Tag Archive for: Personal Branding

Study: More companies succeed in recruiting via social networks

Social Media is becoming the new talent aquisition tool for companies. A recent study by Jobvite states that almost 90% of companies are planning to use social networks to find job candidates. This is an increase of 7% to last year. Two thirds of employers said they had successfully filled a job position via social networking.

The study that polled 800 human resource staffers and headhunters in the U.S also illustrates the importance of personal branding which I proclaim for years now – also with the vision of a personal scoring index. Job seekers should understand the importance of having an active profile on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. However, this is essential and career benefitial, the study also warns that what you say and do on those sites has an impact on your career.

Running the survey in their fifth year, Jobvite is seeing a steady increase by employers in the use of social media.

“Employee referrals are the highest quality hires. (…) They last the longest, have the best match with expectations, and churn the least.” Dan Finnigan, CEO, Jobvite

According to Jobvite’s own client data, 70% of companies examine candidates’ social media profiles after getting a referral. Which means you never know who is checking your latest party pictures and how much you ruin your reputation by updating embarrassing information

“Don’t post any picture, say any words or take any actions that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see,” advises Finnigan.

Some interesting finding shows that Facebook is not the main place to look for job candidates. However, LinkedIn went up from 78.3% to 86.6% (inclusive of all possible usage like search, job postings, etc.).

Having said that, Jobvite also asked their own customers how many actually hired staff using social referrals from various social networking sites. 43% of referrals that resulted in hires came from Facebook versus 41% from LinkedIn and 16% from Twitter.

Spot On!
For the Social Society in which we are living social engagement become an asset bonus but also a challenge for job seekers. Today, it is still difficult to understand for many recruiters why you have a personal brand. In the future, this will change and show your affinity to a topic, to brands and to modern business tactics. People might be addressed or recruited by younger hiring managers who are more tolerant of social media failures or side steps but the more senior a position gets, the pickier recruitment managers are getting.

How do you see the future of personal branding and how recruiters are checking your capabilities via social networks?

Das Social Web – eine dreiteilige Webinar-Reihe

In dieser dreiteiligen Webinarreihe wird der Fokus auf der Beziehung zwischen dem Web als Kommunikationskanal der Zukunft und Social Media als modernem Tool für Kundenbeziehungs-Management liegen.

Das Social Web wird in den nächsten Jahren zahlreiche Veränderungen innerhalb der Unternehmen als auch im Umgang mit Kunden hervorrufen. Um den verschiedenen Abteilungsleiter innerhalb eines Unternehmens einen Eindruck zu vermitteln, inwieweit ihr Bereich davon betroffen ist, wurde die Webinar-Reihe in drei Bereiche aufgeteilt: Sales & Marketing, Human Resources/Personalwesen und Unternehmensführung.

Die Webinar-Reihe wird unter dem Motto stehen…
“Das Unternehmen haben früher Executives geleitet. Morgen wird es der Kunde sein…”

14. Mai 2010
Verkaufsförderung mit modernen Sales- und Marketingstrategien

11. Juni 2010
Employer 3.0 – Online Reputation, Personal Branding und Produktivität

18. Juni 2010
Unternehmensführung – Vergessen Sie die große Sorge um den Kontrollverlust!

Die Vorträge dauern eine Stunde. Teilnehmer haben danach noch 30 Minuten Zeit, Fragen zu stellen. Alle drei Webinare beginnen um 11 Uhr.

Es steht eine begrenzte Anzahl an Plätzen zur Verfügung. Anmelden können Sie sich derzeit noch hier.

News Update – Best of the Day

We have asked ourselves this question when talking about the future working place and personal branding on the Lotus JamCamp: How effective are corporate social media policies? This study by security solutions provider nCircle shows again that 39% of the companies still ban social media usage at work. Reason: Security risks! While F-Secure finds that more than 54% use Facebook at work…

It is about time to find some proof and more case studies illustrating the effectiveness of social networking at work. Especially, when teens expect social networking access at work

If you think about the alignment of social media and your brand, there should be more to consider: 25 things for example, thinks The Financial Brand.

