Lending Our Voice: The Web 2.0 Job Finder

March 15, 2011 by comments 0

You can imagine your hearty-ankled, elementary school librarian peering down at you through half moon glasses, that reproachful gaze reminding you that you’ll never be good enough to read chapter books, as she says, “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

It was good advice. Advice that taught generations of us to dig a little deeper and find out more about everything from books to jobs and people. And now that advice is bunk. It’s been thrown by the wayside with everything else that social media has massacred: traditional advertising, old school marketing, and human dignity and discretion.

These days, you judge a book by it’s Facebook page. And if you were thinking that recruiters and HR entities were turning a blind eye to the information so readily available via the interwebs, you would be mistaken.

In their new book, The Web 2.0 Job Finder, Brenda Greene and Coleen Byrne offer insights and recommendations from recruiters and HR departments on how to leverage social media to help find new opportunity, not kill it. They’ve called upon experts and insiders to give sage advice to those looking to navigate the market and build a fruitful network in this expressive and boundary-less new world.

And you’ll never guess which social media man they tapped… Our very own Mike Troiano.

Seeing as how Mike doesn’t even know where HR sits around here, he is able to bring a fresh and human perspective to the book:

“Invest some time in your profile. Upload a picture, for God’s sake. Add a bio. Create some content to give people a sense of who you are, what you can contribute, what you’ll be looking for. Then start to reach out to the people you know. Connect with them, and start the dialogue.”

It sounds so simple, but it seems that when creating our “professional” persona, we freeze up, certain that any modicum of personality or individualism will raise a red flag. But it’s our belief that now is the time that who you are and what you’re about is what gives you an edge. We’re marketing ourselves in an age of full disclosure. By providing too little, you’re polarizing. Too much and you’re a liability. You need to find a balance, and from there you need to leverage your online presence to build a network that brings opportunities to you, while starting conversations that leave a lingering impression on those with whom you’re connected. That’s just what this book is about.

The Web 2.0 Job Finder will be available April 15th. You can preorder from Amazon.com here.

 

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  • Blog Tim

    Speaking of “conversations that leave a lingering impression on those with whom you’re connected”, I am not sure that your use of “bee” in place of “be” is leaving the right impression.

    • http://scalableintimacy.com Mike Troiano

      Thanks for the catch, Tim. We’ve fixed the error, promptly, if that impacts your assessment.

      • Blog Tim

        Thanks, Mike. Overall, great blog and blog post.

        Many people may be reluctant to create online professional personae because the traditional rules of the job hunting game dictate that we be all things to all people rather than just be ourselves. Ultimately, this creates rather schizophrenic behavior in the job seeker. For example, it is not uncommon to have multiple versions of a CV and present yourself and your story differently to different firms. Judging by the volume of books published with clever tips and tricks for the job seeker, it seems many folks feel that simply being themselves just won’t give them the edge they need to land the job. Instead job seekers are compelled to engage in elaborate charades, overly complex negotiations, psychological games and power-plays just to get a job.

        With this type of mindset, many job-seekers may feel that a single online professional persona will paint their stories with too broad a brush and thus they will lose the edge they gain by having the ability to present themselves in different ways to different firms. Each day they can be someone different. Furthermore, editing your CV in a word processor and sending it to a particular employer and wearing a suit to an interview one day and t-shirt and jeans the next is still easier to do than creating and managing multiple online personae.

        Finally, I think it is important to do your research about a firm so you can find out how you can help them achieve their goals and determine if you will be a good fit with their culture. To an extent you should tailor your CV and your appearance to fit in with the job you are seeking. However, I think the process can be humanized much more than it currently is and employers and job seekers should engage in more of a dialogue than a circus hoop-jumping show to determine if a candidate will be successful at a firm. Right now, most employers do the circus hoop-jumping thing and the job seekers are willing to be part of the show.

        P.S. If you have about 3 million dollars, you can hire a firm in California to manage all of your online personae for you. At least this is what the Department of Defense has done recently. Unfortunately, they only work in Arabic, Pashto, and Urdu.