Amybeth Hale - Research Goddess

I recently spoke on using research effectively at the Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas. As anyone who has ever gotten up in front of a group of people to speak would agree to, I hoped that I conveyed the information in a usable manner and that my audience would find some value in my topic. Last week, I received the following recommendation from Glynda Finister, who sat in on my presentation:

“I heard Amybeth speak at the Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas in 2008 and she provided me with excellent tips for finding a good researcher and as a result, I now have two really great researchers. I could not have known what to look for with out her advice. After the seminar, she spent a great deal of time with Attendees with various questions on how to find a researcher. Thank you Amybeth!”

If that isn’t a validation that the presentation did some good, then I don’t know what is! Receiving a note like this is the best thing that could have happened, and I am so pleased that Glynda was able to hire not just one, but two researchers using some of the information she’d heard.  THANK YOU for letting me know!

The  Fordyce Letter Network recently posted a short video highlight from my presentation. Here is a link to it, or you can view it below:

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I had a great time attending the Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas! As I mentioned in my post shortly after I arrived, the city itself was intimidating for me as a conservative Midwest gal. But I enjoyed my time there. I have stayed in touch with a former candidate (lesson there J) who lives just outside of the city, and as we have become friends outside of our professional relationship, she invited me to hang out while I was in town. We went to the Red Rock Canyon about 30 minutes outside of Vegas and went rock climbing. She also treated me to Mama Mia at Mandalay Bay – what an awesome friend!

The conference itself was an experience! I ran into people left and right that I hadn’t seen in awhile, that I hadn’t expected to see there, and who I’d met through social networks but never in person. I posted about running into Julia and Lisa, but I also had the pleasure of seeing both my former employers, Jon Bartos and Tom Johnston, at the conference. In addition, I got to meet some new Twitter pals – Nick Jimenez and Mike O’Brien of Climber.com. I also got to meet the crew from ERE who’d been so awesome about making arrangements for the conference – you guys did an incredible job!

As far as the content goes, I personally was quite impressed with the presentations. I attended Shally Steckerl’s pre-conference workshop on applying today’s technology to find A+ candidates.  His presentation was a thorough overview of internet research – from “this is a search engine” to how to use Boolean search strings to find online resumes. I found it interesting that a question came from the crowd asking why we would need to search the Internet, as all resumes can be found through online resume databases like Monster and CareerBuilder. I believe this lack of knowledge only further solidifies the need for dedicated research AS WELL AS good research training in order for those of us in the recruiting industry to have a good grasp at the vast amounts of information out there, and how to scale it.

I was particularly impressed with Jeff Skrentny’s keynote on Thursday morning. Admittedly, I didn’t know who Jeff was before the conference, but I am glad that I got to meet him! He brought so many good nuggets forth on how to be successful, and even though his presentation was geared toward the recruiting profession, I know that everything he talked about could be applied in our everyday lives. A couple of my favorite bullet points from his talk on the 9 lessons he learned in his best year ever:

• Don’t let email interrupt your day (makes me think of Pavlov’s Dog)
• Build a structured calendar – 55 minute power sessions regularly scheduled into your day
• Exercising regularly helped him achieve his best year to date
• Regularly attend training sessions and get educated

As well, Jon Bartos’ keynote on Friday was also very informative. Jon talked about the generational differences between the Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Gen Y’ers (or millennials) and how it all fits into recruiting as well as retention.  Jon shared an interesting perspective of mentorship, that Baby Boomers would make good mentors to Gen Y’ers, because the millennials see them as a sort of grandparent figure and someone who is to be respected. He said that the Baby Boomers could teach them professionally, while the millennials could teach the Baby Boomers about technology. A good trade-off! Jon’s presentation was devoted to how each generation must be approached differently in the interview and hiring process, as well as in work environment and retention. He did a very nice job covering this from all angles and there are plenty of lessons in his presentation that can also be brought back for client education as well.

