Your Guide to Job Search and Personal Branding on Twitter

Twitter--the 140 character social networking site--is becoming increasingly useful for job seekers. It doesn't work for everyone, of course, but it can certainly turbo-charge your networking, a key strategy for successful job hunting. It can also be an effective part of your personal branding campaign.

Here, then, is a (somewhat) definitive link guide to getting a new job (or losing your current one) through Tweeting. (I put this together for a client, so thought it would be nice to share).

Getting Started on Twitter--If you're new to Twitter. . .

Twitter Skills & Culture--You'd think it would be easy to type 140 characters and go, but like all social networks, Twitter has a culture that requires some skill to navigate. Ignore this section at your own risk.

Pimp Your Profile--Think of your Twitter profile as your "digital interview suit." First impressions count.

Twitter for Job Search--The nitty gritty of job searching on Twitter.

People and Sites to Follow

Job Search Tips and Tools

Case Studies

Twitter Brand Building--The Twitter job search is also about building your online brand.

Twitter Fails--Twitter isn't rocket science. These mistakes can be avoided with a little forethought.

May 16, 2009 in career, Career Management 2.0, job search, personal branding, social media, social networking | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Evaluating Contributions to a Social Network

As we incorporate social networking tools into learning, I know that some of us are thinking about how to encourage and evaluate meaningful contributions to and participation in those networks.  Dave Duarte's list of 20 Ways to Evaluate Contributions to a Social Network seems like a good start. Many of these items are open to further discussion (i.e., what's a "well-structured argument" look like?), but in those conversations, you can arrive at additional insights and ideas for thinking about how people are contributing.

You could also easily set up a Social Network Challenge (along the lines of the Comment Challenge), using some of these ideas. I could see, for example, doing a week-long challenge that involved the following tasks.

  • Pose a question to the group
  • Build on the ideas of another in the network.
  • Tell a story
  • Make a recommendation
  • Post a "Top 10" list
  • Offer help or answer a question for another person in the network
  • Use a graphic to illustrate an idea

This would encourage the most valuable social networking behaviors in a way that's more fun than simply posting a list of "Guidelines for Participation." It also makes more sense to teach and encourage these behaviors before plunging into evaluating them.

What do you think of this list? Have you been evaluating contributions to social networks? How have you been doing it? What have the results been?

April 28, 2009 in learning, social media, social networking | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

But Do They Work?

One of the big questions I'm frequently asked about using social media is whether or not the tools "work."  Depending on the questioner, this can mean a variety of things, but underlying everything is one issue--will my department or organization improve if we use social media?

Via Shel Holtz and Workplace Learning Today comes yet another "yes," to that question. Shel cites a brief published by the Aberdeen Group, titled Web 2.0, Talent Management, and Employee Engagement (a PDF file) that finds:

  • 52% of organizations that adopt blogs, wikis, and social networking tools (among others) achieved best-in-class performance levels compared to 5% for those that didn’t.
  • The same tools were used within organizations that achieved an 18% year-over-year improvement in employee engagement. Companies that didn’t use these tools grew engagement by a mere 1%. (An aside--not sure how "employee engagement" was measured).
  • A 45% increase in spending on “software that links to networking site (e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn) or other communities of practice” as part of the recruiting process will increase internal recruiters’ ability to connect with potential recruits. These tools also let employees post messages to “lend a voice to the market on the work culture at a particular company.”
  • Social networking is being used to connect newly-hired employees with mentors and coaches as well as build relationships with other employees. “In addition,” the brief notes, “blogs and wikis are also used as a means for a new employee to provide content/commentary on a topic at which he/she is an expert where others within the organization are struggling.” (Note--see my post last week on Lisa Johnson's keynote and the need to engage Millenials at work. This is what we're talking about here. I heard the same thing from the Gen Y folks at my Social Media Game workshop)
  • 38% of organizations surveyed for an upcoming study from Aberdeen said the biggest growth in learning and development over the next year will come from “informal learning.” The investment these companies will make in blogs, social networks, and communities will “stimulate peer-to-peer learning and ideation, as well as facilitate communities of practice in which organizations can leverage the collective knowledge of their employees."

These findings echo what we saw in the eLearning Guild's 360 Report on eLearning 2.0 (webinar today, by the way). Those organizations that were making the greatest use of Web 2.0 technologies reported the strongest benefits, particularly in accommodating learner needs, increasing access to information and improving dissemination of information. As a result these organizations were increasing their investments in these technologies more than those organizations that had less experience with social media.

