Desperately Seeking YOU: Passive Job Seekers Need to be Found Too

With the continued need for top-notch talent and tight labor market, we recruiters are working overtime to find the right people for the job.  Time spent in front of our computer terminals is increasing, and our searches in LinkedIn, Facebook and our other toolboxes are our lifeblood.  Recruiters need to find passive job seekers, those of you who are possibly interested in a new job, but are fairly content in your current position.  So it is heartbreaking when one of my searches turns up the ideal candidate, but there is no way to reach this person.

My Mission:  My mission today is to get people to put their personal contact information into their professional profiles.  Whether that is in my main tool, LinkedIn, or if you are an active user of Facebook, CareerBuilder, The Ladders, or another online site, make sure you are reachable.  I know you want to control your privacy settings, but if you lock me out I can't reach you.

Here's my action plan to be found if you are possibly thinking about a new job:

1. Make a LinkedIn profile that is similar to a resume.  
2. On your LinkedIn profile, use an email that is active and you will receive messages for.  Seems simple, but too often we set up our profile with an old address, or that personal email we seldom check.  Well, guess what, if I send you a message in LinkedIn, probably you won't ever see it.  Opportunity is knocking.....
3. Check your LinkedIn messages often.  Respond to them, including the best way to reach you if you are interested in hearing about possible opportunities.  I do encourage you to use a personal email account so that there is no issue with your current employer.
4. Add contacts that you know.  The larger your network is in LinkedIn, the more likely you are to be found in a search.  

Help me out!  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  This post is completely self serving.  In turn, I look forward to helping you out with a great career advancement opportunity.  

Productivity: Oh How I Love Technology, But Hate the Time Change

This week has been a tough one for me.  I am most productive in the afternoon/evening, and with the time change I could work up until 8 pm or later, and did frequently this week.  But that does make the work/life balance a bit unbalanced.  Tack on a sick 8 year-old and it made the juggle a bit harder this week.  

Loving to get everything cleaned up before the weekend, I was sitting at my desk this evening, Friday evening, about to declare victory over my inbox, when I had an epiphany.  Things have greatly improved for recruiters in the last 20 years.  

Yes friends, I've been recruiting top talent for the last 20 years, and sometimes it hits me how things have changed.  Let's take a look:

Email:  Wow--I can be in touch with people, have a conversation with them, over days, weeks, months and even years.  With a quick search in my email I can find out where a conversation left off with a winemaker, get details on what states a salesperson has experience with, and catch up with clients in an instant.  While I was an early adopter of email having worked in the tech space, it wasn't widespread for years, and not everyone I needed to deal with used email until more recently.  So how did we communicate?  Faxes and letters.  So slow!  Faxing used to be a big activity.  I don't even have a fax machine now.   

Cell Phones:  Back in the day very few people had cell phones.  I remember having my big flip phone and wondering how it linked to other phones.  Was it a direct antenna to antenna link?  Some people thought so.  And making that first international cell phone call was magic!  Now we think nothing of it.  But the cell phone has transformed the speed at which I can talk to a candidate.  I used to have to time my calls in the evening to reach people at home, or leave a message on an answering machine, and hope they got back to me the next day.  Now I can dial up a number, and if my recipient can pick up that call, they will.  If they are in a compromising situation, such as sitting with their boss in a company meeting, they can let it go to voicemail and get back to me later.  EXCELLENT.  And they often know immediately it is me calling, due to caller ID and saving contacts easily in your smartphone.  The ability to reach someone quickly, and often immediately, lets recruiting move so fast.  

Texting:  Texting, how I love you.  Texting is the next greatest invention to allow me to reach people at all times, to get searches moving, to keep offers headed towards a yes, and to coordinate rendezvous.  And you can text with people around the world and feel like they are right there next to you because you can instantly get feedback, updates and decisions.  And if you are in a tight spot, such as still sitting next to your boss, you can often quickly shoot off a text without anyone knowing.  

