jessica lee writes.

Come & Get It - Using Twitter to Hire Presentation.

yesterday afternoon, i had the honor of spending a little bit of time chatting about using twitter to hire at the Cool Twitter Conference. and i was in good company considering you had folks from the Washington Post and CNN Politics sharing how they use twitter... and also there was Mark Stelzner of Inflexion Advisors and Job Angels. what a good line up! i was flattered to be playing with the big boys.

the slides and (fuzzy) video from my session are below. i had 15 minutes to talk it up... and it was mostly to non-recruiting, non-HR folks i was addressing so you'll see that i didn't go super in-depth during the chat on sourcing... it was a pretty high level overview of how to use twitter to recruit. and the slide deck? well, i think i pulled together something kinda lovely. every slide had 140 characters or less of text, in the spirit of twitter. you'll get it as you click through. enjoy - and if you have any questions or need to borrow content, let me know.

(email subscribers or mobile web viewers, slides + video may not be visible! click through to ze bloggy to view them in their entirety.)

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cool twitter conference - jessica lee - using twitter to hire. from fistful of talent on Vimeo.

On Twitter for Employment Branding - Get Back to Basics.

so... back to this idea of using twitter to recruit and hire. there's that whole thing about finding candidates... but the other part of using twitter for recruiting, maybe even the bigger part of it, is focused on employment branding. but what does that really mean - employment branding? time to put our marketing hats on.
 
first, some employment branding definitions. if we look to the reverent Dr. John Sullivan, here's his take:

"Employment branding is unique in that it is the only long-term recruiting strategy. The viral-based perception management program designed to attract top-quality applicants is based on the premise that the organization is well-managed in the eyes of the target candidate population. It has many critical elements, only one of which pertains to getting the message out through awards programs, editorial content in target publications, presentations at conferences, and through viral marketing driven via the employee referral program. It is not the same as recruitment marketing, although recruitment marketing should be aligned with the employment branding effort."

that's a mouthful - much more than 140 characters, that's for sure. and for this twitter conference on thursday that i'm chatting at, it's likely going to be non-recruiting and non-HR folks that i'll be speaking to... so when i think about the notion of organizations using twitter for employment branding - whether a mom-and-pop shop or a fortune 500 - really what this boils down to at a basic level is simply projecting and marketing your organization as being a great place to work so that would-be candidates seek you out. simple enough.

first, the big disclaimer! you've gotta have the goods to sell when it comes to why your employer is a great place to work. maybe that goes without saying. but, if the culture is toxic and the environment is crap at your organization, then employment branding whether done old school or new school with web 2.0 methods like twitter will not save your recruiting life. you've gotta stop reading this and go back and fix the issues. maybe a little later you can then think about employment branding.

for more traditional employment branding, pre web 2.0, there are lists upon lists of great places to work - Fortune magazine has a list. local magazines have lists. coincidentally, my pal Kris Dunn's organization, DAXKO, where he's the VP of People, just received accolades from Fortune Magazine as being one of seven great small businesses to work for - another list from Fortune focused more on small companies though. that's a totally cool recognition for them to be able to sport. but... what if you can't make one of these lists? what if you don't have the marketing or PR folks to help get you on the list? or what if your employee program budgets are dwindling and you're more boot strap but you know you're still a great place to work?

talent management and recruiting thought leaders cite tactics like... workplace rankings and awards. world-class employee referral program. editorial placements. benchmark studies. having a WOW website. being written up in academic case studies. all really good stuff... but a lot of that can fall to the way-side as an HR or recruiting pro if you've got all that day-to-day stuff you've gotta execute. companies who do all of that stuff well likely have strong marketing and PR peeps behind the scenes to help. but herein lies why and how the web and social media is one of the great equalizers. david can now go up against goliath.

there are tons of resources out there on what it means to have an employment brand, who does it well... (for starters, go here and here and here.) read up, and just keep in mind that the basics of employment branding don't change with twitter. if you take all the components of what it takes to build and market an employment brand, all those things that make your organization a great place to work - those are all the different things you could conceivably tweet about. take Kris and DAXKO as an example - they could easily take much of what Fortune highlights as making them special and use that as fodder for their twitter feed. imagine tweets that highlight...

