Friday, May 28, 2010

Cold Calling For Your Job Search

As a former recruiter, I will be the first person to recommend against cold calling a recruiter. In addition, those job postings say, “No phone calls, please” for a reason – calling to follow up on your application is not a good use of time. However, does that mean you should never cold call in your job search? Not at all — I am a big advocate of cold calling prospective employers in your job search for the right reasons and with the right technique.

Cold calling covers more ground: finding a personal introduction for a “warm” call might be impossible for certain firms where you just don’t have a lead. Cold calling is faster: when you rely on someone else to make an introduction you are hostage to their timetable (and no one will have the same urgency about your search as you will). Cold calling keeps the ball in your court: you know exactly how you’re going to pitch a cold call, but you can’t control how someone talks about you when they refer you, regardless of how well-intentioned they are.

But cold call hiring managers, not recruiters. My job as a recruiter was to find the best match for my client, not help you with your job search. It was rare that an unsolicited call was from a candidate with the exact fit – if you have the exact fit to an open job, the recruiter will likely find you. The irony is that, as a recruiter I had the perspective to often see how someone without the exact background or experience could do the job, but I was not in a position to advocate for that person. A recruiter’s role is to make the exact match and keep everyone else out. Hiring managers, on the other hand, are the decision-makers for the actual job and don’t need to focus on keeping people out, just getting the right person in. You want to cold call the hiring manager. This means you need to identify who is the decision-maker for that job.

Your cold call to the hiring manager needs to demonstrate that you are that right person for their job. A lot of jobseekers focus their pitch on who they are – where they worked, what they did. The prospective employer cares about how their new hire will work for them and what they will do for them. Frame everything you did in terms of benefit to the hiring manager. It’s not just about having done extensive market research for Old Company A. It’s about being able to research this Market-You-Care-About for Target Company B. This means you need to know your target intimately – what they are working on, what keeps them up at night – so you can position yourself as the answer to their prayers.

Identifying the right people and positioning yourself in a way that gets noticed is hard work. But it’s the difference between the average jobseeker with little to no results and the star candidate with multiple offers (yes, people are getting multiple offers in this market). Identifying hiring managers and pitching yourself well, while difficult, are skills that can be learned. Many of my clients didn’t believe in cold calling till they did it and got jobs because of it. So get the support you need to do it right and cold call away. Cold calling is an effective job search strategy.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

25 Sources To Help You Get Your LinkedIn Game On

I’m an avid and daily user of LinkedIn and I’m always seeking to learn more about how to use it effectively for building relationships, networking, job search, recruiting, personal branding and business development. I also enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others and regularly speak to groups, associations and corporate clients about how to use LinkedIn. At those events, I typically provide attendees a LinkedIn Resource sheet to take home. I’m in the process of updating my Resources sheet for 2009, and I thought I’d share the links that were provided over the past year with you. So here you go:

Why You Should Use LinkedIn:

Creating Your LinkedIn Profile:

Building/Re-Enforcing Your Personal & On-Line Brand Using LinkedIn:

Ways to Use LinkedIn:

Using LinkedIn For Job Search:

How Do Recruiters Use LinkedIn?

General Resources:

I hope you find some of these resources to be helpful, and once I’ve update my list for 2009, I’ll share those links with you too. Feel free to add any resources you would suggest that I include in the Comments section below. The list can only be better with your help!

6 Ways to Leverage LinkedIn

The top six social media tips to know before you leave the office.

Last week, LinkedIn launched its new “follow” feature, which enables users to track a company from its profile page or the profile pages of its employees. This new functionality is a reminder that the professional social networking site is more than just a resource for job hunters. Now, LinkedIn’s 65 million members worldwide can monitor a company’s news, new hires, and special events, and marketers should take notice.

The network’s business focus makes it a prime platform for demonstrating thought leadership, networking with potential leads, drawing attention to products or services, and engaging internal audiences. Furthermore, recent updates and rollouts have made it necessary to monitor the conversations about corporate brands taking place on the site.

This week’s Six @ Six outlines six best practices every company should be implementing on this increasingly important social network platform. How is your company using LinkedIn to enhance its brand reputation and generate business leads? Let me know on Twitter @valerieelston.

1. Claim the Company Profile:

For some, this advice may seem exceedingly basic. Yet, a surprising number of businesses are not in control of their company’s profile on LinkedIn. Taking charge of the content available on LinkedIn is critical because the site ranks highly in search results and receives about 70 million visits a month. Additionally, it’s important that someone be assigned to manage the profile because any employee can edit the page. This will ensure content is correct and current. LinkedIn indicates the last person to have edited the profile so you will know if someone other than the profile manager has made changes. Be sure to brand your page with your company’s logo, add links to other online resources such as your company’s website, and choose to have your profile automatically populated with news items. These features will add depth to your profile and increase the content available for search engines to crawl and index.

2. Optimize the Profile:

Because the amount of information one can add to a company profile is governed by LinkedIn’s pre-defined fields, it’s important to make the most of the space available. Take time to rewrite your company description from an SEO perspective. What are the keywords that drive people to your company’s website? These words should be liberally utilized in your company’s LinkedIn profile. Your employees can also take steps to optimize their profiles, which will enhance their credibility as brand ambassadors while also strengthening the company’s SEO. For example, when entering website information on your profile, you can add a description by selecting “other” from the drop down menu. This enables you to add keywords that will help search engines direct searchers to your links.

3. Empower Internal Brand Ambassadors:

The power of employee brand ambassadors cannot be underestimated. Employees are your brand’s first line of defense on LinkedIn and encouraging them to participate helps disseminate positive information about your company. Many of your employees may already be taking part in group discussions or using the Answers feature. Of course, these communications should be subject to internal checks before posting and all employees should be provided with best practices and instructions so they can most effectively leverage their personal profiles.

4. Take Advantage of Groups:

Whether you want to create and manage a group or simply take part in an ongoing discussion, LinkedIn groups offer an easy way to network with industry peers around the world. Recommend that your employees join groups for your industry’s professional associations, local networks, or those devoted to interests in their field. Groups offer two key benefits. First, they provide opportunities for thought leadership where employees can post to discussions based on their own expertise. And second, they enable employees to share positive information about your brand from news articles, company blog posts, and other online sources.