Social Media:  Social media for me is like being in the corner coffee shop, but being in the corner coffee shop in every neighborhood I need to be in.  Back in the dark ages, before social media, the only way people could know what you were up to is to see you, or to talk so someone who knew you.  Now you simply put a picture of what you are doing up on Facebook, and everyone immediately can see what you are up to.  Living outside of the epicenter of the wine business, social media has allowed me to form connections with people around the world, and stay on top of what's going on with friends, clients and job seekers.  And yes job seekers, it can let me see if you are a party animal, a bit odd, or a great photographer.  All things we recruiters like to check up on whenever possible.  

Productivity Tools:  Starting in recruiting, we used to get our paper resumes batch processed by a firm in Nogales, Arizona.  The resumes were transcribed at first, and later scanned into the master database.  Then we had to use our Boolean search methods to find the resumes we needed.  A bit tedious, and very underwhelming in quality.  And oh those DOS screens.  Green glowing letters.  Now I can put all my documents up on the cloud and get to my files from anywhere I am, on any device I am using.  Not to mention using a smartphone to run my business while traveling.  And thankfully, not lugging along my huge laptop bag with a million power cords, modems and phone cables.  

But still, I am run by the sun, and my body knows that I can work best when the sun is reaching the western horizon.  With sunset being at 7:16 tonight, i have a few more minutes to be productive.  And check my inbox to see if any stellar candidates got back to me about interviewing.  

Tips for your LinkedIn Profile

Fortune Magazine recently profiled Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn.  Story Here.

I did find out that recruiters are LinkedIn's number one customer.  As a recruiter, I use LinkedIn daily to find new candidates, to network with others and to stay up to date to industry happenings.  The article also included the CEO's recommendations on building a perfect LinkedIn profile--a must for anyone keeping their career on track.

What Your Facebook Post Says About You

It is so fun to post a lighthearted post on my Facebook or Twitter page. Cheers, everyone, Thank Goodness it is Friday, and here's what I'm drinking tonight.  Luckily, that's as far as the debauchery goes on my social media sites.  But some folks don't filter their posts, putting up their worst party photos, trash talking people they don't like, or posting revealing photos of themselves.  Beware, job seekers, what you post could say more about you and your personality traits than you think.  

Recently a group of researchers at the Department of Psychology at North Carolina State University published their research on how personality traits of job applicants are reflected on social media posts.  This research was nicely summarized in Aaron Elliot's post, Traits of Job Applicants on Social Media Detrimental to Career on the Social Media Today site.  

The researchers studied the links between online behaviors and the personality characteristics of job applicants.  The research focused on two main posting types:  badmouthing behavior (criticizing superiors and peers) and those involving references to alcohol and drug use.  These posting types are often viewed by hiring managers as red flags for potential employees.  These posts were then correlated to the poster's five personality traits:  agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness and openness to experience.  

Using this information, the research found that people with the traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness were very unlikely to badmouth others on their posts.  And there was no true connection found between a person's substance use postings and their conscientiousness traits.  They did find that extroverts are more likely to post topics about substance use on social media.  Employers often quickly dismiss candidates with this tendency, possibly eliminating a lot of extroverts from the talent pool.  

Phew, so it is okay to post what I'm toasting with this weekend, as long as I don't badmouth anyone while I'm doing it!  While employers learn what to look for on social media, I encourage you to keep your postings filtered to show off your best personality traits.  

Just Go @$$@!& Yourself

Yes, dear reader, just go Google yourself.  Really, right now, put your name, maybe your occupation, your hometown, and any aliases you use into Google and see what comes up.  Hopefully it isn't a mugshot!

Last week I was preparing for a presentation about building an online persona, and did some research about how to manage your social media presence.  For a few articles to read, visit shetakesontheworld.net and mashable.com.

I pulled this list of tools from She Takes on the World's blog.  These are all items you can put to use to manage what is out there on social media sites, what's being tweeted about you or your company, etc.   

