This will be a short post, because I don’t want to pay too much attention to this. Marketers, social media professionals, and PR types have already written about this topic ad nauseam, so there’s no sense in beating a dead horse.

An echo chamber in this sense is defined as any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an “enclosed” space. Typically, this might seem to be reserved for media professionals but I see a lot of this seeping into our little recruiting community. We all chirp in (pun intended) to add no value to an article, just wanting to say “Me too!” Or we hawk for follows/clicks/reads/validation and try to pass it off as authentic attention.

Hey – I do it too. From time to time, I jump up and down and say “Look at me! I want attention!” just like all of you do. We all want others to read our stuff, so we pimp it to our networks.

Just a couple of things to consider when operating in the echo chamber:

• When was the last time you checked your blogroll? I’ll bet there are blogs on there that haven’t been updated in quite some time, and other blogs that you never read but you put on there because you think it makes you look educated and well-read.
• Are you a quid pro quo blogger? That is, do you only link to another blog if they link to yours in return?
• Do you write original content, or do you simply regurgitate what others are writing and say “Yeah, me too”?
• Do you have ‘deals’ with certain people to pimp their stuff if they’ll agree to pimp yours, and never stray far from this band of brothers?

The whole purpose of a network SHOULD BE to enrich its members and add new viewpoints to allow for new perspective. If the network is closed, the same stale ideas will keep getting thrown around and new ideas will rarely be introduced. In my opinion, this is not a network but rather a good old boy’s club, where members hang around patting each other on the back and telling each other how awesome they are.

I challenge you to think about who you promote and why, and consider reading and learning outside of your comfort zone. There are so many little-known authors, industry professionals, and resources to learn from outside of our recruiting community. Work on broadening your scope of learning and you’ll start to discover how much you actually don’t know. Only then can the true learning begin.

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Jennifer had to say about Ken: “Ken is a stellar blogger, though he still flies slightly under the radar and he shouldn’t. He is a master in the practical application of social media and is also a growing thought leader, as evidenced by his blog posts and tweets. He’s definitely a rising star.”

Ken works at Ernst & Young and  heads up social media practice  as their Director of Social Media. They provide advisory services to brands globally in a variety of areas. He helps his clients better understand the digital space and use web analytics to better strategize. He was originally approached by Ernst & Young recruiters about this position via LinkedIn.

Ken attended college at Central Michigan University where he studied Psychology. He ended up spending more time in the computer lab where he taught himself programming and started doing this as a freelancer. This ’sidetrack’ turned into twelve years of working with agencies doing ditigal marketing and advertising. Ultimately, Ken began running digital operations and analytics projects and found himself moving away from the nuts and bolts of the tech side. Of his formal education, he says that his time studying psychology has helped him be a good communicator. It helps him with management – when you’re working with many different people all day long you need to understand different personalities.

Why Ken believes Jennifer recommended him: Jennifer is a very “pay it forward” kind of person. Ken does alot of this through sharing posts and links – he reaches out to people to learn about others and find ways he can help out. He tries to positively promote data and analytics professionals and help people understand and champion the analytics of social media. Not a lot of people spend time in this area, and Ken believes that’s what caught Jennifer’s eye.

What Ken loves about social media: Ken got involved in social media primarily to focus on brands and clients with regards to strategy and analytics. He hopes to help blaze some new trails with thought leadership for analytics, namely how to standardize and formalize it, and how to use this data to make good business decisions. Ken also believes in developing the use of social media for internal purposes. While working with a consumer healthcare company at one point, he helped them develop an internal social network for the company’s employees. This particular company primarily had an older demographic of employees who were not very comfortable with the tools, but had a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share. They wanted to create a culture of innovation, and Ken worked with the company’s leadership to help them understand the audience. Ultimately, he assisted them with selecting the appropriate technology to reach the audience, actively engage them, and develop community.

Where Ken sees social media going in the future: Ken says that we’re past the “what is social media” question now, and over the next year, companies big and small will start getting serious about this in ways that make sense to them. Companies will begin exploring the right social media ‘prescription’ for them based on industry, culture, customer base, and so forth. The ‘Why’ and the ‘What’ will be replaced with the ‘How’, best practices will be brought forth, and we will see niche uses evolve.

Connect with Ken on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Yesterday, I spent about 30 minutes in the Arbita Sourcing Lab at SourceCon showing the participants how to search Twitter profiles. We were supposed to get into how to manage and clean up our Twitter friends as well, but we ran out of time. As I mentioned in the session, here are some of the resources I had lined up to share with the lab participants. Enjoy!

MyCleenr – sorts your friends by their last tweets, and allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following. However, it only works if you’re following less than 700 people.

• Lock: “locks” certain results so they do not come up in future searches
• Grow: provides you the list of people who are likely to follow you back (cool)
• Cross Follow: shows data for either all of a user’s followers or all of the users they are following to allow you to add to yours (sort of like Twiangulate)

• Location
• # of followers or following
• # of updates
• times retweeted by others
• last tweeted

Earlier today, I spent about 30 minutes in the Arbita Sourcing Lab at SourceCon showing the participants how to search Twitter profiles and clean/manage their followers. We had fun and learned how to make good use of the information that people provide in their bios to aid in our candidate searches. Below are some of the resources I shared with the lab participants. Enjoy!

