Apr

Do what you love…sorta?

As recruiters, Hr Pros and yes, even the lowly marketing vendors who work in our space (ahem) we want people to be happy. We want to see them get jobs, excel, succeed and all of that. So often, from the stage at a commencement speech, in an inspiring speaker’s main slide, in a blogger’s yearly editorial rotation, you’ll hear the phrase “Do what you love and the money will follow”.

Some say that it’s a total crock and that doing what you love isn’t really viable as a career choice.

Others say pursuing something simply for the dollah dollah bills will get you nowhere and quickly.

But for the most part, the debate stagnates with a tentative “sure?” when youngsters like this one ask the question. Even the fellows over at Harvard Business Review seemed unsure as to how to definitively answer the question. Commenters were even further divided.

Over at The Cynical Girl, Laurie Ruettimann recommends trying a new job and a new life before getting caught in the “consumer cycle” and you simply have to make all that money. A more relaxed economy makes that a simpler choice than in recent years.

The truth is, virtually anything you love can be made into a career but can it be turned into a lucrative career? That is the question. And the reason that no one can provide a suitable answer is because human beings are…different.

What propels one person to jump out of a plane? Start a new business? End a failed relationship? Stay in the same terrible job for 30 years? Move across country? Pursue their dream in New York or Hollywood?

We have always had people willing to pursue their dreams at the potential peril of their current and future finances. Consider this heated debate on living and working in NYC, sparked by recent TV series Girls, penned by Lena Durham. Should parents support their children’s dreams financially? Are they obligated to? We all have the desire to follow our dreams but do we have the right?

From time immemorial, artists have been the ones to strike out and find funding (patron of the arts anyone) wherever it lurked. But for every Raphael there is a talented artist who died wracked with syphillis and mental illness and broke, probably in a canal somewhere. Following your dreams CAN be lucrative and support your family, but it can end in misery and heartbreak.

Lest this post end with everyone thinking I am crazy downer, I’ll offer you two stories from my own arsenal (not a big one for saying that just because this is my experience it must be everyone’s but hey anecdotes aren’t the worst…):

Anecdote #1: When I was in college, I got pregnant. It was my sophomore year and I was straight trippin’. Once I get my head around staying in school and not “continuing a cycle of poverty and grinding repetition” (this was my mother’s term for dropping our of school and working full time) I went straight to the counselor’s office and changed my major from Fine Arts (Creative Writing) to Marketing Communications. Yes, I would still be writing. No, it was no longer possible to consider writing my first novella in the Catskills post graduation and I knew it. I’m no genius, but I knew at 19 that I could align what I loved doing with what was profitable. Of course, the desire to write a novel has never died and I have 23 drafts of the first five chapters a book on this very computer.

Anecdote #2: When I was a young wife, student and mother, I excelled at decorating our adorable little house with mistints, fabric remnants and thrift store finds. I thought I was pretty clever and so did an interior decorator friend, who hired me on immediately at her firm. At first the job was a dream- Look! I was doing what I love and getting paid very well to do it! My clients loved me and my designs…until it was time to be a project manager to disparate crews, specialty artisans and seamstresses and rely on shipments that weren’t always reliable. I began to dread what would go wrong with the next client (and something always did). By the time I had my third child I decided that doing what I loved, wasn’t all it cracked up to be.

So…it sort of sounds like I’m doing a really good job of not answering the question. But I think the answer (like a lot of things) really is something that seems more at home on a bumper sticker than a marketing blog and that is “Be True to Yourself”. And that means your whole self, the one that has a family and obligations or the one who can’t handle the six figure job one more day. Realize that being true to your professional dream may mean sacrificing other dreams like a huge, nicely decorated home or private schools for the kids. It may mean moving to Omaha and painting your front door pink and being a sculptor. It may mean 26/52 weeks away from your kiddos to seal the executive deal. The best advice I ever EVER heard was:

“you can have it all, just not all at once…”

37 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Uncategorized

Apr

Look! A Shiny Issue!

I should be writing a proposal for a client.

I should be making dinner for my family.

Barring those two things, I should be playing with my kiddos or insisting that Jack practice flute, or Quin finish his reading or Rocky stop banging on the gosh darn piano because it’s making the dog bark.

