Can You Be Found? Why You Must Personally Invest in Social Media

Can you be found?

“Of all the millions of people on LinkedIn, we found you!”

I had never quite thought of it that way. This quote was a statement from one of our recruiters who was searching to fill my current role. Yes, that is how they found me for it.

This past Saturday with temperatures hovering around 115 degrees here in Saudi Arabia, I was ensconced in the cool of my house reading with the TV on as background noise. I was watching CNBC, which by the way, has the best business documentaries on TV. The first one was a documentary about dating websites and their industry, and immediately following that, there was one on LinkedIn.

A marriage made in social media

How to Make Better Use of the Most Overlooked Part in Our HR Toolkit

The official decree came down that the weekend had changed.

The business community was very excited by this because they had not been able to not align their interests with the rest of the world. This meant that they were having a hard time competing against the rest of the world, especially since the mandated weekend severely reduced their competitive hours across several continents.

The weekend here in Saudi Arabia had been designated as Thursday-Friday [with Friday being the religious day, the same as our Sunday in the U.S.]. The new weekend is now Friday-Saturday. 

Since this was introduced mid-week, and we all got a three (3) day weekend to make the adjustment. In crafting the announcement of this for our workforce, I framed my message with extra time for family, rest and relaxation, and most of all, how everyone should their enjoy extra day off and go do something fun. I built a memo around this announcement that spelled out the new law, why it was being changed, and more importantly, what it meant to them.

The Consequences of Leadership: Yes, Indecision IS a Decision

“My guess is that a good number of firms have been thinking about right-sizing and waiting for someone to provide them cover and we’ll see more of these moves. As difficult as layoffs are, it seems that they will be necessary for some firms to get in sync with the current market dynamics.”

This quote was in reference to the recent layoffs at a major law firm in New York. The law firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, is one of the nation’s most prestigious and profitable law firms. They were laying off a large number of lawyers and support staff while also reducing the pay of some of its partners.

This layoff sent shock waves through the industry and underscored the financial difficulties facing the legal profession.

Cowering is not a competency

What Are You Doing to Help Rebuild the Organizational Bond of Trust?

 “Yup, not even a year and they eliminated my job. Can you believe that?”

I noticed on Facebook a post from a good friend who just lost her job. About nine months ago, we had met in New York to have a celebratory lunch. She had just found her dream job and was beyond excited.

Now, not even a year later, she is out. She was a passive candidate — accomplished, not actively looking for a new job, but the role was a perfect fit. Or at least she thought it was.

When I reached out to her, she confirmed it.

That is about the third story I have heard that fits that profile. Someone gets recruited and hired with all the fanfare, and before they could warm their seat, a corporate initiative comes through and pulls that seat out from under them.

Where was the plan?

Your Team Will Thank Your Contribution When You Find Your Authentic Voice

 “I just sat in the room in awe. All these senior writers, and here I was. I did not speak because I had not found my voice.”

That statement was from Mitchell Hurwitz, the creator of Arrested Development, speaking about his first big break into the TV business as a writer. He had joined the TV series The Golden Girls, working with a writing team of grizzled veterans. It was his first big break into comedy writing.

I was intrigued by his quote. Everyone struggles to find that voice where we speak from a platform of knowledge and authority. How many times have you sat in a meeting and just did not feel comfortable putting your two cents into the discussion? But over a period of time we usually feel that, yes, we do have something to say.

Keeping quiet and assessing the dynamics

Following Your Career GPS: Recalculating to Keep Yourself on Track

Recalculating, make a right at the next light. Recalculating, make a left at the next intersection.

With GPS in a car, there is no need to get lost anymore. I now live in Saudi Arabia, and of all the items that I brought over, my Google Maps app is something I never leave the house without.  

Try following direction and the entire street markings are in Arabic. So if I am looking for Exit 8 this is how the signs look: ٨مخرج

Sometimes, our careers can be like traveling in a foreign country. We get lost, we make the wrong turn, and sometimes end up in a destination that is far from our original target.

Having a career GPS system

Surviving in the Workplace: It’s All About Being Able to Adapt to Change

This could be you but then again I hope not.