5. Integrate Your Networks:

LinkedIn can potentially be a top driver of Web traffic when properly integrated. As your company likely does with Twitter and Facebook, prominently display a LinkedIn icon throughout your website. With the addition of the new “follow” feature, users can start following your company through your profile page, so encouraging them to click through to the site will increase the number of people who decide to join your network. Make sure you highlight LinkedIn on each social networking site your company engages as well – be it Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

6. Consider Direct Ads:

As was mentioned in Six @ Six a few weeks ago, LinkedIn’s Direct Ad capabilities enable advertisers to target audiences by criteria such as company size, job function, industry, position, and geography. The value of targeting your ads based on these criteria is immense and companies should also consider purchasing direct ads to enhance and protect brand reputation. LinkedIn ads can be connected to your company’s profile, therefore increasing your legitimacy and creating an additional opportunity for users to find out more about your company, products, services, and employees.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Four Career Networking Tips That Work

Amy Fontinelle,

Find out the who, the how and the why of using networking to move up in your career.
Many of us look at networking the way we look at going to the dentist. We know we're supposed to do it, but we really don't want to. So we put it off until one day, something goes wrong and we have no other choice.

The way networking is usually presented makes it seem incredibly unappealing. It defies our natural tendencies: it seems insincere and sycophantic, and for introverts in particular it seems to require becoming a whole new person--one who is fearless, gregarious and never encounters an awkward silence.

But networking isn't really about forcing yourself out the door to attend networking events where you'll present your elevator speech and hand out your business card to as many people as possible. It's about developing genuine relationships with people who will be there for you even when you don't need them. So how do you do that?

1. Become the type of person other people want to meet.
This is the key message of Guerrilla Networking by Jay Conrad Levinson and Monroe Mann. This strategy may be particularly appealing to introverts, who can be put off by traditional networking tips that seem to require being outgoing.

"Why work your butt off to meet people when you can put that same energy into becoming an interesting person within your field, and then, benefit again by having the same people you want to meet ... come up to you?" the authors ask in their book. "Meeting people can do nothing for you if you yourself have nothing interesting to offer," they add.

Some of their networking tips take time to achieve--you can't become an expert in your field or attain media exposure overnight--but others you can implement immediately. Offering to help people, smiling and sending an e-mail are easy for anyone to do.

2. Be more interested in other people than you are in yourself.
Almost everyone is much more interested in themselves than they are in you. And almost everyone, given the chance, will talk about themselves rather than really listening to you. So set yourself apart by following Dale Carnegie's time-tested advice from How to Win Friends and Influence People: become genuinely interested in other people.

There's something truly interesting about everyone. That being said, what do you do if you can't find that something about the person you're talking to? Move on. The beauty of effective networking is that quality is more important than quantity. You don't have to click with or be friends with everyone.

3. Be more concerned with collecting business cards than with handing them out.
If you think handing out your business card is a great way to make new contacts, you're dead wrong. When you hand someone your card without getting theirs in return, the ball is in their court. You have no way of contacting them again.

In Guerrilla Marketing, Levinson recommends that when you get someone else's card, you jot down notes about what you talked about on the back and follow up the next day. With your quick follow up, that person will be more likely to remember who you are. Remind them what you talked about and show them that you were actually paying attention to what they had to say, and you'll really make a great impression.

4. Join clubs.
Don't just join clubs for the sake of meeting people for networking--people will see right through your insincerity. Join clubs that do things you are genuinely interested in. You'll already have at least one thing in common with everyone else in the group, and you'll have a much better chance of developing a relationship that could one day lead to a job than you will by attending random networking events. New people are always visiting and joining clubs, and there are plenty of clubs to join, so your network will never get stale. Best of all, you will probably have fun and make friends, so building your network won't feel like drudgery.

The Bottom Line
It's not a bad idea to always have your elevator speech in mind and a business card in your wallet, but those strategies alone aren't going to get you very far. The same goes for staying in touch with people even and especially when you don't need something--yes, you should do this, but you should do it because you really care about those people, not because you hope that your investment in birthday cards and postage will pay off one day when you're unemployed. The real secret to networking is to be sincere and to be the best version of yourself.

Original Forbes Article

Jobvite Recruiting Tool Taps Social Networks

Recruiting-technology firm Jobvite Wednesday unveiled Jobvite Share, a free tool that uses the power of social networking to distribute and target job openings to increase referrals and track in real-time the value of job placement ads.

Using Jobvite Share, a company executive or human resources manager looking to fill a position enters a job URL and Jobvite creates a custom, trackable listing for the position, regardless of where it is distributed on the Internet. The job listing -- dubbed the Jobvite -- can automatically be sent to specific contacts within Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email or elsewhere on the Web, and tracked using real-time metrics.

“As we continue to see signs of an economic recovery, companies -- still strapped for resources -- can now recruit the best, closest fit, talent on the open social web for free using Jobvite Share,“ said Dan Finnigan, president and CEO of Jobvite.

Prospective employers can share short Jobvite links through emails or via one or several social networking sites, blogs and job boards. The software uses an algorithm determine those potential candidates that best-meet the job qualifications. Recipients can pass along these messages to their connections, further expanding the prospective pool of candidates, according to Jobvite.

Since Jobvite Share includes up to five trackable links, the employer can determine which sites are most effective for marketing and distributing job leads. These metrics monitor views, clicks, forwards, and clicks to apply, and track individual channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and e-mail. They also follow referrals as they spread across users' individual networks.

Social networking sites continue to play a big role in uniting employers and prospective hires. TwitJobSearch.com, a job search engine for Twitter, posted 586,836 new jobs in the last 30 days and 694 new jobs between about 10 and 11 EDT today, according to the site.

Original Article

6 Ways to Keep Your Employees From Jumping Ship

With layoffs declining to a number lower than that of employees quitting, companies are going to have another issue to face in the coming years. This is especially true for companies that have taken advantage of the recessionary employment situation in the handling of their own employees.

