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Cynthia Giles

Cynthia Giles

This Is Not the Post I Meant to Write

I started out to write about the role of print media in employer branding.  Then I followed a link to the website of an industry group.  Let’s just say the association has something to do with publishing/communications.

There is no content on their home page.

Let me repeat.  No content.

There are links.  There is a (rapidly) revolving banner.  There is a navigation bar.  There are icons.  There are images.

But there is no information at all about the organization or its purpose.  In fact, there is not a single complete sentence.

My reasons for devoting a post to this?  As follows:

  • This may be an emerging trend that I just haven’t noticed before.  Maybe a new approach designed to make the visitor curious.  If so, it seems like a terrible idea.
  • This may be an example of no one watching out for the visitor experience.  If so, it’s a cautionary tale.
  • This may be an example of companies participating in an association but not bothering to check up on how they are being represented.  If so, it’s another cautionary tale.
  • This may be an example of web developers driving a website—focusing on gimmicks without understanding the fundamental responsibilities of the site.  And that’s one of the most common hazards in online corporate communications, whether development is inhouse or outsourced.

The takeaways for those in charge of corporate sites (careers and otherwise) are fairly obvious.  Pay attention, take or assign responsibility, remember the visitor.

But I have to add one more painful point.  I went through several pages of the site referred to here, and every one of them contained serious errors in grammar and syntax.  Not nit-picky stuff, really obvious mistakes.

A reminder:  This site belongs to an organization that represents companies in the communications/publishing industry.  Plus:  The organization is located in an English-speaking country, has been around for more than ten years, and claims to represent dozens of companies.

So I really wanted to track down the apparent gap.  I followed the “site designed by” footer link and made my way to the portfolio of the web design company.  I won’t overcomplicate this story, but I will say that more than a third of the sites shown in their portfolio had the very same sort of language errors.

I’m not sure what to make of all this, except to say . . . it’s easy to lose track of quality in online communications.  Tech wizards think they can write and nobody stops them.  Approvers look at the site but don’t read the words.  And tight budgets prioritize fast and flashy development over well-written content.

In some quarters (discount merchandise, extremist propaganda, etc.), marginal website quality might not make much of a difference.  But in professional associations and employer branding—there’s just no getting away with badness.

Cosmic Jobs: Now Hiring at CERN!


CERN Twitterstream

On March 30, 2010, “a new era in science” opened when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) achieved an operational energy level of 7 TeV.

Decoded, that means scientists have succeeded in smashing together sub-atomic particles at something near the speed of light.  Why?  To find out more (and maybe everything) about the origins and inner workings of the cosmos.

There’s a long way to go before the answers are revealed—and it may well be that surprising new questions emerge before there are actually any answers.  So there’s plenty of work to be done at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), owner of the world’s largest science experiment.  The LHC is a circular tunnel that runs for seventeen miles under French and Swiss territory, packed with devices that can measure time to a few billionths of a second and register location to millionths of a metre, to record data about the particle collisions.  Around fifteen million gigabytes of data every year, to be exact.  The data will be stored and processed in a worldwide grid comprising thousands of computers.

Top scientists from many countries are participating in this huge project.  But CERN also needs all kinds of other workers, from administrative staff to equipment technicians.  In fact—they are looking for a Recruitment Specialist!

This “challenging position” would be in a “newly established unit” that will:

. . . implement best practices by forecasting and anticipating recruitment needs, planning these in collaboration with key management stakeholders, and subsequently delivering a service of excellence from attraction and assessment of candidates through to selection and appointment.

That description may sound familiar—but now just imagine recruiting for a project that may unlock the secrets of the universe.  “Challenging” just doesn’t seem a strong enough word!

In terms of the organization’s online presence:  Careers at CERN is a pleasant but rather plain site, with information on a variety of programs, the typical search tools,  and the usual sort of video.  There’s nothing about the “culture,” perhaps because applicants in such a rarified niche would either already know or not really care about the working environment.  And there are no social media links.   CERN actually has a good Twitter presence on the “science” side, but apparently that hasn’t taken hold on the HR side.   So all in all, the site is functional but not nearly so exciting/romantic as one might hope.

If you want to know more about CERN and the LHC, get some background with the 3 Minute CERN Tour at YouTube.  (It’s really excellent.)  Then catch up on recent events with this BBC story.  And CERN’s LHC website is also a great source of information.

March Wrap-up


flower

Continuing the monthly tradition, here are some follow-ups and add-ons for March posts, plus anything that was too small for a post, but too interesting to pass up.

Yet More about Social Media Recruiting!

There’s nothing radical or surprising in CareerBuilder’s new eBook—but it’s so charming that I recommend a download.  Plus it has my favorite title of the month:  Will Tweet for Work.   (The subtitle, A User’s Guide to Talent Recruitment through Social Media, is less amusing but more informative . . . )

Highlights include:  A page on “Niche Sites” like Bebo, Ning, and Slideshare, and one on “Best Practices for Using Social Media to Recruit.”  Clearly organized, and filled with tips, this eBook offers a lot of information in just 22 pages.