Pretty quickly the question isn't going to be "will the tools work?" but "how can we make them work for us?" Throwing up a wiki or a blog and hoping for the best isn't going to cut it. But doing it right can make some significant improvements to organizational effectiveness.

October 02, 2008 in Learning Trends, Management, Organizations, social networking, Web 2.0 | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Web 2.0 Wednesday: Find an Expert

Web20wednesday300x79_2 Over on the Work Literacy: Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals Ning where we're on day three of the course, one of the more active forum discussions has been on getting value out of LinkedIn.

Fortunately for us, Tony Karrer is a whiz at using LinkedIn to find expertise and he's recorded a couple of excellent screencasts to show the rest of us how it's done.

For this week's Web 2.0 Wednesday activity, we're going to use what Tony's been showing us to search for expertise. All of us have something we need or want to learn more about and Tony's strategies offer some great ways to do this.

  • Think of a topic or area you want to know more about. Maybe it's expertise in using a specific tool or more knowledge about a particular process or theory. It could be that you have a particular problem you need help solving--whatever.
  • Think of some associated keywords.Start broad, but also consider words that can help you refine your search. In Tony's screencast example (below), "Moodle" and "WizIQ" are the two search terms he's using. Obviously Moodle alone would return one set of options, while adding WiZIQ considerably narrows the search. For more on search, try this page.
  • Watch Tony's screencast and then follow his advice to see if you can find a subject matter expert in the area(s) that interest you.
  • Make contact--Tony also has some suggestions on that, based on how closely you may be linked to the person.

If you do the exercise, please let me know, either in comments or by blogging about it and tagging it with "web2.0wednesday" and "workliteracy." This is one of those knowledge worker skills we all need to develop, so I'll be curious to see how it goes.

October 01, 2008 in knowledge sharing, learning, professional development, social networking, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Wednesday, Work Literacy | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags:

Using Learners' "Technoprofiles" to Integrate Social Media and Learning

JimenezframeworkVia Christine Martell at Blog Cascadia comes this learning framework from Ray Jimenez on choosing social media for learning. It's based on Ray's reading of Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research.

Ray points out that the tendency in using social media for learning is to force creator status on everyone:

The tendency in early adoptions of social networking in learning is the over emphasis on learners becoming active participants. Since Wikis, Blogs and discussions are abundant and tools easy to apply, trainers tend to emphasize the contributions of learners by postings and comments.

This is unfortunate because not all learners may wish or are ready to make comments or participate in discussions, and yet may be willing to do something else. The biggest downside is that, trainers basing on this early experience, tend to conclude that "social learning and networking" does not really work because learners seem not too excited in making comments. I have heard this moaning so many times.

The best instructional design recognizes that you need to meet learners where they're at if you want build the right scaffolding. Forcing people who are naturally lurkers (as most learners are) to move immediately into actor or creator mode may be counter-productive, as it will inevitably turn off your learners.

The solution, Ray suggests, is to create learner "technoprofiles" as he's done here. This framework helps us consider the best strategies to consider in developing learning experiences that use social media.

Christine points out in her post that since we're still in the early adoption phases, learning professionals might need to be focusing more on creating podcasts, videos, screencasts and online presentations that appeal to the lurker audience. I tend to agree, much as I hate to say it. My dream would be that everyone is a creator, but that's obviously not going to be happening, at least in the shorter term. I think that part of the issue is that people don't see themselves as learners. It is also a degree of technophobia. 

Although we need to spend time developing things like podcasts, videos, ect., I think that we need to be finding ways to help people move into actor and creator status too, recognizing that this may be a slow transition for many people. This is where using creator tools (i.e., blogs, wikis, etc.) to deliver "lurker" learning can help to move people forward--for example, embedding short, multimedia learning chunks into a blog and encouraging people to try commenting.  Adding polls and rating systems may be a good intermediary step to include--it allows people to act on the online content without having to make a full creator kind of commitment.

Using tools that help people bridge the distance between familiar and unfamiliar technologies may also be helpful. Posterous, for example, which allows you to blog entirely through email, seems like a great opportunity for encouraging people to try creating social media.