I know people who have lowered their employees' salaries because “they have to keep this job,” or have added on work duties to an already stretched workforce because “they don’t have the option to leave, since there are no jobs available.”

Mr. Employer: This is changing fast. According to the latest data from LinkUp.com, there are more openings than ever. There are jobs out there, and companies must realize that a few years of pent-up demand is about to be unleashed.

So, if you are an employer, what can you do now to stem the tide of employees shouting “I Quit!?”

Six things come to mind.

1. For one thing, as quickly as you can, make meaningful, if small, adjustments to salaries and work schedules. Certainly, opening up lines of communication and holding one-on-one meetings will be helpful to reestablish your company.

2. Remember that pay is always far down the list of reasons why people quit. “Soft” things like respect, culture, and environment all affect the employee who is daydreaming about greener pastures.

3. Do not threaten or lie. I know companies like to describe how evil another employer might be, or how bad the products are. Typically this backfires when the employee realizes later that they were misdirected.

4. Be sure you make the effort to keep your key people. Sometimes in the frenetic pace we all keep, we often forget that our best performers--the people upon whom we depend so much--are also looking. It is almost human nature. We all want to be loved--at home and at work. So, don’t forget to show your key people some love at work. Simple things help: update them on new ideas and projects; compliment them; ask for their opinions; give them tickets to a game. Even a brief but sincere showing of gratitude will work wonders.

5. Next (and this is touchy, but I recommend it) I think you must let it be known that if someone quits, there is a company policy against hiring quitting employees. Before I get flamed here again for this, let me be clear that I do understand that every company is different and I know some make a practice of hiring ex-employees back. In fact, in my own start-ups, I have not followed my advice in every case.

But far too often, someone, particularly a younger employee, will quit just to try out a new job. If your company functions as a safety net, and you will always hire people back, rest assured that more people will test this part of your policy manual. Of course, doing so sends bad messages and creates all sorts of problems for you with the people who stay and remain loyal to you.

6. What else can employers do? I think now is the time to start new projects. New product development efforts should be increased and more people included in the process. Nothing excites employees more than belonging to an organization that is always investing the future and trying new things. If your people can’t brag about what is happening at the BBQ this summer, they might be looking around.

Obviously, if you have taken advantage of your employees during this crisis, and that management style has been pervasive among senior leadership, you are going to have some people quitting. And for you, I have a simple question.

What did you expect?

G. L. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. Currently, he is chairman of JobDig, which operates LinkUp, one of the fastest-growing job search engines. His blog can be found at WhatWouldDadSay.com.

Original USNEWS Article

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Tips for improving your LinkedIn SEO

Monday, May 24, 2010

Are you hurting your business relationships by syncing Twitter and LinkedIn?

Quick Update: Chris Brogan just posted his tips on using LinkedIn effectively. Sheds light on best practices he follows, some of which I’ve outlined below. Read more on Chris’ blog. And, here’s another on how to use LinkedIn status updates. Priceless.

I noticed my good friend, Chris Brogan, seems to have come down with a case of Twitter overkill, on LinkedIn. Let me explain. Recently, we started letting our users sync up their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. That lets you stream your status updates from LinkedIn to Twitter and vice-versa. You do have the option to selectively update your LinkedIn account with only those tweets tagged #in or you could let the whole fire-hose of your twitter imagination run riot on LinkedIn.


Would you take your vacation pictures and paste it in your cubicle. No, you wouldn’t. So, why does it seem ok to let in your entire twitter stream directly to LinkedIn. That said, I’m sure you’d love to show off a picture of you standing next to a business celebrity you may have stumbled upon and paparazzi’d while on vacation. The problem with these auto twitter streams is that folks like Chris start seeing a relentless twitter stream when they log into their LI homepage.

Of course, this is dependent on the # of friends you’re connected to on LinkedIn, as well as how twitter friendly they are. In Chris’ case, since he’s both a best selling author and marketing expert he probably has a ton of connection invites (most of which he accepts – more on that later) who also have a lot to say on Twitter. Unfortunately, some of them chose to stream all that Twitter to their LinkedIn accounts.

Chris Brogan's LinkedIn page with Tweets

So, here are three quick tips for those of you who are interested in nurturing your business relationships on LinkedIn via network updates but would like to avoid annoying your business connections with a meaningless interfering Twitter stream:

1. Control the flow of tweets in your stream:

As Chris recommends, go to your LinkedIn-Twitter sync Accounts and Settings and turn down the Twitter faucet. Secondly, make sure the tweets you bring in to your professional LinkedIn ecosystem are hashtagged #in and have a business context.

For e.g.
or

vs. the random LOST tweet that popped in to my LinkedIn stream today.

2. Hide the noisy twitterers in your stream:

Secondly, increase the quality of your connections (keeping it business) and spring clean your LinkedIn accounts every once in a while. Many times when I see persistent, random tweets come in from people I don’t very well recognize I use that as an opportunity to weed out the connections that may have sprung up inconsequentially.

When you see someone spam you with their tweets, all you’ve to do is mouseover the right of each status update, which will pop up the HIDE button. Click on that and you won’t receive updates from that user no more. You can also do this on your Facebook feed, if you’ve a noisy friend, for e.g.

For a more granular control of the updates you see on the homepage, click through to this Update Settings page where you can then tweak updates by either connections or Type.


Let’s not forget, LinkedIn is a business focused networking site, so letting in all your tweets – all personal and business – will have the exact opposite effect you were hoping to achieve by using the site. And, by that, I mean it’d end up hurting the same business relationships you were hoping to nurture.

Plus, be thoughtful while you send out those LinkedIn connection invites. My rule of thumb is to invite folks I’ve met a few times, talked to and who can recognize my personalized invite right away. What is yours?

3. Time your status updates for maximum effect:

Now that you’re no longer that noisy neighbor everyone’s calling the cops on. Learn how to use your LinkedIn-Twitter sync to maximum effect for your business. Time your relevant, most impressive tweets or status updates for maximum effect. By that I mean scheduled updates at the most effective timings. Here are some tips on what’s the best time to tweet. There are a slew of services that allow you to tweet information to select services. Three that come to mind – Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and Seesmic – all of which allow scheduling your tweets.