1. We tell interviewers we are “not really into that social media stuff.”
2. We have not stayed current in our field or we aren’t articulate about trends and leaders in our field.
3. We dress like someone in a past decade, or worse, wear a suit and tie [or the female equivalent] in an environment that stopped wearing suits years ago.
4. We still have a flip phone.
5. We are not physically fit and sometimes overweight.
6. We have so much experience and have interviewed so many times we don’t spend much time preparing for the interview. Fact is, top candidates spend 8-16 hours preparing.

 This is an excerpt from an article written by my good friend Bill Belknap, uber career coach with the 5’O Clock Club, the premier outplacement & executive coaching firm based in New York City but it has a national footprint.

Bill, thank you — you nailed it!

Shaking my head in disbelief

I’m just amazed by the number of folks that fall into this category, people who are completely oblivious of what is going on around them and refusing to “get with it.”  We all know someone like this, and regardless of the change that is coming, they just refuse to be a part of it.

I got an invite through LinkedIn the other day, and when I clicked over to check out this person, I found that he has all of three (3) connections. There was absolutely nothing on his LinkedIn page but job titles, company names, and duration of service. He was even too lazy to fill in his roles and responsibilities even though he has been in the banking business for over 15 years.

This is the way you should look at this. Think of LinkedIn as the new business card. As a matter of fact, I now hear many people say, “Let’s connect on LinkedIn; I will send you an invite.”

But, LinkedIn is not the only social media platform that is out there. Twitter has become the gathering place for whatever your profession is. No matter what the top issues are that your industry is faced with, hang out on Twitter and follow your profession to get a sense of what folks are talking about, as well as what people in your profession are reading

The job market is tough, no matter if you are out of work or gainfully employed, but nobody is interested in anyone that is just too complacent to keep up. Everything today is moving at warp speed, from technology to disruptions in your industry.

The starting point is out of sight

Who would have ever envisioned how the Internet has changed our lives, from desktop computing to mobile, brick-and-mortar to e-commerce, foundational companies like IBM to Facebook and Google. If you think this does not affect you and your career, you are sadly mistaken.

And the great part of all this is that it is now slowing down, but I still know many professionals who refuse to get on with it. Their thought is that if they can just hold on, they will be out of the market in 10 years or so.

That is such a defeatist attitude. I had someone tell me that “I will give you a call, because I don’t have the time to do that ‘texting thing.’ ” I’m still SMH (shaking my head).

A young lady told me the story of how she decided to give her grandmother an iPad. Everyone in her family told her that would be such a huge mistake. The grandmother was in her mid-80’s, however what they did not realize was that she was a “young mid-80’s. When she received the gift she thanked her granddaughter so much for it. She had been reading so much about “this iPad thing” and was very interested.

She spent every day after that getting acquainted with her new toy. She took classes at the local Apple Store to learn all the tips and tricks. Now at the family gatherings, there she is showing off her apps, how she reads her newspaper, magazines, etc. She even created a LinkedIn and Facebook page.

Even in her mid-80’s, she had a hunger to get with all these new things even though her working days are long gone. I tell that story to all of my friends who are still living back in the past as if it is coming back. It is like keeping old clothes in your closet that you are just sure will come into style again. It may show up  again, but it will be an updated version of before. If you haven’t figured it out, nothing EVER goes back to where it was.

Change is hard

Change is sudden; it is like the rules have changed overnight. It disrupts our equilibrium. Whether it’s the sudden loss of a job or the changing dynamics of your work, the world you once knew is gone, and sometimes, it’s difficult to know what to do next.

Yes, it can be frightening because our survival instinct is based on being able to predict our environment and acting accordingly. When predictability disappears, so too does our sense of equilibrium.

Survival is based on adapting. And that survival is contingent on developing strategies to adapt, survive and potentially thrive during some of the worst conditions that many of us have seen in a lifetime.

Yes, my friends it is that serious.

Brand Strategy: If You Get Employees on Board, Customers Are Easy

When I checked the bill, all they charged me for was the tire. No labor or anything — just the cost of the tire.

