Jennifer McClure | Jennifer McClure`

The Revolution Continues… Social Media Is Not a Fad

The original Social Media Revolution video from July 2009 was quite “revolutionary” and has been viewed over 1.8 million times. I’ve personally seen it about 10,000 times at the beginning of various presentations on social media and the background music is on a continuous loop in my brain. But it’s full of amazing and interesting information, and thankfully has finally been updated with new stats and figures.

If you’re still of the mindset that you can wait for this stuff to blow over, maybe this new video will cause you to think again…

Email subscribers click here to see to view the video.)

Some interesting stats from the video include:

Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
80% of companies use social media for recruitment
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
Wikipedia has over 15 million articles
There are over 200 million blogs
25% of search results for the world’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content
78% of consumers trust Peer recommendations – only 14% trust advertisements

The current and future implications that social media has on your Talent Attraction methods, Recruiting processes and Employee Development systems are huge.

Are you ready?

Written by Jennifer McClure

If Google Says I’m the Best Recruiter in the World… It Must Be True

You may have heard this phrase before:

“It’s not who you know… but who knows you – and what they say about you.”

I believe that statement is very true, but since we live in an increasingly online world, maybe it should be modified to:

“It’s not who you know, or what they say about you… it’s what Google says about you.”

Case in point – a short email I received last week:

Wondering if Curt was on to something, I Googled the phrase “best recruiter in the world” and here’s what I found:

The first two unpaid hits out of over 2,200 results came from a tongue-in-cheek post on this blog from July 2009:

I’m no SEO expert, but I did choose the title intentionally back then, assuming that it’s possible people (ideally client companies) sometimes go to Google and start with that phrase when looking for a Recruiter. A long shot I know. But nothing ventured, nothing gained right? As someone responsible for developing my own business, I try to use every option available to me.

Looks like my title strategery worked a little better than I expected – or at least it worked well enough to give me a laugh. And Curt got a nice response for being a little more creative than the too often used – “I see you’re a Recruiter. Can you help me find a job?”

This cheeky little example was a good reminder for me of how important it is to be mindful of what I put out there on the interwebs. Like it or not, your credibility (and mine) is being judged every day by people searching Google (and other search engines) who are finding your blog posts, tweets, LinkedIn profile, etc.

Thankfully, Google got it right this time.

Let’s be careful out there…

Written by Jennifer McClure

How To Get Speaking Opportunities (And Where You Can Find Me)

As you can probably tell, I really enjoy speaking to groups and traveling to various places to meet new people. Recently on her blog, my friend and HR Blogger Lisa Rosendahl asked for some suggestions to help her overcome The Anti-Speaking Demon. I responded in the comments with a short novelette that I thought I’d also republish here, since it may be helpful to others interested in developing as a speaker as well.

To get started, I’d suggest making people in your network aware that you’re interested in speaking to some groups and some examples of topics you could talk about or do a workshop/seminar on. You’ll likely be surprised at how many opportunities are out there – especially if you’re willing to speak for free. Once you’ve gotten several under your belt, you’ll likely be referred and recommended to other groups who are willing to pay you for your time and expertise.

Beyond your network, here’s a few additional resources I’d suggest contacting:

1) Schools or universities in your area. Usually, the Career Development offices are dying to connect students to business leaders who can talk to them about what it’s like in the “real world” and also provide networking and job search tips.

2) Job search support groups or networking groups in your community – In Cincinnati, there are a number of groups that meet regularly to help people in career transition. Most have a speaker as part of their meetings and they’re thrilled to have someone from HR/Recruiting come to talk with them and answer questions about how to approach their job search.

3) Check with your local HR Association or Recruiting groups. While most local chapters tend to book their lunch speakers months in advance (and it seems they like to book out of town speakers to add some “cred”), it’s likely they’d be interested in having someone in the trenches like you offer to provide a seminar, breakfast or lunch talk about one of the many topics you could speak on.

