of all things boolean and was a fountain of search knowledge! Katharine was the UK sourcing representative and had oodles of useful rousources for us to look at. She also started the session with an excellent example of why you should be searching for people and not for CV’s – only two people in the room had current CV’s online! And there must have been over 20 of us!

I’m not even going to begin to tell you everything I learned because a) it will take too long b) you should have gone yourself, and c)… well there isn’t a c), sorry. I have to say though that I thoroughly enjoyed the day and came away feeling at least 5 IQ points more intelligent than I went in!

TRU Source was, IMHO, rather overshadowed by TRU London and I think that was a real shame. While TRU London was a fantastic event, TRU Source was an unsurpassed learning experience and I think it deserved it’s own moment of glory. Despite spending some six hours with five of the best sourcers out there, I also felt we’d hardly scratched the surface, and this was emphasised on Friday when I attended the TRU London Sourcing track and found I was still learning a raft of new skills!

I hope that Bill and Geoff run more UK sourcing events because I think there’s a lot we recruiters can learn. Next time, though, maybe we need a two day event for TRU Source by itself!

That Facebook Thing

Published December 13, 2009 Social Media 20 Comments
Tags: , ,

Now I love Facebook; there’s not many days I don’t log on. Facebook is my life in pictures; it’s silly, inane comments that only my friends and family get; it’s me at my rawest: No facade, no show, just me. If you’re my Facebook friend and I’m having a bad day, then you’ll probably hear about it in rather passionate prose… But you know what; I don’t have very many Facebook friends! I won’t befriend anyone I haven’t met, anyone I don’t like, or anyone I think there’s even a remote chance I might work with. And anyone I do befriend gets immediately labelled with one of three privacy levels. It’s not that there’s anything remotely dodgy on there – maybe the odd drunken SingStar photo, or a choice expletive, but nothing condemning. My Mum and Dad are both on there after all! But I don’t want every man and his dog seeing pictures of my life, friends and family! That’s private stuff!

I appreciate that some people use Facebook for recruitment and business. Some with success too… but for me, Facebook is the personal social media tool of choice. LinkedIn is for business; Twitter is for a mix of business, personal branding and pleasure; and Facebook is purely personal. I don’t mind being advertised to on there but pretty please, with cherries and cream, don’t ask me to be your friend if you’re not actually my friend!

I’m totally intrigued about how other people use Facebook though. So many people I know have hundreds of ‘friends’! To what end? And if you use it for business and pleasure then how do you keep the two separate? Do you have separate accounts, a raft of different privacy settings, or do you just keep it clean and not overly personal?

Please share your experiences; I would love to hear them!

Social Media: From Online to Offline

Published December 6, 2009 Social Media 12 Comments
Tags: , , ,

I have been busy, busy, busy this week! Now I’m back working 5 days a week it’s a real change of pace. It’s actually a bit alarming how quickly you get used to enjoying a 4 day weekend… [Note to self: Challenge for the new year is to get Mr J into a top notch job so that I can laze around more and he can keep me in the manner to which I’ve always wanted to become accustomed!] So anyway, my social media play time has fallen by the wayside somewhat and I’ve really missed it. But actually not quite so much as I thought I would, because so many of the people I talk to on social media are now people I talk to in ‘real life’ too!

In the last seven days I’ve spoken to @LisaScales, @AndyHeadworth and @AlanWhitford on the phone and to @RadicalRecruit on Skype. I’ve had dinner with @MervynDinnen and @LaraNewman, and tomorrow I’m meeting @ClareWildman for after work drinkies. Who needs social media, eh?! Not one of these relationships would be in effect without social media. Well, without Twitter, to be precise!

Maybe I’m preaching to the choir here, but social media is really only the beginning. So far I’ve met at least 24 people from my personal Twittersphere, and frankly I need to work harder to increase that number because it’s a bit lame all things considered! Seriously though, there’s only so much you can convey in 140 characters or with the written word and if you truly want your relationships to flourish then you need to take it offline, into the real world and onto the next level. Yes, social media is a fantastic start and, sadly, I may never get to meet a lot of my favourite Tweeps in person due to geographic barriers, so in that respect is still an amazing tool, but even so… There are plenty of people we can and should meet. There are people in all our networks who we’ve never met but who live within a stones throw.

