Big embrace of #SocialRecruiting and Talent Communities by @InsideZappos

I have often blogged about the need for organizations to create talent communities to really embrace "social". You can read my thoughts here, here, here, here and here.  

So I was delighted to learn today that Zappos has embraced "social recruiting" in the way I envisaged, in toto!

Zappos has been a favorite company of mine after I read their CEO Tony Hseih's book. I have blogged about them also.

So what is +Zappos.com going to do? According to the WSJ: 

Zappos, based in Las Vegas, plans to hire at least 450 people this year, but candidates won't find out about those jobs on LinkedIn.com, Monster.com or the company website. Instead, they will have to join a social network, called Zappos Insiders, where they will network with current employees and demonstrate their passion for the company—in some cases publicly—in hopes that recruiters will tap them when jobs come open.
The retailer is attempting to fix a common problem, recruitment experts say: how to make the hiring process faster and easier by keeping a pool of willing and able candidates at the ready.

Using #SocialMedia for your professional growth

So the good folks at +SocialSamosa invited me to a "Twangout" - where people could ask me questions via Twitter and I had to reply via a Google Hangout. It was moderated by the co-founder +Ankita Gaba

You can watch the video here - more about the Twangout here

Weighing in on @Zomato's "controversial" recruitment ad

So today Twitter exploded for some reason with outrage over a recruitment ad by Zomato that said they wanted to make Delhi the tech capital of India and was basically a pitch for Bangalore based techies as to why they should move to Delhi (for wider roads, late night hours)

The Bangalore folks on Twitter did not like Zomato's job ad and someone put together a retort basically saying that Delhi sucks when it comes to Bangalore (intolerant, extreme weather)

Both the ads are tongue in cheek and the best part for Zomato is that it has got people talking about it. It might not be able to lure many folks from Bangalore, but what it has done with this ad is shown itself to be sassy and having a personality. Even though it's Bangalore users don't feel very good about it. 

Here's one marketing expert weighing in

As an all-India brand should @zomato be dissing Bangalore on their site? http://t.co/IFId4fL07b Seems a bit shortsighted, no?
— Jessie Paul (@jessie_paul) May 20, 2014

While the Delhi experts feel that the response was in bad taste

Must say this response to @zomato's techcapital is worse and in really poor taste! #fail
— kalpana chauhan (@kalpanachauhan) May 20, 2014

My verdict? Zomato is the winner! People are talking about it, it has shared it is hiring in Delhi, and I suspect if the product is good most Bangalore users (except the communications and marketing experts) will even know this twitter brouhaha to stop using the app/website.

Advice to organizations planning to go social

Many organizations' HR teams are looking at social media as a panacea for increasing employer branding and employee engagement.

Here's what they need to understand and do.

I think it was Sandy Carter of IBM who said "social is an amplifier - if you have a great culture it amplifies it, and if you don't it amplifies it too"

So have a social media guideline for employees - and educate them about it.

Form social media committees where employees can resolve their queries ("My friend just said my CEO sucks, how should I respond?")

Form a social media command centre if you're a large company with many social media channels - outsource to an agency to respond to most B2C queries.

Understand that for a consumer the employer brand and consumer brand are not different. So respond and connect them to relevant groups.

Encourage your HR employees to "be social" to contribute their knowledge and learning with relevant communities. People love to connect to people rather than "brands"

Work with Internal Comms team to create a plan to educate employees and implement an enterprise social network for collaboration and communication.

Evolve a "use case" why people should use the enterprise social network. Is it for question and answer? A communication tool? A project management tool?

Build social media champions in each function and business. Make a plan how to use it for recruiting, showcasing culture, employee advocates, customer care and crowdsourcing. 

How I use Twitter

This September I will complete 7 years on Twitter. As of now I follow 558 people and 14,949 people follow me. This blog's account has 523 followers. Of course, if you are familiar with Twitter you would know that "following" is a relative concept. 

Over the years how I use Twitter has changed.