Tweetdeck’s new update in particular has me wowed since it allows me to not only shorten and track the effectiveness of links through my bit.ly account, but it also let’s me schedule tweets across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

One last tip: If you’re a small business owner or the social media manager who runs your company’s official Twitter account (like I do here), I’d recommend tying that to your Twitter account. If your company does not have a Twitter account but you’d still like to share the latest happening at your company with your LinkedIn network, then consider adding your company’s blog to LinkedIn. More on that here.

These tips are just the beginning. I’ll continue to blog on ways you can use social media effectively at work and for your business, right here on this blog. Please consider subscribing to my blog or following me on Twitter.

Original Article

20 Simple Twitter Tips for Your Job Search

Whether you're starting your career or looking for a change, if you're on a job search, you may have heard that Twitter is a great resource. You've heard right. Twitter offers a great way to ramp up your job search, and we've highlighted 20 great tips that can help make it work for you.
  1. Use your real name: You use your real name when searching for a job, so make sure you do the same on Twitter. Set up your first and last name in your profile, and if you can, use your name as your Twitter username.
  2. Tweet before you follow: Be sure to share useful content before you start following friends, colleagues, and industry professionals. This way, you'll give people a reason to follow you back.
  3. Search for opportunities: Don't just expect an opportunity to fall into your lap — seek it out! Use Twitter's search to look for jobs in your niche.
  4. Use a Hire Me! ribbon: Put a ribbon that advertises your desire for work, so even when you're not tweeting about your job search, followers know that you're looking.
  5. Keep a web copy of your resume online: If you get in contact with someone who would like to see your resume, it's handy to have one that you can just send in a tweet. A tool like VisualCV comes in handy.
  6. Follow your target companies: If the company or companies you'd really like to work for are on Twitter, follow them, and any employees that are on as well. You'll be able to connect better than before and stand out among candidates.
  7. Share on multiple networks: Integrate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn so that contacts on all networks hear your message. If you can, use tools that can push updates from one service to another.
  8. Follow industry leaders: Follow the leaders in your industry to learn more about it and benefit from their network.
  9. Toot your own horn: Put yourself in the Twitter stream by describing your specific skill set. Be descriptive — if your specialty is selling phone systems to food service companies in South Florida, say so!
  10. Use hashtags: Find hashtags for upcoming conferences in your industry, hot topics, and more to become part of the conversation as well as identify people that you need to be following on Twitter.
  11. Look for a job posting account: If there's a certain company or industry you'd like to work in, try to find specific Twitter accounts that offer updates on new job postings available.
  12. Ask for help to close the deal: If friends or contacts work where you'd like to get a job, ask them for a recommendation to increase your likelihood of getting hired.
  13. Give good karma: Don't blatantly self-promote. Take some time to retweet and interact with others.
  14. Make your presence employer friendly: Use your bio as a job pitch, use a professional-looking avatar, and tweet about your job search. You can even link to your online resume.
  15. Be worth following: Don't be rude or boring — share interesting and useful updates with your followers, and focus on interacting with them as well.
  16. Always keep SEO in mind: Your Twitter profile and tweets are indexed by Google and other search engines, so any time you put information out there, think about how you can better make it found.
  17. Retweet industry news: Pass on news and tweets that are important, and you're one step closer to being found.
  18. Have a "Twitter pitch" ready: Much like the elevator speech, you need to be ready with a pitch you can deliver in 140 characters or less.
  19. Don't tweet about unemployment: You don't want to come off as whiny-keep your complaints about unemployment to yourself.
  20. Look for job search advice: Find posts from career gurus and other people who can help you find a job on Twitter

Layoff lessons: Advice from those who know: Cut back, shop smarter, keep looking

RACINE COUNTY — Whether a company closes or eliminates a position, the result is the same for the employee: No job tomorrow; start the hunt.

Among the county’s unemployed are people with education, skills and experience that have made them employable in the past. Now, they can’t find work, and it’s not for the first time. People who never thought they would be out of work have found themselves in that position several times.

Each time, they made adjustments: cut back, shopped smarter and kept looking.

A family effort

Steve Torretta, 50, spent 20 years as a programmer analyst.

He is in his third period of unemployment in the past eight years. He was first laid off in March 2003. In November 2004, he got a job with a company in Lake Geneva. In January 2009, he was laid off again. They hired him back as a contractor in May, to help with unfinished projects. That ended in January.

Torretta’s entire family helps adjust expenses to fit their reduced income. He lives in the Town of Waterford with his wife and two daughters.

“The first thing we did was determine where we’d make cuts,” he said. “For starters, we went more toward trying to keep the heat down a little bit. We went more toward generic foods, where flavor wasn’t going to be too much different. We combined trips ... and planned ahead so whatever direction we were going we’d get other things done.”

They postponed work on the house, and did some work themselves. He applies for four to six jobs a week, but it can be hard to get an interview.

“From January 2009 to May, I had no interviews,” he said. “When my old boss asked if I wanted to come back, they afforded me the chance to take time off to go to interviews. I still wasn’t able to get any interviews.”

Torretta speaks calmly about his situation. Even though his family is living on one income, he said they haven’t faced too much financial difficulty because they had savings to fall back on.

If he hasn’t found work by the end of the summer, Torretta said he will probably go back to school.

“I think everybody should be unemployed for a significant duration to get the gist of what others go through rather than just say, ‘Oh, you can get a job,’ ” Torretta said. “Some have that attitude. It’s not that they look down on you for being an unemployed person. It’s more like, ‘Why don’t you have a job?’ They’re not seeing the big picture of how hard the job search can be at some times.”

Planned ahead for the unexpected

Jess Sedgwick, 60, was unemployed for the first time in 2000, when his position at Johnson International in Racine was eliminated. He found another job in Milwaukee, where he was the vice president business analyst/facility manager for M&I Support Services Corp. After five years there, his position was eliminated again.

In 2006, he worked in loss prevention at a grocery store, he said. In 2007, he found another job, this time as a “working supervisor” managing records retention and retrieval. That job ended earlier this year.

He and his wife live in Caledonia, near Wind Point Elementary School. Sedgwick’s wife is retired, he said, and they have health insurance through her.

