OK, so I’m being more than a little melodramatic to get your attention, but if you are guilty – you’re making a really big mistake. Not only in regard to my health, but your own networking and marketing health are suffering. Mark my words!

Look, I’m all for breaking rules to be avant garde  and stake a claim in cyberspace. But misusing profiles isn’t the way to do that.. it just makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. The rules of social engagement call for respect of user agreements.

Some ‘Don’ts’ from the LinkedIn User Agreement (10. LINKEDIN USER “DOS” and “DON’TS.”) 

• Don’t create a user profile for anyone other than a natural person
• Don’t upload a profile image that is not your likeness or a head-shot photo
• Don’t invite people you do not know to join your network (this one is just plain asinine, against the rules of social engagement and doesn’t count – must be a left over April Fool’s Day prank )

What would better suit your needs is a Company Page.

LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook have specific provisions for company pages. Twitter on the other hand functions quite differently and the best solution is to create separate personal and business accounts to strategically engage the twittersphere.

What’s wrong with networking as a business rather than as a person?

When you ‘hide’ behind a company profile, rather than present yourself as a representative of the company, you’ll find that you have to constantly police your attitude, sense of humor, distribution of content and personal relationships – because you are acting as the company. I can’t say how many times I have seen a ‘company’ post something not in its best interest because the individual behind the posts had a ‘personal’ hat on and missed an opportunity to represent the company in the best possible light.

When you wear the company hat the content character must be purposeful, selective, targeted and engaging to the right audience – often meaning the general public. Think of it as being a billboard with potentially immense global reach (depending on how good you, your strategy and execution are). It should be the company’s character that is promoted not the individual’s. That’s a heavy responsibility.

Managing your personal online presence is also critical matter – if you care, and you should. It’s expected an individual – regardless of how high up the food chain they are, has a unique personal style, character, sense of humor, off the cuff comments, candid moments, personal conversations, photos, etc. You can be the CEO and post about your family, vacation, what you had for lunch, and personal opinion, and it can crystallize the essence of ‘social networking’ and make you human and approachable – something that hiding behind a logo cannot do.

Can you see now why posting personal content directly under the company banner just doesn’t do the company any justice at all and it’s important to have both personal and corporate identities?

P.S. Don’t bother considering that I am being inappropriate with the inhaler here… I’m all too familiar. 

One thing is clear, JWS does have super-duper lawyers, cracker jacks at social media.

So, let’s get to the story…

A refrigerator unfortunately fell on a guy named Zack while on the job in the warehouse in 2009. The company processed his claim and he received medical and temporary total disability benefits for a small inguinal hernia, which required repair,  and a back injury. If you read the entire court decision document your left testicle will hurt too – even if you don’t have one. This guy went through quite an ordeal and went as far as to request that his be extirpated. Ouch.

He was eventually released from medical care, though he repeatedly denied his conditions were relieved and sought continued medical treatment and temporary total-disability benefits for his hernia and back injuries and attorney fees.

This is where it goes from being a nail biter to claimant fail…

Zack’s new pain management doc noted his drug screen came back positive for THC and declined his request and then wrote him a letter saying he wouldn’t treat him any longer… After three additional CT scans showed no anomalies related to the hernia, his primary care doc wrote a letter saying he needed to be sent to a urologist and general surgeon to determine why he was still having such pain.

But the administrative law judge found that there was no medical evidence or lay testimony to support a traumatic work-related back injury and that further medical treatment was unreasonable and unnecessary for his hernia – she denied and dismissed Zach’s claim. He appealed, arguing that substantial evidence did not support the decision that he was not entitled to additional medical treatment and additional temporary-total disability. 

To further complicate matters, the cracker jacks came in with the goods - Zack’s pics out drinking with his buds were all over MySpace and Facebook, yet he was asking for continued total disability.

Zack was outraged and claimed the pics were “a disgrace to the dignity of the workers’ compensation proceedings and the legal system” and had nothing to do with his medical treatment.

Much to Zack’s chagrin, the court did not find abuse of discretion in the allowance of the photographs. Though he pleaded he was in excruciating pain, the photos showed him drinking and partying like he was alright. Although Zack didn’t like it much, the pics called his credibility into question and that could not have helped the legal system’s determination was that he is not entitled to further additional medical or additional temporary total-disability benefits.

Did Zack screw himself by not understanding or monitoring his online reputation? My opinion is.. Combined with the double whammy of positive THC results, you betcha.

On second thought, total disability compensation? Surely if this guy can transport to a bar and engage in social activity he could work as a showroom greeter on light duty.

Maybe I am just mean or jaded by the amount of abuse I have personally seen.

What do you think?

I have been told age is only a number, you’re as young as you feel, after 50 women are more appealing, you’re young at heart and you ‘still look young’. This is not the time for niceties. This is a call for action.