But I am not doing any of those things. I am sitting down to write something because, although I am not in any way, active politically, I feel that there is one particular issue about which I can speak, if not universally, at least nationally.

I was a single mother.

I was (nearly) a teenage mother.

By the time I graduated college, I had a 1 and a 3 year old.

I now have three children that I love and cherish. I have been a stay at home mom, a work from home mom and a working mother. So…I win. And I have had it. I have had it with the backlash over Rosen’s remark regarding Mitt Romney’s wife and mother to their five sons, “She’s never worked a day in her life!”

GASP!

I have read a lot of commentary over the past couple of days regarding this issue. I’ve read this from a pro-life blog, this from a conservative blog, and this from someone who remembers and cherishes a childhood with a stay at home mom.

I don’t deny any of these people their viewpoints. Motherhood is tough, especially for stay at home moms (even as I write this, I am being pestered for screen time, one of my children won’t leave my office and give me the 15 seconds of privacy I’ve asked for and another just tried to climb out the window onto the roof to get a frisbee), but the issue with this argument and this one are that they are presenting stay at home motherhood as a series of “choose your own adventure” choices. Get serious.

The fact is for many American women (let’s not forget we’re talking about the necessary qualifications to be a President here?) being a stay at home is a choice they would LOVE TO MAKE! But they can’t. They don’t have the economic surety, the reputable and educative daycare nearby, the public transportation options, the safe housing, the child support, the birth control, to make that choice.

I believe that Mrs. Romney worked very hard raising those boys. I really do. But do I think for one minute that she ever had to decide whether to fill up her car and survive the embarrassment of her card being declined or risk running out of gas on the way to daycare? No. Do I think she has ever forgone buying her children’s school pictures because she literally didn’t have the $8.00 to spare? Do I think she has ever looked at the back of a package of beans to determine which kind would give the kids more protein until payday? NOPE.

She had amazing advantages and I will not speculate farther than that. What I will say is that I have had to make all of the choices listed above and I am luckier than so many single or wed mothers in this country. I was able to get an education (because I had a family support system), I had the luxury of getting my first home (because I married an employed man who worked hard so that I could stay home) and I have been able to carve out a career in a time of economic upheaval (because that same husband stayed home to raise our children and I live in the middle of the country).

What people are missing about what Rosen said (poorly phrased and dismissive, YES) is that it was in response to Mitt Romney insisting that his wife was solid counsel on women’s economic affairs. She is not. The fact that she is a great mother doesn’t change that. The fact that Rosen spoke too fast and too rudely does not change that. Romney and his ilk (and that means his wife and family) cannot sit around and make decisions about the majority of Americans because they are completely out of touch with what an average American goes through, much less what an impoverished mother who has run out of choices has to go through.

Hilary Rosen appeared on CNN Thursday and explained her comments further. “If I had a do over what I would be saying is that Mitt Romney should not be on the campaign trail saying to women that my wife tells me how it is for women out there because people of wealth sometimes take for granted some of the niceties that they have in life, and the Romneys are people of wealth.”

Go ahead and pay attention to the shiny argument “War on Mothers!” that’s being splatted like baby food all over the front pages if you want to. But that’s not what the argument is about. And it’s an insult to women who have not only had to make hard choices but who have run OUT of choices to make because their economic policies are being decided by people who literally have no clue. It’s also kind of an insult to women who choose to work and think that is just as noble a choice.

PS Do not come out me with how hard she likely worked. This argument is also not about that. It is about her ability to advise her husband on women’s economic policy. Unless you are going to tell me she worked really hard at a women’s shelter or soup kitchen for the last 30 years, don’t bother.

38 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Uncategorized

Feb

Community Theories

Community Theories. As I write this article, Talent Communities are finally making the corporate rounds. Enterprise is catching on folks! Yay! It’s just what we always wanted. Talent communities are on everyone’s lips, being talked about by the biggest and brightest and still, those of us who’ve done the work, seen the scorching failures and perceived the value in not just communities but talent communities, are trying desperately to define, what precisely we MEAN.

