Why Colleges Should Teach Students How to Use Social Media

A graduating senior applying for a position completed a successful phone interview and travelled to a face-to-face interview with the company. Instead of an interview, the candidate was told upon arrival that the company had discovered ‘inappropriate’ posts and behavior in the candidate's social media posts. The candidate was directly rebuked and dismissed without any hope of ever obtaining a position in the company.

Yes, this is a true story from a CEO, who had wished they had looked at social media earlier in the process.

Go ahead, Google yourself. Search for what can be found publicly using the web and within all of the social media tools that you use. Open a new tab on your browser and then continue reading this post.

Who are you?

More than knowledge, skills, and accomplishments, companies need to have employees that meet their corporate values. Employees are the corporation. They need to work together, share a similar work ethic, trust each other, and be a representative of the corporation. Resumes and applications help define an individual’s skills and accomplishments. This has long been the traditional method to identify candidates, based upon what an individual can provide an employer. Keywords and selected answers to questions on applications are used to screen all applicants to help derive a pool of candidates based upon skills and accomplishments. But resumes, cover letters and applications do not tell the whole story about an individual. These items only define ‘what’ a person has done and is capable of doing. What’s missing is the understanding of ‘who’ a person really is, to determine if they will meet their prospective employer’s values.

Interviews have traditionally been the method to identify ‘who’ a person is. Meeting an applicant in a candid atmosphere is more than a test to discover if a person really has the skills and accomplishments to do the job. An interview is also about listening, watching, and engaging individuals to understand the person, their values, and if they can work well within the company. Interviews are still an important part of the hiring process. The challenge is that interviews consume a lot of manpower and time with a low return on investment. Everyone’s time has to be scheduled. Media or transportation requirements have to be arranged. This all takes a lot of time and effort, extending the hiring process. If ten applicants are to be interviewed, with only one to be hired, that is a ten percent return on the amount of time and manpower utilized.

Better ROI     

Today, social media can be used to identify ‘who’ fits the corporate values before the interview process. Using social media will help companies find better qualified candidates as well as reduce costs, providing a better return on investment.

Corporate recruiters are learning to “Google” an applicant and check major social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ for applicant profiles before conducting interviews. What the searches reveal about an applicant is anything, and everything, that the applicant or others share about themselves. What comes up in the search also depends upon Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as the order of the results has a lot to do with activity. Several people could have the same name, making it hard to distinguish which profile is the applicant.

Not having anything appear is just as bad as having inappropriate material. What the recruiters are looking for is, ‘who’ is this person? If they cannot find anything to support ‘who’ you are, there is less likelihood of getting an interview. Applicants that can be found and have a good social media presence are more likely to get an interview.

Think before you link

The best method for students, or any career-oriented individual, is to take ownership of their social media presence. Developing a good social media presence requires students, and all career-oriented individuals, to establish a professional persona and to maintain activity to increase SEO. This is not something students should attempt in their senior year. They should start as a freshman.

A professional persona establishes a student as a responsible, knowledgeable, and interested individual, providing a glimpse of ‘who’ they are related to their career interests. A student may already have social media accounts that have been used on a personal basis. These can be ‘locked’ down to a certain extent, but previous content that had been public may still be available to others that have already viewed it. Once something is made public online, it can never be fully taken away.

SEO can be achieved by maintaining an active presence using social media tools. In all social media accounts, including LinkedIn, activity in the site boosts SEO. This activity can be as simple as ‘liking’ another post, sharing or creating a new post, or commenting on other posts. These are all activities that can be related to a student’s classes or career ambitions.

Another simple task is to include links to the social media tools used for a professional persona on resumes, cover letters, and applications. Some companies are beginning to include links to sites in applications. As an example, a student using Twitter would include their professional handle, such as @dominele, in their resume and cover letter. Students using this simple technique have gained interviews and job offers faster than those who have not.

Teach Students 

A tool is only as good as how it is used. The lure of technology has captivated students to use social media for pleasure. Often it has not been considered a tool, but a toy. Social media is often only seen as a playground in which these toys can be used.

As the business world becomes more ‘social’, it is important for students of today to recognize that social media is not just a playground and that technology is not a toy. We must teach students to take ownership of a professional persona and to use social media wisely. Their future careers quite likely could depend on it.

This post was originally published in University Business, June 2014

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/how-are-students-using-social-media

Develop a Strategy for Social Media

If you only think that social media is a playground for personal folly, think twice as the majority of employers use social media to evaluate potential and current employees. In addition, social media has become the premier method for professionals to promote themselves and enhance their career. This all necessitates having a professional persona using social media that you control. 

A persona is what you project about yourself. This is the person you want others to think you are.

Can you have more than one persona? Yes, we act this way all of the time. If you behave differently when you are with your relatives than with your friends than you are representing a different persona. People will judge you based on how you portray yourself.

Getting and maintaining a job requires the development of a professional persona that will represent the qualities employers are looking for.  It is not just about your skills and abilities, it is also about how well you ‘fit’ into the culture. Do you share the values of the organization?