Now obviously you have to be a bit cautious about meeting anyone from off the internet. Though the prospect of being ‘groomed’ at 20-, 30-, 40-something is actually marginally flattering, personal safety comes first! But we’re all adults and we can all use our common sense. There are local tweetups and events happening all the time and this can be a perfect setting for a first meeting, not to mention providing the opportunity to meet a whole host of other people you might not have connected with otherwise!

@LaraNewman was the first person I’d met on Twitter who I met offline. We went ice skating together and had a lovely afternoon! Mr J thought she was probably an axe murderer or, failing that, some sort of swinger who was touting for new recruits. Of course, she was neither of those things (I suspect he was slightly disappointed about the latter!) but we met in a public place and Mr J demanded I leave a report with him listing everything I knew about her, just in case I never returned home. To be honest, I’ve never (yet!) had any doubts about my meetings with people on Twitter. Most people reveal a whole host of information about themselves on both Twitter and LinkedIn and are known by at least one other person in my network, so short of it being a very large and organised axe murdering ring, the odds are good that they’re not a psychopath. I’d be far more reticent to meet anyone who wasn’t pre-vetted though and you do have to use your common sense.

Meeting someone in person can really only benefit a relationship. These are people you regularly talk to anyway and who you already know you have something in common with. So have a flick through some of your favourite social media contacts and see who you can meet for a coffee in person! So long as you’re sensible, the absolute worst that can happen is that you have a miserable hour and have nothing much to say to one another, so you’ve really nothing to lose!

Google Wave CVs?

Published December 2, 2009 Recruitment , Social Media 10 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

My personal description of Google Wave: A bit like Facebook messaging in that you can follow the conversation from the top down and embed photos, videos and links. The difference is that it’s in real-time and you can also attach documents, gadgets, maps and so on. You can also add and remove people from the wave as it goes along, make it public or private, and people can contribute and edit as they see fit.

Clearly it’s a lot more advanced than that, but you get the idea! If you’re not on Wave* or don’t know much about it and would like the official spiel then you can find it here.

So anyway, I’ve been lucky enough to score an invite thanks to @MikeOwcarz and have been messing about with it for about a month now. So far I’ve found it all a bit overrated: I can totally see the collaborative benefits, but for me personally it serves no real purpose at this moment in time. In fact, I can’t say that I’ve really used it for anything more than instant messaging until the other day when I thought I’d have a look at some of the public waves. This was inspired by a tweet by @andyheadworth explaining the joys of public searches. To do a public search, type “with:public” and your search term in the Google Wave search bar and see what comes up. I, for one, hadn’t even realised that public waves existed so I had a rather excited half hour seeing what I could find!

Well in all honestly there wasn’t an awful lot of public waves that I could be bothered to follow (lets be fair though; this is a new tool still in Preview stage), but I did see a rather inspired use of a wave as a CV. I’m not going to try and link to it because a) I don’t know if it’s possible, b) anyone without Wave won’t be able to see it and c) well, there isn’t a c) but everyone knows a good argument should have at least three points to it. Anyway, it’s called “CV: Scott Bradley” for those who want to search and have a look. It’s not amazing, but it did get me thinking about how well Wave could be used as a tool in this respect.

I think dear old Scott has used his wave quite nicely on the whole. He’s attached his CV, written a nice little paragraph about his situation and has embedded a location map. The bit I don’t understand is that he’s then also copied and pasted his CV into the body of the wave which surely defeats the object, but there you go! Scott got me thinking though; this could be a great tool for job seekers when (if?) it goes more mainstream. Depending on your career, you could make a whole online portfolio with video, work samples and links to your websites and/or social media pages. People could provide feedback, ask questions and get in touch quickly and easily. I appreciate you can probably do this on a website with a bit of IT know-how, but this is a very useable and accessible format for those not in the know and, as one of Google’s little gems, it will surely be beautifully searchable!