As in the past two articles, I’m not ready to get into it yet. I just got back from speaking in San Francisco at the Social Recruiting Strategies Conference (put on by rockstar group GSMI) and while there, I did talking about the whos, whats, wheres and whys of TCs, not to mention some pretty good hows (if I don’t say so myself). But again, the questions thrown back at me from educated, intelligent people in the space revealed a misunderstanding or at best, vague understanding of what a community really was. And once again, I was unable to do better than “all of the above”. As a consultant, a vendor, a writer and a speaker, I believe that we owe these people better than that. Hence, all the commas

So today, I want to talk about community theories:

1) Reciprocation Theory: IMHO, this is one of the most underrated theories in all of community development. It’s pretty simple (like most theories). It states that in order for people to be a part of your community (donating time, attention span, participation bandwidth) they need to feel like they’re getting value. YOU, as the community manager (or similar) have to provide content, conversation, benefits, value, etc.

This plays out in the communities I’ve managed or had a hand in creating. Things that create value for participants:

Online Chats: The ability to raise one’s profile in a semi-closed forum, participate on an ad-hoc basis.

Chapters: A localization of the broader group, this can give people the ability again to raise their profile, connect with others and build on the credibility the group has as a whole.

Content: With more and more folks trying to build a personal brand, allowing people to “publish” and raise their awareness within the community is huge. Of course, compensation cannot be left out of this equation, whether it is through promotion, discounts or actual pay for posts.

Certifications: Many professional communities or skill based communities have this down to a veritable art form.

Acknowledgement: Again, highly underrated. People like to see their name/face/work highlighted. It makes them happy and valued. “Thank You” goes a long way for a community management team. Ditto for commenting or sharing their post, work, comment, etc.

Camaraderie: People are interested in identifying with a group (for the most part). You can see this as people “tip deals” in Groupon or on sites like Gawker, where frequent commenters seem to recognize one another. A community manager can move this forward by creating links between members who seem like-minded.

2) Consistency Theory: This theory states that once a person becomes active in a community, they are more likely to come back again and again. It makes a sense, most of us tend to be creatures of habit. Community managers can help by making their communities great places to be, welcoming everyone who comes in in a timely and consistent manner and finally, by using tools like email, social, and personal contact to remind members of why they come to the community in the first place.

3) Social Validation Theory: “I wanna be where my friends are.” This theory states that but in a way more science-y way. If a community is acceptable to one’s colleagues, friends, etc., it is more likely to enjoy significant growth in that circle. It’s part of the reason that every time you join a new network, you have the option to “find your friends” via Facebook, Gmail or any other tool that contains a crawl-able address book.However, community members can take it one step further and ask who else in the entrenched member’s circle may benefit from being part of the network. This is a theory I’d like to look at closer when we talk about talent communities specifically.

There has long been talk that talent communities MUST HAVE a component that allows talent to talk to other talent on the outside. I think the Social Validation Theory supports that intrinsic need. However, when combined with the still very prevalent competitive spirit that surrounds applying for jobs this may force the transition to internal and external workers, rather than friends with similar skill sets. (This could begin to change soon, but will not happen quickly.)

115 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Best Practices

community/talent communities

Jan

I can multitask. Sorry to disappoint you but I can. I don’t always do it well and I don’t always do it because some things require focus but I can do it. And let me tell you something, I am sick and tired of people telling me I can’t.

The very first internet scuffle that ever happened to me involved this same old saw. The basic tenet was “How can you work when I see you on Twitter all day?” Then it bothered me, because I was worried it was true but I defended myself

by pointing out that while I hadn’t grown up with social media, I had grown up in a house full of kids and using computers. I, even then, had a small baby, two rambunctious kindergarten age boys and was undergoing remodeling projects.

Now there is Skype, Facebook, Google Chat, Google Voice, my blog and website, the blogs and sites and social accounts of at least 6 clients at any given time plus fracking Pinterest, a hobby blog I’ve started, speaking engagements, long-term projects like videos, slideshows, white papers and webinar prep. Plus we’re still remodeling. I also am a partner in several ventures that require my time, money and expertise and not all of them are HR related. I can multitask and multitask well because I HAVE to.

