just plug in

“Without continual growth and progress,
such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”

Where is your office? Do you have a traditional work arrangement in a corporate environment or are you on the road more than a broken yellow line? Is your office in a corner of your home and are you one of the new virtuals? Perhaps your office is in a black bag in the form of a lap top and you don’t leave home without it, ever.

More and more people are working the mobile/virtual way these days. The advantages are many and although “more spare time”  seems to be one of them, it can be merely a sad and unreachable illusion.

Going virtual or in-house (<-your own) solves many economical issues and is also an green or pro-environmental alternative.

Pros
• Less traffic = less pollution = less time lost due to commuting
• Less company overhead = company money saved = more money earned potential
• Less time away from home = cut day care costs for aging parents or smaller children
• Less stress = less friction at home and at work = less illness = less time off from work

And while these all sound great, related and unexpected complications will most likely arise. Those that have the opportunity to clock in when they want tend to do just that.  Anytime, anywhere.  Converse to the advantages, disadvantages loom and can easily cloud an otherwise sunny virtual day.

Cons
• Longer working hours, because you can and it’s there.
• Sleep is disrupted because minds are preoccupied and wander to your in-house, virtual office more easily.
• Requires individuals to be self-driven and enterprising – not everyone is.
• Less commitment to colleagues and employers, as well as to clients or customers due to less developed personal relationships and less face-to-face interaction.

These disadvantages are weighty but with so many clear-cut advantages, there has to be a way to make it work. Given the continuing state of the economy, it would appear that going virtual is becoming more popular and will probably be around for a while, if not forever.

5 Rules for Going Virtual – How to Make it Work

1.  If you are self-employed or work with a small group, clearly define all roles. Written job descriptions and /or contracts with specific duties outlined will distribute the work load evenly while creating and presenting clear expectations for all.

2.  Have defined working hours. Allotting time for email, research, and conference calls will assist in efforts to not overdo it. Rules like, “No computer after 7pm” may seem unreasonable at first but will force you to be more productive during daytime hours.

3.  DO NOT have your computer in your bedroom. How can you possibly rest soundly with a constant work reminder just feet away? When I first started working virtually four years ago, I fell into terrible sleeping habits.  It wasn’t until I moved my computer out of my room that I was able to sleep soundly for 6-7 hours each night.

4.  Make an effort to meet with co-workers/employers and clients or customers regularly, face-to-face, as often as is feasible.  Skype helps considerably, but it isn’t a perfect solution, find the balance of real life and virtual relationship building that works for you.

5.  Create goals that force you to grow and stretch, that are difficult, that improve your work ethic, but it is extremely important to not only make them attainable but also achievable.

With Skype, Twitter, Facebook, G+, ubiquitous wifi, and mobile “everything,” the crazy technologies foreshadowed in a Dick Tracy comic strip are no longer so far-fetched.  Until “Beam me up” is a reality, virtual is surely the wave to catch.

But it doesn’t work without effort and it certainly is not easy.  And it isn’t for everyone.

The author of the quote at the top?  “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” <-Benjamin Franklin said it… OVER 200 years ago.  Pretty smart guy, then and now.

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.  

Is relevance just a matter of perspective?  Of course, it is.

I attended a marketing summit recently.  It was not a recruiting conference or a recruiting unconference.  It was a meeting of local marketing minds from mobile, public relations, social media, and…, wait for it…, the soon-to-be extinct direct marketing.  I have attended multiple tech conferences and enjoyed them, and many, many, many HR and Recruiting conferences.  But this was my first marketing conference – if you don’t count a Seth Godin concert or a Scott Stratten sing-a-long (with greatest respect, as I admire both immeasurably).

It was a great opportunity to meet folks, within my own community, fearlessly working and trying to navigate the new rules of marketing, just as I am.  Typically, I am hopping on a plane or driving for at least four hours for such an opportunity.  Who knew I could be inspired and learn from just down the street?  True, there were only three or four of us tweeting, but the information and deets shared were relevant because of our location and our chosen fields.

