ResearchGoddess

This is a fantastic Twitter tool for those of us in the business of recruiting! Just Tweet It is a self-appointing directory of tweeters, categorized by different areas of interest. There are tons of categories, including Advertising/PR, Bloggers, Environmentalists, SEO/Internet Marketing, Social Media, Technology, etc. You can add your name to as many lists as you’d like. There’s also a list of resources on the right-hand side which could provide helpful for client use (such as Twitter for Business). You can even subscribe to a Directory RSS or to an email update so that you know when new people have entered their information into the directory. This could be great for seeing who is out in your various worlds talking about products/services that would be relevant to your clients and starting to develop relationships with them. And from a recruiting standpoint, it’s a wonderful place to start finding people and developing potential candidate profiles!

For example, I have added my profile to the Advertising/PR category, as well as to the Bloggers category. When I added my Advertising/PR profile on Friday, there were only 40 people on the list. Now (Sunday night) there are over 70 people on the list, and several that I’ve seen who would be good contacts for my own recruiting purposes.

Likewise, there are over 140 listings in the Bloggers category. For a PR professional, this would be a great place to look at folks blogging in your clients’ space and start developing relationships.

Just a couple of picking points:

• You cannot edit your profile once you’ve entered it (wonder if they might be able to change it!)
•  The search function doesn’t appear to work for searching directory listings, and since the listings are shown in chronological order from when you entered your name, it’s a little hard to search

Regardless, I think this is a worthwhile tool – try it out yourself!

I am going to be writing an article on applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to pursuing a satisfying career. In order to do this, I am trying to determine the things that are most important to individuals in their career selection and overall satisfaction.

Would you mind taking a couple of minutes to complete this survey? I would greatly appreciate your input for this article.

This survey is now closed….

I will be taking results from this survey until December 1st, and you can look for the article on my blog after the beginning of 2009.

Thank you for helping me out with this!

Some of you may remember my failed Jelly Cincinnati attempt last November. Well, at the request of a couple of folks still interested in meeting up, we’ve decided to try another get-together for local Cincinnati telecommuters!

Join other Cincinnati area telecommuters for a day of working in a collaborative environment. Similar to the Jelly settings in many other cities, we love our remote working situations, but every once in awhile we crave human contact

We’ll meet at Crossroads Community Church – the church graciously offers free wifi and coffee during the week for the local community. The idea here is to have folks who work in many different job functions working together in an open environment. The expectation is that creative juices will flow and new friendships will be forged. Please join us!

If we have enough interest, we will consider pooling together to order lunch as well. Suggestions for places will be taken! Pizza and Chipotle are a couple of nearby options. Hope to see you there!

Register to attend the Cincinnati Telecommuter Tweetup/Meetup here.

When: Friday, October 17th

Where: Crossroads Community Church
3500 Madison Rd.
Cincinnati, OH 45209

This is one of the neatest Twitter tools I’ve come across! 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPoAuFZAWi8]

“Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers. Using Twittertise you can schedule your communications on Twitter and using URL tracking technology measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving techniques on the platform.”

For anyone who has been looking for a way to track and measure Twitter, this is a really good start. You can plan out tweets – great for timely promotions, running contests, sharing newsworthy moments, and lots of things.

Just type your message, set the delivery time for your message to be tweeted, and add the URL link.

You can then check back to see how many clicks your link has received and where the tweets originated. Very cool if you’re trying to provide some measurement of success for your Twitter campaign with clients or with your boss.

Check it out!

UPDATE: I used Twittertise to send a tweet about this blog post today. Here are some preliminary results:

David Mullen posed a very interesting question recently on the PR industry’s APR designation and its worth to those who pursue and obtain it. He says,

“…I’m wondering if APR means as much as it’s made out to mean these days. For the record, I’m all for professional development, training and working to become the best practitioner you can. I think PRSA does a great job connecting professionals and offering ways for us all to get smarter about the business. I’m not sure, though, that APR is the highest mark of excellence in the PR practice that is necessary to prove you’re a kick-ass pro, as some have made it out to be. Doesn’t your body of great work tell that story, too?”

The last sentence there speaks volumes – shouldn’t your track record of performance speak for itself. I believe that those of us in the recruiting industry have some of the same issues. For the record, I do possess a CIR designation through AIRS. Am I proud to have obtained this? Sure I am. But quite honestly, the only reason I have it is because I was a runner-up in a contest put on by AIRS early last year and my prize was the opportunity to take the certification course and earn the CIR designation. Had that not been the case, I’d still be plain old Amybeth Hale, Research Goddess. The bottom line is that taking the course is expensive, and the companies I worked for previously either did not have the budget to allow me to take the course or did not see the value in me earning it. As well, once I did earn the CIR last spring, I received no raise and no promotion.

There are s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o many certifications that may be earned within the recruiting world. Just to give you an idea of a few of the certs, here are some of the ones that I know of:

With the ASA (American Staffing Association):

• CSP – Certified Staffing Professional
• TCS - Technical Services Certified
• WRC - Workers’ Compensation Risk Certification

I do believe that there are some industry certifications which are worth earning, but not really for someone in my role. The reason I say this is because I’ve never heard of anyone getting a raise or a promotion in a research role by earning a certification. Please let me know if you have a different story. This may not be the case for recruiters – I think that when an MRI-affiliated recruiter earned a CSAM (Certified Senior Account Manager) designation, that in itself is a promotion. As well, almost all of these certifications require you to take continuing education courses in order to keep your certification (this is a good thing for maintaining the integrity of the certification).

Let me break down the value of certifications in my own opinion of cost vs. value:

• Cost: Most of our industry certifications cost anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars to take the course(s) and pass the exam. I don’t know about you, but if I had a couple thousand bucks laying around right now, I’d be putting it toward paying off my last remaining student loan. I think this is worthwhile only if your company sponsors your certification exam or if you’ve got a lot of expendable cash (I doubt many of us do at this point in time!) You can continue to learn within your industry by talking with industry experts and reading books, blogs, etc. for free.
• Value: If you’ve approached your employer about a certification, have you determined whether you will earn a raise or a promotion upon completion? If the answer is no, I say don’t do it. Certifications look nice on a signature line, a business card, and a resume. But let’s be honest, most of us are un-impressed with the string of certifications listed by our colleagues. The only time I personally feel the need to see a comma followed by an acronym of some sort is when I’m visiting my physician or attorney.