“Bread and Cicuses” to the people. McDonalds knows how to get the customers in their shops. Connecting, offline, online and mobile with one campaign…

Best feature of social networks? The Pick-a-boo effect…

pick-a-booDon’t we love to play this game with kids because we know how happy it makes them… Pick-a-boo. But as adults using social networks: What is it that makes us happy? Some weeks ago, I asked some friends of mine who in turn asked friends of theirs as well as their colleagues: What is the main benefitial feature of social networks? The most frequent answer that came up was the ‘Who has been on your profile lately’ feature which goes along the lines of ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect.

Now, what does that mean ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect’? Well, people register in social networks in order to get in contact or connected with peers, (old) friends or humans that are (or might be) interested in them or/and their work. The tricky point is that there are people in the world of social networks we don’t want to contact any longer, in the future or in general. Nevertheless, we still love to take a peek as we wonder if they are still interested in us, what they are up to and what impact is driving their lives. It’s kind of human vanity and curiosity thing. We want to compare ourselves with them, want to check out how ‘sexy’ our online (and offline) reputation is – not only in terms of business life. We want to play Pick-a-boo. We are there and everybody in social networks knows that, but we are not visible all the time. And, we would love not to be visible for everybody when we are looking at people’s profiles who appear not to be relevant for our life. But we’ll pop-up from time to time to stay ‘up to date’.

So, we make us accessible and available in social networks for those who are also users of these networks. As we don’t know the size of the target group of people who is interested in us, we want to find out about it. By this we are making the ‘ego-community’ transparent for ourselves. And most of us ‘social medians’ are eager and would love to know that, wouldn’t we? Some networks have acknowledged this desire of being famous and our nasty habit of being vain. And they satisfy our need and desire for that with great application features supporting this pick a boo effect: status updates, birthday calender or ‘contacts of your contacts’.

No matter if you are a sales person, a recruiter or a consultant. We all want to know how a person looks like after making a call, or attending a meeting or a conference. And we all want to know more about them, either because it facilitates a second conversation or because we would like to recruit someone or sell something. The more we know, the easier the effort. Playing Pick-a-boo has become standard.

The active Pick-a-boo
Let’s identify the active pick a boo effect in social networks. We try to find the person or/and go to a profile page, x-ray the contact or find out details on his mentality, personality or hobbies. So, we take a quick look at the profile and then we are off again. Sometimes, we might be going there for a second or a third time before getting in touch with that person. And the funny thing is: We know that the other person knows that we have been visiting their profile page. Is it because we want them to do the first step. Or we ‘pick-a-boo’ just to let them know, someone is interested.

The passive Pick-a-boo
The passive benefit of the pick a boo effect lies in the feature ‘Who has been to your profile’ application or widget. Although a paid service feature on some social networks (XING and LinkedIn), it is probably the most viewed or reloaded feature of active social ‘medians’, those users who have access to it. Why is this ‘pick a boo’ application so attractive for us? We can…
… receive transparency on the ego-community
… monitor the quantity and quality of visitors to our profiles
… identify our ‘personal branding target group’
… evaluate our job market options
… see how often Google is used for ‘Recruit-Googling’
… see who ‘delivers’ good contacts to us
and finally the best of all parts: Via the passive pick a boo effect, we can contact people and definitely have a starting point for a business and/or private conversation.

Spot On!
Seeing all these benefits of the Pick-a-boo application ‘Who has seen to your profile lately’, it surprises me that the biggest network of all, Facebook, still doesn’t have this application feature. Or will it be coming with the announcement of becoming a paid service platform? We will see…

Curious to hear your view and experience on the Pick-a-boo effect in social networks?

News Update – Best of the Day

daily1Today, the focus is on personal branding and your career…

Are you a top executive? The so called C-level manager? And you want to understand what you resume needs in order to be interesting for recruiters. Meg Guiseppi has 10 top secrets for a great senior-level executive resume.