Tweepsearch – allows people on Twitter to search their followers bio and location information. Twitter doesn’t currently have a bio search and as your Twitter network grows, it’s nice to be able to look through your tweeps. Limited advanced Boolean search (i.e. no near: location search). This is a good service be cause it is:

• Sortable by username, # of followers, or # followed
• Able to download search results to .csv file

Tweepz – does the same thing as Tweepsearch, but allows you to create an RSS feed from your search results. You can:

• Use advanced Boolean operators (location, specific name, etc.)
• Create an RSS feed of search results

Followerwonk – lets you search bios as well as do Twitter account comparisons. Can be either a very simple keyword search or a more complex, detailed SQL full-text search (using the documentation available on the site). For account comparisons, you can run up to three accounts side-by-side and get Venn diagram information on:

• Shared connections – followers & following
• Days on Twitter
• # of new followers per day
• # of tweets

LocaFollow – a Google-powered Twitter profile search engine. It allows you to search bio, location, name, AND tweets. By logging in to your Twitter account from LocaFollow you will be able to:

• Bulk follow the resulting Twitter accounts, or follow them individually
• Create a Twitter list directly from the search results
• Create a TweepML list as the service is integrated with LocaFollow (see my post about why I love TweepML)
• Tweet a particular Twitter user’s search results rank

Twiangulate – lets you search for who your friends, enemies and peers are following (see my Cool Tool Alert post about Twiangulate). Allows for three comparison searches of up to three Twitter accounts, as well as a keyword search. Only simple Boolean can be used in the keyword search (AND, OR [using | ], NOT [using !], and phrase [using “ ”]). This is an awesome service because:

• You can keywords search for profiles of individuals whom a specific Twitter user is following – for example, let’s say I wanted to find out what Account Directors a recruiting colleague is following… I would type “account director” into the keywords search, and the Twitter username I wanted to parse into the next field. I would get the results listed below
• You can instantly tweet out your search results directly from Twiangulate
• You can search for biggest or most common followers, or most common or most obscure friends

I am so pleased to have another article published on Mashable!

12 iPhone Apps for Surviving Conference Season

Next week, I’ll be in San Diego to attend both SourceCon and ERE Spring Expo, and I wanted to share some of the apps that I’ll be using while attending both. Please take a look at the article, and if you have any suggestions for other good conference apps, leave them in a comment either on the Mashable article or right below!

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Brian had to say about Venessa: “Venessa is a philosopher and a futurist, exploring the advanced art and science of human connections and conversations and bringing observations and revelations from the edge to the center. ”

Venessa earned a BA in Psychology from Miami University of Ohio, and currently she is pursuing an MA in Media Studies through the New School, a progressive university located in NYC. Back in 2006, a friend asked if she wanted to be involved in a social media start-up company he was planning to launch. At the time Venessa had never even heard the phrase “social media” before, but was eager to explore a new direction. She spent the next year just learning the basics of how technological developments were affecting the way we communicate and understand the world. Since then, she hasn’t been able to stop. Each new evolution of the social web is allowing unexpected behaviors to emerge that are challenging the norms of how our society operates. Venessa believes it’s only going to get more disruptive as time goes by.

What interests Venessa about social media: How we can better access and use information, and how we might leverage the power of social networks. Unfortunately, the internet is rife with marketing and spam, and the noise is growing exponentially. Venessa believes we need systems that will help us quickly cut through the crap to get to the credible, quality content. Then we need to know what to do with the information. She has been experimenting a lot on Twitter and is finding that by building a network of knowledgeable people in her interest area, she is being exposed to information and ideas that she wouldn’t have been able to find from a quick Google search. As a result, there’s a really interesting informal learning process that’s being recognized there. Venessa has noticed a lot of people taking advantage of it in order to stay on top of what’s going on in their industries and to exchange ideas with peers around the world. She believes it’s going to become clear that businesses that aren’t integrating social media into the culture of their organization are going to be at a disadvantage against the competition. And not just because it isolates them from the opportunity to interact with their customers, but also because they’re going to have a less educated workforce.

With that in mind, she also thinks there’s a tremendous opportunity now for people to do things on a scale that has just never been possible before, from facilitating innovation in businesses to sparking movements that will lead to true social change. She had the opportunity to share some thoughts on this recently on Nokia’s IdeasProject website.

Where Venessa sees social media going in the future: Venessa says, “It’s easy to get caught up in the tools themselves and forget about what it is that the tools enable. Social media is just a means of communication. People are interested in sharing knowledge and information, in making life easier, and in having fun and being happy.” She thinks we will see some of the following stem from these interests:

• The mobile phone will play an increasingly important role as the medium for connecting online because of its portability and reduced cost in comparison to purchasing a desktop computer.  We’ll also see more tools emerge that will enhance the mobile experience, from augmented reality apps like Layar to portable credit card payment systems like Square to location-based services.
• We begin to embrace a new oral culture. Venessa thinks social media has established a new type of communication, and businesses and individuals are still figuring out how to use it effectively. But people have always enjoyed a narrative, so we’ll begin to see approaches to business that move more along the lines of storytelling and visualization. It’s not enough to sell a product or service anymore. People want to see messages that are visually appealing and understandable, like infographics, and they want ideas packaged into stories, whose foundations are built on values instead of material things.
• Tools will be built that make tasks feel more like fun and games. There’s a site called thefuntheory.com that has some really neat videos embracing this concept. Same with Foursquare – why would you want to constantly be updating your location for anyone to see? Because you can earn badges and become Mayor of the local cafe, of course! Whether for educational purposes or on the job, Venessa believes that there are going to be interesting social media tools developed that give us incentives to complete tasks because they feel more like games than work.
• Better tools for search. As mentioned earlier, information streams are already polluted with noise, and there isn’t enough time or attention to be given to filtering it. Tools will be developed that do a better job of catching spam and enabling us to find the kind of content we want.

Connect with Venessa on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Jason had to say about Kipp: “Kipp is super smart and has a real grasp of social media. He’s got a year or two of experience under his belt working with real brands and real clients, too, unlike a lot of folks in that younger age group who set up a Twitter account for their dad’s car lot and call themselves ‘experts.’ He has an interest and a passion for B2B social media which automatically sets him a part from a lot of people. Kipp brings a pure enthusiasm coupled with a traditional PR agency/firm training to the table. He’ll be working with major brands for a long time and will cultivate quite a following as a result.”