“We don’t live uncomfortably,” he said.

They have paid down their debt, Sedgwick said, which helps keep their costs in their budget. Other than their mortgage, he said, they don’t have other loans or debt payments to make. If they use their credit cards, they pay them off every month.

Still, his wife has taken a short-term job this year, Sedgwick said, in part to pay for the three weddings — two out of town — they will be attending this fall.

He got severance pay when he was laid off from Johnson International and M&I. When he was employed, he set aside money just in case.

“In facilities management, you have a job today and they can contract it tomorrow,” he said. “I tried to build up some kind of reserve.”

Sedgwick said he feels his age and experience level are making it harder for him to find a job.

“Companies screen for experience because that means higher salaries,” he said. “There’s also a barrier to older workers because it’s difficult to go into a lower-level position.”

At this point, Sedgwick said, he’s not necessarily looking for a job that will make a lot of money, but wants to use his skills to contribute to something.

“I know what my boundaries are,” he said. “I’d love to take a position with a nonprofit and not make as much but contribute to the community in that way. It’s tough to get people to see that.”

Finding new opportunities

In 1996, Althea Erickson, then 45, left a job as an administrative assistant at InSinkErator to become an executive assistant at Jacobsen-Textron. She saw the move as a promotion, but it only lasted five years.

She found herself out of work in 2001 when the plant shut down. She did temp work at some of the area’s biggest corporations. In January 2003 she landed a full-time job at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. She changed positions there in 2006, and two years later her position was cut.

She turned to family for advice. They helped her make out a budget, and her brother suggested she try to get a job in retail if administrative jobs continued to be hard to find.

That’s what she did.

Now 59, Erickson, who lives on Racine’s north side, works 30 hours a week at the Milaeger’s Sturtevant store. She enjoys the work, but she’s hoping to find something in the field where she spent her career, even part time. She applies for two to four jobs a week, she said.

Erickson has confidence in her skills, but hasn’t been able to get a job in her field. Sometimes, she goes back to that 1996 decision to change jobs.

“At the time, I had sat down and figured out what I needed to live on,” she said. “At that time period, I needed to find something else.”

Now, she’s got a “bare-bones budget” with little personal spending money. She said she looks for bargains at garage sales and thrift shops, and limits the amount she has each week for purchases. She has dial-up Internet service at home and packs a lunch for work.

“It’s been good to learn how to be smarter with what you have,” she said.

She’s kept up her clerical skills through volunteer work, and says she feels her age isn’t helping her get hired.

“I’m fairly confident that’s it,” she said. “I wish more employers would look at someone’s business ethics, loyalty, their skills. I don’t mind learning new skills. It’s fun. And if I can help anyone else learn, I will.”

Friday, May 21, 2010

What are Burger King and Arby's losing by not being on Twitter?

Christa Hoyland

Most quick-service brands finally have an understanding of how they can leverage social media — even if they don't have a social media director like McDonald's just appointed. A few, like Dunkin' Donuts' Dunkin' Dave, lead the way in customer engagement.

Many of those brands have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, while some also have added a YouTube channel as well as other channels. Still, a few have yet to delve deeply into the realm, most notably Burger King and Arby's.
Arby's, for example, has a Facebook page with almost 55,000 likes to date. But it seems to be approaching Twitter more slowly. While @officialarbys does exist on Twitter and appears to be an authentic company address, there's been only a single post, and that on March 16. Meanwhile, several Arby's franchisees have set up their own accounts and are actively engaged.
Burger King appears to be on Twitter since the @burgerking handle exists, but its authorship is questionable. Earlier this month, the @burgerking homepage displayed PETA's old Murder King icon with PETA listed as the account name. That information has since been changed to an avatar with a modified Burger King logo proclaiming Crunk Ain't Dead instead of the brand name. The bio includes the trademark symbol after the company name but it claims to be "Putting the Meat Back into the music scene! Put that in your bun and toast it!"
Burger King does have some presence on Twitter. There are several Twitter handles using some form of the Burger King name, including several for the chain in other countries, such as Puerto Rico (@burgerkingpr). Burger King's @BKhire is barely active, with occasional tweets about job openings. But it only has 24 followers and tweets about job openings, the last on April 22.
The bio for @bksnack says it is the official page for Burger King's branded snacks, but it only has one tweet posted — dated August 2009. There is an @OfficialWhopper handle, which includes a backdrop with photos the brand's King and appears to be an authentic account but has had only one post, in mid-April.
Cost of not being on Twitter
With McDonald's, Wendy's and Taco Bell active on Twitter and other popular social media sites, is there any drawback to these brands not following suit? Will Marlow, social media strategist and co-founder of social-based fundraising software provider AlumniFidelty, said maybe not for some businesses, but for QSRs, yes.
"A quick search finds that Burger King is a hugely popular topic on Twitter," he said. "Much of the chatter is positive, and this represents an enormous missed opportunity for BK to join the conversation."
Plenty of coverage has been devoted to the value of engaging fans via social media, but Marlow says Burger King and Arby's are missing out on other opportunities as well. Those companies with a robust social media strategy also are viewing the sites as a marketing channel. Some, like Taco Bell did with its new Tortada, are now announcing new products via social media rather than traditional PR channels.
With no established presence on Twitter, Burger King and Arby's also may find themselves unprepared in the event the buzz in the space turns negative, such as Dominoes did after an employee video prank created a PR crisis last year. (Though the company did learn quickly how to utilize social media to right the situation.)
"When something horrible happens and it becomes a trending topic, who will carry your message," Marlwo asked. "The older and more long-standing your social media presence, the greater its reach will be and the greater its level of trust/authenticity will be."
Burger King also faces the possibility that fans could become confused about their identity on those sites. Fans who land on the @burgerking home page will undoubtedly be confused by the messaging. On Facebook, a search of Burger King turns up a Wikepedia site about the brand and a Burger King! fan page, but no official Burger King USA communication. (There is an active Burger King UK page.)
Social media strategists suggest Burger King can help protect its brand identity on Twitter by requesting a verified account. Twitter is beta testing the program that assures visitors they are indeed interacting with the authentic account of a celebrity or business. The site is not accepting new verified account requests but will help businesses facing impersonating accounts resolve the problem. Twitter also has rules against what it calls name squatting and allows companies to claim their trademarked name.
Mario Almonte, managing partner of Herman and Almonte PR, said Twitter and Facebook both are developing programs to filter out any poseurs.
"However, they can't police everyone, so it is important for major brand to 'police' these sites, not just to see how they are being talked about, but also to ensure than no one is impersonating them."
Almonte also warns that QSRs not on Twitter are losing out on lucrative opportunities. With Arby's and Burger King so well known, they have a fan base just waiting to connect with them on the channel. For example, the Burger King! Facebook fan page has more than 230,000 likes.
"They can easily funnel a small percentage of the millions of dollars they spend annually in advertising to provide something as simple as discount coupons to their fans," he said.
Loss of opportunities
Joe Beccalori, co-founder and principal of Internet marketing firm Interact Marketing, said that by not engaging with their fans on social media, especially Twitter, the brands could be losing out on other opportunities, including market research. He also sees a correlation between brands actively engaged with fans on social media and their sales performance.
"Companies that have social media profiles are on more of an upswing, whereas Burger King's stock price has taken a downturn," he said. "Also, through Compete.com we have found that there is an 80 percent drop in web traffic to Burger King's site as opposed to McDonald's and Taco Bell (both active on Twitter), which have shown percentage increases."
Could there be a correlation with sales as well? Wendy's early this year began engaging with fans on Twitter via @wendys but Arby's has yet to start. Wendy's same-store sales have been stronger than sister brand Arby's during the recession, but during the period the brand was on Twitter, the company had positive same-store sales in February — and some of the strongest in QSR — despite severe winter weather. The company reported Thursday that it ended its most recent quarter with positive comps of 0.8 percent. Arby's were down 11.5 percent.
Beccalori's research on Arby's and Burger King found that Burger King is searched more than 22 million times a year online and Arby's 3.5 million times, according to SEOBook.com. His search on Twitter found that someone tweets about Burger King once a minute and Arby's about once every 30 minutes.
With those stats in hand and the limited investment to get started on social media, Beccalori sees no reason why the brands would hesitate.
"The fact is that it would cost $500 to $700 to acquire profiles on the top 300 social media sites, which is pocket change to protect a billion dollar brand," he said.
Other experts question why Burger King— who has a history of online creative including microsites such as Subservient Chicken, the Whopper Sacrifice App on Facebook and viral videos such as Burger King Japan's Eat Like a Snake video — would hesitate to fully embrace social media.
Burger King's new CMO, North America, Michael Kappitt said the company is developing its social media strategy.
"We are working diligently to determine the best and most innovative methods to continue engaging and interacting with our fans in ways that they find both entertaining and beneficial," he said. "The challenge for Burger King, or any brand, is distinguishing between what's possible and what's relevant to our core consumer."
Arby's did not return a request for comment.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Joblessness Hits the Pulpit

