Amybeth Hale - Research Goddess

There’s a new show on Tuesday nights, I Survived a Japanese Gameshow!, which is questionable for entertainment value, but in this week’s episode, there was a lesson learned in integrity that I think could be applied in our line of work.

Mary, a 23 year old gym membership sales rep, and Donnell, a 24 year old real estate appraiser, made a deal with their teammate Meaghan, a 22 year old bartender, who put herself up in a previous episode for elimination with the promise that she would be immune from possible elimination this week. Both agreed, and Meaghan won her challenge and remained on the show. However, when their team was once again up for an elimination challenge this week, Donnell wanted to re-neg on their pact. Mary, however spoke on camera and decided that she would keep her promise to Meaghan because in her words, “I need to be true to myself and true to my word.” (paraphrased) She ultimately ended up being eliminated, but she can go home with a clear conscience knowing that she stayed true to her word and didn’t compromise her integrity by going back on a promise.

Who’d have thought that we could learn a lesson in integrity from a(nother) reality TV show? I was impressed that Mary stuck to her word, even when it resulted in her being eliminated from the show. Donnell, on the other hand, has to face a teammate that he stabbed in the back and deal with the trust issues that have no doubt resulted from it. And I’ll bet that the integrity Mary maintained will come back and reward her down the road. I am a firm believer in sowing/reaping - what you give is what you’ll get in return.

How often does a situation like this come up in our professional lives though? We make promises and give our word on things, but then when it’s not convenient for us, we ‘change our minds’ or try to justify why we cannot be true to our word. If we stopped to think about it, the convenience of the moment of going back on our word results in the destruction of a trusting relationship. It takes so much time and effort to develop trust, yet so little to break it down. Why destroy what you’ve worked so hard to build just because it’s not the absolute ideal situation for YOU, at the moment?

My thoughts on this are as follows: think about the promises you make to people, not just in the moment but over the long term. Will you be able to complete that search assignment in a timely manner? Will you be able to find that individual a new position? Can you meet the financial requirements your client has laid out to you? Don’t make a spur-of-the-moment promise to someone just to gain their immediate business if you don’t think you can fulfill it in the long run. Being honest with someone about what you can and cannot do will actually build more trust with them than if you give your word, only to go back on it later on.

No more reality TV for me But I hope this gives you some food for thought!

Alright, I’m all for making new (meaningful) connections on LinkedIn, but this new site that a friend showed me tonight has taken things, in my opinion, to a sickening new level. The site, called InvitesWelcome.com, describes itself as the “casual and informal version of TopLinked.com [they are both registered with the same contact information]…. another way to show you are open to new connection opportunities.”  So basically, you can either do this for free and be on one big giant list, or you can pay $5/month or $20/year to be on a top list, and you’ll get fresh, new email addresses sent to you to connect with on LinkedIn. There apparently is also a ‘Top Supporters’ list that you can buy your way onto through toplinked.com by purchasing points or something….honestly, I wouldn’t consider a list to be a ‘top’ anything list if you had to buy your way onto it. It’s like those “Who’s Who Among Students” things we used to get in the mail (where you buy your own plaque, trophy, and bound book that honors you), or the mail-order beauty pageant applications that don’t even require a photo for you to be entered in some obscure beauty pageant.

Another thing that comes to mind is those chain letters that used to circulate through the postal system a few decades ago. You know, the ones that say, “Send $1 to the first person on this list, then write a new list adding your name and address to the bottom and remove the first person on the list, then send it to 10 people”, and supposedly you’d get thousands of dollars in the mail within 6 weeks. This seems kind of like that, except instead of sending dollars, you’re sending around your email address.

Though I would imagine several folks from the recruiting community are on the list, I still stand by my original opinion that buying people’s email addresses for this purpose is lame. Some might argue that it’s like buying a database access – well, not really. When you purchase a niche database, you’re pretty well assured that the information contained therein is industry specific. This is just haphazard connecting with people who may or may not be in your industry, and who may or may not be connected with someone who is in your industry. It’s total pot-luck!