Kipp earned a B.S. in Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations from Marshall University. He recently (like last week!) took a marketing position with HubSpot in the Boston area to assist in making the HubSpot Blog the best Internet marketing blog on the web. Prior to that, he was Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard Merrell & Partners, a full service marketing and advertising firm in Raleigh, NC. During his career Kipp has successfully developed and implemented social media campaigns and plans for clients in business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries. In addition to his work at the agency, he is the publisher of SocialMediaB2B.com, a multi-author blog dedicated to providing examples and thought leadership for B2B companies planning to incorporate social media into their marketing strategy. Kipp also blogs on technology and social media at his personal blog DigitalCapitalism.com. As if he doesn’t already have enough on his plate with these things, until recently Kipp helped organize local Raleigh-area events including Triangle Social Media Club, tweetups, barcamps, Ignite Raleigh, and other events that focus on technology and social media.

What Kipp loves about social media: He went to college to learn PR and took a job out of school working in public relations. Three to four years ago, he began noticing the beginnings of the social web influence on public relations. This opened his eyes to the bigger opportunity, and he started to spend a lot of time learning how it would tie into everything. Overall, Kipp believes this is the best time ever to be a communicator. He says there is so much opportunity and possibility, and there is no excuse to not be well-informed. It’s our responsibility and obligation to create systems for ourselves to keep informed. More people will continue to do this into 2010.

Where Kipp sees social media going in the future: As a guy who has spent a significant part of his career working with B2B clients, Kipp feels that B2B is going to continue to be a hot topic in the future of social media; he thinks there will be a big rise in B2B adoption. 2009 was when everyone talked about ROI, and 2010 will be the year will people will figure it out. Kipp also thinks that mobile is going to get bigger and that there will be many more opportunities for location-based social media technologies. Real-time & implications on search are really going to play out in 2010, and Kipp believes there will be hardcore battling amongst search engines for the most up-to-date information.

Connect with Kipp on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

A large chunk of my time right now with AT&T is spent doing proactive research for our Campus Recruiting efforts. I look for student profiles in a number of places, and some of the most important things I look for are good GPA, good experience working with groups of people, and some form of leadership, whether it be in athletics, clubs, or an after-school job. These are traits we look for in our future leaders. We put our Development Program participants through training in many areas, including ones that may not be directly related to their ultimate job function, as well as all levels of work within their career track. Why? Because to be an effective manager, you’ve got to pay your dues.

So often, I read student profiles who list amongst their objectives when coming out of college, “To find a management position…” While I applaud your moxie, there are certain steps one must take first in order to reach management, and this includes earning some experience. I’m sorry to say this, but you can’t come straight out of college and land a management position for your first job – not unless:

1. You’re going to work for the same company you’ve been working for throughout school, or
2. You gained corporate experience prior to earning your degree (in most cases, this applies to graduate degrees)

I’ve written about this in the past. You can’t just start off at the top unless you’re going to start your own company, and that’s a whole different ball of wax. Career paths have fairly well-defined start points and those typically aren’t halfway down the trail. I’m certainly not trying to kill your dream here. I’m simply asking you to be realistic about your expectations of yourself (and your future employer!) upon graduating. And if you think about it, starting off with an entry-level position, which is what typically happens, will help you to be a better manager in the long run.

Learning the various levels within a company firsthand helps you to understand how things work. When you start from the bottom and work your way up, you gain understanding along the way of how various departments and levels of the organization operate. This firsthand learning is valuable and earns you wisdom about the inner workings of a company that cannot be gained in other ways.

Managers need to be good leaders, but you don’t have to be a manager in order to be a leader! Leadership experience can be earned at all levels in your career, including entry-level. Leadership is shown through taking the initiative to learn about new products/processes, asking to participate in projects outside of your normal job duties, helping and encouraging your co-workers, and taking an overall proactive approach to your career. These things can all be done as soon as you enter the workforce and will help you to be a better manager when the time comes. Managing well should include leading, guiding, encouraging, and mentoring. If you’ve no experience in these areas, then you’re not ready to be a manager.

Don’t rush the natural progression – this is your opportunity to enjoy the journey! When we were little kids, we whined and complained to our parents about how we wanted to hurry up and be a grown-up, and our parents almost always told us to be patient and enjoy being a kid because they knew we were building solid foundations for our adulthood during these years. Same goes with your career – don’t speed through the foundational times because they will provide a more solid ground for you to stand on for your future. Pay your dues, earn your experience, and you’ll have a more fulfilling and successful career in the long run.

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What David had to say about Kaitlyn: “…she’s making a great deal of headway at Ogilvy with clients and also training their global employee base.”

When Kaityn was in college, ’social media’ as we know it didn’t exist.  Social networking was all about Friendster, YouTube didn’t exist, and Napster was the latest craze. Kaitlyn graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in International Relations – not exactly what you’d expect for someone who would eventually enter the social media world. But like many others, she accidentally stumbled into it.  Kaitlyn had moved from Boston to DC, and her boss connected her with a few of his local contacts.  One was a boutique word-of-mouth marketing shop – and after a few months there she was totally hooked.  After a few years, major agencies were starting their own in-house social media teams and so she took a great opportunity with Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Group.  She says that her default work mode is a pace that many find frenetic – so social media really suits her well.  It’s constantly changing, and you have to keep up to stay competitive.  Kaitlyn says that she really digs being on the bleeding edge – and social media is something she loves both professionally and personally because of the way it’s redefined communication between people.

Why Kaitlyn believes David recommended her: Kaitlyn jokes that it was probably because of her rock star social media karaoke skills that have been on display at bars from Austin to Chicago to multiple ports on the Eastern seaboard. (Kaitlyn, I love karaoke too, and should we ever find ourselves at the same event, I’d love to challenge you to a sing-off… hehe) Yet in all seriousness, the tweet ups/meet ups that she frequents have allowed her to take her professional passion offline and geek out with people who have similar interests as she.  At the end of the day it’s always about who you really know – and she feels fortunate to become true friends with a great group of people whom she respects, and it would appear they respect her back.

