The Shower and the Google Glasses, or is this about discretion?

So not only do I have to ask people to clean up their social media profiles, I now have to ask, do you have any Google glass photos that we need to worry about?

I'm not sure how worried to be about this (remember Justin.tv? no, I didn't think so), but I think it will mean that I have to have more discussions with people about are they really your friends if they take these pictures and post them online at Embarrassing Nightclub Photos.com?(No, not making it up and NSFW) and then describing how to remove these photos from social media services. I find it interesting that when making presentations about the social media work search that I have to discuss qualities and virtues such as discretion and friendship and the dangers of meanness to personal reputation.

What is Meetup?

This summary is from an in-house presentation that I delivered in early March 2013.

Meetup is an online social networking tool that is meant to connect people in the same geographic region who have the same interests to form a group online and then use calendaring and map software to meet In Real Life.

In fact, to form a meetup group, you must agree to meet in person.

Signing up for Meetup

You can sign in to Meetup using your email address and a password or you can connect with your Facebook account. Connecting with your Facebook account means you can immediately invite your Facebook friends to your Meetup groups. You can also see what groups your Facebook friends are a member of.

However, Meetup is useful for “out of network” matchmaking; for example, if you are the only person in your Facebook network who owns their own business, your Facebook friends are not the people who can help you write a business plan or get answers to your questions about VC funds. You can use Meetup to break into networks that are currently closed to you.

What does it cost?

Meetup is free for regular members, but there is a fee to form Meetup groups. Organizers can only run three Meetup groups at one time.

 In this case, if we formed a Career Knowledge Group for campus, but offered a variety of events, this is one Meetup. If we formed a Career Knowledge Group for Arts, Engineering and Education, and each with a separate group of members, we could not add a Science Meetup group without paying for an additional administrator account.

Since there are fees for Meetup groups, some organizers do ask members to pay a small fee when they attend their first meetup. Other Meetup groups are sponsored by groups or business organizations, which can offer some ad space for the sponsors on the Meetup group page.

What groups are on Meetup?

Groups are usually formed around hobbies, such as knitting and movie watching, while others are for educational, such as learn Spanish, and business purposes, such as the Startup Edmonton Meetup.

Some Meetups are even combinations of hobbies, businesses and education: for example, I belong to a vegetarian and gardening meetup which includes a potluck event to meet people and usually a presentation from a local entrepreneur, such as making straw bale homes.

Career services can make use of the educational and entrepreneurial meetups, but since we can also encourage people who are planning to relocate from or to Edmonton, to use Meetup to build a local community to alleviate homesickness.

Open and Closed Groups

Some groups are open meaning that you don’t have to be a member to see upcoming events, while others are closed and events are accessible to members only. Some closed groups only require a request to the organizers to join, while others will ask you to email the organizer with a sort of, why should you let me in to your Meetup group message. Some groups will allow you to remain a member even if you never attend a meetup, while others will kick out people who fail to show up to even one meeting, or who RSVP but fail to show up. All of these rules will depend on the organizer(s).

What does a group page look like? 

• Business Link Alberta 
• Conversational English, Vancouver Group 
• Vancouver Real Estate Investors Foreclosure Insider Club - this Meetup is sponsored, so you can see what a sponsored Meetup group could look like

What does the user dashboard look like? 

• There is a stream of events, including a list of Facebook friends that are on Meetup, as well as information about who has RSVPd to Meetups the user currently belongs to. 
• There is a calendar, which can include suggestions for Meetups that the user may not have registered for or if they are not yet a member of, though they all relate to the user’s interests 
• An editable list of user interests so the user can search for new Meetups.

Why Meetup? 

Meetup combines several familiar tools in one place, so people familiar with all of these tools do not have to learn new skills to use Meetup:

• Mapping Event planning, including RSVPs and group management 
• Calendars, which includes notifications of new meetups, importing calendars to existing services, such as Google calendar 
• Group formation and forums, as well as commenting on events and attendance monitoring 
• Tagging and categorization 
• Review services because attendees can add a review to an event after they have attended 

Facebook uses some of these services, but Meetup encourages out of network connections and socializing outside of Meetup. Meetup offers some solution for event management, though they have not currently worked out the ticketing and event payment process, should a fee by required by the event organizer.

