Photo courtesy of JD Hancock (http://bit.ly/1whbJh7) “The Fix Is In” : Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) on flickr creative commons.
The good news is that there are a lot of people out there who want to help you find a job. The bad news is that not all of the advice out there is good. In fact, some of it, when followed, will stand between you and the job you want and need.
There are also things that job seekers do that completely contradict the good advice that is out there. It never ceases to amaze and alarm me that job seekers spend their time engaged in activities that do absolutely nothing to help them achieve their goals when there are so many enjoyable activities that will.
Here are the top 10 things that I have personally seen done in the last 8+ years with alarming volume and the things that can be done instead to help job seekers gain and sustain momentum in their job search.
- Asking people who cannot personally vouch for your performance to help you get an interview in their company
People currently in a job that they want or need will make keeping their job a priority. They will not do anything to jeopardize their reputation or the well being of their organization. They will, however, be sure to make recommendations that have a high chance of improving their company or make them look good.
Corrective Action: Request a new contact’s time to better understand the organization’s needs. Inspire them to give you an introduction to the stakeholders so that you can recommend solutions, even if the solutions are other people.
- Inviting people you don’t know to connect on LinkedIn with no indication of why they should want to connect
Certainly, there are a lot of people out there who want to help. Even helpful people have a limit to their time and their willingness to help strangers who may abuse the network that they have invested time in nurturing. You DO have a lot more to offer than just filling an open position in a company. You have a network of your own and solutions to problems.
Corrective Action: When you identify a contact who may be able to assist you, review the contact’s profile for indications of how you or your network might be able to serve him or her, such as in the recent status updates. Then, write an invitation that requests a phone or in-person meeting to discuss how you can help each other before you join each other’s network. Then once you do connect, use the notes field of the profile to record what you identified as that person’s needs and be proactive to follow up on them.
- Using a boilerplate message to invite people to LinkedIn or importing contacts
About every article or speaker that I have ever seen on the subject of LinkedIn has advised users to replace the boilerplate LinkedIn invitation. Unfortunately, almost all of LinkedIn’s screens inform you of people you can invite, or prompt you to do so, without giving you the ability to customize your message. You actually have to visit their profile and click on the CONNECT icon to have the option to customize your message.
Corrective Action: Personalize every message and be explicit as to what assistance you are seeking while offering yourself and your network to help with their initiatives.
- Asking a company that has extended an offer to wait for you to hear from other companies
Let’s say you were on a date and it went well and you asked for a second date for next Friday, but he or she wants to wait until next Thursday to let you know. Now let’s say they told you that they wanted to wait until Thursday because they want to see if a hotter date is going to pan out or not. Now let’s say you’ve been dating for months and you proposed, but your amore wants to explore his or her feelings for someone else before giving you an answer. When you consider that a company spends weeks or months trying to find that special someone, and you usually have weeks to consider the company as a match, more time to consider an offer puts the company at risk that they might have to start the process all over again.
Corrective Action: Request 48 hours to evaluate a company’s WRITTEN offer and give them an answer in that time.
- Going above the hiring manager’s head to get ahead in the interview process
If you are already in consideration for a position, there are ways that you can improve your chances, but there are also ways to hurt your chances. Trying to engage inside advocates often just creates internal conflict. Most hiring is not done democratically. A new person can really tip morale one way or another, so everyone has a vested interest in who gets hired, but few have the authority to do the hiring. Keeping a company’s politics in check so that it does not affect productivity is already a tricky enough task. Asking someone to “pull some strings” if they are not the hiring manager is a request that can put everyone in an uncomfortable position.
Corrective Action: When you identify additional contacts in an organization, ask them to help you gain additional perspective on the organization’s problems (without jeopardizing confidentiality) and discuss potential solutions. Then you can include this insight in the WRITTEN thank you note that you send to the hiring manager and any other stakeholders who were involved in the interview process.