Which is not to say I don’t understand where the criticisms come from. Jason Seiden recently mentioned that when he’s looking to hire someone, he doesn’t want to hear that they do eleventeen different things with their time. He wants them doing one thing and focusing on one client (ostensibly HIM) at a time. Fair enough. Which is why I don’t often trot out my laundry list of to-do items for prospective clients. It’s scary, it’s dirty, it’s overwhelming and it shows that I care about more than your project in my whole life world. I’m okay with that, you might not be. I can accept that you would prefer to think of me as one dimensional, after all, I am there to do a service.

Glen Cathey, another smart and seemingly efficient person recently tweeted

When you say you’re a great multi-tasker, here’s what you’re really saying: “I’m great at being busy but unproductive.”

I simply don’t agree. I think that there is a time and place for highly focused, “head down” thinking and creating and there is also a time for multi-tasking. And even though this transcript would say I am the worst offender of ALL, I really do believe I am good at it. In fact, I might go so far as to say that certain people are bred for and evolving toward being better at it. It seems to be an adaptation to our environment.

For example in the study cited in this radio show, they very explicitly state that they did not study people while they were multi-tasking just afterward, which…okay. But even if they had, what is the control group for this? Were there studies done in the past where people were measured doing just one task for comparison’s sake? And PS, we’re studying college kids, that have for all intents and purposes grown up in the information age and who are meant to be learning the stuff their lives will depend on.

And methinks that we’re measuring the wrong things in any case. If you use multi-tasking to learn or to create, yeah you are probably using a hammer to carve a melon, or whatever that saying is. Another study (sorta) pointed out by Cathey was conducted by an MIT professor. I haven’t read the book (no time) but I did read the interview transcript and what it seemed like was one smart and insightful woman’s thoughts on her own life and the lives and connectedness of those around her. I didn’t see anything that was not based on perception.

I appreciate the insight of all these smart college professors and researchers and perhaps they have a point, that college students need to cut down on the multi-tasking. After all, this Lifehacker article puts it very well:

If the tasks you are doing are relatively unimportant or mundane and don’t require undivided attention to complete, multitasking can help to get more done. But if you have an important job or one that requires particular attention or care, the best solution is to stay focused on it (and, at the very least, turn off your phone).

YES! Absolutely. And I think that’s the point that all these people miss. If you multitask all the time, surely your brain is never going to be useful when it’s time to go down in the basement and LEARN or STUDY or WRITE. The people they are studying don’t seem to be doing that. They think that if you google chat and watch How I Met Your Mother while cleaning out a CSV file or using Card Munch to deal with your contacts, you can do the same things while trying to create a suitable outline for a 40 page paper. Not so. Any grown up can tell you that.

I’d prefer to see a study that measures the effect of how I do my job, manage my family, remodel my house, engage with my kids, write a book, manage a new website, juggle and please clients and make time for the things I love, like singing, dancing, exercising, watching TV, reading, cooking, sewing and decorating. I don’t need any blue rectangles or any fancy college to tell me that I am doing it RIGHT, and the life described above requires certain tools at certain times.

Two of those tools are focus and discipline. Another one of those tools is multitasking. Now, I do have some science-y bits here somewhere, hold on. AH! here:

Multitasking is not a myth, its all in the definition and understanding of how computational engines work – the brain is a great example of an intriguing computational engine . To use a technology analogy, a computer operating system on a very rudimentary level is a computational engine. It contains among other things a scheduler (aka task management) and engine. Multitasking inherently means providing workloads to a computational engine in thin slices of time on that engine. Nothing else can run on the engine concurrently within the context of the thinest slice of time available to all workloads. A scheduler typically swaps workloads in and out of that engine as the workloads allocated time slice is completed. The Scheduler also prioritizes those workloads. So I think that is very similar to what a live human brain does. Obviously in both instances when you have large number of workloads you may actually experience so much overhead in the scheduler that very little actual computational engine resources get assigned to the workloads that have “real work” and most gets directed at the scheduler (management overhead tasks). The scheduler has to use computional engine time as well to get its work done – its a workload as well. When the scheduler activity dominates all other activity this is known in technology terms as THRASHING. This is exactly what is showing up in research related to humans and their workloads. The switching going on takes up an enormous amount of time/energy in direct relation to the number of workloads. And the relation is likely non-linear. As more task are added on your schedule to be done concurrently there is diminishing returns to scale. At the other extreme , say only 1 workload/task, all the available computational resources is available whenever needed to the workload. Very little resources are needed for scheduling because there is nothing to schedule, well 1 task, which is not much.