Do you share the name of an [in]famous criminal?

Here's another reason why it is a good idea to verify by actually meeting with someone--or adding more descriptors to the search than their name--before Googling them: do they share the same name as a criminal?

Just this past week, police in BC alerted the public about a young woman who had been released from prison but who may still pose a threat to people and animals. Now, another young woman, from the same community, has come forward to say, we share the same name, but its not me. I would like to say that it was foresight on the part of this young woman, but more likely she got scared into making the announcement when she was almost arrested on the SkyTrain.

I'm wondering if you did an ego search on yourself and found that you had an evil twin by name, if you should add this info to your application, just so people don't jump to conclusions. 

Mistaken Internet Identity

Andy Elwood, a contributor at Forbes, has apparently been mistaken for the drunken, duct-taped passenger on the IcelandAir Flight, and he has decided to write about it to clear up the confusion.

This is actually something I have warned people about--not that the IcelandAir flight crew apparently has plastic ties on hand to deal with drunks, but that when you do a Google search on someone, that you are correctly matching the face to the name. This is actually one of the reasons why I don't like it when people tell me they searched someone on Google before an interview: they don't know that this is the person that they are deciding to interview, because they have never met them.

Luckily for Andy Elwood, he has a reputable platform where he can dispel the confusion and can refer to the story if there is every a question about his ability to hold his liquor. There are probably many cases of mistaken Internet identity where the person whose name is sullied can't remove the confusion--especially if employers make assumptions before a meeting. 

"Any teenager could have done what we did, with no money and better"

The Onion takes shots at TED and social networking gurus. And both deserve it, IMHO.

"Just keep looking like you're doing work, and people will pay you for it."

ALA Chat: Using Social Media for the Most Effective Job Search

The ALA just posted for an online career chat, Using Social Media for the most Effective Job Search, on February 23, 2012.

What is Google+?

Google+ has had a lot of press and this post is just a summary of some of the more interesting articles I have seen so far about the service.

The US Navy has released a guide to Google+ with plenty of links and resources, which includes this video that explains why you may want to accept an invite (and be assimilated, but that was probably an accidental irony).

Canadian Business also had a very good article about the competing models of Facebook and Google+, which may also help users decide if they want to accept the invite to Google+ and just what is in it for them (and Google).

And although I object to the use of "rockin"--which is on my blacklist next to "bitchin" and "synergize"--to describe a profile (or anything else), I liked many of the practical ideas in this CareerWorx slideshare about using Google+ for recruitment. This means I'm probably going to have to make a screencast about how to use Hangouts for interviews.

CareerWorx Google Plus Recruiting Strategy

View more presentations from Maysoun Mohamed

Right now, you can bleat all you want about Google+ but until your friends are on it, you probably aren't going to use it. And the longer it takes for them to get there, the quicker your attention will wane.

Legal Experts Stress That Social Media Background Checks Create Risks from Workforce Management

Legal Experts Stress That Social Media Background Checks Create Risks from Workforce Management argues that conducting a Google search on a candidate, not to mention looking at their Facebook profile, is akin to interviewing a candidate. I don't know if I would go that far for public results available from Google, though I do contend, stay out of Facebook for screening.

This argument may be enough to curb the practice:

Employers also should review their liability insurance programs, including employment practices coverage, to make sure they are covered if they are sued by employees or job prospects in connection with the use of social media"

This is also another article that attempts to hammer home the point about mistaken identity when conducting online background checks on candidates.

Book Review: Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

The authors of Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier include the CEO and Chief Counsel of ReputationDefender, a company that specializes in online reputation management. Though the book does advertise the services of their company, they also lay out a plan that a reader who understands the nature of the tactics described could use to protect their online reputation. Their plan could also be used to create documentation in case a question every arose about the veracity of the information in the attack, or may prove useful to law enforcement should an online reputation attack veer from malice to harassment or RL violence.


The authors explain the reasons why strangers, acquaintances or customers may use a search engine to look for information on a person. Verifying identity, reputation and claims of expertise may be the most common reasons. Employers, for example, will perform an online search to verify claims and credentials. Since a great deal of public information has moved online, it makes sense to conduct a search via Google, if only to satisfy curiosity.

