Online Networking — Good and Bad
By Kevin Donlin | March 24th, 2008
Just read an interesting article in The San Francisco Chronicle on networking, with good and bad advice on your job search.
Let’s start with the bad advice.
According to BJ Fogg, professor at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, the close interactions between friends on Facebook can easily be leveraged for this purpose. “Post to your status update that you are actively looking for a job. Or create a short video where you let people know what kind of job you are looking for and how you qualify. Tag selected friends and ask them to leave comments about the video and forward it to relevant contacts,” explains the professor who also mentions the possibility of creating a group. “You could call it ‘find me a job’ and ask your friends to join it,” he suggests.
This qualifies as bad advice for two reasons.
First, as a rule of thumb, never listen to business tips (in general) or job-hunting tips (in particular) from a professor or other academic, unless they used to hire people or run a business in the real world. Because academia is not the real world. (The three words that make me run screaming from any business article are: “The professor suggests …”)
Second, I’ve seen plenty of video resumes and other attempts by job seekers to use the medium to find work. And I have yet to see a single video that made me want to meet anyone. Not one.
In fact, most job-search videos have the opposite effect.
That vast majority I’ve seen have given me many, many reasons NOT to call whoever filmed it, ranging from stilted delivery and cliched wording to shabby hair and poor sound.
For some reason, video resumes bring out my inner Simon, and I find myself thinking things like, “Oh, stop. You’re dreadful. You will never, ever, ever have a career in sales. Not in a billion years. There are only so many words in my vocabulary to say how awful that was.” (You, too?)
So, give the job search videos a pass for now.
Anyway. Among the good advice was this:
Robb Hecht, digital managing director with the media communications agency Universal McCann, found his current position through LinkedIn. A recruiter saw his profile which also linked to his blog, Media 2.0. “My LinkedIn profile is much more comprehensive than a traditional resume. One of the things I like to include is any media coverage or mentions that I have helped generate,” says Hecht who has integrated his LinkedIn profile with his Facebook profile. “This has a good cross-media effect in terms of building dialogue with the business professionals on LinkedIn as well as with non-business conversations on Facebook. As Facebook continually gains more usage among older professionals, it will actually be used as a job networking site,” he says. He currently sees Facebook as positioned between the “all fun” MySpace network and the “all work” LinkedIn network.
Get that?
It’s not just your LinkedIn profile that can get the attention of hiring managers. It’s the things you link to from your profile, including your blog, if you have one. (If not, why not?)
------------------------------
Spread the Word:
digg this
del.icio.us
Technorati
Blogmemes
Ask Jeeves
Furl
Reddit
Rojo
Simpy
Spurl
Socialize It
Earthlink
Google
Netscape
Windows Live
Yahoo
------------------------------
March 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Hi, Kevin
Thanks for talking about my viewpoint in your blog post.
I’d like to offer few points of clarification.
1. I’ve run various businesses.
The academic work at Stanford is something I do for fun. I started with entrepreneurship young. With that experience, I supported myself during graduate school, running my own companies. I earned three graduate degrees and ended up with no debt and money in the bank (not a lot, but that wasn’t the point).
I’m very good at finding jobs for my students and friends. So I’m certainly not your irrelevant professor type. Ask any of my students and you’ll see.
2. I’m not proposing people do video resumes
I never talked about video resumes. Instead, I’m advocating that people use the power of their network to find the right job. I did talk about Facebook video as a way to engage your friends to help you, not to appeal to an employer. I agree with you. I’ve used Facebook video for various things, and the response from my friends is superb. So you really need to try this before you rule it out.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Dear Professor Fogg,
That was quick
1. If you have run a business and have a lifetime of exposure to entrepreneurship, then you are an obvious exception to my rule. I’ll bet you could throw 100 pies at the next faculty meeting and not hit another professor like you. But I may be wrong.
In any case, kudos to you if your students are getting jobs.
2. Re: video resumes, while you may not have proposed them specifically, that’s what most people think of when they see the word “video” in an article about job hunting.
While I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion, so will most readers, I fear. But I may be wrong.
In any case, if you or any of your students has a success story of how they used video on Facebook (or anywhere) to get a job, please share it here. My readers would love it. Thanks!
March 26th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Yeah, I’m not very typical in academics.
The focus of your blog is excellent. Getting not just a good job but a job you love matters so much. This match determines quality of life to a large extent.
Best to you in blogging this important topic.
BJ