This is taken from a comment on the HBR website, but it makes sense to me. My Yammer Air desktop app seems to drain very little juice from my iMac, but when I’m working in Excel or Adobe Illustrator or heaven forbid iMovie, there is every danger of my computer freezing up, slowing down or crashing altogether. And I have a very nice computer. When I need to do a task I know will require a lot of power or memory or jigowatts, I turn everything else off! Sometimes I do a restart first and clean off my desktop. DUH!

Now enter Maren’s brain, also a very nice computer. There are tasks which can run concurrently pretty much all the time, they are as ingrained in my thought processes as breathing (okay that’s hyperbole but you get me). But there are others for which I must make sure not to run other programs or specific other programs. For example, I can design something and facebook at the same time. But I cannot write copy for a speech and watch TV at the same time. It’s just the way it goes. I can moderate a #tchat while a TV show is on, but I cannot get on facebook. And if I need to write a white paper, I sit down and collect the information I need from the internet or magazines and then shut off the internet while I write and play classical music. My kids can come in, no problem and talk to me. I can get up and do a load of laundry and come right back to writing. I can even write heady material while cooking dinner.

What was I saying? Oh yeah. I can totally multitask.

My real point is this, the statements I am seeing in the media and propogated by my friends are not wrong, simply incomplete:

You can’t multitask…all the time.

Multitasking is ineffective…when used for the wrong tasks.

You are permanently damaging your brain…if you never give it a rest.

Personal relationships will suffer if you multitask….provided you are a weiner and never give your spouse/kids/GF/BF/friends the time of day.

128 days ago Short URL 10 Comments

ADD/Best Practices

brain/Glenn Cathey/Harvard Business Review/Jason Seiden/MIT/multitasking/science/Stanford

Jan

I was. Until I took the time to stop and read a little about it. Trust me you are not that busy. So, yes you do have to inform yourself dutiful citizen and yes, you do have to try to enact change with your very own fingers from your very own smartphone with the very precious minutes of your day. If this sounds condescending I apologize, I am mostly talking to myself.

So if you’re stressed out about it, and perhaps you aren’t puttering around on Facebook or Twitter to see all these great defining articles, here is a quick roundup that I hope will make sense and force you to take action.

This article Why SOPA is Dangerous on Mashable breaks down what the law is intrinsically about (copyright infringement) and how quickly and scarily your life could change if it’s enacted.

Here’s an easy place to get the demographics on what and WHO the proposed bills would affect and a quick and easy way to sign!!

If you are like me, you might need something funny to persuade you. I give you, The Day The LOLcats died.

Until today there was a great infographic here but now it has a handy and easy way for you to go dark.

129 days ago Short URL Comments

Uncategorized

Jan

Last time I started writing, it was titled “Why Communities Matter“. Again, I’d like to reiterate that I am not yet even starting to delve into the whole talent community debate. It’s important for me to step back and see just where this whole discussion came from before throwing it back in the buzzword soup.

Communities used to be limited by geographical proximity. If you were close to a community, you were kind of in it, for better or worse and when you moved away, you kept tenuous ties but were no longer part of that community.

As we ventured online, user groups became a sort of wavery, online mirror of what communities looked like in real life, with the exception of the anonymity factor (yes I just named it that). Whether you were using Prodigy, America Online or Newsgroup, you could generally be anonymous. While this is an older article, it credits a 1984 user group called The Well as being one of the first to encourage the use of real names.

The ability to go online and share your view points with the seeming protection of anonymity gave rise to and abundance of vitriol and exaggeration, still seen today on virtually any Youtube video ever posted

In my mind’s eye, I see this as kids racing through a candy store…blindfolded. MySpace and AOL were the stars of this generation, teaching generations how to behave or misbehave online. But these tools were beginning to be used by groups of people, schools, universities, military spouses to generate ties that were stronger and that stretched over longer distances than before.