What Kaitlyn loves about social media: During the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Kaitlyn got to work with Lenovo, an Ogilvy client, on the Voices of the Olympic Games campaign.  She says one of the few things she loves more than social media is the Olympics and working on this project, where 100 athletes from 25 countries were given laptops and their blogs and multimedia content were aggregated throughout the Games, allowed her to blend the two. When reflecting on the experience, she said it was a real thrill to travel to Beijing and be one of the first people to execute an Olympic social media effort. This campaign really let her cut her teeth on executing a successful global campaign.

Where Kaitlyn sees social media going in the future: Kaitlyn specifically noted that she believes Facebook will become a ’social web outpost’. Facebook functionality has gotten to a place where brands can skillfully use the platform as a hub for all their social activities. Look for brands to really start knocking their Facebook presences out of the park in 2010. She also believes we will see enterprise change – many major corporations are ready to to adopt a social brand framework and re-think the way they approach marketing, communications, CRM and more.  She says we are starting to get beyond the pilot programs and social media ‘experiments’, though there are of course still a huge number of companies still looking for these types of programs to unlock budgets and prove effectiveness.

Connect with Kaitlyn on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

As T-Pain would say – “Never thought I’d be on a boat….” – except that I never thought I’d be on a list. Especially considering how much I really don’t care for lists. I find it ironic that I am now on one.

However, I am humbled and honored to be considered a Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiter, based on John Sumser’s latest post. I’m actually a researcher, though my colleague Chris Hoyt keeps telling me that there’s more recruiter in me than I’d like to admit (I’ll never admit it!). As such, I guess there’s no denying certain aspects of oneself, so thanks for including me in this list, John!

So while I go grab my flippy-floppies and have some santana champ, I encourage you to check out the others who made the list. Oh, and look at T-Pain On A Boat, just because it’s a hilarious video (send the kids out of the room though because the lyrics are rough!)

This post is especially geared toward students, but I think it’s important for people of all ages. Mentors are a vital part of life. You absolutely cannot make it through life successfully without input from other human beings, in my opinion. That’s why I think people, especially young people, need to put much more thought into mentor selection than a lot of them do.

Tell me if any of these scenarios happened to you:

• Scenario 1: Your sophomore or junior year in high school, you went to your school counselor to ask about what colleges to apply to. Your counselor referred to you by the wrong name, or mispronounced your name, and hardly looked up from his or her desk while reeling off the names of some local or in-state universities.
• Scenario 2: You ask your parents what you should study in college. Your mother or father suggests that you do either the same thing or something similar to what they’ve pursued professionally, even though you’ve never expressed interest in it.
• Scenario 3: You’ve gotten yourself a job after completing school. While sitting in your cube, one of your older co-workers starts chatting with you about the fact that it’s a buyer’s market right now and it would be a good investment for you to buy a house right now.

Guaranteed that at least one of these has happened to all of you, if not all of them. While people can have good intentions with the guidance they give you, remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When considering your life, you need to be very selective about who you go to for guidance. And students especially listen up here: it doesn’t always have to be your parents.

Before anyone gets offended by this statement, I want you to take some things into consideration:

1. With the area of life in which you are seeking guidance, does the person you currently go to have ‘fruit on the tree’?
2. Do you go to different people for mentorship for different areas of your life?

If you answered no to either one of these questions, I would suggest you rethink your mentorship situation. Let me share some of my own situations with you:

• My parents are divorced. I would not go to them for marriage advice. Instead, I look to several couples in my life who have great marriages – including my brother and his wife, and a couple of family friends who’ve been blissfully married for almost 15 years. When I get married someday, I have great examples to model.
• Though I wouldn’t go to my mom for marriage advice, I most certainly will ask her for parenting advice when I decide to have kids. She was an awesome mom.
• I take fitness and health advice from my personal trainer. He knows what my body is capable of currently, and he knows what goals I have for myself and thus what needs to be done in order for me to accomplish them.
• Over the last several years, I have taken financial advice from my friend Jeff, who is a successful independent sales consultant, public speaker, and business owner. Because of his thoughtful advice, I own my vehicle outright and was able to pay off 4 credit cards that had amassed over $15k (obviously I made some bad choices early in life!). I also know, through counsel with Jeff, that it’s not the right time in my life to purchase a house, even though many others around me did. I see many of those people struggling to make home payments today.
• I have three or four people I go to for career advice. Some work in my industry, and some do not. But each has a niche area of expertise from which I want to learn. Some are excellent public speakers, some are fantastic managers, and some are brilliant industry leaders.
• For spiritual mentorship, I lean on my church and a couple of friends who truly walk the walk and aren’t simply Sunday morning pew-warmers.

Please don’t misunderstand – I have advice given to me by lots of people, just like everyone does. But there is a big difference between getting advice from a friend or family member, and seeking out a mentor relationship. One is typically offered without being requested, and the other is a relationship you deliberately seek out. Also, advice can often be given by someone who doesn’t know the whole story. When you are in a mentoring relationship, your mentor typically knows about external factors that may come into play with regards to the things they suggest for you. Make sure your mentor has all the information necessary to guide you on a path toward achieving your goals.

So make sure you check for fruit on the tree before entering into a mentoring relationship with anyone, Make sure that person has your best interest at heart and has actually found success in the area in which you seek guidance, because, as the saying goes, if you take financial advice from your neighbor, chances are they’ll be your neighbor for a long time.

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

What Chris had to say about Keith: “He’s got a big heart, a strong eye for using media tools to build relationships, and a sense of how brand sensitivity and corporate culture interact with the new social space.”

Keith has quite an interesting background. He started attending Medaille College to study business, but life had some other, more important things in store at that time. With a child on the way, Keith said he ended up finishing at the ‘School of Life’. He worked as a chef for a few years, but was deeply interested in the arts. That’s how his love of social media started – he had been making wood sculptures for his house and decided to start blogging about it at www.magicwoodworks.com. This led to doing some livestreaming of carving sessions, during which he used the interaction to take cues from the audience. Keith was able to take this experience and convert to a career as a Community Manager at Best Buy. Shortly thereafter, he set out on his own and now runs Keith Burtis Consulting.