The authors try to explain the motives of people who destroy online reputations—unfortunately, there may be no reason for wrecking a reputation except boredom—and they describe some of the tactics and tricks that reputation thieves use. Some of the tactics include:

• Googlebombing involves manipulating search results so that a search for other terms will lead to this person’s profile. The example the authors used is the “miserable failure” search leading to the biography of then-President George W Bush.
• Googlestuffing where top level search results are filled with erroneous information about the person searched for.
• “False flagging”, or becoming a double. Some examples include impersonating someone in a forum, blog—as in Fake Steve Jobs—or in a social networking site, like Facebook. Some of these impersonations have highly sinister overtones, especially if they masquerade as a family member.

There are also mistaken identity issues that can lead to online reputation smears. There are cases where a person may deliberately assume your identity online, but the authors also recommend periodic checks to look for “doppelnamers”, people with the same or similar name as yours, who have criminal histories, are a little dodgy or lack good sense. You can use some tactics to distinguish yourself from “dopplenamers”, such as adding your middle initial to your digital footprint, but it is also useful to be aware that these people may end up showing up in your top level search results. It would also be a good idea for any employers who are looking for information online to verify that they do indeed have the correct “Jesse James”.

The book does recommend for fee services, a few affiliated with ReputationDefender, for managing online reputation. However, there is a plan laid out in the book that person, who has read the entirety of the book and who understands the nature of online reputation attacks, can use to protect their personal and professional reputations. Reputation checking will require ongoing effort and it is worthwhile to document attacks and their clean up, in case there are questions about the attack or you need to submit a file to law enforcement.

If I have one big problem with the book, it is that I discovered that the site listed in the references, http://wildwest2.com, does not lead to a companion website for the book. The index/home page leads to the Amazon listing of the book. The links provided in the references at the end of each chapter, such as http://wildwest2.com/go/813 found on page 147, lead only to a broken links. Now a researcher will be able to find the actual references, but the implication of providing links like this is that, well, they will work and will lead the reader to useful resources.

Librarians who are looking for work may want to use the information outlined to check up on their online reputation--and I know for a fact that libraries are checking out their applicants online--and they may need to use it to defend the online reputation of their library. Sadly, only about an hour after finishing this book, I did have to recommend it to a client who was facing personal attacks online; though I was sorry about the attacks, I was glad to be able to give the person a resource to use so they could understand the nature of the attacks and how to resist them effectively.

Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

Use TweetDeck to update Twitter Job Searches

I'm still skeptical about using Twitter to find work, mainly because I have not met anyone personally who has found work via Twitter. But I did configure a search on TweetDeck (which I think makes plain Twitter functional) that may be helpful for those determined to prove me wrong.

Basically, TweetDeck is an app for Twitter that helps you manage your tweets. You can also run searches on Twitter, via TweetDeck and get pop-up updates if your search terms appear in Twitter. (These pop-ups are slightly annoying, but if you are Twitter-obsessed, perhaps you love their cheerful appearance.) Anyway, once you are signed in to TweetDeck or have downloaded it onto your desktop or iPhone, you can stay updated on your Twitter feed and get refreshed searches.

You can just type in your keywords/search terms, you don't need the hashtags because the search will send you posts where the search terms appeared, whether they have hashtags or. Since supplying a hashtag is voluntary on the part of the tweeters, this means you will get posts both with and without hashtags. (This, of course, can be good and bad, but if you are determined to use Twitter, you are determined to try anything.)

I would recommend running a Boolean AND, of the keyword for the profession you are looking for AND jobs, so you don't get the librarian saved my life tweets, or something about weird fantasies from people hanging out in the reference section (amazing what glasses and some smarts do to some people's libidos).

You can run several different searches, four displays nicely, but just remember that you will need to scroll sideways to view them all.

Now let's see if running searches on Twitter can actually lead to a real person, who will post a real comment that they found a real job--not just a posting or an interview, the full meal deal--through Twitter. I would prefer to hear from librarians and their successes, but I'll take anyone who can prove that Twitter got them employed.

