Category Archives: Networking

What does it mean to be social?

I guess Facebook is kind of important with over 1 billion users. But, did you see their first ad campaign? Are they overdoing it a little comparing themselves to a chair? Here’s a great cartoon about it from my favorite marketing cartoonist, Tom Fishburne.

I still know a lot of people who are not on the Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter and their lives go on. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like chairs. I also know a lot of people who are on Facebook who don’t seem like they are accomplishing much of anything. But I guess they are trying to redefine being social and I’m all for progress.

Then there’s enterprise social, or using private social tools inside the firewall. There are a lot of players in that market too but I’ve worked with NewsGator, who is doing a great job of making big companies more social. Sure, it’s easy if you have a great corporate headquarters where everyone sits and gets free snacks. But, what about everyone outside of corporate? Don’t you want your corporate marketing people and your remote sales people to be better connected? What about your global supply chain? How about that consumer insights person in Asia that just ran a test on a new product that you may never see? If you’d like to learn more about building a successful social workplace, check out NewsGator’s latest white paper

What about people who are actually social? In our new neighborhood, where we’re all new and trying to build a community? We do things like get together – you know, in person – every Thursday night. And last night, we were sitting in our living room minding our own business just after it got dark and our doorbell rang. The guard dog sprung up from the floor and ran to the door and I was expecting a desperate politician or a gutter salesman. I was pleasantly surprised to look down and see a little pumpkin container filled with candy and a note. The note encouraged us to make a copy and share a “boo” with two other neighbors. What a nice change from e-mail chain letters right? We’re doing it tonight, making copies, filling containers with candy and ringing doorbells. What about you? Are you social?

How do you hire people?

There are lots of tools out there to help you hire people. But, let me ask you this – have we gotten better at hiring because of application management systems, standardized corporate assessment practices, and industrial psychologists? What about new social tools like Klout? Here’s an interesting article on how Klout recommends you consult their scoring system before making any hires and one man’s view of that:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/29/klout-would-like-potential-employers-to-consider-your-score-before-hiring-you-and-thats-stupid/ 

I have to admit, I signed up for Klout and got all wound up about it and realized my score was 10 on a scale that goes to 100. That’s not great but I’m going to play the game and see if my score improves. It may even get better with this blog post and your reaction to it.

I have some personal experience with industrial psychologists, don’t we all? A friend of mine recently spent a whole day being tortured by pre-work, online assessments, a series of personality and intellectual tests under time duress and then role plays that included responding to an e-mail box full of e-mails and acting out a live scenario. Really? I think I’d rather just pay for therapy so I’d get something out of it.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies – Tommy Boy. Do you remember the scene where Tommy (Chris Farley) was trying to make a sale using an old joke of his dad’s? His prospect said that he’d like to get a look at the new brake pad line before making a decision about buying break pads. Tommy was trying to overcome this obstacle with “when you’re trying to buy a good steak, do you stick your head up a bull’s ass or would you rather just take the butcher’s word for it?” but instead I think he suggested that his prospect stick his head up a butcher’s ass and there wasn’t any steak involved. I laughed until I cried. Eventually, he found his own style and was successful at influencing people using that style, not trying to be someone else.

I was in a meeting recently where two different senior people said that their interviewing style drives their HR people crazy but they focus on “intellectual curiosity” and have different ways of getting there. Their focus is on trying to get to know the person and how they think, not asking a bunch of questions about problem solving ability and conflict management. My favorite interviewing strategy is from Zappos.com. They are quite seriously looking for weirdness and trying to harness creativity to deliver great customer service.  They have some very different interview questions like “What’s your theme song? When you enter a room, what song should be playing?” Mine is probably “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. Why don’t we trust people to hire people anymore? Isn’t that how it used to be done when people spent an entire career at one company? I’d hire Chris Farley if he were still around.

Alumni Power

As I do a lot of networking, it’s amazing to be reminded of the power of alumni connections. It’s also fall and that means college football which fills huge stadiums all over the country with people dressed in matching sweatshirts, all cheering against their rivals. It seems that as the world gets busier and more fragmented, we appreciate connections to the past even more. Many people from my alma mater, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, have “ring” stories. You see, the college has a very distinctive class ring and a very high percentage of grads actually order the ring and wear it. I’m not going to lie, I dug mine out and dusted it off recently so I could see if it would bring me good luck or make some connections. There are legendary stories of alums all over the world running into and getting help from each other. I didn’t have my life saved in the ER by an alum or anything but I know an ER doc so it could happen. I’ve had a couple of good examples in the area of networking which started with me reaching out to alums and I heard back from them right away and had great conversations and they were very helpful. I made an assumption that the reason people help each other in that situation is that they are paying it back – someone probably helped them the same way. But who knows, maybe there is a real connection that people feel. I heard from a friend recently that it’s that way with sorority sisters as well. My friend’s daughter is at a big university and she is pledging or rushing, not sure what they call it, for a big sorority on campus. I can’t think about that without thinking about Animal House and wondering if they are going to have a toga party and wind up on double secret probation. But, similarly, my friend sought out people she knew to find a connection to that particular sorority and she did. A couple of e-mails later, this complete stranger was writing a letter of recommendation for a freshman that she never met just because she was a friend of a friend. There are varying statistics out there about the job search and what percentage of people get a job because of a connection – the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which seems pretty reputable, says that 70% of all jobs are found through networking. In my search online, the first post I found was for Yale, they actually have the Yale Career Network, a job board, and their own web site called STAY at www.yale.edu/stay/ for networking. So, why does anyone submit their resume to a company online anyway? That whole process seems like a huge waste of time right? I think LinkedIn has done a brilliant thing by allowing you to search alumni and sort by the year they graduated and what industry they work in and where they live. That’s an incredible resource and should be leveraged to it’s fullest extent by colleges and universities as the great demographic shift makes the market even more competitive for incoming freshman. I guess Yale gets it, what about your college or university? So, put on your old alumni sweatshirt or ring or whatever and cheer for your team – and if someone on your team needs a little help, do what you can.