Now I’m not overly technically minded so it’s possible I’m being totally obtuse here. Perhaps putting your details on a public wave opens you up to all sorts of ID or intelligence theft, or maybe it opens you up to abusive remarks and other such horrors, but it’s a nice idea and I take my hat off to Scott for being one of the first people (that I can find, anyway) to use it in such a creative way.

Public CVs and portfolios might not be for every person or profession but it did make me think about where the future of CVs could be headed.

———————————————–

Note: If you want to make one of your waves public then you need to include public@a.googlewave.com as a participant. This is easier said than done because when you type in the email address Wave tells you there’s no account for this email address. Instead, you have to go to ‘Manage Contacts’ and add a new contact from there. ‘Public’ will then appear in your contacts and you can add it from there.

* I still have a couple of spare Google Wave invites so, if you haven’t been able to get one yet, talk to me on Twitter and I’ll happily oblige on a first come, first served basis.

The Personal Benefits of Social Media

Published November 24, 2009 Recruitment , Social Media 18 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Last week was the UK’s first recruitment unconference and it was certainly an interesting event. I was working the Social Media Track with @mattalder and @carveconsulting. Anyone who knows Matt and Paul will know how knowledgeable both are when it comes to social media; I cannot tell you how much I learned from them throughout the day!

Matt and Paul know all about using social media in business but me, I don’t know anything much about that really. I work in the construction industry and, as emaciated as the industry is, you don’t find that many candidates or clients from my little niche working the social networks. I use social media for me; my personal development and networking. I don’t know anything much about posting jobs, using boolean searches for finding candidates on LinkedIn, or monitoring my company’s brand because that’s not how I use it, so I didn’t feel as though I had an awful lot to contribute on that front. I’m more about personal branding and interaction, so I was a little sad that everyone was more interested in the corporate stuff. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised though really; these are tough times for recruiters and social media is a fairly new tool for a lot of people. Me, I’m a bit of a geek – I’ve been making friends and networking online since my mid-teens and the days of ICQ, IRC and forums.

Social media for personal use is something we all need to be aware of and work smarter at though. The benefits are endless but the two major ones are, in my opinion, personal development and networking.

Personal Development

We all have different work ethics, operate in different industries and have different training. Sharing our experiences and opinions, be it through blogs, tweets, emails or in person, is enlightening! We can learn something from everyone in our network and I think the unconference really highlighted that: There were all sorts of unique ways that companies and individuals were using social media, all sorts of tools that people were using to monitor their brand, and a variety of positive and negative experiences that people had had which we could all learn something from. I’m not going to list them all here; go to the next unconference in February and see for yourself! I didn’t get to visit any other tracks (apart from the secret track at the end!) but I still came away with a couple pages of notes, so I can only imagine what those who had a chance to move about learned!

Networking

I worked mostly in customer service and HR before moving into recruitment so, frankly, I don’t know an awful lot of people in the industry. I say “don’t” but I actually mean “didn’t” because social media (Twitter in particular) has totally changed that for me over the last nine months or so. There are some amazing people out there that you can talk to and Twitter is an amazing way to interact with people you might never meet or give a second glance to in real life. And these people can not only help you find useful tools, be your sounding board, provide services, or introduce you to relevant people; they can also become your friends.

My experiences of social media are nearly all positive. In fact, there’s very little negative I can think of in nearly 15 years of messing about with it in various formats. The kindness of strangers is an inspiring and thought provoking thing. Countless people who owe me nothing have helped me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and I am a better and wiser person for it. It may seem a daunting and unfamiliar place to those new to it, but give it the chance it deserves! Immerse yourself in it, interact with people, share your opinions, offer help and advice. To me, it’s not all about business. My favourite contacts aren’t those who constantly talk about business or forward links, but are those who share little titbits about their lives and let their personalities shine through. So even if you’re mostly using social media for business, consider the personal benefits too and do a bit of work on your personal brand. You won’t regret it!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 17 other followers

About Me

Over eight years’ recruitment, HR and sales experience in the private sector. For the last four and a half years I have worked in the construction industry, specialising in the recruitment and co-ordination of quantity surveyors.

Click on my picture for more information.

My Tweets

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.