• no one has private offices
• a work/play lounge is offered, complete with a Nintendo Wii and a 52-inch plasma TV
• all new employees get 15 paid vacation days
• all staff receive free YMCA membership
• staff receive $1,500 annually each to spend on professional enrichment
• after every seven years of service, staff are entitled to a four-week sabbatical

all compelling stuff, right? and imagine pushing that out there via twitter for public consumption. (and yes, they are already on twitter. check them out here, @DAXKO.) keep in mind though, you've gotta have the goods to back up the kool-aid you're trying to offer - just like DAXKO does - when it comes to why your company is a great place to work.

so i guess in the end? it's somewhat back to basics on employment branding, folks... it's just that this time, twitter is just another tool for your arsenal for getting the word out. wow. i think i have my brain wrapped around half of my talk for thursday now!

Using Twitter to Hire + a Cool Twitter Conference.

okay... so coming up on thursday is the first ever "cool twitter conference." the conference title, well... it leaves me wanting more. (sorry kent and bob, who are organizing this effort.) but a conference focused on just twitter alone and how to make it work on a practical level? i love the concept and i like that the guys behind this venture are trying something new... and of course, how could i say no to speaking at this event especially given the line up of folks who will be speaking? folks from some of DC's best organizations... CNN Politics, the Washington Post, the Heritage Foundation among others plus little me all talking about leveraging twitter. neat.

my focus? using twitter to hire... which is really also how to tweet your way to a job. and i have 15 minutes to make my case. i have material i can pull up from past chats and re-purpose... and the topic is a no-brainer for me... but freaking me out slightly is the conversation header they've thrown over my session though - 10% unemployment: using twitter to lower the rate. wow. those are some lofty goals for me to try to speak to... but i'll give it a whirl.

essentially, twitter for hiring really boils down to two things:

1. find + source candidates, and
2. employment branding. 

the latter, chris ferdinandi of renegade HR have written about on behalf of zoominfo... and the former, i can pull content together for. as usual,  i'll post the deck up once it's finalized... and if i have video footage, i'll post that as well... but the thing i always come back to with new twitter users is helping them get over the mystery and intimidation of twitter. at this point... i've been at it for a year! wooo! and it's taken me a year to pull together 1700 followers. not bad in terms of my reach, and i could be doing better... but new tweeters should rest assure that influence in the twitterverse doesn't happen overnight.

i charted out my follower-growth over the past year, pictured right (track your own twitter growth using twitterholic or twittercounter)... and i'm thinking the major markers for someone looking to make a mark in the twitterverse are at when you hit 200, 500, then 1000 followers. each of those points in times seem to show significant growth for me so we'll take a moment to chat about that in my session... but of course, influence doesn't necessarily equate to having a lot of followers, which i think we'll also chat about. i've realized of late that i have more people lurking and checking in on my twitter feed who don't actually follow me...

so that's it for now. the next few days of my blog's content will likely be focused on this topic as i grind out some materials for that session... 15 minutes of talking and i'm betting i'll obsess hours over getting the slides and content juuuuuust right.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Ambient Awareness.

breaking up isn't the same anymore, is it? even just a few years ago, for me at least, breaking went something like this: "it's not you, it's me. here's the things you left at my apartment. see you around! oh, and it was nice while it lasted!" and then i would walk away from my ex. hands were washed clean, and it was done quickly. but today, we're so hyper-connected that it seems making a clean break isn't so easy anymore. we may have connections via Facebook, Twitter and instant message. add in text messaging, blogging for me... and that's a lot of different places to be connected to someone. so when you stop being in a relationship, and when you need to make a clean break, i'm learning that perhaps you not only have to cut people out of your heart, but you need to make some cuts digitally too. sad, but true. think "ambient awareness."

last year, the New York Times ran a piece in their Sunday magazine on this notion of ambient awareness in this new digital age. on a subject within the story becoming an avid Twitter user:

"But as the days went by, something changed. Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life."