- Ask people to pass on leads for positions that match your job title
Chances are, even if you are “flexible,” you have more criteria to the job that you would accept than it just matching a job title. Logically, it may make sense that the more general you are when you ask people to keep alerted to positions for you, the more leads you will receive. Practically, however, your function in a company rarely cleanly matches a job title and not only will you receive job leads that you will not want to follow up on, but the people who pass them on will be discouraged and less likely to pass something on if they think you will not follow up. Also, by the time a posted position makes it to you, it is often too late in the game to be considered.
Corrective Action: Explain to people what problems you solve, for whom, and what conversations they might hear that indicate that an introduction would be beneficial to all parties. When you do receive a lead that does not fit, but includes a contact name, follow up, be forthright and offer to help them find the right candidate.
- Only seeking the help of those in your field
Back to the song from Sesame Street, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” Think about the people who see other people all the time. People in your field may see other people in your field, but they also might be limited to seeing people in their field that only work for their company, and once they exhaust their own company as a viable employer for you, there may be past colleagues. According to a University of Virginia study, we are all connected by no more than seven degrees of separation. If you are on LinkedIn, it probably surprises you how you are connected to people. It is very visible once you put your network into a digital map. What about the rest of your network, however? What about your dentist, your mailman, your landscaper, the cashier at your favorite lunch spot? They also see other people all the time!
Corrective Action: Make inquiries of people who are outside of your professional realm to see who and what they know that might help you find out who has problems that you can solve.
- Asking other people what kind of job you should be pursuing
When you are doing a self-discovery process to determine what your next line of work will be, the input of others is sometimes helpful; it is impossible to be objective about yourself, after all. However, no one should know more about what you want than you. People generally have great intentions when they make suggestions, but most of their reasons will be in direct contrast to YOUR priorities.
Corrective Action: Give other people an idea of what you consider to be your strengths and what you suspect you would want to contribute to an organization. Ask for suggestions and make a list. Identify at least 3 people for each potential path who are willing to share with you what the challenges and rewards of that role are. Compare these with your concerns and greatest desires. Narrow the list down to one and design your campaign (or ask us for help).
- Using job market data to determine the viability of your job transition
When the Bureau of Labor and Statistics gather and disseminate information, it is comprehensive. When the media reports it, it is simplistic and usually bleak. If an area is “growing,” so is your competition in that area. What is growing today may be shrinking tomorrow. Those who survive will be the ones with the highest qualifications and passion. Also, it is not as important to know who is NOT getting a job as it is to know who IS getting a job and why.
Corrective Action: Pursue the position that is most viable for you – the one that genuinely aligns with your talents and motivations.
- Spending more than 10% of your transition time on job boards
When job boards first became commonplace, they did more good than harm. Now they are a necessary evil. Companies need to track their candidate applications and are required to keep records on what actions are taken. That does not make job boards the best way for you to be noticed or invited for an interview. You may still have to submit your information through a company’s website to comply with their human resources procedures. You do NOT have to start there.
Corrective Action: Track the time that you spend on your transition, including social engagements, as long as you leverage them. Adjust your weekly activity so that no more than 5% of your time is spent on job boards. Set up agents on the aggregating sites (Indeed, Simply Hired) and check them ONLY twice a week. Once you identify a desirable position on a job board, go straight to LinkedIn or niche recruiters to find a better way to get in front of the hiring manager. Use the online application offered by job boards as a LAST RESORT.
Getting Legal and Marketing to Play Along in Social Media
Photo courtesy of Mark Kens on flickr open source. “Social Media Cloud by Techndu”(http://bit.ly/1BQicff).
Getting a company’s legal department and their marketing department to work together can seem like an exercise in futility. The acrimony between the two departments can be can be a drag on the overall business. The marketing department wants to move ahead with its latest campaign, while legal is concerned with avoiding risk and mitigating possible lawsuits. Throw the legal risks of using social media into the mix, and acrimony between these two departments may increase exponentially.
