ResearchGoddess

Last Friday, I gave a presentation to the Technology Alliance Group for Northwest Washington, otherwise known as TAGNW, on how to attract technical talent to Bellingham. Bellingham, for those of you who don’t know, is a small-ish city halfway between Seattle and Vancouver BC with about 70,000 residents. Our claim to fame is ski-to-sea – we’ve got skiing at Mt. Baker within an hour’s drive of Bellingham Bay, where one can go ocean kayaking, waterskiing, or charter a whale-watching boat in the summertime. In addition to that, we’ve got a series of interurban hiking and biking trails and boast one of the best mountain biking spots in the nation. Not to mention all the waterfalls, county and state parks, camping, dining, concerts, scenic drives, wineries, and wonderful local companies that make this city such an awesome place.

So, why the need for a presentation to attract people to this oasis? What I just described sounds like heaven on earth, doesn’t it? Continue reading “The Intangibles of Recruiting: My @TAGNW Presentation” »

A week has passed and I haven’t even uploaded all my photos from Minneapolis. Call me a slacker, but I’m still trying to absorb my experience at the Social Recruiting Summit that was held at Best Buy’s HQ. Being a presenter at an event always gives me a different perspective than if I just get to attend and learn. I get nervous before I present, which is silly because usually I am WAY over-prepared, and I settle right into a comfortable place within about 2 minutes. But it’s how I roll. This having been my very first Social Recruiting Summit, I had no prior experience with which to compare – and looking back now, I think this was probably the most emotion I’ve felt in a 24 hour period coming into a conference at which I was to present. A couple of reasons for this:

1. The last time I presented to a sizable crowd was at last June’s Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas. I presented on how to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Recruiting Plan in a 3-hour pre-conference workshop. I felt rusty.
2. I was presenting in front of several people whom I hold in high regard and who’ve never seen me present live before, including but not limited to Chris Hoyt, Jessica Lee, Eric Winegardner, Jennifer McClure, Jeremy Langhans, Marvin Smith, Anthony Knierim, and my colleagues from Waggener Edstrom. Some, like Jennifer McClure, I’ve known for years and consider to be close friends. The pressure was on!
3. My presentation topic was a potentially controversial one – How To Market Yourself With Social Media… Without Being Annoying!

I sat at the ‘blogging tables’ throughout the day, writing down my thoughts on the various presentations and stewing over my own. Being the wrap-up speaker comes with its own challenges – you’re the only thing standing between your audience and a frosty beverage, so whatever you have to say needs to be extra memorable. However, having a week now to digest and critique, I feel I did a good job with my presentation, and the feedback I’ve received from it has confirmed this feeling. For those who were unable to tune in, during my presentation we did about a 15 minute exercise on developing our own personal marketing plans. We used the POST method, derived from Groundswell, written by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. Feedback from this activity has been wonderful – I have had several people proactively reach out to me to let me know that they were adding details to the framework they came up with in my presentation and are eager to really get more focused in their online efforts. Hearing this warms my heart, and I look forward to seeing how they develop.

Having Minneapolis host a national recruiting event was long overdue. Minneapolis has put itself on the map over the last several years with its many heavily attended locally-based recruiting events, including the Minnesota Recruiters events and the Minnesota Technical Recruiters Network. However, Minneapolis also has a rich social media community that I’ve grown to know and love, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet many people who I knew online through Twitter but had never met in person before. As a former Cincinnati gal myself, it pains me to say this (not really…) but if the 513 wants to host a Social Recruiting Summit in the future, they’ve got some big shoes to fill.

Highlights from the conference, from my experience, included:

• The pre-conference Tweetup, hosted and sponsored graciously by LinkUp. Lots of the local Minneapolis social media community members attended this in addition to all the recruiters who were in town for the event. It was a great ‘sandbox’ evening – everyone played quite nicely and great new friendships were begun.
• Best Buy – truly a wonderful company, not only for hosting the event (and I hear they also hosted at least 2 more events over the remainder of the week – wow!) but for giving us a glimpse into what they do with their social presence, not just from a recruiting standpoint but also from a marketing, financial, and customer service perspective. Those guys and gals are cutting edge.
• Josh Ingalls and Andy Drish of Principal Financial Group – a campus relations guy (Josh) and a marketing guy (Andy). AWESOME… I believe our jobs are more marketing-based than many really understand, and it was great to hear an actual marketing person speaking at a recruiting event. And the part of me that has been doing work with campus relations jumped for joy at Josh. Thanks, guys!
• My roommate (for the 3rd time now I think!), Jennifer McClure – many of you know the saga of my 2600 mile move from Cincinnati to Washington state last summer, and Jennifer accompanied me on most of this journey. Any chance I can get to spend with her is special, since we no longer live near each other (we seriously used to live down the road from one another!)
• Meeting some Minneapolis friends – something I honestly didn’t think I would ever get to do. Just through 6 degrees of separation, I think outside of my Cincinnati and Washington state connections, I have more connections with people in Minneapolis than anywhere else. Specifically, Keith Privette, Steve Lewis, Kate-Madonna Hindes, Erica Mayer, Nicole Bodem, and Lisa Grimm, it was nice to meet you in person along with everyone else!

Things I’d like to see at the next Social Recruiting Summit (which incidentally is being held 80 miles from my current residence, in Seattle WA!):

• More metrics – now, for those who know me, you know that it hurts for me to say I want to see MORE numbers (I loathe metrics) but these are needed in order to make a business case for the continued use of social media for our recruitment efforts.
• More small business examples - Paul DeBettignies gave us a glimpse into what he does as a one-man shop when it comes to social media presence. I think we need more examples of this, as employment trends will continue to move more and more toward companies hiring for contract as opposed to FTE. We need to know more about the how-to from an individual contributor standpoint.
• More marketing and more PR – once again, I think there is more marketing and PR in our current job duties than we’d like to admit. I would like to see pure marketing and/or PR professionals do presentations at these events. These are the people whose bread and butter is based on the things that we really are just skimming the surface of.

BIG thanks:

• ERE – David Manaster and his team always put on a good event. I appreciate being given the opportunity to present here and I am looking forward to being able to help out with the next one – just let me know what I can do!
• Best Buy – gracious hosts and wonderful examples of how to really do things right and be thought leaders. Thank you for giving to all of us in so many ways!
• Kris Dunn – for being a fun and engaging emcee – I’ve been a fan of Fistful Of Talent  and HR Capitalist for awhile, and it was great to finally have the chance to meet and chat with you!
• Paul DeBettignies – you are the poster child for going above and beyond the call of duty. You lobbied hard to bring ERE to your city and brought all of your worlds together for one big awesome party. Thanks for being a gracious host. I hope you’ll come to Seattle and allow us out here to return the favor to you!

I’ll post the link to the video from my presentation as soon as (or IF) it can be recovered (technical difficulties). In the meantime, here’s the Prezi version of it. As well, here’s a neat transcript of the #socialrecruiting hashtag from the day of the Summit as well as the day before and the day after, created at www.wthashtag.com. I look forward to seeing many of you again in Seattle!

I’ve been in Minneapolis since Friday hanging out with friends Paul DeBettignies and Kasey Skala, and meeting new friends like Erica Mayer, Lisa Grimm, and Bridgett Jewell. Why am I here? ERE is holding the Social Recruiting Summit here today – a gathering of recruitment professionals interested in learning about social technologies and how they can play a part in the future of our functions. People are coming from all over the US (and someone even flew from Australia from what I heard!) to get their learning on. And yours truly is the wrap-up speaker for this event! Yep – I have the honor of being the only thing standing between the attendees and happy hour at the end of the day I’ll be talking about how to market yourself through social media without being annoying.

I plan to have some fun with this topic – after all, each and every one of us had to crawl before we walked around these here parts, and we’ve all made pain in the you-know-whats out of ourselves at some point in our quest to establish our online identities. I’m looking forward to having a great group discussion with the attendees – and as an added bonus, I understand that the session will be live-streamed! So please feel free to tune in to the live broadcast at ERE.net. My session will begin at 4:30pm Central Time. I am using the hashtag #rgMN on Twitter throughout my presentation as well if you want to follow some of the online discussion (also follow #socialrecruiting for the rest of the conference).

PS – this will be my first time doing a livestreamed event! Please send me happy thoughts Look forward to meeting many of you in person and hope to see some lively interaction from those of you who will be following along online!