I sat in on several presentations over the week – Doug Beabout, Mark Berger, Joe Pelayo, and I wish I’d been able to sit in on more! I heard that Stacy Ethun’s presentation on learning from hearing things that you don’t want to hear was great. There’s just a good lesson in that – I think some of the best lessons learned are the ones we know we need to hear but it hurts to hear them. And I have to say, I was surprised yet pleased with something that Doug Beabout said: he said that if he had to choose between firing a researcher and firing a recruiter, he would fire the recruiter first! I think that speaks volumes about the value that research brings to the whole recruitment process, and it’s great to know that our peers are starting to see this.

I received good feedback for my presentation as well. Those of you who know me will understand when I say that I feel I could have done better, but it’s the audience feedback that counts the most. I spoke about things to consider when you are thinking about hiring a researcher – how personality characteristics play a big part, knowing what functions you want performed by a researcher before you begin interviewing, and also some thoughts on how to help a researcher be successful once they are on board. I am happy that several people came to me afterward and mentioned that the information I shared was helpful! Just in personal reflection, I had sort of talked myself into being nervous so the next time I do something like this, I’ll make sure NOT to do that J While talking in front of crowds is not the most comfortable place for me to be, I do love what I do and I want to do whatever I can to help educate people on the research function and the benefit it brings to an organization.

Make sure you check out the post event tab on the Fordyce Forum website – many of the PPTs from the presentations are available to view there, as well as some video snippets from the presenters. And keep an eye out for the next Fordyce Forum as well – I was pleased and honored to be invited to participate in this one, and the next one is sure to be even better.

Here is a link to the slide deck from my presentation at the Fordyce Forum last week. Please also check out some of the other decks available as well - there were so many good presentations and unfortunately many of them overlapped so I wasn’t able to get to all of them. I’ll be posting a summary of my experience in the next couple of days as well.

I am having a wonderful experience here in San Francisco attending the Web 2.0 Expo! I just wanted to provide the link to where my updates and information will be posted for this particular conference. You can read all my updates on ERE’s Inside Recruiting page.

Look for more posts in the next couple of days, and be sure to check out the post about Yahoo!’s new SearchMonkey tool!

Those of you who have been following me on Twitter know that I will be attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week – woo hoo! But what you don’t know is WHY – or HOW – I am going. And the story of how this all came about is pretty fantastic.

I have been seeing lots of people talking about this conference. It’s the gold standard for social media and internet geeks. If you want to see developers, internet entrepreneurs, social media buffs, big dogs as well as cool new startups, messaging stuff and new kinds of search tools, and the glitterati of Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Web 2.0 is where it’s at. Well, being a fan of social media myself, I was itching to go. My company, Waggener Edstrom, is very supportive of its employees in learning and growing and we are encouraged to attend conferences where we can learn our trade. However, I have already committed to attending a couple other conferences this year, and I would not be able to attend Web 2.0 under normal circumstances. I was bummed about this as I kept listening to people talk about all the cool stuff that’s going to be happening at and around this conference. On Tuesday morning while conducting a search for one of my recruiters, I stumbled across a list of attendees to the Mashable and Chi.mp after-party, Evolve, taking place on Wednesday the 23rd. This was apparently the last straw for me. As a joke, I typed up in my Twhirl window, “Would anyone care to sponsor me to attend the Web 2.0 conference? :D”  never in a million years expecting anyone to take me up on the offer. Boy, was I wrong! I received a direct message not 5 minutes later saying, “We might be interested in covering your T&E [travel & expenses] in exchange for you covering the event for us.”

OMG!

What had started off as a whimsical fantasy just became reality. Someone was actually going to sponsor me to attend the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco! And that someone is none other than Mr. David Manaster, of ERE Media. So in exchange for this, I will be checking out the conference and writing some articles from a recruiting and research standpoint – what technologies will be useful to those of us in the recruiting world, how the things that are changing online are going to affect the way we do our jobs, etc. I will be twittering throughout the event, and I’ll also be breaking out my video camera from time to time as I come across interesting people.

My company has been incredibly cool about this. After all, it’s a GREAT story, plus we’ll get some excellent press as well! I’m also hoping to rub elbows with some PR folks while I’m out there (BTW, if any of you PR people reading this are going to be at the conference, please get in touch with me – I’d love to meet you!). This is a complete win-win-win for all involved, and I couldn’t be happier!