• Blog Pulse: an automated trend discovery system for blogs. This search engine analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere. http://www.blogpulse.com
• Board Tracker: a message tracking and instant alerts system designed to provide relevant information quickly and efficiently while ensuring you never miss an important forum thread. http://www.boardtracker.com
• Google Alerts: updates sent via email of the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. http://www.google.com/alerts
• Social Mention Alerts: a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web�s social media landscape in real-time. http://www.socialmention.com
• Technorati: a search engine that indexes blogs. Find mentions of your blog or specific keywords across other blogs. Subscribe to the search results feed and get notified of new mentions. http://technorati.com/
• Trackur: pulls keyword mentions from a variety of sources, not just Google Alerts, but its biggest use comes from the ability to save, sort, tag, share and subscribe to particular feeds. http://www.trackur.com/
• Yahoo Alerts: a notification service that instantly informs you of what you consider important and relevant via instant message, email or cell phone. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/alerts/about/alerts-19.html

In today's social media rich environment, you had better have an online presence, and make sure it is reflective of your professional self. So, doing some WineTalent research, I Googled myself.  Yes, ego-googling is a favorite pastime of mine; so I did expect to see a lot about this blog, my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and my LinkedIn profile.  Being an occassional Yelper, I thought that might come up too.  All of those things came up, as well as a bad Yelp review for WineTalent.  OMG!  How could this be?  I went on the Yelp review, and think it may have been a retaliatory comment from a bad review I gave a restaurant.  I was so embarassed, but instead of sitting in my bed rocking myself to sleep, I thought I should research this a bit.  The old review gave WineTalent one star, and was from about a year ago.  It took me that long to find it and fix it.  That's way too long.

So how did I fix the situation?  I contacted Yelp and let them know what I thought the situation was.  I also put a comment on the page myself--facing up to the bad review--and hoping that future clients and job hunters would still give WineTalent a chance.  Once Yelp reviewed the situation, they removed the bad review, and now my own self promotion of WineTalent is all you can see on there.  While I don't think WineTalent is the most Yelp-review intensive business, I do plan to keep track of my account, and address any reviews that come up. 

Now, self promotion may not be your cup of tea, but you had better make sure you don't have anything damaging out on the web.  Here is a great case in point:  I was recently feeling sentimental about high school and wanted to find out what my old friend was up to these days.  I knew he had moved away after finishing up his graduate degree, and put his possible whereabouts into Google.  Yes, possible stalker alert time!  But boy was I shocked when the first result that came up was from Mugshots.com.  Going to the site, I got to see my old friend's face for the first time in years.  Yep, that was him--looking a little bleary-eyed in front of the police camera.

Ok, I should stop the online sleuthing now, and chalk this up to "good to have known him, time to move on" but I was really shocked by his possible fall from grace.  So, using some additional information, I expanded my search. With this, I found out that he's a highly successful financier who has been gainfully employed for years.  His photo on his work profile looks self-assured and completely capable.  Not the beat-up guy in the police blotter shot.

I haven't touched base with my old friend--being worried about being seen as a stalker, and in case there is really more stuff I shouldn't uncover!  But if I were him, I'd be calling up mugshots.com immediately and asking to have my information removed.  Looking over the site, they publish this information due to the Freedom of Information Act.  This is such a great Act, allowing things like the local paper printing all of my neighbor's government salaries a few years' back. Made several of them ticked off, but it was fun seeing who made what!  FOIA of not, mugshots.com also has a link for getting your information removed.  Reading their FAQ, they mention that you can have your picture removed, and that there may be costs associated with this.  No dollar amount is listed, but I am pretty sure you could call them to get something worked out.  Probably for smaller violations it would be less expensive, for repeat mugshots and heinous crimes, it would be more costly.  So, how much you are willing to pay may reflect on your online persona and/or criminal alter-ego.

This is not the first time I've found, let's say "awkward", information online.   When I have suspicions about a potential job seeker or unknown client, the first place I go is Google.   I have recently Googled a job seeker whose first search information was about a past scam, and another who was involved in questionable business practices within the wine industry.  Decided against putting these people on my A Team of Talent.   

So, use those tools up there to protect your online persona.  If a recruiter is doing it, who else might be?  Now, to friend the guy in the mugshot or not?  That is the question.