More Churches Lay Off Clergy as Donations Drop; Few Get Severance Benefits

When Tim Ryan was called to an urgent meeting last year to discuss his duties as children's minister at West Shore Evangelical Free Church, he knew something was amiss.

"This is really hard. I don't know how I can do this," said executive pastor John Nesbitt, who helps lead the 2,500 attendee megachurch in Mechanicsburg, Pa.

The church, part of the Evangelical Free Church of America, had been growing rapidly but giving was down and well below projections as the recession weighed on members. So Mr. Ryan was losing his job, as was another pastor.

While the economy appears to be recovering from the worst downturn in generations, more clergy are facing unemployment as churches continue to struggle with drops in donations. In 2009, the government counted about 5,000 clergy looking for jobs, up from 3,000 in 2007 and 2,000 in 2005.

Church staff are feeling the pinch, too. In an October survey, about one in five members of the interdenominational 3,000-member National Association of Church Business Administration said they had laid off staff amid the recession.

The official unemployment rate among clergy sits at 1.2%, far below the national average jobless rate, but layoffs can be particularly painful for ministers. Churches aren't subject to unemployment taxes, so laid-off employees can't collect the benefits available to other workers.

West Shore kept Mr. Ryan, 42-years-old, and the other pastor on staff for five months while they looked for new jobs, but many churches don't offer severance benefits, experts say.

"Churches are so reluctant to let people go that by the time they get to the point where they have to, they don't have the resources for a big severance package," said Bob Clarke, who directs programs that assist ministers in need for the Presbyterian Church in America.

Two things have contributed to the layoffs: a long-term drop in attendance in many denominations and the short-term stresses of the recession.

Nearly 30% of church attendees said they had reduced their giving since November 2009, according to a survey of 1,008 adults conducted in late January and early February by the Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., firm that researches trends in faith and does consulting work for churches.

Nearly half of the 3,000 members of the National Association of Church Business Administration say they have reduced or frozen salaries and benefits.

That is a tough blow for many clergy, because salaries are low to begin with. For example, the average salary of a youth minister with a few years of experience is $32,000, according to MinistryPay.com, a website run by the National Association of Church Business Administration. An associate pastor with a decade of experience might earn around $64,000. On average, men with a bachelor's degree earn more than $77,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Some church leaders fear donations won't reach prerecession levels as long as unemployment stays elevated. Church surveys report that giving dropped off sharply beginning in November 2008, when the overall unemployment rate was at 6.7%. Since then, contributions have slipped in tandem with rising unemployment.

Some of the hardest hit by the recession have been megachurches, roughly defined as those with 2,000 or more attendees. Last year, the 6,000-member Granger Community Church in Indiana laid off eight employees and cut the hours of 15 other staff members.

A pastor's departure can have a particularly emotional impact on members of a congregation. When West Shore announced which ministers would lose their jobs at a congregation meeting, several members in the audience gasped.

"People knew we were behind on our giving, but I don't think people were comprehending that it would come to this," Mr. Ryan said.

In addition to Mr. Ryan, the church laid off the pastor who led its 60-member disabilities ministry, which caters to mentally challenged and disabled church members. The pastor, who now works in a group-home system in New York state, didn't respond to requests to be interviewed.