when first starting a relationship, ambient awareness has been a bit of an advantage, for me at least. we can be surrounded by each other digitally - via Twitter, Facebook, instant message and what have you. we can get in touch with each other and be connected in half a dozen different ways. and it also allows for the learning curve of getting to know each other to be shortened a bit. we can follow each other on Twitter. you can read my blogs. we can go through each others Facebook archives and photos... we can learn snippets about each others past to piece together each others histories and then in real time, we can begin seeing each others current daily rhythm. (although... i recognize that there's a lot of self-editing taking place online... so you learn a version of me that i've chosen to present. there still might be some skeletons in the closet you have yet to learn...) and admittedly, i've also been strangely comforted because of ambient awareness. something as simple as a silly green dot makes me feel better. i log onto GoogleTalk, my instant messaging service of choice, and i see your little green dot that represents a status of being available... and i just feel like you're there for me. i might not have anything to say to you at all, but the green dot and the idea of you being available warms me.

but what then happens when you want to or need to cut someone out of your life? that ambient awareness grates on you. something as little as seeing your ex's now ugly and discomforting green dot on GoogleTalk becomes irritating. they are present - you see their green dot afterall... so why aren't they reaching out and talking to you? or maybe you see the now ex  update their Twitter status. they are indeed at their computer so why aren't they updating or pinging you? once comforted and excited by seeing and feeling someone everywhere, having that ambient awareness... you might just grow to hate it once the loving is gone. and to remedy the situation? you un-friend the ex on Facebook. you might block them on your IM/chat client. you stop following them on Twitter because sometimes, you just need to cut cords, literally... the blessing and curse of ambient awareness. we're in a new age, for sure. wouldn't you say? 

Today, You're Being Redirected Elsewhere...

guess what? i spend a good deal of time writing in other places and for other spaces. so today, i'm pointing you in those directions as oddly enough, i have a few different articles and blog posts dropping in various venues today.

• over on Fistful of Talent, i'm talking about offer letters and why some candidates refuse to give their resignation until they receive an actual letter with an actual signature. sure, as a job seeker, you want to be prudent before you call it quits at your current gig... but i kinda feel like if as a recruiter i've done my job properly, you should trust me. i am never going to make an offer to someone unless i know there's a job for them... so you should take my word that i'm not going to screw you over.

• i was also asked recently to guest blog/guest write a few different things. over on MediaBistro, a site dedicated to folks in the magazines, television, film, radio, newspapers, book publishing, online media, advertising, PR, and design industries, i'm squatting on their Media Jobs Daily blog on the notion of "great places to work" and what that really means. i think i might drop into their jobs blog more regularly with guests posts on behalf of the day job since the folks who read that blog are the kinds i recruit and hire. it's good exposure.

• then... at the end of June, i'll be in New Orleans for SHRM's annual conference and speaking on a panel with Lance Haun, Laurie Ruettimann and my pal Kris Dunn on HR bloggers... and in anticipation of that session, i've popped up a  quick and dirty post on the SHRM conference blog on e-business cards.

• lastly, my friend Martin Burns of Zoominfo who writes the blog good to know, asked me to contribute to Zoominfo's monthly newsletter which goes out to about 15,000 recruiting and HR pros. what an honor! i partnered up with Chris Ferdinandi of the blog Renegade HR to write a tutorial on using Twitter for employment branding. and really, the guide can be used for anyone who is trying to use Twitter to market just about anything. it's the basics... we might have to do a follow up that goes into more detail.

so there you go, folks! hop on over to any or all four of those locales to get your fix of my writing today. i'll be back tomorrow with more here though. here's to a fabulous thursday!

Why I Love DC.

i'm thinking about chronicling reasons why i love DC via Twitter - and you can follow along using the #whyiloveDC hashtag. i've only done a few tweets so far - but there are so many days i wander about and am re-impressed with and re-inspired by my surroundings. check out this picture i snapped last night on my walk home from work. the White House isn't direclty on my route home, but by taking just a three block detour, i am able to see gorgeous tableaus like this. i never get tired of it...

Twitter Lesson: Hashtags. #EFCAfail.

i have a love hate relationship with twitter. some days, i honestly want to stop following half of the folks i follow... but i can't bring myself to be that cut throat. you follow me, and you reply to me... so i can't ignore you even if half of what you tweet out isn't quite worthwhile let alone entertaining to me. sorry to be so brutal. other days, i love you, twitter. i get a lot of great news and information via twitter - and for the sake of building a brand and brand loyalty - i think there's so much potential. but twitter is still young. 

for now, let's all agree that it still is an elite group of people who are active in the twitterverse - and there's much to still teach and show the twitter neophytes. so let's start with a lesson on twitter hash tags. the basics, says hashtags.org:

Hashtags was designed to accommodate the real-time news community. We provide analytic reports and indexing features to allow users to track what's happening now.