As people began to see the internet as a place for professional discourse and even social interaction, as opposed to a giant library, weblogs and media sites became communities in and of themselves. Like spoke to like, and vast numbers of people congregated under a banner they had a hand in creating.

Fast forward past Terminator 2 and The Net, until we see entering stage left the big three, the undeniable stars of the current day community. Facebook obviously, centered once again around the proximity premise, with the original service being used within universities and then primarily for college students. Compare that with the behemoth social network that itself is a platform for thousands of communities centered around the benign (Tide, Oreos), the career oriented (BranchOut, Work4Labs), the ironic (Protesting Facebook Change) and the professional.

Twitter, has contributed to the online community platform, if for the sole reason of evening out the playing field of digital media for a little while. While it’s less community and more distribution service, it’s still a powerful service for brands, individuals and yes communities, who use the service to bolster conversation via the use of hashtags. While a seemingly insignificant part of the conversation, twitter chats are actually much more powerful than most people realize and share some of the same social loyalty based characteristics as ye olde tyme radio shows, which is why many of them have a radio component (internet based of course) that run alongside them. Same time, same channel, identifying call letters. These are all behaviors we understand and are familiar with, whether we used them to tune into a “fireside chat”, watch Family Ties every week or are LOST devotees. Traditional media taught us how. The exception being that it combines media we consume with media we participate in, underscoring that feeling of community.

LinkedIn. Most HR pros/recruiters would say this was where they first started building community. Here’s how it worked back in the day. You had a group of business contacts, recruiters and sales pros had more than most (stacks of business cards because stacks of contacts), you could share articles and job openings with your friends but that was about it until….groups. Groups made it so that anyone could create, manage and moderate a large group of people from a professional standpoint and because the platform was new, create almost instant “expert” status. Enterprising recruiters used in particular to turn candidate databases into “talent pools” that they could connect with on a regular basis and even begin to educate. Communities around companies, professional associations, disciplines, causes and localities sprang up by the hundreds, some numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

When I started building communities, ning was big, as was kickstarter. Now we seem to be having some trouble defining community. Maybe we’re having trouble redefining it. When something that comprises part of the definition suddenly becomes untrue or now needs a qualifier to make it true (as in locality or proximity now not necessarily a part of the definition of community or needing the qualifier of online to make this exception), it seems to spark a debate or underline the importance of semantics.

The history of online communities is one that shows a shifting line in the sand, with parts of it obliterated by the new waves of innovation that come crashing to shore, quicker and quicker now. This is by no means a comprehensive or heavily researched account. But as I said, I am looking to get my thoughts together on communities and what they mean to marketing, HR and other disciplines.

You gotta start somewhere.

131 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Best Practices/Community/Maren Hogan/Social Media

community/definition/history

Jan

Why Communities Matter

There is an idea taking shape. An idea that I’ve been ruminating on for some time. It is this:

Communities are necessary.

Not because they provide additional value but because they are a fundamental building block to our society and because as our society shifts to doing more and more and MORE online, these communities must manifest themselves online as well. The idea is that communities are not only ideal but an absolute to civilized discourse on the internet, where the majority of our commerce, work and enjoyment happens these days.

Have you seen this cartoon? It made the rounds a few months ago:

It’s funny but SEE?! Our lives have changed, little by little, until it’s a LOT. And I’m not the only one, neither are you. And while there are millions of people who don’t give a hoot about Twitter or a fiddle about Facebook, they still do much of their learning, working, and socializing on the computer or alternatively, a smart phone.

It’s pretty scary to call something a paradigm shift, but I really believe this is what we’re talking about. It’s true that the tools might change but the behavioral patterns we’re learning right now will augment themselves to a newer tool, the essential shift is the same. The way we do everything now is different. 10 years ago it wasn’t that common to expect an instantaneous answer on which TV to buy or how your dress looked. Now you can ask that and more and get answers from all over the world in a matter of seconds. Collaboration and access are soaring on an unprecedented level as we adapt our communicative practices to this new but somehow familiar setting.