In our online social networks the term ‘friend’ has a complete different meaning than in our offline world. Getting this straight in terms of a strategy becomes even more complicated. Chris Brogan writes an interesting summary on friends, reputation and endorsement. And he makes us think how we handle this topic.

One thing is for sure… In order to be successful in business we all need a good contact network. Now, in the era of social networks the question rises what is more important: quantity or quality? Thomas Power gives an answer… (although there is no proof it sounds quite realistic).

Interested to hear about your view and how do you handle your friend, colleague, partner or customer relationships… – Tell us about it!

Online Reputation Management bleibt (zeit)aufwendig…

Als ich meine Vision des Personal Web Managers geschrieben habe, dachte ich, es wird sicherlich bald eine solche Dienstleistung des Reputation Coaches für aufstrebende Manager oder stark im Web aktive Persönlichkeiten geben. Derzeit ist interessant zu beobachten, wie sich dieser Plattform-Markt für persönliches Reputation Management in Position bringt.

Es steht eben viel auf dem Spiel: die Bewerbung einer Karriere, die für Nachhaltigkeit einer authentischen und erfolgreichen Persönlichkeit steht. Die Online Reputation wird dabei immer wichtiger für den nächsten Karriereschritt, aber ihr Management bleibt leider trotz unterstützender Plattformen zeitaufwendig. Ein kleiner Überblick…

Bisher galt der amerikanische Dienstleister Reputation Defender als der weltweite ‘Platzhirsch’ im Entfernen oder ‘Geradebiegen’ von bildlich belegbaren Fehltritten oder voreilig getroffenen Statements und Kommentaren, die im Web verewigt sind. Denn, wie wir alle inzwischen wissen sollten: Das Web vergißt nichts – teilweise nur, wenn wir entsprechend nachhelfen. Und so bietet Reputation Defender mit myChild ein Produkt an, das den Ruf und die Privatsphäre des Kindes schon von Kindesbeinen an online schützt.

In Deutschland ist mit my ON-ID eine sehr interessante Plattform am Start, die Online Reputation auf technischer Basis zu handeln, monitoren und optimieren anbietet. Die Web 2.0 Plattform offeriert sehr viele Optionen, das eigene Personal Brand als Visitenkarte (bzw. fast schon im Format eines Online CV aufzubauen (mit zahlreichen Schnittstellen und Widgetfunktionen zu anderen Social Networks).

Am Wochenende erhielt ich nun die neuste Pressemitteilung von Dein Guter Ruf, die mir von meinem Ex-Kollegen Jannis Moutafis zugespielt wurde. Die Nachricht preist die ab sofort kostenlose Suche des (mir noch völlig unbekannten) Reputations-Dienstsleisters an, sowie die Option eine Web-Imageseite zu veröffentlichen. Als Gadget wird der Test „Welcher Online-Typ bin ich“ angeboten, der einem Tips zum persönlichen Reputation Management offeriert (mein Testergebnis siehe Bild).

Hintergrund des Tests: Der Profil Organiser wird hiermit promotet. Dort kann man seine Netzwerk-Profile eingeben und hat diese so im Schnellüberblick und -zugriff. Der vordergründige Vorteil der Übersichtlichkeit, läßt sich mit einem grundlegenden Tip entkräften…

Starte kein Profil in einem sozialen Netzwerk, wo Du nur einen kleinen Mehrwert siehst und evaluiere vorher, ob Du nur aus einer zeitweiligen Zugehörigkeit (Schule, Uni, etc.) oder aus zukünftiger Überlegung (Kontakte halten, Karrierebenefit, etc.) dieses nutzen wirst.