Why Keith believes Chris recommended him: He has known Chris since the first podcamp, about six years ago. He was one of the original helpers. Keith said that Chris has been a mentor of his, and from him he learned to never approach a network or person with a greedy, one-sided agenda. By blogging, he is learning through the things he writes, the comments he gets back. Chris knows that he’s the type of guy who’s doing it right and that it’s not quid pro quo with him.

What Keith has to say about social media: People want to be connected. They don’t care about products any more, they care about the process around it, the service, the interaction. By keeping people up to date, it keeps them interested. If you’re going to get involved in social media, get involved before you need it. Some bigger companies are trying to grab onto the tail end of this, and it’s not easy to do. For Keith, it’s about adding value to the system so you will ultimately get value back. He puts value in all the time – the thing for him is that the more he adds, the more he gets out of it anyhow. He believes that a lot of people  still worry too much about their number of followers/friends, yet they’ve never really gotten anything out of it except for an ego boost. What’s important is encouraging other people in this space who are doing great work.

Keith’s thoughts on the future of social media: Keith believes that Twitter and Facebook are the “everybody’s there” places right now. Deeper conversations do happen, but companies will begin to learn how to leverage these tools to build intimate one-on-one relationships with their customers and fans. Whether they move in this direction or not, it’s where the value is. While there is value in numbers, where you’ll get the most bang for your buck is whittling things down with focus on project-specific items.

Some people who’ve influenced Keith:

• CC Chapman – Keith said he took a similar career path as Chapman. From him, he learned to do what you’re passionate about, and hope it converts for you.
• John Meadows – a great friend to Keith who has been there for him on the tech side. If something got broken on his blog, John would help out.
• Steve Saylor – podcast-audio bookwriter. Keith mentored Steve from a business standpoint, but they ended up mentoring each other.

Connect with Keith on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Olympic athletes are tweeting from Vancouver, sharing first-person accounts of what it’s like to be on a world stage as a competitor. I think it’s a good indication of the impact of social media and micro-blogging on instant access to world events.

For those of you who are like me and enjoy watching world-class athletes compete and put multiple injuries, failures, and successes, and years and countless hours of training to the test – here is a collection of many Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Athletes who are on Twitter: Winter Olympic Athletes on Twitter. These Tweeps are broken out by their respective Olympic events, and you can take a look at the tweets coming from each sport’s athletes collectively. (You’ll also notice that there are various other professional sports categories in the left menu)

I think this is a fantastic way to get a personal experience of the Olympics through the eyes of the athletes who are actually competing. It’s one thing to attend an event; it’s an entirely different experience to actually compete. I don’t think this has ever been possible before – estimations are that over 1/3 of the US Olympic team in Vancouver is on Twitter. Even during the Beijing Games in 2008, Twitter was still relatively unknown except by early adopters, and thus much of the limited buzz came from spectators. This will present an entirely new way to experience the Olympics. For example:

• On Saturday, Ryan Bedford, US Olympic speedskater, tweeted: “Great day on the ice this morning! Off to cheer on @ChadHedrick! He is a big reason why I’m here today, he’s the best teammate ever! GO CHAD”
• Scotty Lago, US Olympic snowboarder, shared: “Me and @louievito and @gregbretzz are moving over to a house closer to cypress [one of the outdoor venues], I’m going to miss all the hott Russians though.” (lol)
• Kristi Leskinen, US Olympic freestyle skier, lamented: “Olympic tape delays are already killing me! It’s far too easy to stumble upon results online. Guess I don’t need to finish watching moguls..” (guess they share the same frustrations as the casual observer!)
• Ben Kilner, British Olympic snowboarder, after training: “just back home from practice. Halfpipe kinda lost it’s shape due to the rainy weather but managed to get on ok”
• Jeremy Teela, US Olympic biathlete, after competing: “9th place today… Not podium but ok start to the games.”
• Chandra Crawford, Canadian Olympic cross country skiier, in response to the first Canadian gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau: “YEAH ALEX! The nordic crew is so stoked for you!!”

Other collective lists to check out:

• Twitter’s verified list of Olympians (not broken out by sport)
• Sportsin140.com’s Olympians on Twitter Google doc (current and former summer & winter Olympic athletes)
• AssociatedContent.com is following Olympic athletes (looks like it’s manually updating…)
• Hashtags: #vancouver2010, #Olympics, #van2010
• Official Vancouver2010 Twitter account: @2010Tweets

As sourcers, we’ve all had this happen: we spend a whole day looking for a tough req and come up empty, or we may have luck and find the perfect candidate within 10 minutes. Almost all of you are smiling and nodding in agreement right now, because it’s happened to all of us at some point – but the tough part is explaining this to our peers and especially our bosses.

How do you justify a productive day of sourcing when you’ve only got a few leads, if that? That’s the big question, because research never guarantees a specific outcome – only that you will find some kind of an answer. And a lot of times, it’s not the answer you were looking for. I love Thomas Edison’s approach to research and invention: “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

In research, I consider it a success if you’re able to rule out certain resources for a search. Nope – no gold in them ‘thar hills, let’s pick up our tools and move to the next place! And when you’re faced with a tough search, chances are a LOT of resources are going to be ruled out! That’s what makes it a tough search in the first place.

When I was in college, I waited tables to put myself through school. Some nights, I’d work for 6 hours and only make $30 in tips. Other nights, I’d work for 4 hours and go home with $100. Ebb and flow. Things always worked out in the end and I always made rent, because I never gave up during the ebb periods. And I think that’s what Edison was talking about as well – you never fail in your attempts to accomplish something unless you fail to keep pressing forward to find a solution.