Communities are even now being used to enact political, social and economic change. People have taken the tools set before them (after all they are based on how humans interact and communicate to begin with) and essentially, picked them up. We have been using them and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Talent Communities have generally been used as a business tool or product, which they can be, but I think they are and can be much more. If you can technology supported communities changing one or two fundamentals of the society, why should it be difficult to disrupt the recruiting process? Or the corporate process for that matter?

I plan on writing a lot more about what communities are, why they are not only important but necessary and to address them from an anthropological view point. We can adapt and harness the power of community but only if we understand the purpose and history behind them. That’s why I’m not starting with “talent” communities per se, because I believe this conversation to be bigger than that. I also will get to business cases and ROI as I think through some of these ideas, but I won’t shortcut the discussion to argue semantics or prove things to you. You can google it.

A community is a society locally organized

135 days ago Short URL 8 Comments

Community/Social Media/talent

anthropology/history/recruiting/social/talent community

Jan

Riding the wave…from a vendor perspective

I’m a consultant now (who isn’t?). I have a little company that’s been around for awhile and it does okay. But when I started it in 2008, it had a much different look and feel than it does now, because now I’ve worked with vendors.

Let me explain. No, it will take too long, Let me sum up.

If you’ve been around for longer than a year or so, you will start to see the same stories crop up in the blogs, in the magazines and at the conferences. These “evergreen” topics go in a bit of a circle:

NEW PROBLEM –> NEW SOLUTION –> PROBLEM WITH THE SOLUTION —> WE’RE TOTALLY OVER IT–> BACK TO THE BASICS

And you’re lucky I left out the exclamation points.

When you work at a media outlet, you watch the cycle with amusement but you either highlight or create the stories that go along with the cycle. You report on it, basically. And when you work for an HR department or a recruiting firm, you make selections based on whatever your current criteria, budget and timeline are.

But when you work for a vendor, you see how terrifying and fickle the cycle can be. First you have the prep the market for the problem that your solution is trying to solve (pharma companies are MASTERS at this), then you have to make sure your solution does not just A and B for the problem, but at least anticipates C. Then when the gloss wears off your solution (because no tool can do the job of a human except for in the Terminator movies) your audience, who you so carefully cultivated and educated starts to complain and you dazzle them with service and consultative sales. If you do not do that fast enough, well then you’re out of luck, because you’re reached the “totally over it” phase.

Back in the day, this phase wasn’t a huge deal. There were 3-5 year contracts, auto renewal and truly great product took years to innovate and build. Now, with true SaaS and free or low-fee products, it’s make or break time baby. This is typically when you see the “back to the basics” posts start to form. Nothing wrong with them, I’ve written more than a few myself. But it’s pretty easy to write them from my home office or from a consultant or vendor’s point of view. Real HR pros have contracts to worry about, and a team. They have legitimate excuses for not jumping from one tool to the next, some even (gasp!) have a long range plan.

So here’s what I say to vendors, look at the cycle, recognize the high and low points, the opportunities and pitfalls of human nature and pretty predictable market waves, prepare your communications for that inevitable cycle and then…ignore it.

Because the truth is, your product (don’t care who you are) can’t do everything for everybody. In fact, there is a very select pie piece of the market for which your solution will be THE solution. The only way for a vendor to ride the wave is to constantly be improving the product and the service process.

That is all.

143 days ago Short URL Comments

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consultative sales/recruiting firm

Dec

The year the world is supposed to end…

my actual, literal, BODY of work

It’s going to be 2012 soon. The year everyone thinks will be the end of the world. Well, not everyone. As an added bonus, my husband’s birthday is the day after the big croak. Woot! No presents for him

Now I don’t think the world is going to end a year from now, but what if it does? I posted something on my facebook a day or so ago that just said: “do good work” and a lot of people liked it and whatnot. But it started me thinking about what I do, what you do, what we all do.

There are thousands of articles and blog posts on how to be more productive, how to fit more into each day, how to be transparent and effective and even more authentic (I’m not going to pretend to understand that). Like so many hyperactive preschoolers we leap from activity to activity, hoping the next one will prove our theory or bring more business or focus meaning on our work.

What’s interesting about that (to pull a Sumser) is that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. When you go in search of the money or the recognition, you often find those things, but very rarely do you actually find meaning. And perhaps it’s post-Christmas, slightly hungover (from serious amounts of meat mostly) Maren talking, but the older I get the more I find that meaning is a big old chunk of what I want to see reflecting back at me when I look at a body of work.