Die Dienstleistungen von Dein Guter Ruf erinnern mich dennoch stark an den Personal Web Manager, denn hier geht es offensichtlich wirklich um den strategischen Ansatz des Reputation Managements mit persönlicher PR-Betreuung. Man bietet vier verschiedene Versionen an: Basis-, Profi-, Premium- und VIP-Manager – von kostenlos bis 129,90 EUR pro Monat. Letztere verspricht sogar…

– Wir legen für Sie Profile in mit Ihnen abgestimmten Portalen an.
– Wir integrieren bereits vorhandene Inhalte in Foren, Blogs, Fachportalen.
– Wir prüfen monatlich Ihre Reputation und liefern für Sie geeignete Portal- und Themenvorschläge.
– Wir führen für Sie geeignete Online-PR Aktivitäten durch.

Insofern wirken die Preise vernünftig und erinnern an das Preismodell von Reputation Defender.

Kurztest: Dein Guter Ruf
Suche: Die Suche ist unbefriedigend. Bei 466.000 Googletreffern zu meinem Namen fand Dein Guter Ruf rund 70. Einige hatten überhaupt nichts mit mir zu tun. Zahlreiche positive, wie Interviews und Gastbeiträge von/mit mir, wurden gar nicht gefunden.
Image-Webseite: Ein Bild kann nicht gefunden, hochgeladen oder integriert werden (vielleicht in einer Bezahlversion?!). Der erste Eindruck eines Menschen zählt – und der Mensch verkauft sich in der Karrierebewerbung über ein persönliches Bild. Man verschickt ja auch keinen Lebenslauf ohne Foto.
Paid Services: Daß man für zahlreiche Funktionen (z.B. Kommentar eines Suchtreffers) im Web 2.0 Zeitlater bezahlen muß, ist irgendwie Web 1.0 Welt. Zumal my ON-ID hier schon diese Funktion ohne Aufpreis anbietet.
Fazit. Unspektakulär, nüchtern, sachlich, nicht personalisierbar – aber vielleicht ist die Form genau das, was zukünftig für das Personalwesen die nachhaltige Bewerbung ist. Wer weiß…

Spot On!
Neben my ON-ID macht sich mit Dein Guter Ruf ein weiterer Anbieter auf, unsere individuelle Online Reputation im Auge zu behalten und zu professionalisieren. Mein Urteil bleibt dennoch kritisch. Die Idee Reputation Management mit persönlicher PR-Strategie zu verknüpfen, gefällt mir gut (schon wegen seiner Nähe zu ‘meinem’ Personal Web Manager). Man müsste es fast einmal einem Test unterziehen, um zu sehen, wie erfolgreich sich die Arbeit für das Personal Branding zeigt (Erfahrungsberichte bitte an mich schicken). my ON-ID ist dennoch derzeit einen ganzen Schritt voraus und bietet die spannendere und zielgenauere Lösung das Online Reputation in der Spur zu halten. Reputation Management bleibt weiterhin aufwendig, vor allem zeitaufwendig, denn am besten wird sie derzeit noch von jedem Einzelnen kritisch beäugt, bewacht und bewertet.

Personal Branding – how to build your career 3.0

Personal branding is the way to stand out of the crowd and being noticed in some special way in the business world which makes you unique. It is your value proposition for the future of your career. In a session at the webinale09 I held a speech about ‘Career 3.0 – split between personal branding and productivity’ and gave some projections on the relevance of social media activities and how these affect your career development.

Today, we want to learn from Dwight Cribb, founder of his successful recruitment agency, what professional recruiters think about personal branding and what is the relevance for personal branding. You can follow his offline and online thoughts via his Twitter account.

Q: What is the first thing you do when somebody is being suggested as a perfect candidate?
Dwight Cribb Of course I will first probe what the relationship between the candidate and the person suggesting him is. Supposing that the recommendation is made during a phone conversation, I will in parallel check the candidate’s profile on Xing. If that does not provide the information I require I will probe deeper with people search engines.