As you may guess, I’m currently in an ebb period of a search I’m working on. Writing this post and really thinking about the big picture has helped me to regroup and re-focus. I urge each and every one of you to not get discouraged when you’re going through an ebb in your sourcing efforts. Things will work out in the end if you continue to press forward. Good luck and happy sourcing!

Last Monday, I read a post on Career Rocketeer that talked about some appropriate ways in which to network with others. The following phrase jumped off the page at me:

“When approaching a new networking partner, DON’T ask for a job. This is about the worst thing you can do. Networking partners want to be helpful but if you ask for a job the likelihood is that they will not have one for you that matches your skills and qualifications. Thus, the networking partner will not engage you because they don’t want to disappoint you.”

I’d have to say that as a recruiting professional, I completely agree with this. While yes, it is my job to find people for our open positions at AT&T, I am neither a mind-reader nor a magician. Even though I want to help, I can’t magically pull opportunities out of you-know-where just because you need a job, nor can I know what your skills are via ESP.

If you’re reading this thinking, “But I really need a job! What’s wrong with doing that?” take a look at a couple of follow-up responses I received when I tweeted the first part of that paragraph:

@danieljohnsonjr: It’s almost like asking to go to a hotel room on the first date.
@brandeecrum: it’s like going on a 1st date and the guy saying, “I thought we’d skip dinner & the movie and just go get married.”

Consider this scenario: we both attend a networking event. We are introduced, and you learn that I work with AT&T in a staffing capacity. Since you’ve recently found yourself back on the job market, you’re excited by this and immediately let me know that you need a job. You ask me if we’re hiring….

STOP. Take into consideration the information with which you’ve just provided me. You are 1) looking for a job, and 2)….. well, that’s pretty much all I know about you at this point. I don’t know how many years of experience you have, I don’t know what you did in your last position, I probably don’t even know who your last employer was. So it’s pretty near impossible that I’ll be able to give you a response that will be to your liking until I know a little more about you. I of course can, and probably will, ask you what you want to do, but the conversation has already become quite awkward…

Put this into a situation where you’re on a date…

You meet your date at the door. You introduce yourselves, and immediately your date starts telling you how she is ready to get married, buy a house, and have kids. She hasn’t even checked with you to see if you think she is pretty, if you want a serious relationship or if you want to take things slowly, heck – you haven’t even made it through date #1 to see if there will be a date #2.

So many people have made this analogy, that job hunting is like dating. When you go out on a first date, you don’t offer up a hotel room key when you first meet. (and if you do, well then… wow…) You don’t make a marriage proposal at the end of the evening, either. You don’t want to appear desperate – you want to leave something to be desired. Most recruiters enjoy the thrill of the hunt – so let us pursue you

REWIND: Let’s try this again. We both attend a networking event. We are introduced and you learn that I work with AT&T in a staffing capacity. You share with me that in your most recent position you were an online marketing manager. When I ask you where you are currently, you indicate that you are in transition, and that you are here to meet like-minded individuals and that you’re glad we met. You say you’ve heard good things about AT&T’s digital marketing. I smile and thank you for the compliment. We exchange cards and move on to meet more people. In the back of my mind, I remember you because you were not desperate and you paid my employer a compliment. As a good recruiting professional, I will follow up with you and ask if you’d be interested in applying with us.

Please, use the same networking etiquette with recruiters as you to with others. We’re not always going to have a job for you, and we feel bad when we don’t. Be tactful about your approach, and leave something to be desired. Make yourself memorable in a good way!

**ADD-ON: Recruiters, the desperation door swings both ways. Don’t be that desperate recruiter preying on everyone at a networking event. This scenario applies to you too

Last week, I had the extreme honor of having an article I wrote published on Mashable. You can check it out here, and when you do, please make sure to click through the links for the people who are mentioned and used as examples. There’s a great story behind them, and the article being written in the first place, that there simply wasn’t enough time, or room, to get into in that article…

It started as a simple conversation I had last summer with one of my favorite guys whom I’ve never met in person, David Mullen. I don’t even remember what David and I were talking about, but somehow we got on the topic of lists, and how we both really don’t like them. We especially dislike lists of people – you know, the ones that say ‘these are the top 15/30/50’ of whatever the category may be. And especially when it comes to social media, there are many lists that have the same people on them. This got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great to see people who are awesome in their own right, but who rarely get named on lists, lifted up? And even better, what if they were lifted up by the very people who occupy those spots on top lists? I started verbalizing my thoughts on this to David, and he got excited about it. He said it would be a great blog topic, and I agreed. So I started thinking about the best way to accomplish this, and the following is the background of my experiment in paying it “socially” forward…

The experiment: asking some of the most well-known social media professionals to recommend someone they think is a rising star in social media and someone to keep an eye on in the future. I would then contact those who were recommended and interview them on their careers, how they achieved a level of success that had gotten them noticed by such a well-known person, and where they see social media heading over the next year.

The players: among those I reached out to, I received recommendations from:

• Amber Naslund – Director of Community, Radian6
• Dan Schawbel – Personal Branding Expert and author of Me 2.0
• Peter Shankman – Founder, Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
• Steve Rubel- SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
• Chris Brogan – President, New Marketing Labs
• David Armano – SVP Digital, Edelman
• Elisa Camahort Page – Co-founder and COO, BlogHer
• Jason Falls – Principal at Social Media Explorer LLC
• Iggy Pintado – CEO/CNO, ConnectGen
• Bryan Person – Founder, Social Media Breakfast and Social Media Evangelist, LiveWorld
• Jennifer Leggio – blogger with ZDNet
• Aliza Sherman – Co-Owner and Social Media Marketing Strategist, Conversify and host of the weekly podcast “The Digital Marketer’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Building Your Business with Web Tools”
• Tony Hsieh – CEO, Zappos.com
• Jeremiah Owyang – Partner, Altimeter Group
• Mitch Joel – President, Twist Image
• Brian Solis – Principal, FutureWorks PR and Blogger at PR 2.0 & bub.blicio.us

My method of selection for reaching out to these individuals? People whom I follow, read, learn from, respect, and who have obviously achieved some high levels of success in their own careers, as evidenced in the sheer number of times they are referenced and requested for engagements. This is a small sampling of what I would consider to be the best of the best in social media, but since I couldn’t take years to complete this project, I had to keep it to a short list. There are many, many others whom I did not get to communicate with who should be considered social media success stories – but these were the people who responded when I reached out. For that alone, I owe a debt of gratitude – thank you to each of the people mentioned above for taking the time to respond to a girl you probably never heard of before.