Hey, if you’re into this method of making new connections, more power to you. I guess this is cool if you’re a ‘power networker’, LION, or a ‘top-linked’ person. Besides, it IS only a few bucks. And from a business standpoint as well this is profitable, because whoever came up with this is making some pretty easy money! But for me, it seems pretty lame. Lists that call themselves “top lists” should not be something you purchase points to be at the top of. You be the judge and come to your own conclusions about this one…

There is an endless supply of information available to us these days. This information comes at us in all forms – emails, blogs, RSS feeds, tweets, at times I know we all feel bombarded. Come join the latest social network! Check out my new website! Please subscribe to my blog! How can you possible keep up with the latest trends within your industry to maintain a competitive sourcing edge without spending the rest of your life trying to play catch-up with your RSS reader?

I propose looking at the flow of information and knowledge outlets in the same manner that you approach a trip to the grocery store. When some people go to the grocery store, they create a list of items they need ahead of time. This makes the trip quicker – in and out. Of course, there are always a couple of rogue items that get put into the shopping cart that were not on the list (usually your kid sneaks a candy bar or a bag of chips in when you’re not looking). Then, there are those who have an idea in their head of what they need when they hit the store. Usually, more rogue items end up in those people’s shopping carts, right? 

Regardless, you go to a grocery store, filled with thousands upon thousands of perishable and non-perishable items, and you come out with only a small sampling of what was available to you. Why? Because that’s all you need – at the moment. However, those other items that you did not purchase will be available to you the next time you need to go shopping, just in case you need one or two of them.

How is this like our seemingly endless flow of information? Well, the Internet is like that grocery store. It houses all the different portals and networks that we need on a daily basis to have a competitive edge in sourcing. Each of these knowledge outlets is like an item sold by the grocery store. They serve a specific purpose for a specific audience. And the important thing for us to remember is that we don’t have to buy every item in the grocery store (register with every network, read every blog, subscribe to every RSS feed). All we need to do is go in with our list, take what we need, and leave the rest on the shelf, knowing that if we need it next time we go to the store, it will be available to us.

What are some good ways of keeping these things organized? The example I’ll use is RSS feeds. I have about 16 different folders in my reader – one for recruiting blogs, one for PR blogs, one for analyst relations blogs, another for social media, etc. Each one is a specific category that I can choose to read at my leisure. Or, I can collect the blog posts for future reading if it’s not an area of top priority to me. For example, I still have a folder for RFID, which is an industry in which I researched over 2 years ago. Who knows if I’ll ever need that knowledge again? But just in case, I’ve got that folder there waiting for me.

So, remember that you don’t have to buy everything in the store; just get what you need at the moment and know that the other items will be there if you need them. Happy Sourcing!

For those of us who work in the world of recruiting, we have been blessed with numerous new resources for name gathering and communication – the various social networking sites to which we belong. We sing their praises because of the ease with which we can now find people to fill our open positions. All we need to do is search our networks tofind these people, and then leave them a message on the site.

There is, however, a downside to this newfound ease in communication. The InMails, the friend invites, the notes we can leave for people, is it all too easy? What do our prospects think of the influx of recruiter outreach?

I’ve heard from a couple of senior level executives that social network outreach is a daily occurrence for them, numbering up to 5+ notes every day that they receive from recruiters. Others I’ve spoken with say they are contacted on a regular weekly basis, and still others several times each month. What do prospects think of this? Of course there are some who enjoy it; it makes them feel important, special, wanted, valued, however you want to describe it. A lot of folks however describe their feelings toward social network recruiter outreach with indifference, saying that they usually delete the notes before reading them (keep in mind that this is unofficial information – gathered only through conversations I’ve had with people and not in any formal format).

There are those as well who, being networkers themselves, take the time to read a few of the notes received from recruiters and either respond or pass them along to their networks. These are good people to know; however, don’t abuse your relationship with these folks by sending a lot of irrelevant openings to them to pass along. You don’t want to wear out your welcome, after all!

(As an aside to this, how many folks tell you they will pass an opening on to their network, but never do? It’s kind of like the promised prayer to actual prayer ratio isn’t it?)