Developing a persona that represents you professionally will help others to understand your values, ethics, and interests when looking for a job or advancing your career opportunities. The use of social media is the best environment for developing and maintaining this persona.  Will your persona change over time? Probably, that is why your persona should never be considered static. As with your life itself, it is something that needs to be maintained and not left to wallow.

Establishing a Persona Strategy is a way of recognizing and establishing what you want others to see you as. You can have different persona's, such as the one you may have for your family, another for your friends, and another for you work.  At the heart of it all is still you, who you are, but there will normally be a different perspective that each group needs to know and identify with.

Think about it as if looking in a mirror. Are you the same person you were five years ago? Probably not. What is different? Do you like it? What do you need to accept or change? This is how others see you.

This all comes with living socially.

The use of social media has increased the opportunity for individuals to share and engage with larger numbers of people. A way to build your communities. It also becomes a tool for self promotion and development. .

Social media is based on trust. If you want to build your network you have to be trusted. This provides a greater need to have a Professional Persona Strategy.  A strategy is a plan to obtain what you want to achieve. A Professional Persona Strategy is a plan to ensure that others will find what you want them to find as well as how you want to portray yourself.

Here are factors that should be considered in developing a Professional Persona with social media:

Your Name - consider if you want to use your full name, family name or use a professional title.

Handle - a single user name that represents your persona

Bio - what do want to say to others about who you are, what you can do, where you want to go.

Age, Gender, where you live, contact information, education - this is information that is publicly available, what and where do you want to share this needs to be identified

Picture - a picture is worth a thousand words. What do you want your profile picture to represent? what pictures do you want to display? what pictures do you NOT want to appear?

Interests & Activities - select the interests to share: sports, hobbies, political, educational, etc. How much and often do you want to share?

Social media goals - determine why you are using social media, what purpose will it serve, how often you will use it.

Social media use - determine what tools are to be used, how they are to be each used, and how frequently you will use them.

Social media success criteria - how will progress be measured and evaluated? what are you looking for as outcomes from using social media?

Isn’t it time that you started to take social media seriously? Isn’t it time for you to think about how you are using social media professionally? Before you do anything else, sit down and craft a strategy before you start building profiles, sharing, and engaging.

Goodbye Glass?

Google recently stopped manufacturing the Explorer version of Glass. Since I have had Glass Explorer for over a year this has prompted people to ask me about the status of Glass. As an active technology professional and educator there is not a simple answer.

The 'official' answer from Google is that Glass has been moved from Google X to a profit oriented division of the company. Basically, Glass is not going away. What was learned from the Glass Explorer program is being developed into a marketable product.

Glass Explorer was a concept rollout, not a product rollout. This was done through Google X, the research arm of Google. Developers and the public began to petition to 'get their hands' on this thing that Google was developing. As Google began to release, first to those invited and then, to the public it was clearly stated that this was an Explorer program. Glass Explorer was truly not ready as a consumer device.

There were and still are some major hurdles facing wearables that Google had to explore.

There was not a wearable operating system in the marketplace when Glass Explorer became available.  It was not clear how users should and would interact with a wearable device.  Google Explorer allowed Android to be investigated as a wearable platform. Cards and the use of voice had to be considered as part of the user interface.

Similar to the introduction of mobile/smartphone devices the type of data and the screen size for wearables is different.  Web pages are no longer a viable option. Even trying to reformat for a specific size would not work. All of the current web pages and services will have to be adjusted to provide for the use of more specific information that is served to meet specific inquiries. The introduction of the use of the Card as the display object allowed for a good display, but the web is not ready to identify and serve small pieces of data from its mass amounts of information.

Although voice inquiry and activation have been around for a couple of decades, it has not been an integral part of any operating system. The use of a keyboard, mouse, or touch to execute commands in a menu/hierarchical system has been the standard format. Voice tools such as Siri or Google Now are only an extension of the menu format. The more specific the question, the better the answer. Glass Explorer attempted to assess voice as an integral part of an operating system. Yet, it was being used in a hierarchical command process that was not user adaptable.

One of the limits of Glass Explorer was the perception of extending current technology without providing anything that was truly new technology.  Walking down the street one day, a man passed me talking on his phone. The man glanced up as he passed, then quickly stated incredulously into the phone, "I just passed someone that was wearing that internet on his face thing." When people asked what I could do with Glass Explorer, they would sum up what I was saying with, "Basically, it is a smartphone on your head." Glass Explorer was about creating a better experiential environment of current technology.

Wearables are hardware that allows for a better experiential environment. Glass Explorer was an opportunity for Google to discover how it can best serve the marketplace and make money with wearables. Google will have to take the time to examine its position in the wearables marketplace and the Internet of Things.

It remains to be understood exactly what will come next. My best guess is that Google will be focusing on its strength, which is software development.

Whatever happens next, I just hope I get another invite......

A Wink and a Smile #throughglass

Google Glass creates happy faces.