For me, Ray's framework harkens back to some of what I was thinking about a few months ago when I drew the social media helix. Ultimately I believe that the most valuable and long-lasting learning occurs at the creator level, not at the lurker level. Ray's chart highlights this--check out the "Results" row where the learning result for lurkers is "retention," while for actors it's "application" and for Creators it actually changes work behavior. From a workplace learning perspective, clearly finding ways to move people from lurker to actor or creator is part of improving the quality of that learning.

So the real question becomes what is the proper scaffolding to make this occur? How do we take lurkers and  turn them into actors and creators? And I don't want to hear that we should just let people stay at the lurker level. That's like saying that we should just not worry about doing a good job as learning professionals. For me, part of the mission is to help people be better learners, not just to transmit specific content to them. Keeping people at the lurker level is a way to create followers, not creative thinkers and leaders.

UPDATE--Be sure to check out the comments where some really interesting discussions are happening.

July 01, 2008 in learning, professional development, social networking, technology stewardship, Web 2.0 | | Comments (18) | TrackBack (0)

Combating "Birds of a Feather" Syndrome

Marbles For the past few days I've been deep into thinking and learning about homophily, our tendency to connect to people who share similar backgrounds, experiences, interests and values. I've been excited to see a conversation beginning to occur both here in comments and at other blogs. It's interesting to see the conversations evolve and new pieces being added to the puzzle.

As I continue my reading, discussions and thinking, I've delved into some concepts I haven't visited for awhile, most particularly the nature of networks and two types of behaviors that occur to build them--bonding and bridging activities. I think that these offer additional ways to think about the issue of homophily and give us some strategies for creating a better balance for healthier network growth.

Adaptive Networks and the Role of Bonding and Bridging Activities
If you believe in the value of networked learning, it's because you've observed that there's value in the social capital that we develop through our participation in networks. In other words, we benefit from our connections to the people in our network.

However, as Lenore Newman and Ann Dale observe in their paper on Network Structure, Diversity and Proactive Resilience Building, not all social networks are created equal:

". . . networks composed of "bridging" links to a diverse web of resources strengthen a community's ability to adapt to change, but networks composed only of local "bonding" links which compose constraining social norms and foster group homophily can reduce resilience."

This paper raises a couple of issues for me--the idea of bonding and bridging activities and the notion that we need a healthy balance of both to create resilient networks.

Clearly it's the bonding opportunities that attract most of us to social media and the development of our personal networks. How excited we become by finding legions of like-minded people who finally "get us." It's the many instances of "me too" and "I've had that experience" that seem to most draw us together. They are a big part of what makes learning through social media so rewarding--we feel part of a large learning family.

These bonding activities help us build strong networks, but how resilient are those networks in adapting to change? Again from Newman and Dale:

"A densely developed social capital network can, for example, lead to the exclusion of outsiders, make excess claims on group members, and restrict individual freedom (Portes, 1998). Bonding capital has the potential to hinder social innovation by 1) cutting off actors from needed information and, 2) imposing social norms that discourage innovation.

My interest in homophily developed as part of my consideration of why edubloggers and bloggers involved in workplace learning were not having more dialogue on 21st century literacy skills. I realize now that what I was observing was that the bonding behaviors for both groups have been very strong, creating internal cohesion, and a great sense of community. However there have been fewer bridging behaviors connecting the two communities, effectively cutting each group off from learning more from the other. This, in turn, may seriously impact both groups' abilities to adapt to the changes they are currently experiencing.

Bridging behaviors, argue Newman and Dale are what help us create resilient networks:

Bridging social capital allows actors to access outside information and overcome social norms with support from outside the local network, in addition to increasing access to diverse forms of other capital. Because bridging capital brings in new and potentially novel information, it is here that bonding capital provides the group resilience needed to absorb the benefits of bridging capital; the two capitals are complementary. The sheer amount of social capital is not likely to be a good indicator of how well a community will be able to engage problems. It is a dynamic balance of bonding and bridging social capital that builds resilience and makes the difference between a small community “getting by” or “getting ahead” (Dale and Onyx 2005).

What strikes me here is this quote: "The sheer amount of social capital is not likely to be a good indicator of how well a community will be able to engage problems." 

Right now, we have a huge quantity of social capital that is being developed every day. If I look at the communities I'm dealing with, for example, new bloggers come online constantly, adding their voices to the conversation. But the issue isn't the quantity, of course. It's the mix of bonding vs. bridging that goes on that truly is the measure of the effectiveness of the network, both on a large scale, as well as in individual personal learning networks. If my personal learning network consists of people who largely think as I do, then I'm focusing too much on bonding and not enough on bridging and need to find a way to develop greater bridging social capital. It's why sometimes I feel like I'm stagnating ("getting by") rather than growing ("getting ahead.").