We are all battling the same demons:  How many email campaigns before we get deemed spam by our receivers?  Is print marketing dead?  Is social all it’s cracked up to be?  Can you really measure it?  Do we really want to help each other?  How much more can we possibly learn? Are there really that many platforms and do I need to be present on all of them? Whew…, makes even the most level head spin.

No one is teaching this – no formal educator anyway.  We are learning it on our own, organically, as we go.  When last I checked, my alma mater was still not offering social or mobile marketing classes.  Why is that?  Has it been determined, somewhere, by the academic gods that  social media is a flash-in-the-pan?  That mobile is just a fad?  I, for one, am very happy to declare that they aren’t going away.  They aren’t going to ride off into the sunset, like Polaroid cameras and Playtex bras.  They aren’t going to sing one last song for the road, at least not until the next greatest elevation of innovation.  This is it, the latest and greatest.  Learn it, embrace it.  Use it to do your job better.  Listen to what others are saying and doing.  And share what you are doing.

When all is said and done, perspective is everything. How you use what you use.  What you need to “make it work” depends on you – your approach, your management and maintenance, what is relevant to you, your family, your friends, your business.  G+ may be just what you were looking for as an individual, but how will it work for your business?  LinkedIn may be perfect for your HR department, but how about marketing?  Twitter may be the be-all-end-all for viral marketing, but  does it really make a recruiter’s job easier?

Facebook sits on the throne, but how long will be the reign? With lightning speed, functionalities change or increase.  Sometimes, the crown becomes crooked or tarnished – but is always righted and shiny once passed along.  The elevation of innovation.

Here lie the graves of:  reel-to-reel, facsimile, cassettes, Napster, dictaphone, pagers, and of what once was Friendster -  What will be next?

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for the online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.

“The phone is bigger than any other medium.” – Joel Cheesman

Joel Cheesman is the first to tell you that he fell into the whole Cheeshead thing accidentally. Sounds like a nice mistake, huh? Joel, the Head Cheese, is an avid blogger on recruitment issues and has a considerable following. He is a huge advocate of using the internet and technology and how the recruitment industry can benefit from close involvement. “As I blogged, I got more business. Clients would call me and say, I’d like to retain your services.” Instead of making a bunch of calls, Joel was taking them.

In 2005, Joel followed through on his interest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and utilizing his entrepreneurial nature, learned enough about it to garner business through its consistent use. He started his blog, “I thought it was a cool, progressive thing to do.” Yes, it was Joel and we are sure glad you did. He liked to blog and he was good at it. As a matter of fact, two guys you may have heard of, Jason Davis and John Sumser, sat up and noticed what Joel was writing. How to monetize this worthy endeavor? He made a few calls and was able to bring in a featured sponsor or two.

2008 brought new challenges. “It got to a point where too much news was coming in too quickly. I could either stop blogging or get some help. ” Joel made the right choice and took an office, hired some great folks and now, here he is today, “ready to make a mobile play.” Taking advantage of recruiting’s flexible nature, Joel and some developers created a new app for the iPhone called mJob – Mobile Recruiting Solutions. This news is hot and exciting. He describes this path as “growing intelligently.”

The idea of a computer in your pocket? How cool is that? Joel is an early adopter, owning his first palm in 2002. The smart phone is here to stay as evidenced by the iPhone and others like it. This rapidly emerging tech that has taken off like mad in just a year’s time triggered something in Joel’s mind. Understanding that the SEO game in mobile is different, Joel knew he had to get educated about it and fast. “I have always felt kind of bitter about missing the first 2.0 wave. And now, mobile – it’s taking us back to 1996.” Yep, the innovation curve has started over again. Joel continues, “I think we will see new brands, new businesses. And I thought, let’s start a business where we power the backbone. There will be a day when every job will have mobile component and I wanted to help companies build that.”

Joel is a system’s thinker – he sees the forest and it is green. His words, “All the things that are going on, how can we attract candidates like never before? How we grow, how we engage? I am looking ahead five, ten, twenty years down the road.” The B2B angle is already live, a whitepaper has been released, and consumer play/private data is set to launch any day now.