The age of 50 is very deceiving. We tend to think of 50 as half – 50%, half a century, half a dollar, etc.. It’s way past the half life mark however for the average American woman according to the report, “Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2003,” by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics which says is 80.5 years is the average life expectancy for white females – of which I am one.

That means I have 31 expected years left in me… not nearly enough. I now have more things than ever I want to do and less time than ever to do them. I need to defy the odds.

AARP will never, I repeat, never be my friend or welcome in my mailbox and it’s becoming clearer to me by the day why people desperately want to believe in reincarnation, life after death, heaven, and places like eternal paradise. Because people start to appear on the Grim Reaper’s radar at 50 and frankly that’s cause for alarm.

Add in comments like the one I heard a few weeks ago from a 20 year old college student I was career coaching, “I don’t want to work with old people in their 50′s because they’re slow” – and though I personally have never felt discriminated against in the workplace for any reason, I can only imagine it’s just around the corner. I was safe with sonny boy, he thought I was his mother’s age, 38.

So, today when I posted

I am thinking, thinking, still more thinking and cannot stop thinking about turning 50 in 2012. I’m not exactly embracing the concept…

I was pleasantly surprised by the lively, interesting, lengthy and engaging  dialog that ensued on women aging ( I can’t believe I’m ‘aging’). Try as we might to come up with acceptable alternatives we couldn’t. With the exception a couple of conciliatory comments from men, they largely (and smartly) avoided the thread and left women to try as they may to figure it out.

The US market generates about $50 billion of revenue each year in ‘anti-aging’ products, mainly nutritional, physical fitness, skin care, hormone replacements, vitamins and herbs – while medical experts to include the American Medical Association, state that the use of such products has not been shown to affect the aging process. Desperate suckers do desperate things…

While I wait for Raymond Kurzweil‘s prediction that advanced medical nanorobotics could completely remedy the effects of aging by 2030 to come true, Mina Bourque  provided some respite. She posted two links on the Facebook convo that provided hope.

The first was a piece on the late Andy Rooney, who in all his wisdom factually stated among other truths, “A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think”.

The second was a film project needing funding by Terry Hardesty on KICKSTARTER, New Wrinkle.

Older workers, nowhere near retirement age, feel the pressure to inject themselves with botox to go on an interview.  They fear they will be left homeless because they look “tired” and “frumpy.”

I watched the video and immediately donated $25. Terry, I’m counting on you to help me live forever…….

P.S. Seriously now, watch the video and consider helping Terry reach her funding goal – for the good of women everywhere. After all, we have to have each other’s backs.

After all, sometimes we all need help getting out of our rut. Know that if the current way you are searching for a job isn’t yielding the results you expect, it’s time to change your strategy. If your job search consists mainly of scouring the big job boards and registering on your state’s one-stop-shop website, know that there is so much more you can do to improve the odds of getting off unemployment or into your first professional gig post graduation.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

Here is the 10 step strategic job search plan I discuss when I go out to talk to college students, job clubs and with individuals I coach on their job search.

