Strategies for Implementing Career Goals and Ambitions via Social Networks



Photograph by Ron Henggeler (http://www.ronhenggeler.com/)



Career oriented professionals understand how to set and achieve business accomplishment via strategy and long-term commitment to achieving that goal. The same tenacity and flexibility used to achieve a business solution should be applied to developing and achieving your desired career goals and ambitions. Conquering interim steps and staying focused on a career path helps to build self-esteem, affirms your ability to achieve short-term goals, and strengths your resolve to achieve the long-term goals you expect of yourself. Being focused and knowing what you want to achieve help you to deal with rejection as well as help you to decide if an employment offer is really ideal for you.

An organization creates a business strategy in order to leverage company capabilities, talent and resources in ways that result in leverage over competitors and creative ways of doing business. This competitive advantage depends on the company’s management being able to attract and retain the talent necessary to achieve the goals of the business strategy. How the company is perceived in the marketplace can determine if your company attract, acquire and retain the necessary talent or whether that talent goes to a competitor (Phillips & Gully, 2009)



Career focused individuals should have career ambitions that are more than just an objective written at the top of a resume. A resume documents your past career history. The evolution of the resume is your social network profile URL. Your social network profile should be much more than just a copy-and-paste of your resume along with a few nicely worded recommendations from past employers, peers, and coworkers. Many organizations are limiting employees in their abilities to provide recommendations or a reference (whether written or verbal) for current or past employees or consultants, so now is the time to get as many relevant recommendations and reference postings you can. We might find employees working for some major corporations chasing after senior level consultants and freelance professionals, in order to get recommendation postings on their LinkedIn profile.



Posting a history of attendance of local MeetUP or LinkedIn networking events demonstrates your commitment to a particular technology, industry standard, or particular skill or talent. Posting a list of books you’ve read or are currently reading in your LinkedIn profile shows prospective employers you’re intelligent and an active reader of relevant and topical reference material. You can post writing examples, portfolio, PowerPoint presentations, technical documentation, and whitepapers via Box.net. Social network profiles can be connected to Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Wordpress – providing prospective employers a venue to view your social profile, contribution to online communities, blogging, social branding, and how you choose to portray yourself to the world via social networks and social media.



Employment websites like DICE and JobFox are building website-based social networks providing tools to provide a good overview of candidates experience and capabilities. JobFox’s “Interactive View” provides candidates with a marketing URL used to give prospective employers a more complete picture of who the candidate is and what that person has to offer an employer. JobFox feels suggests candidates:

• Let employers know who you know by sharing a subset of your social network connections, highlighting your industry connections and showing how you are linked to customers, vendors and business partners

• Impress employers with real-world examples of what you've done by including samples of your work (files or other websites) and linking them to the other information in your Interactive View

• Give employers a more complete picture of who you really are by adding answers to the Q&A section of your About Me page

View and an example of a JobFox “About Me” page at: http://www.jobfox.com/people/sarahSmith

Social networks should be more than just an online resume. A social media profile demonstrates (over time) your commitment to your career goals and ambitions as well as your success with past career achievements. Do not let your profile seem like your career was something that just happened. Make sure your profile demonstrates your ability to establish career goals in 2011 – so that it can later on document your ability to achieve those career goals and ambitions three-to-five (3-5) years down the road.



Reference:

Harris, P., JobFox Customer Service Email Broadcast. View and an example of a JobFox “About Me” page at: http://www.jobfox.com/people/sarahSmith



Phillips, J.M. and Gully, S.M., Staffing to Support Business Strategy (2009), Summary viewed via Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) Publications Website: http://www.shrm.org/Publications/Books/Pages/StaffingBusinessStrategy.aspx Read More!

Can BI provide data that proves Recruiting Strategy ROI ??

Business Intelligence (often referred simply as “BI”) encompasses all of the computer applications, tools, and systems that provide data used in the strategic planning process of any company or corporation. These tools gather and store data used in company decision making. Business intelligence areas can focus on customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, inventory and distribution analysis just to name a few (Webopedia, 2010.) Can business intelligence provide the data necessary to truly prove the return-on-investment (ROI) on recruiting strategies and workforce management efforts?