Bridge Developing More Bridging Social Capital
The question becomes then, how to engage in more bridging? I actually think it begins with diagnosing my tendencies toward homophily--a homophily self-assessment if you will. This is something I've started to do here and, through comments, discovered that Tom Hamilton is doing on his own blog. The first step in solving a problem is to admit you have it.

I can also start building bridges myself between the various communities I belong to, something that Meryn Stol suggested I do.

But these are relatively simple steps that don't get at some of my deeper concerns. What I'm wondering now are things like:

  • How do I find and connect to more diverse voices online? As I said the other day, I don't know that this is an issue of me being more interdisciplinary--I already read a fairly diverse set of materials. This is more about finding the voices that don't echo what I already believe. I'm honestly not sure how to do that? How do I do a search on "the opposite of The Bamboo Project"?
  • What do I do about not having access to a lot of other perspectives? How do you connect to groups of people who are not online and who may not be part of your physical network either?
  • What are the best ways to build bridges between communities? I can do as Meryn suggested, visit various blogs and leave comments and links to pull the two groups together, but does that work? And if only a few people do it, can you really achieve the critical mass necessary to build the bridges?
  • How do you get homophilous communities to be more open? One of my ongoing frustrations with building bridges between academic and workplace learning communities (both on and off-line) is that both seem to be closed to the perspectives of the other. The work world is dismissive of education as being too "academic" and not getting the real world, while educators feel that businesses don't understand the pressures and issues that they live with. Each may be speaking some truths, but I also think that these are symptoms of the closed networks that each group has created. Homophily breeds intolerance and polarization.
  • How can we get technology to help? The current state of social media is that it tends to build strong bonds, but it doesn't necessarily contribute to building bridges. Nat Torkington has some ideas here on how to mix things up. I'd like to actually see these at work in social software.

This is obviously an ongoing issue for me, something I'm trying to understand as I honestly believe that we will not get the full benefit of social media until we can figure out how to build more resilient networks through bridging social capital.

What ideas do you have for how we could build more bridging behaviors and opportunities into our online activities? How can we find more diverse voices and create connections between different communities so we could learn from each other?

Photos via Michelle Brea and WisDoc

April 28, 2008 in Blogging, knowledge sharing, learning, Learning Networks, participatory culture, personal learning environment, professional development, social networking, Web 2.0 | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Why the Internet is Making Me Stupid

Birds_of_a_feather2 I learned a new word this week--"homophily," which is the tendency for people to associate and bond with others who share their interests, values, culture, demographics, class etc. This is the all-too-familiar online behavior I was remarking on earlier this week in my post on 21st century workplace literacy. There I noted that it seems like edubloggers tend to associate online with other edubloggers, while the workplace learning folks are talking to other workplace learning professionals. And it seems like there's little cross-communication happening between the two groups. I plan to come back to that discussion, especially after seeing all the great comments, but right now I'm fascinated by the whole homophily idea and how social media tools seem to further strengthen this very human tendency.

It was Amy Gahran's post, Breaking out of the Echo Chamber, that helped me identify the phenomenon. It's something I've noticed before, but didn't realize had a name attached to it. I've been thinking that being online has been this fabulous learning experience (which it definitely has been in many ways), but after following Amy's trail of links, I can also see that it also has the potential to make me dumber. She points to an interview with Ethan Zuckerman and Solana Larsen in which Zuckerman says:

“We know so little about one another, and what we do know is generally so wrong, that our first instinct is to try to shut each other off. …We have to work a whole lot harder. We can’t just assume that being connected [via the net] solves these problems. If you let us work it out on our own, we tend to reinforce our own prejudices and stereotypes. . .

“Cass Sunstein, an amazing legal scholar, says that one of the dangers of the internet is that we’re only hearing like voices, and that makes us more polarized. Homophily can make you really, really dumb. What’s incredible about the net is we have this opportunity to hear more voices than ever. But the tools we tend to build to it have us listening to the same voices again and again."

Social media--blogs, social bookmarking, social networks--all of these can be tremendous ways for us to find and bond with like-minded people online. In fact, these tools have allowed us to find even MORE people like us than we tended to encounter in "meat space." The problem is that we'll tend to seek out ONLY like-minded people, looking for groups, blogs, etc. that reinforce our preconceived notions and our personal interests. We then start to live in an online world where we don't see or hear other voices.