Q: Let’s imagine somebody is not doing anything for personal branding. This person is not blogging, micro-blogging or social networking. Does this have a positive or negative impact on your perception of that person?
Dwight Cribb This largely depends on the type of position I am recruiting for, both in terms of seniority and discipline. I would normally expect someone in a directly client facing role or someone who communicates directly on behalf of a division or company to have at least some presence on the web. It is, however, true that not being on a social networking site is today more of statement than being on one. A few years ago one could be forgiven for thinking of people who had not yet discovered Xing, LinkedIn and facebook as being somewhat backward or conservative. As it is today largely impossible to not have noticed these networks flourish, we must assume that those not on them have shunned them on purpose. This may be a good strategy if one relies on others to communicate with clients and the public, especially as a senior manager. A C-Level executive will through his utterances on social networks have a severe impact on the brand communication, it thus needs to be 100% in line with the other communication, if not it will cause at best confusion and at worst it will undermine the credibility of the brand.

As for blogging, I think that is a very personal decision and I would never think badly of anyone who did not blog. I may, however, think badly of someone who blogs badly or in a manner inappropriate to his or her position. So overall it would not reflect badly if I found out nothing about a person online, it would just peak my interest and make me more curious to receive other information in the form of a CV or a recommendation from a third party.

Q: Will personal branding and the individual online reputation replace the traditional CV some day?
Dwight Cribb I doubt whether it will replace the CV, it is more likely that it will continue to augment the CV. Online reputation is a fantasy product. We each spin our profiles in a manner which we feel supports the image we want to convey. It is self marketing. A CV is more strongly based in chronological fact and provides a picture which comes closer to the reality than the pictures which get drawn in communities.

Q: If everybody has a strong personal brand, don’t companies fear these people could get chased by some competitor and recruiters? Or that employees just work for their own career purpose?
Dwight Cribb Most successful employees work for the own career advancement. But in the long term they will only achieve this by delivering results to their employers, because people are very good at spotting meaningless self marketing and will not fall for it for long. Good employees have always had a strong personal brand (also called reputation). It has been true in all areas and across the ages, if you do something well you will be admired by your peers and your reputation will spread. This means that others will try and employ your services, sometimes via a recruiter.

Q: What is your advice on how companies have to handle personal branding of the employees in the future?
Dwight Cribb Let people define themselves what they are comfortable with. Give them a clear guideline what company resources and what company information they can use to build their reputation and to what extent they must make clear what is their opinion what the company’s.

Q: What do you think of the personal web managers vision?
Dwight Cribb There are instances where this makes perfect sense, but I belive they are far and few between. This is a role which has precedence in the offline world, many high-profile business people, politicians and celebrities employ someone with this brief. Whether they do their job online, offline or in both really does not make much difference. We have come to expect that the picture we get presented of these people has been scripted and planned in detail. We even often admire the way in which they craftily manipulate their image. But I think we would be less inclined to condone or accept this level of abstraction in communication in our closer environment of colleagues, family and friends. A facebook status update from a friend loses relevance if I know that it was posted his or her personal web consultant, who was busy making them be liked by their friends and acquaintances.

Q: Give us 3 tips how to create a personal brand, please.
Dwight Cribb Be yourself, be honest, laugh at times.

Thank you for your time and your advice, Mr. Cribb.

Study: Twitter used as a learning tool – not for ego-boosting

According to a recent study by the research firm MarketingProfs in early and mid-April, the main intention to use Twitter is learning in more or less real-time, then comes social networking benefit or pushing the ‘digital ego’.

The results of the study revealed that almost…
– 100% of the respondents said they value “getting information in a timely manner” and “I find it exciting to learn new things from people”
– about 80% like to be connected to lots of people.
– 70% answered “I find it gratifying to have people follow me,” and “I want to generate new business.”

The question that divides the Twitterati population is if a large number of followers makes you more respectful, or not. On this statement…
– 39,9% strongly or mildly agree
– 45% strongly or mildly disagree

Seeing the large number of followers as a perception of intelligence was tested with the question “People who have a large number of followers are smarter than those who don’t”…
– 81,7% strongly or mildly disagree
– 5.9% strongly or mildly agree

In the eyes of Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, the benefits are …

“Twitter lets people know what’s going on about things they care about instantly, as it happens” (…) “In the best cases, Twitter makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.”

