LatinOcean – Digital Marketing Consulting

I am always a bit sceptical about news of studies regarding perceptions and attitutes about the mature workforce like the one that got published recently.

Don’t get me wrong; if the findings indicate a true change of practice regarding older workers, that’s great.

I mean it’s in everyone’s best interest, right? Sooner or later – if we’re lucky – we’re moving up the age bracket whilst staying functional.

Whether we’re bosses or employees, we’re always selling our professionalism, experience and potential. Fact remains, the perception of our effectiveness as salespeople is impacted by how wrinkled we look.

How do we change these perceptions? How do we become grey hair impervious?

All of us have a to-do. Owners, managers and workers young and old need to nremain ‘responsible’.

1. employees, ensure you’re not mis-cast. There will be a temptation to take on a job that may not be a strength to you, but your potential employer is going to say ‘come on mate, you’re experienced, you can do this job’. if you know that is not the case, don’t accept it. It will come back to haunt you.

2. employers, just because some people have been on the workforce for thirty years, it guarantees you nothin’. There are people who are shit workers in their 20′s and they don’t learn, skill up or gain insights, and in their 50′s they remain shit workers. Leave the affirmative action stuff, don’t hire off the back of the wise-older worker preconception, and interview and test as if you want the job done the best possible way.

3. employees stay hungry. No-one wants lazy fat cats in their teams, however young or old. Show that you want the job, that you want to do well, that you want to become a linchpin of the organisation (here goes Seth Godin again). Stamina changes should not impact on your attitude.

4. employers, situational leadership won’t go astray across all your teams.There are certainly different motivators per staff member; don’t manage generational groups. Manage individuals.

Bye

With “Linchpin”, Seth Godin has hit the mark as far as conveying a message that resonates with employers, employees, the self-employed, the entrepreneur: work is art in as much as it is a process filled with generosity provided by individuals that create, connect, produce; and ultimately has an effect on others.

Perhaps the book’s punch comes from the fact that the metaphors and actual advice avoid the usual career advice gaff and aims to engage the reader at the emotional level that is required to be an effective worker, as opposed to a ‘steady job holder’.

This post – the first in more than a few months – is direct result of his pep-write: I’ve been too busy to “ship” (deliver, produce, think, give). I had great excuses: I am dedicating a lot of time to other projects including Digital Reach, and I had ruined the original template of this blog (it still is as you can see), so I did not want too many visitors.

I am getting out there again: selling, writing, consulting, pushing the things I stand for; which as you know it’s double-shit scary. Double because you can fail, which makes you feel you want to go hide under a rock and never come out; or you succeed, which means you have to get tense again and deliver so that your client is happy to pay the bill you sent them and then want to come back for some more.

Obviously if you dislike Godin, this will likely not be the book to make you a convert. It’s more of the same, perhaps sharper than ever, less sympathetic and with a desire to shake the ‘factory worker’ mindset and bring out the unruly genius in all of us.

If you get to it, let me know what were your impressions.

Have a great rest of the week

Belated happy new ’09. Nice to be back

A bit of a rant and/or speculations re. the news on job ads

a) The 50% + decline in newspaper ads includes the economic slow down factor and the migration to online factor which, if you have seen the Seek investor presentations, is BIG

b) The almost 30% decline in online ads includes the slow down factor, the ‘less-reposting’ factor and to a still small extent, to a ‘migration off classifieds’ factor.

c) If you take a) and b), then the corollary is that the decline in the actual job openings is less dramatic that the ad statistics.

d) There will be more applicants per job ad, but possibly less applications overall (due to lesser volumes of ads). But if you accepted a) and b) then it will not be 50 or even 30% harder to get a job, ceteris paribus

John Sumser wrote about how the media loves the bad news. I encourage everyone not to make our own gloom.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that referrals are a great source of placed/place-able candidates. “Great” is obviously highly subjective, it could refer to a number of variables and scales.

I will forget for a moment that I have not seen systemic/comprehensive empirical of the ‘greatness’ of referrals. Assuming this is a channel worth nurturing and developing, I believe that what enables the message (job opportunity) to disseminate through the channel is a minimum of two Trust relationships:

- 1 between the referrer and referee (colleague, relative)
- 1 between the potential employer or agency (whomever offers the job) and referrer (current employer, family business)

I am not even saying that this trust is well placed, I am only stating it needs to exist so that the message (job opportunity) goes somewhere. Eventually, a third trust relationship – between employer/agency and referee – may develop, even though the candidate is not offered the job.

From this it follows that the core issue with online referral systems like 2vouch and others is the fact that there is no trust relationship between the job poster and the referrer, so there is no comfort in disseminating the message. I would argue that the info on the job posting is not comprehensive enough to compel a referrer to recommend it to a contact.