Worse, I think we're living under this delusion that we're actually BROADENING our experiences because we're connecting to such large groups of people. I suspect all that does is further reinforce our pre-existing beliefs while at the same time making us believe that somehow we're being broad-minded because there are so many more people in our network. More of the same thinking isn't exactly a recipe for learning.

Partially this is a human thing--we tend to build relationships on finding the commonalities. But it's being encouraged by the technologies:

  • We go to Amazon or Netflix and get recommendations for books and movies based on what other people like us are reading or watching.
  • On Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, we tend to first connect with the people we already know in real-life who tend to share our same values and world-view. Then we connect to their friends (who presumably also share similar world-views) and to seek out groups etc. that fit in with our interests and comfort zones. I know, for example, that as a Democrat, I've made zero attempt to find Facebook groups for Republicans. I don't even look at them.
  • As I've already noticed, many of us operate within the same narrow blogging fields. Edubloggers seek out other edubloggers, nonprofits seek out other nonprofits. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this--except that if these are the ONLY blogs in our feed readers. (Here's a test, by the way--go check your reader right now and see how many blogs you have in there that come from industries and occupations other than your own. If you do, I'll guess it's because you may also have blogs related to personal interests, etc. Do you have anything in there that doesn't MATCH what you already think? I know I don't have too many).

All of this has the impact of making me dumber. I know this. I think it's been the source of many of my instances of writer's block here. I also can see how it would make me a little lazy as a thinker--not as many challenges to my worldview. Certainly I get comments and suggestions that have me tinkering with the edges of my ideas, but am I encountering things that fundamentally shake my worldview or at least force me to examine my own? And if I do, do I actually examine my view or do I dismiss what I see, read or hear? I'm ashamed to say that many times I do.

The question becomes, what to do about it? If this is something to truly break out of (and I think it is), then how to do that?

That's something I'm going to delve into more deeply in another post. Through Amy's links I found a few ideas. I also found some interesting stuff on my own that I want to explore.

In the meantime--what do you think? Do you see homophily going on in your online interactions? Do you think it's making you dumber? What are you doing about it?

Photo via desert trumpet.

April 24, 2008 in learning, Learning Networks, participatory culture, personal learning environment, PLE, professional development, social networking, Web 2.0 | | Comments (16) | TrackBack (2)

The Stages of Personal Learning Networks

I'm out the door, but wanted to share this.  Jeff Utecht has come up with a nice graphic depicting the stages of developing a personal learning network (PLN) that I think captures the different phases of using social media for learning. You can see the graphic here. (I'd share, but his Flickr license is All Rights Reserved.)

Jeff's stages are:

"Stage 1 Immersion: Immerse yourself into networks. Create any and all networks you can find where there are people and ideas to connect to. Collaboration and connections take off.

Stage 2 Evaluation: Evaluate your networks and start to focus in on which networks you really want to focus your time on. You begin feeling a sense of urgency and try to figure out a way to “Know it all.”

Stage 3 Know it all: Find that you are spending many hours trying to learn everything you can. Realize there is much you do not know and feel like you can’t disconnect. This usually comes with spending every waking minutes trying to be connected to the point that you give up sleep and contact with others around you to be connected to your networks of knowledge.

Stage 4 Perspective: Start to put your life into perspective. Usually comes when you are forced to leave the network for awhile and spend time with family and friends who are not connected (a vacation to a hotel that does not offer a wireless connection, or visiting friends or family who do not have an Internet connection).

Stage 5 Balance: Try and find that balance between learning and living. Understanding that you can not know it all, and begin to understand that you can rely on your network to learn and store knowledge for you. A sense of calm begins as you understand that you can learn when you need to learn and you do not need to know it all right now."

This has been my experience, although I'd reverse stages 2 and 3. I found that I first tried to learn it all before I began evaluating my participation and trying to decide on the right networks. And I agree with a few of Jeff's commenters that the stages might best be represented as a cycle that people move through several times.

Right now, I think I'm between Stages 4 and 5, still trying to find that ever-elusive balance. What about you? Where are you in this process?