Earlier Twitter was a small network, with the early adopters from the blogging world. People I had followed via blogs from 2004-2007. There were three main groups, the Talent and HR bloggers, the Tech and Startup bloggers, and there was the Desi bloggers.

And then Twitter exploded with celebrities. Politicians, movie stars came to the network and the growth in membership started thanks to the extraordinary press Twitter got. A rub-off effect happened on the early adopters. Some of us thanks to being their early got a fair bit of people who started to follow us.

However a lot of people who join Twitter don't really understand how to use it, and a majority of them don't return to Twitter. It's not an easy platform to understand.Unlike say a Facebook or LinkedIn. The benefits of Twitter are not really evident for the normal user.

Here is how I use Twitter currently:

1. Having to let go of the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) - now I have understood Twitter is a stream, I won't ever get through all the content ever, so no use trying. Like a river I dip in and immerse it in when I find the time for it.
2. I post links to interesting content I find on the internet, these could be HR related or not
3. I reply to people who ask me specific questions 
4. I retweet interesting Tweets I find on my timeline.
5. I have chosen the option that any follower of mine can send me a direct message (as compared to the default setting of only people I follow)
6. I make a decision to follow people after going through their timelines and seeing their past few posts - too many uninteresting "personal" posts means I won't follow.
7. Even after I follow people if their posts don't add value to my learning I weed them out. 
8. Chatty people who reply to conversations with others (whom I don't follow) so that everyone sees those conversations are ones that get unfollowed too.
9. Posting auto generated posts like paper.li posts and twitter stats also ensure that you will get muted or unfollowed.
10. Finally for me Twitter is a personal learning network, and any negativity and hate posts ensure that I am not interested in what you are saying. 

Building your learning quotient

Many people equate "learning" to "being taught" something. Professionals who have been working for more than 3-4 years always expect "training" or "executive education" from their employers to build new skills and learn new things.

However I believe that being a "passenger" in one's career car is not what today's professional needs, but to be an "active driver" because the road to the future changes without warning all the time.

So what should you do as a professional to keep on learning?

Here are some thoughts

• Read, read, read - Not just publications, websites and blogs related to your domain, but also areas that might potentially force changes in your industry/function. In today's world that means technology. 
• Scenario Planning - Whenever you come across a new development, ask yourself "How would this impact my role? How can it impact my next role?" 
• Volunteer - If your company is putting together a project team to explore a new business/initiative then volunteer to be part of it. Don't bother if you don't know much - the more out of your comfort area it is, the better. 
• Social Media - many people think social media is all about cat pictures and photos of what you had for dinner. But a smart and judicious use of social media enables you to have conversations with the experts. Here's a case in point

  @GautamGhosh Yes, process as important as the $$$ per se.
  — Tom Peters (@tom_peters) November 3, 2013

• Enroll in MOOCs - Now you can learn from the best professors in the best universities in any area. Want to learn Design Thinking from professors in Stanford's d.school? That's possible - for free!
• Build meta-skills: There are certain skills that apply accross roles - like making High Quality Decisions, Influencing Skills, Communication Skills, Emotional Intelligence. Building these would positively impact your career irrespective of your role. 
 

Update about my LinkedIn account

So after I clicked on delete my account on LinkedIn I realised it wasn't deleted. It was still there and turning up in Google searches.

Then I got an email from someone in customer support saying my number of connections was too large for the system to delete it automatically, therefore a customer support person had to do it from the backend. And wanted to check if I was really sure if I wanted to delete it.

That made me pause.

Many friends had called me or chatted with me after my last blog post, and one thing stood out when someone said "what will people think if they can't find you on LinkedIn?"

That was when I realised how much online identities are a part of how people percieve us. Yes I have made judgements when I can't find people on Facebook and LinkedIn. I assume they are not who they claim to be .. so for that reason alone, I am not proceeding in deleting my LinkedIn account.

But I am not going to be active there. It has no use for me. However that doesn't mean it's not useful for you. People with niche skills, you have to be on LinkedIn.