I called them back and the guy on the phone said, “You and your family are such good customers that this was on us.” 

My wife was driving home last week and had a slow flat on the interstate. She was able to creep into Meinke where we get all of our cars serviced. They promptly came out and took all her worries away. Long story short, the work was done and in a short time, she was on her way home.

Moral of the story? We’re now a confirmed customer for LIFE. 

This highlights something you should know: everyone that works in your business is a brand ambassador, from the lowest rung on the org chart to the top executive. We sometimes falsely assume that it’s only when you get higher up in the organization that branding matters. However branding has a lot more effect when it is contagious down to the street level.

The importance of touch points

How many times have we gone into retail establishments and the employees went above and beyond for you? Those encounters always tend to chisel an impression into our psyche. On the other hand, when the opposite happens and we are rudely treated as if we are bothering them, that also has an effect. Studies however, have shown that the later experience is shared amongst friends more so than the former.

Companies spend enormous amounts of time and money developing, strategizing, and implementing marketing campaigns about who they are to their target audience and anyone else who will listen.

A companies brand is not just a cute marketing statement or some logo. Regardless of what your advertising campaign is, if your employees do not embody your message, as the say in The Sopranos, “fuhgeddaboudit. “ It’s just not happening.

Yes, but do your employees get it?

Companies can ignore employees at their own peril, however, they are the best advertisement you could ever have. If they live the brand that syncs to your marketing message, you are at the intersection of nirvana.

I had an experience at a local chain here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia the other day (where I am working as an HR leader). I bought an extension card, took it home, and it was the wrong type. So I put it back in the container and on my way home from work, I stopped by not for a refund but an exchange.

When I went to customer service, you would have thought that I was asking for double my money back. Because I had opened the package, the clerk adamantly refused to exchange it and basically walked away.

I asked for the manger and he apologized and gave me one that was already opened. My suggestion to him was that his customer service reps need a lot of training and I would not be coming back to shop there at all. So, customer lost and the story was repeated at work the next day.

Branding means starting with employees first

The customer experience is paramount, whether in a retail environment or inside a call center. If that touch point with the customer is not a branding experience, you have lost.

Each one of your employees is responsible for delivering what your brand promises. And if the employees don’t get it, their attitudes and behavioral patterns towards clients, colleagues, partners, suppliers means that the branding effort will have been in vain.

Your entire organization is constantly at risk because in this age of social media. Yes, bad news travels especially fast!

As part of your “brand strategy” you have got to get your employees to live it. An engaged workforce goes a long way in upholding that strategy. One the other hand, regardless of the campaign you devise if your employees don’t get it, it is not going to matter.

So before you go into that conference room to start talking brand, make a detour into your workforce.

That is an important first step. The process must begin by explaining to all employees the essence of the brand and what it is all about. The company must clearly define and elaborate the desirable traits and behaviors that they want their employees to exhibit. Most importantly, they should solicit feedback from those very same employees

And if that key component of your branding effort — your employees — do not know what the brand stands for, it is hardly reasonable to expect that they will be able to “live it.”

One day smart companies will spend the money getting more insight into their employees before they start the journey of getting to know their customers. They just might find that if you get the former right, the latter is a piece of cake.

Today’s Job Search: What It Takes to Get to the Top of the Pile

A job search today is not your Mother or Father’s job search

“I have some ideas as to how I am going to approach this and would like for you to take a look and give me your thoughts. My response was as usual, “talk to me first as to what you are thinking and then send me your draft [s].”

The lady I was helping methodically walked me through her thought process and how she was going to take it and transfer it to marketing collateral.

I realized after hanging up that a job search today is beyond anything that we have ever witnessed in years past. The day of just sending out a generic resume is a thing of the past. There is an entire cottage industry that has been built around resumes and LinkedIn bios.

Bringing your “book” to a job interview

I have friends that are former HR professionals who have hung their shingles out as resume writers, or shall I say, designers of resumes. Two of the industry best are Careers Done Write(Debra Wheatman) and The Resume Crusade (Chris Fields)