And yes, Twitter is turning around the media world if we look at the eMarketers summary ‘Twitter tally’.

Spot On!
But, hold on… One question makes me think about these results of the MarketingProfs study in combination with the authenticity of the answers and the first idea of the micro-blogging tool. The question “I feel bad when I tweet something and nobody responds” was answered as follows…
– 52,7% strongly or mildly disagree
– 24% strongly or mildly agree
– 23,3% neither agree nor disagree
Now, if Twitter is like a mobile phone for text message dialogues, meant to communicate with followers we like and rate, is this communication not going back to being a monologue then? So, are we really sending out some kind of information just for the sake of informing others? Don’t we await an answer if we send a text message with a mobile phone? If we tweet ‘I am in the tube’ or ‘Just got breakfast’, then probably nobody expects anything. But not if people are writing scientific papers of 500-750 words – and then tweet the headline and the link. In my opinion Twitter is moving from a communication tool to some kind of personal branding tool. Otherwise, we might ask: Why do people spend an average of 2¾ hours per day on Twitter (average using time for Twitter according to study!), instead of being productive, picking up the phone or meeting up with clients for lunch or in the bar? This is real communication, and not limited by 140 characters. And if someone has written the scientific paper it is on the web, it’s public, so if people are interested, they will find it. But Twitter spreads the word much faster. And is not this the reason why people love and use Twitter?

News Update – Best of the Day

Companies still don’t know whether to ignore Twitter or being aware of a Twitterstorm might save the brand’s value. David Sarno and Alana Semuels show good cases why major brands learn they’d better respond quick – focussing on Amazon, Skittles, Domino, Coca-Cola and Hasbro.

How to explain the social web to your parents? Obviously, all of us who engage in the social web world have faced this problem. In May, I have decided to speak at the Webinale on ‘career 3.0 – split between productivity and personal branding’ which will give some insight how successful companies might work with the social web of the future. Jeremiah Owyang did an excellent storyboard explanation on the social web and compares the industry with a ‘Social Reef’.

“…see this space like a reef, a complex ecosystem that has so many variables and changes, each day is different.”

Still thinking on how to behave on Facebook the right way? No worries, here is the answer and a wonderful advice by YourTango and their film ‘Facebook Manners’.

News Update – Best of the Day

Die richtigen Strategien für Social Media zu finden, ist derzeit ein Versuch von zahlreichen RP- und Marketingexperten. Geoff Livingston, ein bekannter amerikanischer PR Stratege, bringt die Komplexität der Thematik in seinem Post ‘Five Social Media Strategies‘ kurz und prägnant auf den Punkt.

Es gibt viele Leitfäden für die Planung einer Webseite – aber nicht viele für die Planung der perfekten. MintTwist, eine Internetberatungsfirma aus UK, hat eine sehr interessanten Planungs-Leitfaden abgeliefert. Einfach mal durchlesen und selbst prüfen, ob die bestehenden Elemente der Planung, dem Design und der Aussagekarft der Webseite entspricht.

Nach seinem erfolgreichen Post über Personal Branding 101, hat der Autor des Buches ‘Me 2.0’, Dan Schwabel, nun seinen zweiten Teil abermals bei Mashable veröffentlicht. Personal Branding 102. Wer sich diesen Post durchliest, macht sich danach sofort an das Auffrischen seiner Digital DNA und seiner Kontakte in seinen Social Media Netzwerken.

______________________ Spot On!

Wenn Sie einen aktuellen Report zum Thema Social Networking haben möchten, bietet diese Studie Ihnen die Option dazu. Die Studie will herausfinden, wie wir Social Networks im Business-Kontext nutzen, welche wir bevorzugen und wieviel Zeit wir dort investieren. Nehmen Sie sich die Zeit und sein Sie einer der ersten, der die Studie bekommt.