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

now, more importantly, let's talk about how to use them. starting the usage of a specific hashtag is easy. anyone can create one for a variety of reasons. my friend The Recruiter Guy, Chris Hoyt, created a hashtag recently for his week of travel in DC: #rgdc (Recruiter Guy DC!). and at first, i thought it was silly, honestly i did, Chris - but upon doing a search of his #rgdc tweets, i saw all the messages he and others have sent out related to this trip. and that's kinda cool. i mean, if you were to look at all of his tweets, he's tweeted 3000+ times on a variety of topics or issues... but to distill all of them related to this trip, you could easily do a search of those that included the hashtag #rgdc to construct a story.

and constructing stories are nice- but think about the possibilities even further. i started a twitter hashtag #EFCAfail a few months ago when i started noticing more chatter in the twitterverse about the Employee Free Choice Act. people would reference the entire name of the act, just the acronym, or they'd call it card-check... searching on those terms and all the variations people might have used in their tweet seemed ridiculous. and, people talk about it from many different angles which made it increasingly difficult to track who was talking about EFCA in favor of passing it, and those who opposed. and as i realized who fell along what lines, i @replied and/or direct messaged those who appeared to be against EFCA and asked them to begin using #EFCAfail. at first, there were probably 4-5 of us actively using it... but it takes very little time for a hashtag to catch on. check out the thousands of tweets that have gone out using the #EFCAfail. pretty cool huh? even the Huffington Post has used #EFCAfail a few times too. 

but what do i do with a hashtag once it's up and running? well, for a little grassroots project i'm working on to get more people to talk about the EFCA, i can now see who is talking about the EFCA from the same perspective as me. there is an #EFCA and #cardcheck hashtag too - but you'll notice clear trends of those using the general hashtags as merely sharing information or being in support of it. to know where the lines have been drawn, #EFCAfail gives me those who aren't in support of it and want to see it fail. people who use hashtags likely know the importance of trending and organizing (in a non-lobbying or grassroots sense, that is!) so #EFCAfail also gives me a wealth of information in that  many tweeters send out messages with links to articles which allows everyone to quickly scan for new information on that topic. 

and really... that's all there is to twitter hashtags. there is more info and a wealth of other information related to hashtags here. the thing to look out for in the future? better analytics related to hashtag usage. hashtag.org is doing some stuff - but i'm not certain the numbers are completely accurate.

and PS - wanna know more on how to get involved if you're worried about EFCA? drop a comment and we can talk about it offline.

You CAN Recruit Through Twitter If I Met My Last Boyfriend There!

let's have a little chat about the power of twitter... because it's spoken about all the time yet i feel like people still struggle connecting the dots on how to actually develop relationships via twitter and then turn that into something actionable or measurable. so, let me share a story because pretty much, i met my last boyfriend because of twitter. yep. you read that right. 



it started with us just following each other. i dunno if i followed him or he followed me first... but we stumbled upon each other some how. and it was natural enough to follow each other because we knew of each others organizations/blogs as well as some of the same people since we run in a similar professional circle. but following doesn't quite equate to a relationship... which i hope you know, but read on... i actually did a search of our "conversations" to find out how we first started chatting and things began simply enough with a reply from him to me that included a link to a blog i had never heard of that echoed the sentiments of tweet i had put out there. i thanked him for the introduction to a new resource and that was actually our initial exchange. we didn't quite converse frequently from there - but, he had given me enough to think that it was worth having some conversation with one another. so, it was just whenever it seemed appropriate that we'd have exchanges - all purely professional, and i never really thought twice about him in any way except for being some guy on twitter who worked in the same industry. 