A few more tips:

1) Add a Speaking page to your blog. List topics you can or have spoken about. Not only will your blog readers find you that way (and you’ll get opportunities from it I’m sure), but you’ll also get found through search engines. My Speaking/Workshops page on my blog gets daily traffic and more than once I’ve booked a speaking gig because someone Googled “Using Social Media in HR & Recruiting” or “Using LinkedIn for Job Search”, etc. and landed on my blog. I’ve also gotten interview requests from magazines, radio shows, etc. through being found by this page.

2) Add that you’re a speaker, or open to speaking, on your LinkedIn profile. Same as above, I’ve booked speaking engagements and interviews as a result of being found on LinkedIn.

3) Don’t be shy about asking attendees to write a recommendation for you on LinkedIn if they found your talk to be of value. I’ve not been comfortable with asking myself, but I know several speakers who have tons of great recommendations on their profiles – because they asked. Once your LinkedIn network starts seeing recommendations pop up for your speaking, you’ll start getting more requests to speak. Subtle marketing works.

4) Bring your own evaluation sheets if the group doesn’t provide one. The feedback will not only help you understand what resonated with the audience, but also what you can improve upon. As you start speaking more and filling out Speaker Proposals, often they ask for evaluation results from some recent engagements.

5) Eventually make sure you get a good video of you speaking to a group. Same as #4, it will help you see what you do well and what you need to improve and it’s also frequently requested for more high profile speaking opportunities.

Where You Can Find Me

Since some of you may subscribe
to this blog via
RSS (I hope you ARE a subscriber!), you may not have noticed the link
on my blog to the Speaking/Training/Workshops page before. Take a
look there, and you’ll notice that April, May & June are thankfully
shaping up to be pretty busy for me as a Speaker including:

RecruitCamp
– Raleigh, NC – April 22, 2010. Thanks to RecruitingBlogs.com
I’ll be leading a session at this event and I’m looking forward to the
Keynote by my friend Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR!

HRevolution
– Chicago, IL – May 7 – 8, 2010. Special thanks to Lisa Rosendahl
for asking me to co-lead a session on “Can HR Be Trusted” to continue
the discussion started with my recent post. (This should be good – can’t wait!)

Louisville
Kentucky SHRM Chapter – June 8, 2010. Thanks to a recommendation
from Crystal Peterson, I’ll be joining LSHRM as their
luncheon speaker and also leading an afternoon workshop on Using Social
Media in HR.

I’m also super excited about speaking
at the Ohio HR Conference in September thanks a connection
from my friend Steve Browne and also the Sm@rt Social Media
Conference Reno/Tahoe in December thanks to Dr. Bret L. Simmons.

You’ll notice in the engagements I’ve highlighted,
there was at least one person from my network who helped me to connect
with the opportunity. I’m grateful to each of these people and appreciate their support very much. My network rocks and if you’ll be attending any of these events, I’d love to meet you in
person to get to know you as well!

What did I miss? What would you
recommend to someone interested in developing their speaking skills or
becoming a professional speaker? I’d like to learn from you!

Written by Jennifer McClure

It’s April Fool’s Day… Can You Learn Anything From It?

Ah, it’s April Fool’s Day and the pranks and jokes are flying in offices all around the world and especially on the Interwebs. Hey, I’m a Fan of fun and a decent practical joke, but having a specific day unofficially sanctioned for these activities means that it’s not safe to go on the internet, step out of your house or speak to any of your friends.

Bah. Humbug.

Of course I may be jaded a bit after a good (or was it bad) trick that was played on me (and quite a few others) a couple of years ago. I had just caved in and finally joined Twitter (on March 26, 2008 to be exact) after reading this post from Jim Stroud indicating there were only 85 recruiters were using it. A few days later, on April 1st, I started my day as usual and noticed a tweet from Scott Allen, mentioning a post on his Linked Intelligence blog with a big announcement from LinkedIn – that they were eliminating their free service as of May 1, 2008.

Immediately after reading the post, I spun into a tizzy. How could they do this? I’d been using the free version of LinkedIn for a couple of years and had also spent a considerable amount of time teaching and encouraging other professionals – especially job seekers – to sign up and get involved. I knew that many of these people wouldn’t be willing to pay for the service and as a result, its usefulness would soon be gone.