One 44-year-old mentally disabled busboy said several people in the class started to cry when the pastor announced he was leaving. "I had to walk out of the class to get some fresh air. It was hard for us," he said.

The extent to which ministers are susceptible to layoffs depends in part on which church or denomination they serve. Catholic and United Methodist bishops appoint clergy to their posts. So while a Catholic parish may have to eliminate a position, the bishop can relocate the priest to another church that can afford him.

Meanwhile, placement offices for Jewish rabbis say the average length of the job search for rabbis has increased, but that few temples and synagogues have resorted to layoffs.

But pastors in other Christian denominations are mostly on their own in managing unemployment and a job search. Right now, the Presbyterian Church in America, which includes about 1,700 churches, has about five pastors looking for work for each of its 54 job openings, about twice the level before the recession, said the group's business administrator, John Robertson.

Stiff competition isn't the only hurdle clergymen face. Each job comes with a laundry list of required qualifications that are sometimes more specific than is common in corporate hiring. Courts have consistently declined to interfere in the hiring of clergy members on First Amendment grounds, meaning the usual prohibitions on discrimination based on disabilities, age, sex, and gender generally don't apply said Dianna Johnston an attorney with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A job listing for a pastor opening in Florida on the Southern Baptist Convention website, for example, requires that applicants be married and between the ages of 30 and 49. Another ad for a part-time position in Kansas warns that the committee won't consider someone who has been divorced.

Mr. Ryan, who served at West Shore for a year and a half but was never ordained, decided against uprooting his wife and four children and took a lay job in home remodeling offered by a member of the congregation.

His new job? Carpentry—the biblical profession of Jesus and his father, Joseph.

"The irony is not lost on me," Mr. Ryan said.

Original Wall Street Journal Article

5 Must-Have LinkedIn Apps: Pump Up Your Profile

LinkedIn has introduced several new updates to their site recently, including the "Company Follow" tool, another that matches users to job openings and a number of new sharing options. But if you're looking to add a bit of pizzazz to your profile, or hope to catch the eye of a hiring manager, consider exploring LinkedIn's Applications. These add-ons make your profile dynamic and interesting, says Nathan Kievman, owner of the LinkedIn group Linked Strategies and host of weekly LinkedIn webinars. "Profiles [can be] otherwise boring and static without applications," he says.

Kievman recommends that every LinkedIn user should add at least one application to their profile--he suggests Amazon's reading list--, but keep the total to no more than five to avoid cluttering your space.

To access LinkedIn's applications, select "More..." from LinkedIn's navigation bar and choose "Application Directory." Note that for each application you choose, you're able to control the privacy settings, so be sure you update them appropriately.

Here's a look at five applications worth exploring.

With Amazon's Reading List application, you use a search tool to build a collection of books you're planning to read, are reading right now and have read. You have three lists of books you can view with this application: one from people in your network, one from connections in your industry and one detailing updates from across LinkedIn.

If you like a particular person's reading list, you can follow it. Likewise, others can follow your reading list. This application is great for discovering books recommended by people in your field, as well as finding out which books should be on your radar.

2. WordPress

If you maintain a blog on WordPress, this application synchs your posts automatically with your LinkedIn profile. This app displays your avatar and also lets you filter your posts--if you don't want to share every entry with your LinkedIn connections--by using a special LinkedIn tag. As with sharing your tweets on LinkedIn, be wary of which posts you share and how often you do it.

3. SlideShare Presentations

If you have a SlideShare.net account, you can post your presentations and documents directly to your LinkedIn profile to share with your connections. (You can also sign up for an account via LinkedIn's website). With this app, you can view "Featured" presentations, search webinars and click through the most downloaded presentations. You can also check out a list of the presentations that your connections have uploaded.

4. Events

The Events application, via a box that's added to your profile, shows what events people your network are attending and helps you find events recommended for you based on your industry and job function. You can also view the most popular events, search for events and create new ones. This application is great for making connections prior to attending a conference, or following up.

5. Company Buzz

The Company Buzz tool aggregates mentions of a company from Twitter, helping you discover relevant trends and comments about your current employer or a target employer. You can customize and modify the topics to watch, monitor trends and display charts that track activity.

Staff Writer Kristin Burnham covers consumer Web and social technologies for CIO.com. She writes frequently on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. You can follow her on Twitter: @kmburnham.

Original Article

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

How a Contract Recruiter Made $19,000 with Just 30 Minutes in LinkedIn

A common misconception of Social Media sites is that you have to spend a lot of time to get anything out of them. But according to some contract recruiters we’ve spoken to, you can really get a lot of value for a very small investment of time.

According to Mike McDonough of General Search and Recruitment, spending as little as 30 minutes every other day on the site is more than enough.

“Don’t put more into it,” McDonough said. “You’ll get lost chasing a lot of stuff that’s not valuable.”

In fact, just 30 minutes in LinkedIn resulted in one particularly lucrative placement for McDonough. He mentioned to a newer client that he was able to do contract placements. The client eventually grew to the point that they needed contract help and turned to McDonough. Once he had the job order, he used the Advance Search feature of LinkedIn to look for people with specific skills in the insurance industry and within a specific zip code area. He then used the InMail feature to contact seven people who had relevant experience, asking if they or someone they knew might be interested in a contract assignment. Five people contacted him back, and one ended up being the person he placed. He had the candidate on contract for five months and then converted the position to a direct placement.

“I earned $19,000 off 30 minutes in LinkedIn,” McDonough said. ”To me, that’s a pretty good investment.”

Here are a few of McDonough’s tips from the trenches:

  • Schedule time to spend on LinkedIn, but not too much time. Again, he only recommends spending 30 minutes every other day.
  • Join Groups – That’s where the best candidates are.
  • Activate saved searches within LinkedIn. This will yield 15-20 candidates per day.
  • Don’t let your LinkedIn time take up phone time.

Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn

Whether you just created your first blog, or you are considered one of the top bloggers in the world like Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, or Tim Ferriss, you are always looking for ways to generate more traffic to your site. Even more so, you are looking for qualified traffic to your site, (i.e people who are interested in the content you produce).