Employers sidestep recruiters...from the Globe and Mail

WK4US has been having a discussion about how to use LinkedIn properly for finding work, and one of the members of the list posted this article from the Globe and Mail, Employers sidestep recruiters to tap social media.

The employers are using social media, but they are also exploiting the power of weak ties--finding a job through an acquaintance. They are using the "refer a friend" feature found on many online networking sites. This means that if in your circle of friends, they come across a posting that would be of interest to you and they pass it on, just as the workers in this article are posting job opportunities on their Facebook walls for their friends to read.

Chances are many of your friends have a similar background and skill set (you can read Mouw's articles about social capital for more on this topic), and employers are tapping into this via social networking. It isn't new, though the medium is making it more visible--not everyone would see the posting for employees on the church bulletin board.

The interviewed employers in the article appear to mainly come from the retail sector.

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter , MySpace and Other Social Networks

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Other Social Networks by Brad and Debra Schepp is a nice basic book on how to use online networking tools to look for work.

More than one half of the book is devoted to LinkedIn, with the other networking tools receiving one chapter each. The book is filled with testimonials from users who have used that service to find work online, and it also includes advice from users on how to navigate the site and on online networking etiquette, mainly focused on LinkedIn practices.

This book may have nothing new in it for experienced users, but for people who have not joined an online networking service, or have joined but have done nothing more than update their status, this book would offer some direction on how to proceed.

If you haven't used LinkedIn to look for work, you should know that:

• There are librarians on LinkedIn, some looking for work and some that are responsible for hiring
• There are librarian groups on LinkedIn, some offering general support and information, and others that include job boards
• There is a job posting service on LinkedIn that you can use to find work. Some of the job postings will ask that you are have recommendations and can get a referral within your network to apply to a position. Even if you have less than 50 connections, you will probably have at least one third degree connection who you may be able to get put forward by, depending on how your network works.

If you aren't on LinkedIn, you might want to add it to your job search strategy. You can also consider using LinkedIn to fuel your job club if you are currently at library school or have a local networking group for job seekers.

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Other Social Networks will give you the basics, but you can also sign up for some online education from the LinkedIn Learning Center.

Twitter mistakes

HR Guru has an article on Twitter mistakes, and I hope you aren't making any of them, but you might want to mention them in some of your how-to-job-search classes.

I would also add that you don't add any identifying hash tags, like the name of your workplace, or where you live, should limit your exposure. Tweeting under your full name will also get you outed pretty quickly, though I could argue that searching for people and finding the correct one is not as easy as some people seem to think.

Articles like these, including the ones about not doing stupid stuff on MySpace and Facebook, or any other online service, have to do with discretion. Some people are just not discreet, or they are convinced that no one will ever know--and the lack of knowledge about social media, and the Internet in general, may give them a sense of security. The people you don't want to know about your online rants aren't going to find out about them unless

• someone in-house tattles on you--which they should, in cases of threats of violence, or indiscreet revelations of company secrets or intellectual property
• you friend/follow your boss and then say stupid stuff online
• they get a clue about the Internet. 

For librarians, you can also add, revealing personal information about clients/patrons that approach us in confidence.

Maybe discretion and conduct should be added to a professional behavior course? They are topics to be addressed, if only briefly, in a course on online job searching.

discretion

LinkedIn API

This comes via the SimplyHired blog, a video from LinkedIn about how developers can use the LinkedIn API to create job searching tools on the web.

Stalked off

Now, I know the article [Stalk your way to a new job] was tongue-in-cheek, but I don't recommend stalking individual people at an organization--you should follow news stories and items about an organization. If the people that work there happen to publish and you might end up working in their department, you should read their publicly available work. But staking out their Facebook page?

According to the article,

Within minutes, you can find out where he’s from, how to reach him, where he’s worked in the past, and – perhaps most importantly – what his favorite movie is. The more you know about him, the better your ability to sell yourself.

Not so fast. This depends on a few factors.

1. The person is online and is accessible. This mean that they keep their blog or their Facebook profile out in the public sphere on their own name. Lots of people don't.
2. Even if you think you have the right person, how do you know that you do? Plenty of celebrities have people who name-jack them (would that be Twitter jack?) but I know quite a few people who have misspelled potential colleagues names.
3. For librarians, many of us know where the privacy settings are. And we teach others where to find them.