The purpose of ERP implementations was to give business decision makers one place – one application – to organize data and manage a business… but companies need information and data that is created outside the organization as well as what is generated by the ERP applications. Sales and marketing departments depend on analytical data that comes from paid resources, social media, and free internet communities. Recruiters and internal staffing professionals work similar paid resources and free sources as well. Paid resources like employment websites and resume spiders generate resumes and candidate leads – but do not provide information on the number of candidates that abandon the resume submittal process, or the opinion of people who viewed the job description. Social media sites like LinkedIn and Google provide analytical data, but these are often not imported into an applicant tracking system (ATS) or reviewed when making decision on recruiting strategies. Most HR and recruiting decision makers only ask for data regarding recruiting strategy when it comes to renewing a website contract or making budget decision. True data analysis and data integration is lacking in ATS and related CRM applications specific to recruiting and staffing strategies. Employers find it difficult to find true data that justifies recruiters being on FaceBook or LinkedIn groups during business hours.

The only Key Performance Indicator (KPI) associated with recruiting strategy has always been the number of job requirements filled through the company’s recruiting efforts. These job requirement “fills” (or placements) are considered the most important – if not the only purpose of recruiting. With social media and networking becoming a significant part of doing business these days, it is important to align and measure hiring deliverables with established business goals. Recruiting efforts should also be aligned with sales and marketing strategies the company is planning for new product release, conventions, and coverage in industry related media. Business intelligence applications can track staffing KPIs, create hiring metrics and reporting tools, and can be used to develop executive dashboards that provide decision makers with adhoc and real-time information on hiring goals and how successful recruiting strategies can affect other business aspects, deadlines, release dates, and sales quotas.

Business intelligence provides business decision makers with organized data and metrics accuracy that can be used to create business goals and realistic business targets. Business intelligence is not about “what data you need – but what decisions you need to make.” A recruiting being aware of business intelligence requires more attention to data accuracy (including data entry in ATS); making sense of the data collected; and getting decision makers’ approval on possible opportunities and recruiting venues that otherwise might not have been recognized without having that BI data. Business intelligence can provide opportunities for cost saving, time savings, provide a competitive advantage, as well as possibly justify a specific recruiting strategy and prove a tangible and concrete ROI.



References:

Business Intelligence. 2010. Webopedia. Viewed via: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/Business_Intelligence.html

Baruffaldi, A., Vesset, D., Pizano, G., et al., LinkedIn Business Intelligence Group. “BI evolution in the next 2-3 years” online discussion. Viewed on December 23, 2010 via http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=29182661&gid=23006&commentID=28342172&trk=view_disc Read More!

Webinar Invite: Your Employer Brand Influences Candidate Applications

Since my topics of blog discussion have been covering employer branding - thought I'd cross-post this information on a webinar covering this topic. Hope the group will find this webinar of interest.

Danny! (aka Daniel Parrillo)
=======================================

Talent Technology Recruiter Webinar series with Liz Ryan.

The upcoming webinar will focus on developing and leveraging your employer brand to attract and engage top candidates.

Today’s online job search has changed the way candidates select and engage with companies. Their impression of your organization’s culture and values is being shaped by the image reflected in your employer brand, and ultimately drives candidates’ decisions to apply.

Register Now: Complimentary Webinar

Join Liz Ryan (AskLizRyan) for a free webinar to understand how Your Employer Brand Influences Candidate Applications to learn how savvy employers are attracting very smart, talented, motivated employees with their employer brands.

When: Wednesday, December 8th - 10:00 AM (Pacific Time)/1:00 PM (Eastern) Register Now!

Liz will cover:
• How the employer brand influences candidate recruiting
• Elements of the employer brand
• Developing and talking about your employer brand strategy
• Aligning your employer brand strategy with your website and job search process
• Case Study: Employer branding strategy for ACME Dynamite
Attendees will receive an eBook on how to influence the development of their employer brand strategy.
Who should attend: This is a non-sales webinar for recruitment and HR professionals seeking to understand how to build a good employer brand strategy, and to align it to the recruiting and hiring process.
This non-sales webinar is sponsored by Talent Technology's Recruiter Webinar Series. If you would like to learn more about Talent Technology's new talent generation solutions, visit www.talenttech.com or call 866.747.3375.
I hope to see you at the webinar!
Stephanie Weirich
Hiring Success Team
Talent Technology
sweirich@talenttech.com

P.S. Please join Liz Ryan's informative free webinar to see how Your Employer Brand Influences Candidate Applications Wednesday, December 8th at 10:00 AM (Pacific)/1:00 PM (Eastern).
In an age where books such as No Logo and Fast Food Nation are international bestsellers, companies need to wise up and realize that they can no longer tempt jobseekers using financial incentives alone. Read More!