as it would turn out though, probably months after we began following each other on twitter, we were going to be at the same event and i wanted to make sure that i met him for the sake of networking. so, i replied to a tweet of his and asked how could i find him since we'd be in the same place. he said he'd be around and asked when i'd be getting into town... and we tweeted back and forth a few times. he didn't use his actual picture on twitter though, so i wasn't completely sure how i'd find him in a sea of a few hundred people but we did have a mutual twitter acquaintance who i was able to spot at this event, and i asked that acquaintance for an introduction. connection made. mind you, again, still, it was still just a professional twitter relationship at that point... and i had wanted to connect for only professional reasons... but, you meet someone interesting with whom you have good chemistry and then a few more @ replies turns into a direct message or two or three where i began to flirt with him... and direct messages turned into going out for drinks. ha.


the rest as they say, is history. but that was the beginning of our relationship and honestly, i dunno if it would have ever happened without twitter. so what exactly do we take away from this? well, if you're on twitter or want to get on twitter to build more relationships - whether it's personal or professional, including to recruit candidates for your organization - my story is your roadmap. first, find the people you want to potentially recruit (good how-to here at this post by The Recruiter Guy, Chris Hoyt, on conversational recruiting) but then, remember that the true value of twitter - and how you'll develop you relationships - is through conversation. and if you haven't figured it out on your own yet, well, it's easy enough when you break my little story down:

1. begin following, and hope for a follow back. and make sure your twitter bio is clear and comprehensive so they have a reason to follow.
2. start conversing. reply to the person's tweets. retweet where it makes sense... but this has to be organic. don't stalk. just let things evolve naturally.   
3. use direct messages where appropriate or to get more personal but do wait until you've started to develop some rapport through @ replies.
   
4. if you're going to be in the same place at the same time, request some time together. (and i'd say, use your real picture, please? it makes it easier to connect!)  

yep. so, that's how one little love story began, and interestingly, here's how another has developed - a twitter marriage proposal! not quite how my love story ended. and, i'm just waiting for the day that someone tweets out, "it's over!" to end their relationship via twitter. who knows, it could be me in the future because i seem to be teetering pretty close to there... because my twitter love story? well, we kind of used IM to end it. ha!

The Reason for HR Pros to Hop Onto Twitter.

if HR pros ever needed a reason to jump into the world of social media, check out the "tweet" below from Shaq. priceless... but of course, anyone in the HR world for more than a few minutes know that you can't be in this business because you're a people person. more on Shaq jumping into twitter here.

Tweet Tweet Tweet.

oh... twitter. i just can't seem to quit you. i really didn't want to get involved in the beginning. i thought it was too frenetic. but the HR Capitalist nudged me, so i stepped to tweeting and have kept at it. (despite him falling off the tweeting wagon... but i digress...) when in front of my computer, i check in at least once an hour. i check in with twitterberry when away from the laptop. at the time i write this, i have 292 followers and have made 1,545 updates. i don't know where the followers have come from - some are obvious... recruiting/HR folks, DC area peeps, PR pros... and others mystify me. but i do thank you for following. some quick thoughts on twitter though...

i'm invested - but what's the point? and is it all worth it? it's hard to say and it's possibly too soon to know. i mean, in terms of tangible twitter deliverables, i guess i can say that i:

• found some candidates

• was interviewed by PRWeek

• sparked a little drama

• engaged in some flirting

• made some new contacts + expanded my network

i suppose it's the last bitty that is the hardest to measure but perhaps has the greatest potential for return. i saw a good tweet fly by the other day though that asked... if twitter were to disappear into thin air, would you still have the relationships you have in the twitterverse? which reminded me i probably need to make sure i do a better job of gathering contacts and keeping my rolodex up to date and not relying on web 2.0 tools. these relationships should transcend the tool itself.

and about the flirting via twitter. it's not there for you to see... thank you, direct messages. i'm sure you really don't care that much anyways, right? but the thought dawned on me... 70% of how we communicate is non-verbal... so how on earth does flirting via web 2.0 tools work? isn't that strange? you've got to be clever and witty for it to really stick. or desperate as the recipient of some lame-o flirtation. which is why i just don't get dating online and how it works... yet success stories abound. but that's a different tale for a different day.

speaking of the power of twitter though, i was taken aback this past weekend when the whole motrin/mommy blogger firestorm erupted. more on the backlash here. and look at the coverage the whole drama received in Forbes and NY Times. folks are being forced to take notice of the power of twitter...so maybe i'll stick with it for a while longer. there's something to this new-fangled tool...do i really get it though? eh, still not sure.

just some randomness on the twitter tip for today.