1. Identify the position you seek (be realistic or this will just be a futile exercise in fantasy and frustration). You may be open to or skilled in multiple jobs but pick the one you are most qualified for and most would like to be employed in.
2. Pull up your resumé on the screen and tailor it to this position. Mentally assume the position you have selected and review your resume to see that the professional you are in that role is talking. It must look, smell and feel like it’s you, the Forensic Accountant, Account Executive, HR Coordinator etc. in charge and talking. Note that most people simply do not do justice to their own resumé. If you cannot hire a professional resumé writer then at least go to book store to the business books section and find something like Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer by Susan Whitcomb. And don’t stop there… by all means have a couple of friends who who are managers and hire people (doesn’t have to be in your field) review, proof read and critique it for you. Remember, opinions are like #$$&()^!@ - literally everyone has one – just make an informed decision based on the critiquing and edit accordingly. The last two letters in resumé are ME so don’t be a template be you.
3. Think about 10 companies you would really like to work for – not 10 companies you ‘would’ work for if a carrot were dangled in front of your face. If you don’t know 10 companies that hire people to do what you do then you have a huge area of opportunity for research, and you will have increased your competitive  industry knowledge significantly – only to your benefit. Search on Google, LinkedIn, Hoovers if you have a subscription, etc. Check out this short instructional video for tips on How to Research Companies Online- Power Prospecting with Google Search. Yes, it is geared toward client prospecting for sales… I’m certain you can figure out how to adjust to your needs as a job seeker. You’re prospecting too!
4. Start a shareable spreadsheet (I love Google docs). The first tab is the summary sheet with the 10 companies on it. Then create a tab for each company. On each company sheet plot the following across the header row fields: company, contact 1, contact 2, contact 3, date resume sent, date response received, date of interview, next step, notes. Customize as you see fit but the idea is to chart a process and be deliberate not hari-kari, shot in the dark or random hit and miss.
5. Contact a few people you admire professionally and who are good networkers you think could help you with intelligence on or connections into these companies. Share the spreadsheet with them and give them access to edit it. In the email to send them the link, attach your resumé, let them know how much you admire their careers and value their expertise and assistance and you are asking that they be part of your personal advisory board during your job search. Ask that they help you fill out the contact information in the spreadsheet and make introductions for you via LinkedIn, email, phone, coffee, however they can. Ask them for their ideas on how you can network into these companies. Ask if they know of other companies who could use your talent. Research their suggestions and if you like them, add them to your spreadsheet.
6. Spend 2 hours Monday – Friday (except holidays) researching, networking, connecting, and charting your progress daily on the spreadsheet until you A) Get a job or B) Exhaust all options with your advisory board and the companies. That means until you receive a rejection from each company and rule it out. Don’t delete the row, highlight it in red and sort the row to the bottom of the list. Spend the rest of the day volunteering and taking care of and being good to yourself/family.
7. Keep 10 companies on the list at all times. When one is ruled out research others to replace it. This way, you’ll never run out of options until you get a job but never have more on the list than you can focus on. It’s strategic, it’s a plan. It’s doable.
8. Send a weekly progress summary in an email to your personal advisory board with the link to the spreadsheet and ask them to review your work and make suggestions. Doing this each week without fail (except if you are in a coma) keeps you and your advisory board committed. If your advisory board members all know one another then send a group email and revel in the groupthink that begins to take place. If not, ask for permission to make the introductions to one another. The advisory board members can get a lot out of this too!
9. Be gracious to your advisory board members, thanking them profusely for their time and energy and be patient and kind to yourself as your network grows and you begin to get more interviews and chart progress in your job search. No more blindly surfing job boards, just calculated actionable and measurable steps to success…
10.  Get your job and then spend time teaching this method to others. Forward this post to other job seekers, get your personal advisory board to do a panel presentation with you at a job fair or job club, blog about your own job search and what worked and what didn’t – to help others. Be a personal advisory board member for someone else, the way others did for you.

P.S. I didn’t post about HOW you should network -you have to do what works for you. I suggest a combination of in-person and on-line networking – neither exclusive of the other. That means LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, online communities, professional mixers, job clubs, association meetings, professional community events where you live. You know, stuff like that.

Are you one of the one in six? If not, you have an area of opportunity to work on. Although you’ll find jobs posted on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, job posts are not the power of social networking.  The power is in building relationships enabled by these vehicles. It takes some learning and finesse to understand how to be truly effective – or, you can slog through it by trial and error, key and click and hope you land on your feet at an interview.

Before you can be effective in a web 2.0 social job search it’s crucial to have a working foundational understanding of social media, reputation management, etiquette, and a strategy.

If you live in northeast PA and want to increase your level of digital literacy, build your 2.0 social skills to help with your job search, help market your business, recruit employees, promote jobs opportunities or your nonprofit, meet others with similar interests, manage an online community, or just demystify the web of tools available today to enhance communication and quality of life, I have news to share:

Luzerne County Community College has invited me to conduct a  series of 4 workshops on Tuesday evenings in March, Facebook and Beyond with Karla Porter. It’s a hands on workshop in a computer lab that will be held from 6-9pm at the Corporate Learning Center on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

From the course guide:

This hands-on novice series of four workshops is designed to build a foundation for using the social webs most popular applications like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, for the purpose of creating conversations, building relationships and reputation management. The workshops will provide hands on experience with account management, basic and advanced features, third party applications and the creation of a ‘social media strategy’ to help you effectively engage in virtual communities, target interests, promote ideals and events and manage your online personality. You will experience a variety of tools that allow you to participate in the key activities of social media: listening, connecting, contributing, communicating, community, and measuring. The workshops will take place in a computer lab for hands-on exploring the social web, learning and application of the tools. You will leave the workshop with a solid basic understanding of social media / Web 2.0 concepts, key skills for implementing social web initiatives and knowledge of how to build an effective presence and strategy. Target Audience: Students with keyboarding skills that are comfortable using a PC and the Internet that are interested in using social media tools for listening, connecting, contributing, communicating, building community, and measuring.

 This is a hot opportunity to tap 12 hours of my time and expertise for $109.  - a crazy unheard of deal at $9.08 per hour of instruction.

Go ahead, search social media seminars and courses and see if you come up with something comparable. I’m partnering with the college to do it because I’m committed to increasing the use of this type of technology in the region to help bring the community up to par in its use with other metro areas across the country, increase our market competitiveness and suck us into the age of modernity.