My request to these people was to recommend one or two individuals whom they see as being ‘on the rise’ in their respective careers, and whom they see being a major player when it comes to social media in the coming months. This resulted in about 20 recommendations of people to speak with. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to connect with everyone, but those interviewed were:

• Dave Knox – Brand Manager, Digital Innovation, Procter & Gamble
• Kipp Bodnar – Social Media Marketing Manager, Howard, Merrell & Partner
• Len Kendall – Digital Account Supervisor, GolinHarris
• Jennifer Leggio – blogger with ZDNet
• Daniel Honigman – Digital Supervisor, Weber Shandwick
• Sarah Evans – President, Sevans Strategy
• Jessica Randazza – Senior Associate with Digitas
• Ken Burbary – Director of Social Media, Ernst & Young
• Nadia Jones, Stacey Ferguson, & Nyasha Smith – the 3 ladies behind www.MamaLaw.com
• Keith Burtis – Owner at Keith Burtis Consulting
• Laura Roeder – Principal of Roeder Studios
• Amanda Mooney – Sr. Social Media Strategist, Edelman
• Kneale Mann – Marketing and Social Media Strategist, YouIntegrate
• Venessa Miemis – blogger (emergent by design), currently pursuing a Masters in Media Studies at the New School
• Kaitlyn Wilkins – VP of Digital Strategy, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Group

Those recommended but unable to connect before the article was published included:

• DJ Waldow – Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
• Ruth Sylte – Principal Consultant, Manitou Heights Group Inc.
• Jade Craven – Founder, Social Media Solutions
• Julia Roy – Senior Manager of New Media, Coach
• Bill Cody – Las Vegas real estate
• Jun Loayza – President, SocialMediaMarketing.com and Chief Marketing Officer, Viralogy

As I began reaching out to these people, I started thinking how this could turn into an annual ‘pay it forward’ project. My plan, as I shared with them, was to contact each of them at the end of the year to get their recommendations for the next group, and so on and so forth. Every person involved in this project indicated that they loved the pay-it-forward concept – which told me I was talking to the right group of people: people who were already giving back out of the abundance of success in their own lives, and who saw a great opportunity to continue to do so.

I learned so much in the few months I spent communicating with and getting to know these people. I of course learned some similarities they each possessed, as discussed in the Mashable article. But I also learned that all of them have a strong desire to see other people achieve success, and an equally strong desire to help make that possible. I am honored to have had the chance to get to know a group of people with such big hearts.

And so, to stay true to my original plan when I initially reached out, I am going to be posting short spotlight posts here on each of the recommended people over the coming weeks/months. The plan will be to do one per week – giving you a chance to get to know each of them and put them on your radar as a rising star.

As a final note – I want to say a sincere THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to either recommend someone for this project, or who took time out of their busy schedules to have a conversation with me and let me get to know you. It has been an absolute pleasure, and I look forward to doing this again next year!

I believe there’s a lot of untapped gold on Twitter when it comes to searching for job candidates. The thing you need to keep in mind is that there is more than one type of job seeker on Twitter. Here are the two types of active job seekers I’ve noticed on Twitter:

1. The Deliberate Twitter Job Seeker
2. The Situational Twitter Job Seeker

The deliberate twitter job seeker is the person who has written in their bio line that they are looking, whereas the situational twitter job seeker is one who might tweet that they dislike their job or want a new job after a frustrating day at work. The key is to run searches for both types of people. If you only search Twitter updates for job seekers, you’re going to miss out on the ones who have their job seeker status in their bio.

The deliberate job seekers most likely have other social network profiles elsewhere noting their status as a job seeker, and Twitter is simply a part of their ‘campaign’. As such, it would be best to use a tool such as TweepSearch or Tweepz to find these people. These two search engines search only Twitter profiles, not the tweets themselves. Here is a sample search string to use:

“looking for a job” OR “looking for work” OR “seeking employment” OR “need a job” OR “need work” OR unemployed OR “new opportunity”

Situational job seekers are going to be a bit more challenging to find, because they probably don’t even consider themselves to really be ‘active’ job seekers. Rather, these are the individuals that maybe had a bad day at work and are venting. For example:

When approaching these people, it’s important to catch them close to the time in which they expressed their disdain to their job. That is, if you wait until 2 days after they’ve expressed hatred for their current job, you’ve probably missed your window of opportunity. For this search, I recommend conducting a basic search through Twitter’s advanced search function and subscribing to an RSS of the results. This way, you’ll get fresh results for people who are having frustrating days at work. Here is a search string that has worked pretty well for me:

“new job” OR “need a job” OR (“looking for” job) OR ((want OR need) “new job”) OR (hate “my job”) OR “job sucks”

Another good resource to follow is the Twitter account @hatemyjobfeed. This particular Twitter account automatically retweets message that contain “hate my job”. While often just amusing, there are occasionally tweets that come through this feed that warrant a response from a recruiter with a good opportunity.

“Research Goddess” is a silly nickname that was assigned to me nearly 4 years ago. The story behind how it came to pass is pretty interesting, so let me share with it with you and put to rest any notion that its meaning is anything more than completely fun and innocent.