April 03, 2008 in learning, Learning Networks, personal learning environment, PLE, professional development, social networking | | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

In Which I'm (Almost) Convinced of the Value of Twitter

                   

I've been trying Twitter off and on for months now and just couldn't get excited about it. I hear all these great things, but somehow it just wasn't connecting for me, which is a little unusual since I tend to take pretty quickly to new technologies.  So when Jeff Nugent from the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching Excellence emailed me about what he, Britt Watwood and Bud Deihl were experiencing with Twitter, we decided a conversation on the benefits of Twitter was in order.  Thus was born our most recent podcast, during which they educate me about what I've been missing. It was recorded as our previous conversation was with the Pretty May Plug-in for Skype.

I have to say that these guys make a pretty compelling case for sticking with Twitter. Among their reasons:

  • It's another channel for sharing ideas and coming up with new ones.
  • It's a great way to get quick questions answered and to get links to articles and resources.
  • It builds community, too. You get get 140 character windows into what's happening with people you may know through other venues, which helps build trust and connection--the basic currencies of the social web.

Of course there's more in the podcast, so take a listen here or just click on the title in the player above.

A few links we referenced in our discussion:

And some recents Twitter-related posts from Jeff, Britt and Bud:

Jeff was also kind enough to send me some other resources to further persuade me:

After we recorded the call, Sue Waters, who may be the biggest Twitter addict I know, tweeted me to let me know that I'm basically a loser if I use the web-based version of Twitter. According to her, to get the full power of the tool, I needed to download Twhirl and sign up for Tweetscan.

Twhirl allows me to, among other things, receive automatic updates when new posts appear on Twitter, and Tweetscan lets me sign up for RSS feeds to searches of Twitter conversations. So I can put in my Twitter ID, for example, and find out if people are talking about me, part of that whole monitoring your online reputation thing (or perhaps simple personal paranoia). I can also look for topics and trends, something Britt, Jeff and Bud mentioned was so valuable in our podcast.

Wanting to give Twitter another chance, I took Sue's advice. I will admit that Twhirl is making monitoring Tweets a little less overwhelming, which has been one of my main gripes about Twitter. The jury's still out on Tweetscan, but I'm assuming it will be equally useful.

I can't say that I've been entirely converted, but I'm beginning to see the light. If you're on the fence, maybe the guys at VCU can convince you to give Twitter a try. And if you've already been converted, drop me something in comments about your favorite power uses. I'm open to whatever I can learn.

(Mea Culpa program note--I had some kind of brain cramp at the beginning of the interview and referred to Britt as "Britt Atwood" instead of "Britt Watwood." I'm apparently name-challenged, so Britt, I sincerely apologize. Bud, I would like to point out that at least I spelled your last name correctly this time. Jeff, the next time we talk it'll be your turn for me to screw something up, so get ready.)   

UPDATE--Be sure to check out Sue Waters' post on Using Twitter--lots of great resources!

April 02, 2008 in learning, Learning Networks, personal learning environment, PLE, professional development, social networking | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

With Web 2.0, You Can Run, But You Can't Hide: Tools and Resources for Managing Your Online Reputation

In a few weeks I'll be doing a presentation on social media and public relations for the Philadelphia Black Public Relations Society, so this video via Escape from Cubicle Nation is very timely. It's from  Gary Vaynerchuck who argues that in the transparent world of Web 2.0 it will be impossible to have multiple identities. "You are who you are online," he says. No more can you be "one person for the chicks" and another person for your business associates. His conclusion? The "forces of good" can now win, because the best people will rise to the top, their actions and quality of work apparent to all.

That's a really powerful idea for both organizations and individuals. It's also a dangerous one if you aren't  careful. You have to be on top of your game because if you aren't, then people will know it. You have to keep learning, because if you don't, your outdated skills will show. That's not to say that you can't screw up, but if you do, then you won't be able to hide. It will be out there for people to see, so  you'll have to acknowledge and deal with what you've done. How you address mistakes will then become part of that public record too.

Monitoring and managing your online reputation becomes a critical success skill for both individuals and organizations in a global trust economy. In case you don't believe it, check out this survey. And don't forget The Transparent CEO.  So how do you do this? Below are some resources to get you started.

Tools and Resources for Monitoring and Managing Your Online Reputation

I'd love to hear from you about your favorite reputation resources and your thoughts on Gary's assertion that you can't have multiple personas in a Web 2.0 world.
 

Rss If you liked this post, then you may want to sign up to be automatically notified when I add new content. Learn more here or click on the button to the left to grab the feed.

March 30, 2008 in Career Management 2.0, online identity, professional development, social networking, transparency | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Next »