While thinking about social media–visit/revisit our March post on Corporate Blogging.

The Art of the Turndown

A continuing theme at Corporate Eye on Careers is improvement of the candidate experience.  The basic idea of being nice to candidates gets repeated a lot, along with reasons why it’s good business and reminders for best practice.  But obviously this topic can’t be covered too often, since so many HRs still aren’t managing their candidates effectively.

Turndowns and Great Recruiters, a post by Jason Lauritson over at the Human Capital Institute blog, offers some helpful tips for one of the hardest tasks in the hiring process:  rejecting applicants.

Further Adventures of the Undercover Employee

As explained in an earlier post,  I’ve been spending a few weeks disguised as a worker bee inside a really big company.  So how’s that working out . . . ?

Aaaarrrgh!  I’m still in the hive, so won’t go into a lot of detail—but here are a couple of thoughts that have occurred to me so far:

  • From the hiring perspective: Many job descriptions include the phrase “fast-paced environment.”  And that could mean anything from “uncontrolled chaos” to “never boring.”  Candidates should ask what flavor of “fast-paced” the environment really is—and interviewers should be prepared to answer honestly.  A real discussion on this point could help improve hiring fit, since the skills required for a fast-paced environment could be excellent multi-tasking on one hand, nerves of titanium on another.
  • From the onboarding perspective: One of the challenges for new employees is finding themselves in a lot of meetings where they don’t know the other people and don’t have any background on the topic.  That’s hard enough in person.  So as more and more meetings become virtual, meeting leaders need to seriously master the appropriate skills.  For example . . . Remember that people on the phone can’t see you!!  Remember that people on the phone probably can’t hear questions asked by people in the room.  And learn how to use the conferencing tool (whatever it is) BEFORE the meeting.

More from the Undercover Employee in future posts.  Meanwhile–Hello, April!


(Many thanks to prakhar for this month’s “something beautiful.”)

Tweets from the Suites: How Execs Use Twitter

What's Happening

In CEOs Take on Twitter, Business Week looked at the Twitter pages of some C-level execs, and asked them for brief comments about their Twitter use.  The result was actually very interesting.  Since almost all of the people they looked at are in the high tech/social media/PR/etailing sector anyway (think Zappos, TechCrunch, Sun), it’s perhaps not surprising that they are tuned in to the Twitterverse.  But taken together, their insights about tweeting make up a pretty good index of what makes Twitter important.

The sole outlier in this tech-heavy group was Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  (For those who don’t follow the book trade, Thomas Nelson is the leading publisher of bibles and Christian books.)  Hyatt describes himself as an avid blogger—and a quick review of his Twitter page reveals frequent tweets that mix the personal with the informative.  Most important:  They do not appear to be churned out by staffers.

The Business Week story appeared in August of 2008, so in a way it’s old news.  But the time lapse permits us to see what has happened to the profiled tweeters in the meantime.  And we find out that Michael Hyatt—whose stats in the article were Following: 146, Followers: 1,059, and Updates: 2,045—now has (wait for it) 74,776  Followers and has racked up an impressive 9,809 Tweets.  He is Listed 2,124  times.

Hyatt’s Twitterstream is a textbook example of how to convey personality online (“We just finished Vespers.  Now off to a birthday party.”) and engage community (“I’m giving away 50 free copies of [book title].”)  He answers nerdy questions (“Yes, I just used the Amazon Associates tools, plus a little CSS styling.”) and describes relatable experiences (“We had such an amazing evening. There is something so healing about being with people who know and understand you.”)  Along the way he slips in PR for his blog (“I have two ads left for sale on my blog for March . . . ”)

He retweets his family’s updates (daughter Marissa is chronicling her attempt to quit smoking) along with links to useful content (“7 Ways to Build Your Author Brand Online”), relevant events, and topical stories.  Last but not least—and best of all, or worst, depending on how you look at it—he ghost-tweets a Twitterstream for his dog, @NelsonHyatt.  Sample:  “I can’t believe @MIchaelHyatt left me in the car while he went browsing in the bookstore. Hello! Obviously, I can read!”

@Nelson has 464 Followers and he answers all their comments.

@Michael almost never mentions Thomas Nelson directly, by the way—just an occasional oblique reference, like this one from 15 minutes ago:  “I’m sitting in a Nonfiction Publication Board, discussing five prospective new books. Excellent proposals!” That tweet demonstrates exactly how to evoke positive impressions of a company without appearing in the least promotional.

I’ll follow up on some of the other Tweeters profiled in Business Week, and if there’s anything interesting, there will be another post.  But in the meantime . . . anyone who wants to see corporate tweeting done well for a mainstream company should take a look at Hyatt’s achievement.  Though it’s not the only good approach, it’s an example of one that works.

 

(Thanks to rvacapinta for the original boardroom photo.  It’s been modified a bit for this illustration.)

Is Twitter the New Rolodex?