LinkedIn is a great way to generate free, organic, traffic to your blog.

“But Lewis, isn’t LinkedIn just a site to post my resume when I am looking for a job?”

No, wake up people! Although LinkedIn has been great for job seekers during the most recent economic cycle, it is much much more than that. Individuals and companies are achieving more professional goals than imaginable on LinkedIn. For example, LinkedIn can help you:

  • Sell products
  • Find new clients or employees
  • Generate leads
  • Receive funding for your company
  • Obtain sponsorships
  • Sell hundreds of tickets to your professional event
  • Get national and local press coverage
  • And last but not least, drive massive traffic to your blog

Achieving these goals on LinkedIn don’t come naturally. You’ve gotta work the system on LinkedIn and experiment with different methods. I’ve come up with the best ways to achieve those goals. Here are my top 10 ways to drive traffic to your blog using LinkedIn:

1. Complete Your Profile:

Numerous individuals have told me LinkedIn doesn’t work for them. I always ask them how much time they have put into using LinkedIn, their response – very little. If your profile is weak people will lose interest quickly and may never click on your website links.

If you want people to read your profile and click on your websites then make your profile concise, compelling and value driven throughout. Complete your profile 100%, add a great picture of yourself, and take the entire process very seriously. The more complete and compelling your profile is, the more people will read and visit links you have posted.

This advice goes beyond driving traffic to your blog. If someone were to Google your name (which most people do when they are researching you) your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that pop up. Personally, my LinkedIn profile is the third result, and for Darren Rowse it comes up seventh (before Facebook or Twitter). Google your own name and check out what position your LinkedIn profile shows up. You must make your profile compelling.

2. Increase Your Connections:

The more connections you have, the more people will have access to your profile. Every time you take an action on LinkedIn (i.e. update your profile, join a group, recommend someone, RSVP to an event, etc… this shows up on the home page of your 1st degree connections). If you only have 100 connections, this limits the amount of potential clicks on your profile and website links per day. Constantly be updating and adding new connections.

add connections

3. Customize Your Website Links:

When you first create your profile your website links will look like this:

blog links

However this is not a “call to action” and you are missing potential traffic because of it. No one actually cares what your blog is unless it is relevant to them or solves a problem. Instead, customize your website links to attract more clicks and drive more traffic to your blog. If I were Darren, I would insert this:

LinkedIn blog

The second image is more compelling and explains exactly what the viewer will see on the next page when they click on each link. In order to change your websites with a custom headline, click on the “edit” button next to one of the websites. View the image below for further details:

LinkedIn

4. Answer Questions:

This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. The more questions you answer, the better the chances are of that person asking the question to click on your blog to learn more about you. Not only will that one person be more interested in learning more about you, but also others answering that question. Additionally, when someone rates your answer as “The Best” of the mix, it will improve your thought leadership status. It moves you up the rankings as a “featured expert” in the category you answered in. When you are a featured expert people become more aware of your profile, and the chance they will click on your link to learn more about what you have to offer improves.

5. Update Status:

For you Twitter lovers out there, this should be an easy step to take. LinkedIn also has a status update feature that is a lot like Twitter, only it gives you 148 characters to work with instead of 140. Why is it so important to constantly update your status? Because it is the first thing that pops up the home profile for all of your connections. Check out your home page on LinkedIn and you will see a few status updates of those your are connected to. If they are smart, they will include some compelling copy with a call to action and a link back to their blog (something I do that drives traffic to mine).

status update

6. Join Niche Groups:

Whatever your blog is about, there is an audience of people on LinkedIn that share interest with. To make it easy to find these people click on the “Group Search” tab and type in some key words that relate to your blog. I have a sports industry blog that focuses mostly on social media with an audience of professionals who work in the sports. I joined all of the professional sports groups I could find:

sports groups

Some of these niche groups have thousands of members who are actively involved in connect with other members. If you are not in the groups where your audience for your blog is hanging out, then you are missing out on the opportunity for new readers, and organic traffic to your site. Join as many groups as you can after doing a key word search that relates to your blog.

For starters – check out the Professional Bloggers Group.

7. Post Comments In Groups:

Some larger groups are receiving hundreds of new discussion topics every few days (think of it as a forum). People are sharing points of discussion, commenting and giving further feedback and suggestions on those comments. Every time someone creates a new discussion topic, it shows up on the home profile of everyone in that group. If there are 100,000 people in the group, then you are potentially getting the attention of 100,000 other individuals for your comment.

music group

8. Add RSS Feed to Groups:

Each group has a section that allows you to add a link to a website with the latest news you think is relevant to that group. It also allows you to add your own RSS feed or website link so it will automatically update the group every time you post a new article on your blog. This creates an automated flow of organic traffic that will show up on the home profile of everyone connected in the group. Again, this gives you more opportunities for people to view your blog.

LinkedIn

9. Create a Group:

This may be one of the most powerful things you can do on LinkedIn. I won’t go into all of the amazing details on how this has helped me, but I will tell you that owning a group drives a lot of traffic to your site. I own several niche related groups on LinkedIn. For example, I created the Sports Industry Network group on LinkedIn and there are currently over 19,500 members. When a new person joins the group, they see a brief description of the group, my name as the owner of the group, plus my website url www.sportsnetworker.com. Since my group gets over 100 new members each week, that’s additional traffic from new members alone. That’s not even including the close to 20,000 members who are actively engaging in the group, and clicking on my blog links.

10. Add the Blog Application to Your Profile:

This might be the most obvious suggestion, but I still see some of the top pro bloggers leaving this feature out. This application posts the title and first paragraph for your most recent articles you have published on your LinkedIn profile. It is a way to give viewers of your profile a sneak peak of what they will read on your blog.

Go to “applications” and download either the WordPress or Blog Link application and add your URL for your blog.

linkedin blog application

LinkedIn continues to be one of the top sites that drives traffic to my blog, thanks to these 10 examples, but the power of LinkedIn doesn’t stop here. What other tips have you found through using LinkedIn to increase traffic to your blog?

Original Article

*****

Establishing a blog is a good step to enhancing your visibility as an expert in your field.