I recently went through my notebooks from the last five years and saw less meaning than I’d like. There were strategies, and little plans, people to meet and collateral to create but I saw none of the early things I did that gave me so much love for the industry. So here are my resolutions, in no particular order, for the coming year:

1. I’m going to talk to more people. And not just the people I know either. I’m going to talk to the brand new blogger, to the person at the expo that can’t do a thing for me or my business. I’m going to chat up the person next to me in the salad line and follow up with phone calls long put-off.

2. I’m going to stop comparing myself to others. If I have not yet realized my value in where I am and what I do, in a completely separate way from others, then I need to get into a new line of work. Period.

3. I’m going to get more involved in my local scene. This blog was named “Big O Recruiting” when it started and I sometimes talked about local things. I was on local boards and met local people. I had a vested interest in things like Big Omaha, Silicon Praire, the AITP and HRAM (our local SHRM chapter). I’m going to reignite my responsibility to the local community.

4. I’m going to walk. Not run, not bust a move on the treadmill, just get out of my house and walk down the street.

5. I’m going to start sharing my opinions. When I first started blogging, I wasn’t that involved in Twitter or Facebook. I didn’t know thousands of people around the world. But now I do, in one sense or another and I live in constant fear of offending just one of them. If you are scared to share your opinions (about professional things of course) to more than a handful of people, you are just a gossip. And when I say you, I mean me.

6. I’m going to start asking for favors. Yup, you heard right. I’m going to start calling in my chits, or chips, or whatever the saying is. I mean, if the world’s gonna end and all….

148 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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2012/best practices/Big O Recruiting/Marenated/marketing/new year/New Year's Resolutions

Dec

These are a few of the raddest things (for work)

Tis the season to whip up gift posts and I’m doing it too!

-Not because that’s what you’ve come to expect from me, dear reader

-Not because you’re wracking your brain trying to come up with cool gift ideas for your boss, coworker, cute cubicle mate

-Not because, yes indeed! You DO need another post to waste time with while counting down the hours til your vacay starts!

Nope, I’m doing this post to amalagate all of the super cool things I got for people, couldn’t get people or just popped into my head!

Check it:

The Boss’ kid: Yeah, you know that kid that heads into the office? The one who you have to be nice to and takes up extra time because mom’s the boss? Well here are a ton of coo”learning” toys for that special little sprite. Please note the following must have factors: expensive, ability to be played with at work (and/or left on the boss’ desk) and sort of hoity toity. Also from Fab.com which sort of indicates you’re cool? Check out these inscrutable toys from Beyond 123.

That lady that is ALWAYS cold: Next time her teeth are chattering, simply clear your throat and meaningfully glance at the back of her chair. When you gift her the toasty warm surprise, ensure there’s a note inside that says “Keep it in the office woman!”

Ooooh! Candy! Yeah we’ve all got a co-worker who never fails to have treats on the desk. Keep em in line (get it?) with these Matyoshka dolls (they’re measuring cups but I do not care). Adorable! And perfect for playing with…or measuring.

The office lush. This is a category that is so rich with awesome presents. But I will stick with books, as they are awesome and (at least for me) a no-fail gift strategy. Try How to Booze: Cocktails and Unsound Advice OR The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto. This is one of those great gifts that pays dividends to the giver, year after year.

Got a foodie work friend? Check out this salt and pepper light switch. It’s super cool (see above), not too pricey and even foodies put salt on stuff right? How to spot a work foodie: They bring artichoke torte to the work potluck when everyone was secretly hoping for ambrosia.

Your boss and work bestie. Here’s where I can’t be of much help and probably no other “gifting” article will either. I will give you one hint though. Check out the kinds of publications the boss reads (blog/mags/business stuff). Those kinds of people spend a LOT of money trying to figure out what to sell to their demographic. Does she get The New Yorker? Try this desk diary. Is he a fan of Outside Mag (if not, he should be, it’s awesome), check out their gift guide. Paying attention to what they read, listen to and peruse online may give you a deeper window into their soul but chances are that that publication’s done a little gift post of their own.