What difference does Joel hope to make in recruiting? Joel brings a voice that’s never been here. He hopes to connect recruiters with what’s going on through mobile and then connect recruiters to candidates in the consumer play. Twitter and facebook are really talking about mJob. “Proximity marketing plays into this, an instantaneous introduction. This introduces a lot of new ways to do this job. I.5 billion people around the world are online, but 4 billion have a phone. There are twice as many phones as televisions. The sheer volume, the sheer reach is staggering.”

Yep, the phone is bigger.

Originally posted in Bonus Track on RecruitingBlogs.com March 12, 2009 — so mobile recruiting has been around for awhile….

**Joel Cheesman left mJob in 2009 to take his innumerable talents to Jobing.com until April of this year and  just launched Mobsicle this past July…

As someone who has worked in HR and Recruiting for 10 years, I can tell you how tough it is to find good candidates.  The old methods like newspapers, radio, and traditional job boards aren’t working.  Gen X and Millennials don’t traditionally read the paper or listen to the local radio station.  Job board posting often result in hundreds of overqualified or underqualified job applicants.  What if there was a way to reach a targeted audiences locally without the spray and pray method of social media, newspapers, or radio?

There is. . .

My friend, Ron Cariker and I are teaming up to work on a new joint venture called, Texting4Jobs.  Texting4Jobs is a text message based job platform.  Prospective job seekers opt in by texting “T4J” to 67664, select the industry and metro area of their choosing.  Job seekers will receive no more than 4 texts per week making them aware of job opportunities in their target location and industry.  Companies work with Ron and I to post their openings based on the job opening’s industry. I’m excited about this venture for a number of reasons (Data according to the Mobile Marketing Association):

• 94% of text messages are read by the recipient.

• 70% of cell phone users use text as a way to communicate

• The average population sends more than 2 text messages per day.

• 18-24 year old consumers use texting more often than voice to communicate and spend on average 3 hours per week texting.

Interested in learning more?  As a job seeker, you can text “T4J” to 67664 to start receiving job alerts.  If you are business who is interested in sending job alerts to active job seekers in Oklahoma where we are rolling out this new service first, give me a shout at jessica@xceptionalhr.com.  Be sure to look for our website in the coming weeks as well.

As businesses begin to integrate social media into their long term strategies, they are looking for ways to take collaboration, coordination, and networking to the next level.  And Carlin Wiegner, CEO and co-founder of Cube Tree believes his company has the answer.

Last May, Cube Tree quietly released their new internal social media software just out of beta.   But before that, Wiegner and his business partner Ross Fubini were working for Symantec, a leading internet security company and found a need for a better way for employees housed in multiple locations to communicate and interface with one another on multiple projects.  Both Wiegner and Fubini tried tools like video conferencing, wikis, microblogging, and others for the purposes of knowledge transfer and idea creation but nothing fit quite right.

Cube Tree uses a FaceBook style platform that allows for internal company communication that integrates with systems including Twitter, Google Docs, WebEx, Salesforce and more.  Additional, they provide the ability to edit and update wikis with ease while allowing users an option to test drive the platform offering a Freemium option versus a free trial.  Freemium allows users to test drive all the features without limitations.  Depending on your business need, Cube Tree offers Basic, Professional, and Enterprise editions ranging from no cost to $5 per user per month.

One feature that I was particularly impressed with was their mobile options for users who are on the go.  Cube Tree seamlessly works on your smart phone including Blackberries and iPhones and even allows for instant messaging.  Companies that are seeking to be transparent can benefit from Cube Tree and their use of blogs allowing for thought leaders to generate discussion and influence business strategies or company culture.  The software also allows for manager and peer recommendations or “kudos” feature that is viewable on employees individual profiles.

Internal social media tools like Cube Tree can be used for more than project coordination and as a form of talent management tool.  Recruiters and Human Resource professionals can keyword search allowing for access to internal passive candidate profiles while also posting open positions on threads within the network.  This also allows the recruiting model to become flipped where associates can aggressively search for talent managers allowing them immediate interaction with recruiters and improving the internal candidate experience.

Companies should consider Cube Tree when shopping for internal and collaborative communication tools.  Their seamless integration with most any social media platform and leading business communication tools provide companies a way to develop, attract, and retain a company’s most valuable asset, their people.

Photo Credit Cultivation Posterous