The biggest lesson to be learned here is to ALWAYS ask. You just never know what’s available to you unless you ask. When you don’t ask, you can’t possibly receive. You won’t always get an answer you’d like, but every now and then (as with this!) you’ll get a pleasant surprise.

Please stay tuned to ERE as I will be posting up articles and other stuff during and following the conference. Big thanks to Dave and Todd at ERE, as well as to my coworkers for being incredibly supportive, and I am looking forward to a fantastic event!

A note to all my blog readers who work in research and sourcing, I have a favor to ask of you. In June, I will be attending the Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas, and have been asked to give a presentation there on a research topic. I am humbled to do this, and have chosen to make my presentation on using research effectively.

In my desire to make this presentation as relevant as possible to all areas of recruiting research, I have created a brief survey asking about the use of research within various recruiting organizations. I am polling recruitment agency owners and recruiters, corporate recruiters and HR professionals, and vendors as well as telephone and internet researchers and sourcers alike in order to get a good sampling. I would love to have you take a moment to complete this survey and contribute to the results, which I will review during my presentation on June 5th.

I am going to close this survey on Saturday so that I can begin analyzing the results. Thanks for helping me out with this project!

Better strap yourself in - this is a long post, but it’s full of cool information!

Last week, I attended the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) in Seattle, WA. I signed up for the conference because I wanted to find out some more in-depth information about what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to social media. Little did I know what I was in for! There’s a whole lot more that goes into building a social networking site, tracking blog comments, and analyzing user profiles than I ever could have imagined!

Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed the academic value of the conference. It truly was an academic conference in that all of the presentations were actually original experiments and hypotheses derived by the presenters, the results were shown along with some interesting findings, and the questions presented by the conference attendees were genuine answer-seeking inquiries. I can honestly say there wasn’t a single presentation made that I had already seen in one format or another. There was a great deal of respect shown to all of the presenters by all of the attendees, something which I hate to say does not occur at some professional conferences. All in all, the experience was great, and I did learn quite a bit.

For those of you with short attention spans, I’m putting my bulleted summary first, and if you want more meat and potatoes you can read further

Some key observations:

• Social media has crept into almost every aspect of our lives, but how do we leverage it to benefit us in business?
• There is a LOT of behind-the-scenes stuff when it comes to social media- tracking, algorithms, design, how to maintain interest, etc.
• Even the social media platform designers are annoyed by how many usernames and passwords one needs to stay current with all the networks!
• Perception is reality when it comes to how people view your profiles online
• There is concern over content privacy, ownership, and authentication

Conclusions:

• Most companies’ efforts in being more visible in the social media space are just scratching the surface right now
• With this being an election year, people are actually gaining interest in social media because of the information that is flowing about candidates, so this is a GREAT time to capitalize on the rise in online traffic
• Companies that do not actively engage in social media risk allowing competitors that do an unfair advantage, as well as customers having a more open platform for tarnishing a company’s reputation. You have to manage your online reputation or else it will manage itself
• There is still MUCH room for improvement when it comes to social media applications, and I was pleased to meet so many of the people who are on the cutting edge of these developments! 

The conference actually began before the real conference took place. The folks who put together the event set up a Crowdvine social network site for all of us who would be attending. When I looked through some of the other folks who were going to be there, I started to feel like Wayne and Garth when they met Alice Cooper (“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”) These folks were PhD students, college professors, linguists, computer scientists, and research scientists at places like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon U, Northwestern U, U of WA, etc. People hailed from the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Japan, India, and several other places so it truly was an international conference. And here I was, just a simple sourcing strategist looking for a few crumbs from the table! I looked through profiles and decided there were several people I wanted to meet while I was there, so I sent little notes indicating my desire to meet people. I think it was a great idea for the event coordinators to do this, as it helped with the introductions while we were there.

When I arrived in Seattle, the very first session was presented by the founder of LiveJournal, Brad Fitzpatrick. He discussed some of the differences between social networks and social applications. He talked about how most social networks ‘suck’ today as there is very little privacy and authentication of communication requests amongst people, and you’ve got to sign up for a million new networks as each one promotes its ‘one new and cool feature’, and he discussed the future of these problems and how things like OpenID and OAuth will help with these issues. I found it interesting how someone who designed a product that is utilized by so many people in social media thinks that social media sucks!