The benefits businesses receive when using social media are essential in this day and age, but what are the negative impacts of not using social media? What happens when a company’s overly cautious legal department triumphs over their marketing department in terms of social media usage? There are very real risks and challenges involved with social media, and sometimes marketing and legal departments can’t come to a consensus regarding its use. Rather than create a comprehensive social media policy that covers a company’s legal bases (while building relationships with customers), a business may deem social media too risky.
Avoiding social media may satisfy risk-adverse businesses, but there are serious implications to ignoring the medium. Stunted growth, perceptions of poor customer service, and an indifference to new technology are ways that a limited social media presence can kill a business. Furthermore, a company’s employment brand may become damaged. Employees, who feel stifled by a restraint on their own social media activities, may leave the company. It becomes difficult for a business to hire and retain talented workers, especially if those workers take pride in mentioning their place of employment on social media. Allowing employees to engage on social media can make it easier for them to make a positive contribution to company’s brand, and can help discourage turnover.
First, let’s discuss legal and marketing departments, and why they may object to company’s social media presence.
A legal perspective against social media usage:
Legal departments are crucial in supporting businesses. They provide legal advice that includes litigation, intellectual property protection, regulatory compliance, business conduct and other corporate affairs. In short, legal departments ensure a company’s actions do not run afoul of the law, and that their legal bases are covered.
From a company’s legal perspective, social media usage can be a real nightmare for a variety of reasons.
Security concerns: Hackers can either take over social media accounts of a business, or their known employees. If passwords are shared, this could open up the door to a company’s customer and employee database being compromised by hackers. The entire debacle surrounding Sony is an excellent example.
Copyright infringement is another real problem if a business chooses to use content created by others. If a company uses a person’s likeness or positive review on a social media account, it may violate a customer’s right of privacy. For example, if a customer wrote a glowing review about a company’s service and the company used that testimonial without permission it could pave the way for litigation.
Terms and conditions: All social media platforms have their own terms and conditions when it comes to advertising. A failure to follow those requirements may result in an account being removed (talk about embarrassing!), and possible legal liability.
Employee liability: Employees who post on a company’s official social media accounts or those who represent a company on their own social media accounts can be a legal risk. If any employee makes a comment that offends customers, defames the competition, is false advertising, is deemed hate speech, or accidentally leaks sensitive information, the business can be held liable.
Trade Secrets: Any employee could accidently post trade secrets or other proprietary information on a social media account. If that information is re-shared and goes viral, it could present a major problem for the company.
Avoiding risk may take the form of not allowing employees to use social media outlets, even for personal use. For example, an employee may not be allowed to post on LinkedIn or Facebook. Maintaining such a strict policy may ensure employees never place their employer in a bad light, but such a move can inhibit workers from building a relationship with clients. Also, many company cultures that embrace social media enjoy the added value that a dynamic workforce offers. People who are “out in the world” can father much more intelligence and develop a greater perspective for their employer. Employees who are happy with their jobs can become major advocates for a company. Their pride and sense of purpose at work will manifest as genuine enthusiasm. In terms of official company accounts, if a business never engages with their customers on social media (especially when there’s a problem), their silence can be interpreted as aloofness or outright disdain.
I know a programmer for a company who is also an avid social media user. Being an employee of this company, he’s not allowed to mention he works for the company (or mention the company at all) on his social media accounts. I wouldn’t have known at all he worked for them if he hadn’t of casually mentioned it while we were at an Oktoberfest event. In talking to him privately, it turns out he loves working there. He values the company’s commitment to maintaining a racially diverse workforce, loves his work there as a programmer, and is being groomed for a promotion. Recently, this company has been getting a lot of bad press. We almost never hear about workers being satisfied with their jobs at this company. How different would our perceptions of this company be if employees were encouraged to share their experiences on social media? We may even give the company business or apply for a job there.