There are smiles whenever I wear Google Glass. There are stares and questioning looks, but most people break out into a smile as I pass by.  When the curious ask what I am wearing, the smiles become a happy face.

To demonstrate what Glass can do, I ask, "Can I take your picture?".  As they say "Yes", I wink to take the picture. This action brings on not only a smile, but an entire happy expression.

Hundreds of my photos show people caught in the process of discovering what Glass can do. The video contains some of these happy faces along with the appropriate music. Take a look and... Put On A Happy Face.

How do you say '@'?

What is the English word for @'?

Tweeting from Glass is a quick way to share the moment. No need to pull out a device and type a message. It can all be done with voice commands. However, I have not been successful in mentioning someone using the '@' symbol.

Hashtags work surprisingly well. Simply saying "hashtag frozen" will result in '#frozen'.

However when attempting to use '@', just saying "at discover MATC" results in 'at discover MATC' instead of '@discoverMATC'.

Also, saying "at symbol Sendiks" will result with 'at symbol Sendik's', instead of '@Sendiks'.

Had the same problem when I tried using "at sign Heritage Print" that resulted in "At sign Heritage Print", instead of '@HeritagePrint'.

'@' was created as representation for value or pricing of goods and services. Aside from commercial usage, the symbol was not widely used or understood until the development of Unix and internet in the 1970's. The symbol is widely used today for email address and Twitter.

Twitter uses '@' to 'mention' someone directly in a tweet.  '@' allows users to tag someone in a tweet. This tag allows for the tweet to be found when users are checking who has tagged them. '#' can be used for general words and terms, whereas '@' can be used to get a tweet noticed by those being tagged. It is also used when replying to another person or when wishing to get more people into a conversation.

This is all easy to do if you are using a keyboard, but there does not appear to be any consistently recognized word for '@' that is understood by voice recognition software with Glass or Google for English speakers.

Besides being called the 'at sign' or 'at symbol' in English there are several different ways of referring to '@': 'commercial at', 'atmark','asperand','ampersat'. These are all words that have appeared when I search the web for '@', but none of them have any specific claim to being recognized as '@'.

Interestingly other languages have given '@' different names. The French use arrobase and the Spanish use arroba. The Germans refer to it as the 'monkey tail', Affenschwanz, and the Russians refer to it as the 'dogs tail', sobaka. Since I am not fluent in any of these languages, I am not sure if these words will produce '@'.

The utility of Twitter is limited if one cannot mention others using '@' using voice recognition software. What appears to be the problem is that Google either recognizes a specific word or it attempts to interpret what is said. With '#', it will first spell out the word 'hashtag' after it is stated, but then convert to the symbol when the word has been recognized. Since 'at' is a common English preposition used in many contexts, Glass is not quickly recognizing the word as '@' needed to Tweet.  The solution resides on selecting a specific English word to represent '@'.

So, what word will be best used to say '@' in English and be recognized by Google voice recognition software?

How did my wife get Hoffed?

On April 1st, my wife received an Auto Hoffsome'd picture in her G+photos that she did not take, nor was tagged in. How did the picture arrive there?

The picture was taken at an event using my Google Glass. The picture was not shared with G+ or any other social media service. The original picture uploaded to my G+ photos that night while Glass was charging. A few days later, on April 1st, she received a notification about the Hoffed picture.

No harm done with the Auto Hoffsome photo as we both thought it was quite funny and appropriate for the event.

We were both dressed in traditional Bavarian clothing for a silent auction fund raiser for a German language school. Coincidentally, one of the auction items was a collection of David Hasselhoff memorabilia. Adding Hoff to the picture was in context with the theme and added to the fun we had at the event.

Some of the fun:

What is intriguing, is that my wife did not have a profile picture of herself for her account at the time, nor did I have pictures or reference her in my G+ accounts. Further adding to this mystery is that we have different last names.

How did G+ know that she was in the picture and find her account?

If anyone has an idea or the official word on how my wife got Hoffed, let me know.

Feed Me Product Information

Nutella is a staple in our household. Something I discovered on a business trip to Germany about thirty years ago. Like PB&J, Nutella is a quick hunger fix that goes great with graham crackers or any type of bread.

The US market for the product has been growing. As a result, major US brands have been attempting to grab some share of this growing market. As such, I am always inclined to buy the new product and test it out.

The other day I discovered that Hershey's came out with a competing product. There was an end cap in the supermarket that featured the Hershey product as well as Nutella. Almost as if it was a dare to compare.

I had not heard or seen of the Hershey product and was curious about why Hershey's thought their product would be better, however, no further information was available.

As I stood there looking at the product, with my Glass on, I realized it would be nice to be able to scan the barcode to obtain more information about the product.

Are packaged goods manufacturers or any consumer goods manufacturers considering using the barcodes to communicate not only with POS systems, but also with consumer devices?

Is anyone going to look at how to develop this with Glass?

Well, this will be one of the apps that I will definitely look into. Anyone want to help?