Then, we dove head first into the deep end by discussing data mining. And I’m not talking about the data mining that we researchers do when we conduct searches – I’m talking about hard-core, semantic search formulas, algorithms, PLSA-LDA theory data mining. I tried to dumb my notes down as best as I could so that I could make sense of them myself, but some of the concepts of data mining alluded me, so much respect to the presenters for their grasp on these topics! There was a presentation that particularly interested me in that it was an experiment in how users participate in contests/surveys/etc. through social media. The presenter shared that higher awards (bigger prizes, large money pots, etc.) attract more views, but not necessarily more submissions and that the prestige of the contest will slightly hinder participation (higher prestige, higher risk). What I gathered from this conclusion is that lots of people will view a high profile/high stakes contest, but not many people will actually participate because they don’t believe they could win. It made me think of the current SourceCon challenges that are going on.

The presentations that were made on the psychology of social media were fascinating. One presentation was made on the perception of people profiles. It brought up some interesting topic discussion, including how one’s own beliefs and interests may change how they view someone of the opposite beliefs or viewpoints. Here are a couple of notes from this presentation:

• Do environments matter?
  • Findings: people do get each other
  • People on FB get each other better
  • Women are better guessers than men
  • Women are also easier to get

• Profile elements that matter
  • More understood:
    • Link to funny video
    • What makes me glad to be alive
    • Most embarrassing thing
    • Proudest moment
    • Spirituality
  • Less understood:
    • Profile picture a non-person
    • Awful website
    • An awful person
    • A great book

So basically, people who don’t post a human photo on their profile are perceived to be less understood. Or, if they post a link to an awful website or person. Interesting! (checking out my links and connections right now….)

A lot of the neatest talks were had during meals and after-hours. I had great opportunities to hang out with several people during our networking lunches and dinners, as well as at a little wine bar called The Local Vine on Monday night. Sometimes, the ‘unofficial’ parts of a conference yield the best information! :) 

Day two began with a keynote from Marc Smith, a Senior Research Scientist with Microsoft. He discussed some interesting ideas and findings about the different people who utilize social media. He called them answer people and discussion people. Answer people typically have more outgoing responses to topics but generally do not start discussions, where discussion people typically initiate conversations but generally do not respond to inquiries as much. He showed some graphs backing this information up. We also had a presentation by James Caverlee on MySpace profiles and how to figure out some of the spam and deception that goes on there. Here is a link to that study as it has been made public. The sample search results are VERY interesting! Basically, what they found is that the “fake” profiles on MySpace, based on comparison of text and other factors, modeled the real profiles created by users in their late 20s – late 30s (fake users are really age 26-39, a sad day for my generation! [bunch of spammers and hackers]) Following that, Danyel Fisher presented on space planning for an online community. He said something of interest when discussing the different community members: he said embrace leaders; respect lurkers and that leaders welcome new people. This is important as the lurkers will eventually become active members of your community and quite possibly future topic leaders. By not embracing new folks and/or lurkers, you are in fact alienating your target (and future) audience.

Day three was begun with our last keynote from Technorati founder, David Sifry, who gave a great presentation on developing an effective project management team. The things he discussed I think can translate into how to develop a good sourcing, research, and/or recruiting organization within your company as well. We then moved on into discussions heavy on political news, blogs and tracking. We discussed using blogs to provide context for news articles and what terms produce “emotional charge” and will indicate if a post is charged or not. We also explored the use of social media coupled with viewing television, and how social media has and will continue to impact the methods with which we watch programs. Finally, we looked at the differences in journalistic sourcing between traditional journalism and bloggers. This was of particular interest, since we have folks at Waggener who keep an eye on bloggers in our clients’ respective industries. We concluded with a panel discussion on politics in blogs, and then wrapped up a power-packed couple of days and set off on our merry ways.

Conclusions – I don’t think the conference is for casual observers of social media! There was so much meaty material and much of it went over my head. I am very glad, however, that I attended as I think gaining knowledge of what goes into making a social media application will in turn help me as an end user to be a better consumer of the technology. It was cool to see how the search engine algorithms are developed and how they return results. I would not recommend going to the conference if you’re not REALLY into the math and science aspect of online technology; however, if you want a crash course in the inner workings of social media, this is the place to be!