So, with the increase of ease in reaching out, are we in fact alienating the very audience we desire to reach? Hey, I’m certainly not excluding myself here! As a researcher, my networks have become invaluable tools for me, especially when it comes to contact verification.  But I personally think that, if you rely heavily on this method of contact, it is important to personalize your outreach to people. Make sure they know that you took the time to find out a little about them.

I’d like to encourage discussion of this topic via comment. Please share your thoughts on the matter by leaving a comment on this post. Do you think social networks have jaded our audiences? Do you think social networks have encouraged greater interaction between recruiter and prospect? As well, how do you think you can make yourself stand out in the crowd from all the other boilerplate notes that your prospects are receiving?

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.

Saw Maureen’s post about the Democratic folks who have LinkedIn profiles, and I had to add in that the Republican Presidential nominee also has a LinkedIn profile, a cool website, a blog, a Ning site, and an official John McCain for President LinkedIn group! Oh, and he IS open to accepting connection requests, unlike the Democratic presidential hopefuls

Go McCain!

It’s been said that success happens when opportunity and preparedness meet. A few years ago, I decided to set about working on a project that resulted in a great deal of success and recognition for me over a four year time span. As a result, I was asked to discuss some of the things I’d done in front of large crowds (15,000+) and even participated in recording an audio CD last year. I have had many people stop me at conferences and ask questions about what I’d done, call me up looking for advice, and email me wanting to know my secrets. It’s cool to know that what I had done had seemingly impressed so many people, especially since there really wasn’t much to it outside of a little ‘elbow grease’ and persistence. But tonight, I had the opportunity to witness another young lady be recognized for doing exactly what I’d done, and she’d also found success through her efforts. She approached me about a year ago and told me that she was inspired by my actions, but she actually followed through herself and made her own success story. I think the difference with her is that she went beyond being impressed and was truly inspired, and as a believer in paying it forward it felt good to hear about some of her personal success. It made me smile as well to know that she, in turn, would inspire others who would hear her story.

In reading this, I hope you can take away the importance of being inspired by another person’s success as opposed to merely being impressed. Being impressed by the accomplishments of another person is saying “Wow, that’s cool! I wish I could do that too…” Being inspired by the accomplishments of another is saying instead, “Wow, that’s cool! I am going to do that too…”

I encourage everyone out there to inspire, and be inspired. Don’t just be impressed by the achievements of others - remember that there was someone who inspired them first, and you can do it as well!

Last article from my experience at the Web 2.0 Expo! Check it out here on ERE - Inside Recruiting.

Make sure you look at the last video There were only a small handful of people who caught it live!

How many of you out there were band nerds in high school? Or the art geek who always had paint or clay stuck in your hair? Or the music dork who had a garage band that sucked (even though you thought you were awesome). What about the science geeks who were always blowing stuff up in chemistry lab, or throwing around frog guts during biology? Or the computer nerd who was one of the first kids on the block to get an Atari, or spent your evenings chatting on AOL when they still charged by the minute, or sat in your parents’ basement punching out code (I know for a fact that some of you are still there!!) There are so many kinds, and where it used to be…well, uncool to be a geek, now geek is the new black.

Geeks are hot - and it’s time they were honored And finally, there is a website to confirm this - Sexiest Geeks Alive. TechCrunch tweeted about this website last month, and since I was interested in checking out some hot geeks, I followed the link. The folks who have created this site say that “the world should spend more time celebrating the sexiness of geeks” - and to that I say heck yes! The site is still pretty new, but I was pleased to see both sexy male AND female geeks here. And I love the category ‘Shower Thoughts’ - how many of us are guilty of daydreaming about someone sexy while we’re in the shower? I know I am… 

I fully support this endeavor! I’m personally coming up with a list of people whom I think are sexy geeks to give to Cianna (maybe YOU’RE on the list….hmmmm!), and I’d encourage you all to help her out as well and recommend some nerdy hotties. Send an email to nominate[at]sexiestgeeksalive.com if you have someone in mind who should be honored as a sexy geek - we should certainly get sourcing and research represented!

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!