The accompanying risks are well known: spamming, low quality, lack of ‘greatness’. What follows then is that if I were to run one of these referrals sites, I would dedicate 90% of all my budget to develop at trust relationship between the job poster and the referrer, sneezer, etc.

Do you agree? What else would you do to make an online referral platform actually work, other than the usual (great service, fluid site, blah)?

Have a great week

A quick snapshot of the self-confessed Australians on LinkedIn

1. 60k shy of half a million members.

2. In Crowds:

a) C-Level types = 8.5k
b) IT Professionals= 47k
c) Small Business = 15k
d) Finance = 14k
e) Sales = 19k
f) Entrepreneurs = 7k

That leaves a few hundred k’s unaccounted for, but suspect marketing, engineering, other professions are a big stack

Bottom line is there is critical mass on LinkedIn for the region. Now, how do you go about engaging them?

Stats kindly provided for an ad campaign by Mary Oliver-Iglesias from Linkedin. Maybe she can help you with a campaign too.

company name: notchup

based in the US, currently in beta mode. you can apply for registration or get referred (send me your email if you want to go straight in)

the idea: give candidates cash for taking interviews with employers and recruiters; members are also encouraged to spam, i mean refer the site to people that might be interested in joining by given the inviters a % of the money made by the invitees in one year.

the user experience: clean design (although someone commenting on the techcrunch article reckoned that the layout was a ripoff from google’s grandcentral. uploading your profile from linkedin is meant to be easy too, though I did not manage to connect. On the other side of the equation, employers get to see a blind profile which they can choose for interview and lay out the cash

The site offers 100% money guarantee, not sure about the terms of reimbursement though.

It will be obvious to you that the model can fall on its bum before it comes out of beta if there’s abuse, lack of talent or buyers. I am wondering tho if you as individual agency or corporate recruitment department would be prepared to materially reward candidates at interview, shortlisting or placement stage of the process. Or, are you already doing that?

Hope you have a safe weekend

Had you asked me at the beginning of the year: will you be in Vizag for business in 2007? I would have honestly said no.. but here I am. This is all part of the plot to justify why I have not been writing – or reading – blogs in the last couple of months or so. More details soon.

Anyhoo, I was reading today about how LinkedIn is not going to be bought by News… Just in case they change their minds and/or Nye stops playing cat and mouse, I reckon this is a fab purchase because it enables News to

a) move up the value chain re. employment [from classifieds (immediate placements) to relationships with professionals (workforce planning)]

b) nurture an interesting audience for its other advertising and content

So there

Have a great weekend

Usually I write a post and move on.

However this one got a good comment, which you may miss out on if you don’t check previous entries.

By good I don’t mean I concur 100%. I somewhat disagree with the outlook expressed in the last item. By good I mean it highlights a few key messages regarding using networks as a sourcing tool or advertising medium:

- The network environment gives you access to additional candidate info you may not get when advertising in the paper or a job board. It even gives you information about the people that decided not to go for the job; this has to be good intelligence for future postings

- Recruiting becomes more personal and symmetric. You as a hirer have a few more obligations in things like response management, to ensure that your ad increases the strength of your network as opposed to the other way around

- Networks as promising sources of good candidates may/will deteriorate IF the hiring processes do not adapt to a network environment and the behaviors it spouses

Here is the comment again. Thanks Anonymous

Climber.com

Tagline: “We are like dating for jobs”

Jist: Matches candidates with employers based on resume type information plus something that resembles a preferences and attributes profile (e.g. are you money-driven, does you work have to have a positive social impact). Climber calls this the Career Fingerprint.

Snapshot today: At the moment the jobs matched to the system’s registered users are keyword-matched ads from the Indeed engine, but as employer preference data grows the matching is expected to be more comprehensive. Professionals have private profiles and decide to share personal/contact info to specific employers.

Initial assessment: The attributes and preferences profile is superficial; then again, it is not meant to be a rigorous tool to assess a person’s suitability for a role. Given this, if the profiles were to convey the candidates/employers likes and dislikes, there is an increased chance to assess a level of compatibility between potential hire and hirer at the onset.

I would also like to know how this information is embedded (e.g. taken into account) in the recruitment process. Maybe RPO and corporate recruiters are readier than others to use this information effectively.

Down the track: It has the potential for interesting metadata

My philosophical question: At the end of the day do you hire on (soft) compatibilities or hard skills?

Went for a bit more info, but the system is like, down

My first foray into empirical research as part of LatinOcean. It is really more a brief compilation on how recruiters are using the system in the region in an attempt to transcend the hype and the buzz.

Don’t go too hard on me re. sample sizes and statistical relevance; nevertheless I hope it is of benefit to some of you out there, and feel free to pass. Enjoy