I’m attending the ICWSM conference in Seattle this week!

There are a million conferences going on all over the place right now. While there are lots that we all want to attend, we’ve got to pick and choose based on budget (ours or our employer’s), amount of travel required, time off from work, etc. When we attend these conferences, the idea is to learn new things, right?  

I find there are 3 main types of conference attendees. Let me outline them for you here: 

1.         The guy who is there to learn:
This is the individual who arrives with a notepad and pen (or a laptop to take notes) and hangs on every word the speaker says. He sits near the front of the room to get a better view of the presenter and to ask questions during the Q&A.He’s the guy who:

• Introduces himself to the speakers (and everyone else there, for that matter)
• Is excited about being at the conference
• It’s possible he paid his own way to the conference
• Has a pre-written list of questions to ask the speakers
• Tries to get one-on-one time with the speakers and/or the well-known attendees who are experts in their field
• Has an overall good attitude

2.         The gal who knows it all:
Somehow or another, we occasionally end up beside that person who sits in the back of the room with her arms folded and a smirk on her face who grumbles, “I already know all this stuff; this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Typically, she’s the one who:

• Casually strolls in 15 minutes late to the sessions
• Leaves early to start happy hour before the speakers are done talking
• Has something critical to say about every presenter
• Knows more about the subject matter than the person presenting (or so she thinks)
• Has an overall bad attitude

3.         Then there’s all of us in the middle J We’re kind of excited to be there, we take a few notes here and there, and we might introduce ourselves to a speaker or two, but we’ll tend to circle only with the other attendees that we know and don’t meet many new people there. 

May I offer up a couple of tips for getting the most out of your time at a conference?

• You’re there for a reason J Either you paid your way (in which case you should be the most interested person there) or your employer sent you. Make the most of your time and try to learn something new.
• Find the person who is obviously interested in learning, introduce yourself, and take note of the people he or she is meeting.
• Make some preparations before you attend: ping your network and see if there are any folks going that you have connections with but haven’t met. Set up 5 minutes during a coffee break or something to connect and introduce yourself.
• Try to sit near the front of the room.
• Read the speaker’s bio and/or synopsis on their presentation, and write some questions down beforehand to ask (keep in mind they may get answered during the presentation too!)
• Be respectful of the presenters and show up on time. If you were the one presenting, you’d probably find it distracting to have someone walk in after you’d already started; chances are they probably do too!
• Avoid the know-it-all like the plague J This person will drain you mentally and make the conference a drag for you. And beware: this person might be a co-worker of yours! Best way to avoid is to not sit in the back of the room J
• Understand that the person who is presenting was asked to do so for a reason. No matter how much you think you know, there is always something you can take from their presentation. Thinking that you can’t possibly learn anything new is arrogant and a sure sign that you do indeed have lots to learn J

A few years ago I attended a regional MRI conference, and there was a man there who was giving a presentation on recruiting best practices. I don’t remember verbatim what he said, but I remember him specifically addressing those people sitting in the audience who were saying “I already know all this” and he said, “For those of you sitting out there saying you already know all this stuff, just think about this: if you already knew what it took to make $500,000, you’d be making $500,000, and you would be up here presenting. So try to get something new out of this.”

So what kind of conference attendee are you?

I will be attending the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) in Seattle from Monday - Wednesday this week. I won’t be checking my email much over the next few days, but I will be Twittering interesting stuff from the conference. So, if you’re interested, subscribe to my tweets! I should be back to normal (somewhat) after Thursday of this week!

For all the researchers and sourcers who read here, my buddy Russ Moon is conducting a research and sourcing survey, the results of which he will be sharing during his presentation at the ERE Expo in San Diego. He has requested feedback from anyone who works in recruiting research or sourcing.

• Part 1 - Identifies a list of factors which can help a researcher optimized their ability to produce maximum return on investment for their employer or client while feeling satisfaction in their work.
• Part 2 - Identifies a list of factors which inhibit a researchers ability to contribute at their highest level.