blogBoston Social Media Breakfast covers “Getting Hired in a 2.0 World”
1 May 2008 
This morning’s Social Media Breakfast in at Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge included a speaker’s panel focused on hiring and getting hired using social media. The speakers included:
- Stever Robbins, consultant/executive coach and host of the Get-It-Done Guy Podcast
- Aaron Strout, VP of new media at Mzinga.
- Todd Defren, principal at SHIFT Communications
- Chris Brogan, VP of strategy & technology at CrossTech Media
They touched on two main themes:
- Using social media to help your careeer. They talked about the importance of your internet activity to your prospects of getting hired, and steps you can take to better represent yourself online. Stever Robbins provided a list of guidelines that dispelled some of the “myths” associated with reputation and career in general. Chris Brogan, with a good dose of humor, described how his blogging connected with his career experiences and the importance of the human element in business (e.g. getting acquainted with someone through his Flickr postings before realizing he’s a prominent VC).
- Using social media to recruit. This discussion was led by Aaron Strout and Todd Defren, who described their own experiences using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other channels. The main idea expressed was that several aspects of a person’s online activity are very important in identifying good candidates:
- what she writes in her blog or microblog (Twitter) and her Facebook and LinkedIn profiles
- any content about her that comes up in a Google search, including potentially negative material and material written by others about her
The conversation was enlightening. Todd declared that in the PR space, for example, a candidate isn’t likely to be hired or even interviewed without being “well known” on the internet. More generally, the wisdom prevailing as recently as 5 years ago - that one should be careful about making communications visible online - seems to have reversed polarity. Today the greater risk clearly lies in NOT being visible online, with the chances of a potential employer seeing what happened in South Padre last spring break being actually much less if there is significant other material out there in one’s favor.
There were a couple of issue that weren’t well addressed, despite some audience questions along these lines. The discussion remained limited to the PR-oriented purview of many of the speakers (and audience), so the hiring issues discussed were typically those faced by prestigious PR firms. These hires would be expected to be media savvy and these firms would also tend toward elite hiring practices (e.g. “I want to hire the abosolute best 1-2 guys in the field”). The question of hiring other kinds of professionals (e.g. software engineers) was raised, but a solid answer wasn’t really given. The example of hiring Joel Spolsky because of the prominence of his Joel on Software blog suggests either an unrealistic view of the software industry or social media industry myopia. While many software firms would be psyched to hire Joel, every firm must be willing to hire developers who don’t have widely-read tech blogs, and would probably be better served by looking for the “rank & file” contributors to the social media world, the talented engineers who are reading and/or commenting on Joel’s blog. Finally, there was no attention paid to the majority of people not yet actively using social media. Though we might be better off if more of them did, we can’t expect every dental hygienist to have a blog in order to be doing the job well.
These shortcomings in content covered are quite understandable given the goals and audience of the event, and are pointed out as suggestion for further discussion rather than a negative reflection on the event. Overall the session was excellent and the folks there were very cool.
Thanks to Bryan Person for organizing!
Mark Soper
on May 1st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Mark, good to meet you this morning and thanks for your comments. I would certainly agree that we had a social media-focused panel, and that this could skewed have discussion. However, another way to look at it is that some firms like SHIFT and Mzinga are on the leading edge of recruiting trends that will filter their way down to other industries and companies in the next few years.
Thanks again, Mark.
on May 1st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Mark, great analysis of the breakfast this morning. I think that you’re hitting very close to home in regards to the fishbowl. Being active in social media is a great way to increase your personal brand and get recognition from other people in social media.
Now, let me caveat by saying that I like the people I’ve met through social media. I think they are incredibly smart and brave to put so many of their thoughts online for scrutiny.
But I don’t work in PR. I am looking to make a career in the corporate world and the reality is that most people and companies aren’t into social media yet. To Todd’s point, it is a valid consideration of whether I want to work for such a company. And yet, to me, it doesn’t automatically rule them out.
Personally, I would like to see more companies using published content to find job candidates. I know that my resume can only convey so much and having an opportunity to read my blog and twitter stream would give a better sense of what I’m capable of. Even without being a rock-star blogger with a horde of followers, the work that I publish is authentic to my experience.
That should count for something.
on May 2nd, 2008 at 6:10 am
Great write-up, Mark. Very glad to see this all back from the audience side, because I usually feel half in a trance when trying to figure out my speaking. : )
Thanks for this.
on May 2nd, 2008 at 8:05 am
Mark - great feedback. At the risk of sounding like I’m pimping the article that US News did about this topic (with me as the subject matter), I did discuss the notion of hiring outside of the Marketing/PR realm. Check it out if you get a chance: http://tinyurl.com/4tkrpn
Also, if you would ever like to talk 1:1 about the topic, I have some additional thoughts.
Best,
Aaron (@astrout)
on September 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
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