I sent Scott a couple of tweets asking how this could happen. No response. I searched the internet for the “official LinkedIn announcement” that was referenced in the post. Nothing. I Googled, went to LinkedIn related Forums and scoured the LinkedIn site and blog. After losing far too much time and productivity, I went back to Scott’s post (which has since been removed – bad for LinkedIn SEO I guess) to see if I could find more information there. As I scrolled down to the bottom just above the comments, in very tiny font, I saw this:

*April Fools

I was mad. And frustrated. I’d lost a lot of time and productivity (my fault – not Scott’s) by following this April Fool’s boondoggle. But after I thought about it a bit, I was thankful. It was a great wake up call to remind myself that I must be sure to never depend on any one tool or any one thing that is controlled by someone else to manage my relationships and do my job.

So thanks for the Punk Scott! I deserved it – and I even learned from it.

Now if you want to see some good April Fool’s hijinks, this one is perfect. (Link to the picture referenced is here.) Couldn’t have happened to a better target guy. 🙂

Written by Jennifer McClure

Can an Internal Coach or HR Pro Be Trusted With Your Secrets?

At The Conference Board’s Executive Coaching Conference
that I recently attended, we spent some time in one of the sessions discussing concerns with HR pros being designated or trained as
internal coaches in organizations due to trust and credibility issues. (Note: attendees at the conference were primarily external coaches and OD professionals.)

Here’s a tweet I sent out during the discussion:

I guess the discussion made me a bit #sad because as a former Human Resources pro myself, I felt like I was effective as an internal “coach”. Whether working with an employee as part of their career development process or providing support to some making it through performance improvement plans, I worked hard to balance their need for confidentiality in the process with my responsibilities to the organization. I took pride in being someone that employees at all levels could talk to and one CEO even referred to me as his Consigliere – which considering some of the bullets I took for him, was kind of fitting.

But I do recall a conversation I had one day with an employee who was experiencing some issues at work. When I offered to listen and provide support, she said “Unfortunately, I can’t talk to you about this. It’s not that I don’t trust you personally. It’s the chair that you sit in. You have the authority to fire me. And I can’t risk that.”

After she left my office, I thought about what she’d said. I wanted to be offended. But I kinda understood where she was coming from. While it was frustrating that she wouldn’t allow me to try to help out just because of my position in the organization, I also knew that sometimes it was part of my role to be involved in making decisions about her career. So sharing a weakness or performance problem with someone who has that type of influence could be perceived as a risk.

Fast forward to today, where I work with clients as an external Executive Coach… The feedback I’ve received from clients is that one of the most helpful aspects of the coaching process is the opportunity to speak confidentially with someone outside of the organization who can listen, support, challenge and guide them. I’ve listened as senior level clients have shared with me a variety of potentially career damaging things – being afraid of making decisions, that they’re intimidated by a peer or they’re unhappy in their jobs. We’ve been able to work through and resolve those issues, but I’ve often wondered if it would be a challenge for me as an internal coach to have access to that same information.

HR often seems to get thrown under the bus in regards to confidentiality and credibility issues (if you’re the one causing that to happen, then please STOP), but I don’t agree that credibility/trust of internal coaches is an “HR” issue. I think it’s more about the perceived confidentiality that an external coach can provide – no matter how good an internal coach may be.

I think it’s hard for employees not to feel at risk when sharing information with people in a position to influence their careers.

What do you think? Can HR pros serve as effective coaches inside their organizations? Do external coaches have an advantage over internals?

The conversation at the conference has caused me to wonder if maybe the employee who was preoccupied with where I parked my derriere each day was on to something…

The Revolution Continues… Social Media Is Not a Fad

If Google Says I’m the Best Recruiter in the World… It Must Be True

How To Get Speaking Opportunities (And Where You Can Find Me)

Where You Can Find Me

It’s April Fool’s Day… Can You Learn Anything From It?

Can an Internal Coach or HR Pro Be Trusted With Your Secrets?

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