 

Rolodex 1d

Recently I realized just how Twitterized I’ve become.  I saw a blog I liked (One Louder, by Microsoft “Employee Evangelist” Heather Hamilton) and felt rather desperate when I didn’t find a Twitter bird on the site.  Thinking it through, I found that Twitter (via Tweetdeck) is now the way I “file” people/websites I want to keep in view.

I still have a very nice set of categorized pages that gather RSS feeds–and almost every website/blog on earth offers RSS, so no problem there.  But in truth I don’t look at those pages very often any more.  I use them like a library, visiting when I want to browse or find something in particular.  So if I were to put One Louder on a feed page, I would probably forget all about it until I went there to look for something else.

On the other hand, when someone I follow tweets about a new post on their blog, the tweet appears in the appropriate column on my deck display, and I can tell pretty fast whether I want to look at it or not.  If I do, the post is a click away.  And that’s just one of the many ways Twitter can be useful even if you don’t ever tweet.

I didn’t invent the Twitter/Rolodex connection, of course.  In fact, a Fast Company blog post last year gave a nice example of how Twitter works as a a “living Rolodex that responds to you.”  And around the same time, another blogger gave a good example of how Twitter has become “the new rolodex for every journalist.“

If you think back to the original Rolodex, its great virtues were simplicity (each card holds the indispensable information, with no frills) and consistency (every card has the same information arranged in the same way).  Of course you could also  scribble on the back of them, but that’s a matter of taste . . .

Twitter offers some of the same attractions.  Everybody gets the same number of characters, so it’s a level playing field–and you can absolutely count on tweets being short!  Few things in life are so certain.

At the same time, following a resource on Twitter adds a dimension of information by surfacing what they notice and choose to tweet.  It’s amazing what you can figure out about an individual or company by just observing their Twitterstream for a while!  And with the advent of Twitter lists and Twitter managers, you can now organize your Twitter Rolodex in many different configurations—for example, put the boring people all on one list and filter them out.  They are still in your “file,” but you don’t have to see what they tweet.

Heather Hamilton wrote a post about why she is reluctant to engage Twitter, and I think she probably speaks for a lot of people who have the same concerns.  But the potential usefulness of Twitter doesn’t really become apparent until you actually get into it, mess around with different approaches, and  stick with it for a while.  That process lets you figure out what role—if any–it should play in your work/life.

 

(Many thanks to Hannes Grobe for the original photograph of this cultural icon.  It’s been reworked a bit here.)

A Handy Guide to Content Marketing. Plus—Employer Branding in a Nutshell

800px-Combustor_with_guide_vanes 2.svg

I hadn’t thought that much about the definition of “content marketing” until I visited the Junta42 site for another reason, and realized that I wasn’t sure exactly how they were using the term.  While scouting around for clues, I found an absolute gem buried in one of the many (many) layers and offshoots of the site.

Junta42 is a content-marketing matchmaker (projects-to-vendors), and their site is super-rich in content about content.  But there is such a thing as too much abundance!  Luckily, though, I did discover the Content Marketing Playbook and recommend it very highly.  Subtitled “42 Ways to Connect with Customers,” this nifty ebook has a page for every imaginable kind of content, from white papers to webinars.  And!  Each page has a brief case study that links right to a relevant example of the content type.  So if you’re not completely clear on what an “Online Media Site” might be (Item 31), you can click right over to an example at Proctor & Gamble’s HomeMadeSimple.com.

For every content type there’s a handy cheat sheet, explaining what it is, who/what it’s good for, who/what it’s not good for–and ending with three quick tips.  A cruise through this book provides a great refresher on content forms that are already familiar (blogging, newsletters, podcasts, etc.) and should also offer every reader at least a few new ideas.  Get up to speed on magalogs, wikis, widgets, and more.

Suggestions:  (1) Open/download the PDF version.  You can page through the book via the website, but there’s a lot of visual distraction. (2) While visiting Junta42, bookmark their guide to the “Top 42”  blogs about content marketing.  (The list is also an example of Playbook Item 11, the “Industry Ranking System.”)

Speaking of cheat sheets—there is an exceptionally concise summary of employer branding on the website of Singapore-based Human Resources magazine.  It’s smart, short, simple, and clear.  Here’s a highlight:

Generally, companies can focus on four types of employer branding messages:

Focus on offers: “At our company, you get more than what you get elsewhere. (E.g. benefits, culture, and career opportunities)”

Focus on personality: “You can find people who are similar to you in our company.”

Focus on values: “Values are important to us. If you share the same values, you can live according to what’s important to you here.”

Focus on tasks: “At our company, you will get the chance to do what excites you and you will love it here.”

This article provides a nice refresher for those already engaged with employer branding, and a useful starting point for those new to the topic.

All in all–two free reads that offer a lot of value.

 

(Thanks to Arnero for the . . . illustration.  Wondering what it is?  Me too.  By title, a “Combustor with guide vanes.”  No idea what that means, but it’s really cool to look at!)