When I left my first internet research job, which I held for 4 years, I also left a sizable internet research community via a listserv (numbering near 500 participants). As it was a proprietary listserv, I was no longer allowed access to it. I started my blog in order to stay connected to several of these researchers as well as to meet new people outside of that community. My first blog, by the way, was called “SPI Research” (now simply a placeholder), NOT Research Goddess. Research Goddess came about after I had conversations with Joel Cheesman and Jim Stroud. Joel informed me that I needed to create a memorable identity (as he did with Cheezhead), and Jim told me it would be in my best interest not to tie my blog directly to the company for which I worked at the time. He told me it would be hard to continue with the blog title “SPI Research” if I ever left SearchPath International, which I eventually did a year later.

Jim and I played around with some new possible blog titles on the phone one day, most of which I cannot recall now. In jest, I threw out “Research Goddess” and the line went silent. I thought at first I’d lost the connection, or that it was a horrible idea, but then I heard an enthusiastic “That’s awesome!!” from Jim. I chuckled, stating that it was just a joke, but Jim insisted that it was a great blog title and a memorable one at that. To this day, whenever Jim calls me or I call him, he always greets me with “Hello, Goddess!” It makes me giggle that he still does this, as it’s all in good fun.

As months turned into years, the nickname stuck. In fact, when I go to conferences now, I usually introduce myself and then throw in “I write Research Goddess”, and only then do I get the “Ohhhh, I know who you are!” responses. I am almost better known by my silly pseudonym than I am by my real name. What this tells me is 1) it’s a memorable nickname, but 2) I need to do a better job of tying who I really am in with the nickname. Working on that…

As a test to those of you reading this, here are a couple of other popular ‘nicknames’ of people you might recognize:

• The Sourceress
• The Searchologist
• Cincy Recruiter
• HR Bartender
• The Recruiter Guy
• The Red Recruiter
• Recruiting Animal
• MN Headhunter

While you may not know their real names off the top of your head, you recognize the names and know that each has a niche or a gimmick that is recognized and understood. That’s one of the important parts of creating a memorable identity for yourself. And one of the reasons “Research Goddess” has stuck to me.

Does it mean I believe I am a goddess? Heck no. I’m just another girl in this game, trying to learn and grow just like the rest of you, while sharing my thoughts with this little community. And quite honestly, for those of you who know me, I mean REALLY know me, you know that pretentious, selfish, or conceited are not words that describe me. Opinionated, yes. You’ll never have to wonder where I stand on issues. But having an opinion does not equate to being full of oneself.

If you think that the nickname “Research Goddess” means that I think I am an expert or a guru of sorts, please talk to any of my peers and learn otherwise. I will say that I feel blessed to have had opportunities cross my path that have enabled me to learn and develop my skills. As such, I do believe I have a decent grasp on good research techniques as well as some application of social media technologies when it comes to sourcing. Also, I believe my peers will tell you that I certainly have earned any praise that I have received. I believe I’ve worked hard and contributed some value to this industry, and I hope I’ve done a good job of paying it forward as well. BUT… I know I still have SO much to learn, and you will never hear me say anything to infer that I feel I’ve ‘arrived’. EVER.

If after having talked to my peers you still believe there is a conceited, pretentious, or conniving underlying purpose for my blog and my nickname, I strongly urge you to leave a comment here. Or call me directly – (360) 389-3227 – and let’s talk. Give me your thoughts as to why you believe this of me, and make some constructive suggestions for alternatives. I’m open to all ideas if you think I should take another direction. All I ask is that you don’t judge me or my intentions until you get to know me.

In the end, you’re certainly entitled to think whatever you want to about me. But I believe my work, my track record, and my peers’ experiences with me speak louder than anything else. I hope this sheds some light on the whole ‘research goddess’ thing. It’s just a stupid nickname, but it helps people recognize and remember me. And in my book, that’s a good thing.

If you’ve got some cleaning up to do when it comes to the people whom you follow on Twitter, I highly recommend Tweepi. It’s not just a clean-up tool, it’s actually a complete Twitter account management tool. With Tweepi, you can auto-follow back new followers, auto-unfollow people who unfollow you, auto-reciprocate for those who are following you already but you’re not following them, and (my favorite) to a quick clean-sweep and bulk unfollow many accounts at once.

Example: I want to clean up the current people whom I follow. Once I us oAuth to access my account, I can pre-set targets:…or I can customize the columns which I’d like to see in the results:

Once I choose what columns I’d like to see, I can then start going through the list of people I follow and bulk follow/unfollow them:

The only thing I don’t like about the sorting feature is that it only sorts what is on the current page. Meaning, you have to click through and re-sort each page; it doesn’t sort all the results, just one page at a time.

Give it a shot – I love that this is a one-stop multiple function account management site. Enjoy!

Wayne Gretzky, arguably one of the greatest hockey players of all time, has a few of my favorite quotes. First one is probably his most famous, and that is “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Slightly less well-known is this:

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

I will add to this and say, “I skate to where the puck [in my game] is going to be, not where it has been.”

When you are sourcing, do you think about where YOUR potential candidates are going to be, or do you just go to the same tired places because that’s where everyone else has been?

When looking for candidates, go where the candidates are going to congregate in your industry. And for each of us, that is going to be a different place. For example: a marketing sourcer is probably going to find a plethora of candidates through various popular social networks. An accounting sourcer – not so much.

The whole idea behind this quote is forward thinking and future planning. You have to be one step ahead of your target or you’re going to miss it, or be late to the game and get stuck with all the leftovers.

Are you a talent attraction professional? Start thinking 6-12 months ahead of your target audience. How is the economy going to affect them? How is the current labor market going to affect them? The latest technologies? Then locate resources discussing these types of topics and share them. You’ll earn brownie points for thinking of them and their future. And while you’re at it, digest those resources yourself. Chances are a few new candidate resources will surface when you start thinking ahead…

We’re each playing similar, yet decidedly unique, games here. Stop worrying about the puck in other people’s games. Make sure you’re following the puck in your game and look ahead to where it’s going to be.