A marketing perspective in favor of social media:
Marketing departments are essential to generating sales leads, maintaining brand awareness, building customer relationships, and keeping an eye on long-term consumer trends. Without leads generated by marketing, a business wouldn’t have customers to sell to. It is crucial that marketing gets the word out about the products or services their company offers. Social media is just one of many tools marketers have at their disposal, and using it is essential to remaining engaged with customers.
Turning negative comments into a positive experience: Opening up on social media can potentially open the floodgates to a surge of negative comments. If a customer is unhappy with a product or service they won’t hesitate to voice their displeasure to family, friends and followers in their networks. Worse, having a presence on social media can invite hostile users to negatively comment, regardless of if they are a customer or not. No one wants to be on the receiving end of such criticism, warranted or not. A skill use of the medium can turn a potentially brand-damaging scenario, into a way to highlight a company’s excellent customer service.
Overcoming a major time sink: Marketing departments are already busy, especially if the business is small. Fielding comments, concerns and using the medium to blast out company information takes valuable time from other forms of communication. A company’s marketing staff knows the value of social media, and will often work usage into their daily schedule.
The target audience is shifting from traditional media to social media: A client-base using traditional media may be larger than the one using newer forms of media. That said, the audience is already using social media on a daily basis, and usage of the medium continues to grow each year. The interactive nature of the medium means its impact is far greater than traditional media’s.
There’s always something to say: A smart marketing plan consists of posting products and services on their social media accounts. The latest information is what customers’ value. Additionally, marketing campaigns can be creative and give their followers a sneak peek behind the scenes of their business. Other fun ways marketers can interact can is to conduct polls, have Q&A sessions, and ask clients for their direct thoughts on products and services.
Is it worth the ROI: Every business wants a Return on Investment. Even if using social media is free, it still requires time and effort from employees. If an increase in sales isn’t immediately apparent it may be tempting to ditch, or heavily limit social media usage. Social media usage goes far beyond the bottom line. The cost of not going to where an audience is can do far more damage to a brand, than spending the resources to conduct a comprehensive social media campaign.
The benefits that social media brings to a marketing campaign can’t be stated enough. A business that closes itself to social media will be left in the dust by the competition. Many customers take to social media in order to get a problem resolved or to further connect with a brand. Being absent on social media means a missed opportunity to resolve a bad experience for a customer, and a missed potential to turn them into brand advocates. Additionally, current (and future) customers on social media want to hear about service and product updates, and expect the majority of businesses to have an active social media presence. On the flipside, social media is an excellent way for marketers to gain valuable customer insights through feedback, monitor their competition, advertise company culture to potential employees, and generate customer leads for sales.
Inspiring collaboration between legal and marketing departments:
Five ways both groups can meet in the middle:
A third party firm can be beneficial to companies developing these policies. An outside firm can come in and mediate while creating standard content that each employee can use. It is a great way to move the company forward, if there are growth initiatives and human capital initiatives. A company can make up for lost time and progress by hiring a firm (like Epic Careering) to write profiles for the front lines (sales, customer service, and recruiting), and for the executive team.
A failure to fully embrace and utilize social media by businesses can mean a sudden death. A competitor fully tuned into social media can come in very quickly and dominate a market in some industries. Any company that wishes to remain vibrant and relevant in today’s highly connected world needs a consistently branded presence on social media. Getting the legal department and the marketing department to play along nicely doesn’t mean a business has to sacrifice their online presence to mitigate risk. A well-developed guide that covers employee behavior, online accounts, data protection, and ways to deal with negative feedback are great ways for a company deal with issues that may arise because of a strong online presence. Effectively leveraging social media as a powerful marketing platform can increase brand awareness that makes sales easier. The effort of inspiring collaboration between legal and marketing departments may mean an investment of time, some communication training, or mediation. That effort will make all of the other outward business efforts (sales, partner development, recruiting, and even selecting vendors) easier and more successful.