A far more helpful post would have been how to find out information about a company and their prospects, especially for privately-owned or small firms not listed on the 500 that Fortune slavers over each year.

Use Social Media

This is a link to an article posted on Inside Higher Ed about the benefits of using social media for PhDs. A lot of what the article says can be applied to librarians. I do think that a lot of librarians are blogging, but I don't see very many of us on LinkedIn, so pay attention to what the author has to say about the benefits of LinkedIn.

I would like to add that it is relatively easy to import a badge from LinkedIn and place it on your blog, so that if someone reads your blog and wants to find out more about you, they can find your profile on LinkedIn. Which can also lead to your resume, should they decide to find out if you are a librarian-for-hire.

You can also get a LinkedIn Companion for Firefox (which has gotten mixed reviews on the source page, but I think it can be handy). When I used it and scanned job postings, I could also see if anyone on my LinkedIn network was connected to the company. I would feel more comfortable using my first degree connections if I was looking for info on a prospective company, but you can use this tool to see who you might know, weak or strong-tied to you, at the company.

LinkedIn benefiting from the economy?

Is LinkedIn benefting from the downturn in the economy, with more employers supposedly:

• Using connections on LinkedIn to fill positions?
• Job seekers using LinkedIn to look for work?
• Mean that increased traffic could lead to a high profile buyer?

If you are thinking about adding LinkedIn to your tutorials on how to use the Internet to find work, make sure that you also investigate how active local groups and alumni associations are, not just what the LinkedIn tools include.

Cross posted at Coagitating

Patron resources for job searching

New Improved Internet Job Searching Now with Social Networking is a basic resource list of job searching tools for patrons. I like that the writer has included resources who Spanish speakers, but I would advise anyone to act with caution when suggesting the recession proof job list to patrons.

Here's what happens: you have a patron who has either been laid off or is in fear for their job and you suggest that they check out the list of recession proof jobs. Many of the jobs on that list require four years (or more) of specialized education--teacher, doctor, accountant, can't become one in time for the next pay check. That's fine if you are already a nurse and your community is starving for nurses--and you will still see people who want to switch jobs in in-demand careers because they want to escape from their employer or sector, but aren't sure which button is eject--but if you have a client who was just discharged from the army and had specialized training in HR and recruitment, telling them that they have to sign on for another for years of service is not a comfort.

You need to fill out this list with community specific resources, find vertical search engines that will let you search Craiglist local or map their job searches with Google Maps, so this list is just a starting point for services to your clients.

There is also some evidence that employers are starting to tweet local job postings, so you may want to find the posters in your community, and show patrons how to follow them. Resume Bear explains how.

Recession support groups

The Globe and Mail has an article today about recession support groups, either online, for example on Facebook, or meeting in public places using Meetup. The emphasis is on positive thinking and strategies for surviving the recession.

Why you shouldn't blog about patrons

According to this blog post from BNET, some employees of Tesco in the UK have found themselves in hot water for talking about customers on a Facebook page. A librarian also got dismissed for writing a book about patron client interaction in a library, even though she wrote under a pseudonym.

The truth is, every person who is responsible for hiring in a library googles their candidates to see what they are up to online. Usually, they are looking to see publications and what you have done for the profession, or as a student. They are looking for your digital footprint, the good stuff, but sometimes they find dirt, publicly available. And blogging about patrons, no matter how witty, is dirt.

It's in the ALA code of ethics that librarians "protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted". It doesn't matter if their query is ridiculous or if the person is smelly or nasty; we need to protect their privacy--unless a crime has been committed, and there are appropriate policies to deal with that issue.

And if you are blogging about it, even if you believe you are anonymous, people will find out about it. Librarians especially. You might think you are anonymous and do a few google searches to make sure your digital footprint is a proper fit, but I want you to go and search yourself in Pipl. Use some of the usernames you have signed on to online services for, like browser mail, blogs and social networking and see what comes up attached to your aliases. You might think you are anonymous, protected by a handle, but if librarians are good at anything it is following rabbits down digital holes. See where some of yours lead and don't make any online dead ends by violating professional ethics.