If you’re an executive who blocks social media in your company because it’s ‘scary’ I hope to see you there, and bring your marcom peeps too.

P.S. This is a community service not my consulting fee – so catch it while you can!

I went and did as I was told and true to his word, amazingly that’s how it happened. I filled out what amounted to be a formality of an application, Mr. Someone shook my hand and bestowed upon me the title of Rubber Band Packaging Machine Operator. I went to work the the following morning.

There were good things and areas of opportunity about that day. The company had a commitment to hire veterans and would ‘find’ a job for them. The process at the unemployment office was well-meaning but as I look back knowing what I know now, it was fraught with failure.

Day one was interesting, I job shadowed and was marveled by the machinery, how the boxes were automatically folded, the timing of the assembly line and how whistles ran the place. Day two I mastered my job by lunchtime and in the cafeteria looked at faces more than twice my age who had never had another job, doing the same thing day in and day out forever. Day three I went in halfheartedly and resigned at the end of my shift. I’m as much a fit for a rubber band packaging machine as I am for ragweed farming – not. I’ll bet I was a grand disappointment. I may have even appeared to be ungrateful, though I wasn’t.

There have been milestone improvements in what was once called the unemployment office, renamed by the US Department of Labor as one-stop shops, with a different moniker in each state.  The unemployment claims process was separated out and relegated to call centers and the Internet, leaving state employed career specialists the opportunity to source jobs, prepare candidates and make the match. It’s still not swanky, clearly not cutting edge and still very blue collar oriented – but it has improved greatly. I’m sure there are centers of excellence – depending on the leadership and I know there are centers that still operate as if we were in the 80′s. I won’t give addresses.

One of the best advents to come out of the Department of Labor is O*NET, the nation’s primary source of occupational information. Central to the project is the O*NET database which provides the basis for Career Exploration Tools, a set of assessment instruments. It has been recently retooled for veterans as My Next Move for Veterans. It’s useful to military personnel and new veterans researching civilian careers. You can browse careers by industry or keyword and something new and super helpful is the ability to enter the name or code of your military classification for translation to civilian careers with similar work. You can learn more about DOL employment initiatives and opportunities for veterans here.

Three major forces of the Internet, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn have all stepped up in 2011 with products for transition to civilian life and career.

Recently, Google donated 600 Chromebooks to Walter Reed  Hospital that can be checked out from the Red Cross so wounded members of the military can communicate, research and help plan their future. This past week they helped launch the Veterans Job Bank in collaboration with the National Resource Directory. And then they did something else equally as awesome and beautiful. They created Google for Veterans.

The Google Veterans Network is our employee volunteer community that strives to make Google a great place to work for those who have served, their families and their friends. We also aim to be a positive contributor to the veteran community at large. Google products and services have made our lives a little easier – whether we are still in the service, transitioning out, or on a new path in our civilian lives. We wanted to give back to the community and help other veterans and their families discover how useful these tools can be. So we created Google for Veterans and Families – a collection of free and useful tools from our veterans’ community to yours.

The description is humble to say the least. They have assembled a very powerful suite of tools – some you are already familiar with and others that are new, based on Google technology. The site is made up of four main tools.  VetConnect allows vets to find other vets with similar experiences. Google Veterans Channel is a YouTube channel for videos and discussions related to military service. Resume Builder powered by Google Docs provides auto-formatted resumes, and Tour Builder powered by Google Earth (coming soon) will display “3D maps of veterans’ service histories, complete with photos and videos”. Visit, you won’t be disappointed.

Facebook recently rolled out U.S. Military on facebook. There are many, many pages on Facebook that are military related but until the launch of this page there has been no consolidated effort.

Our goal is to bring together resources and information to help the millions of military personnel, veterans, and families stay connected and informed.

The page’s Career Resources are still slim in variety but I expect – hope – they will grow. Right now they rely on BranchOut and Military.com, a Monster Company and the largest military and veteran membership organization — 10 million members-strong. Facebook is of course the great friend finder, it’s where I found my Air Force buddy Debbie after a 28 year loss of contact. Search the word military on Facebook and you’ll find enough affinity groups and pages to keep you busy for a long time.

Not to be outdone, LinkedIn and the White House have joined forces to kick off the first ever Veterans Hackday. They invited hackers to put together projects that can improve any aspect of a veteran’s life. For encouragement, they assembled a phenomenal lineup of judges; Sumit Agarwal, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media, and Jeff Weiner, CEO LinkedIn. Wow…. I am following the action at @LinkedInEng and simply cannot wait to see what they come up with!

In the meantime, visit LinkedIn’s new microsite for Veterans  tailored with tips, tools and information to help veterans find new opportunities across LinkedIn, including a free one-year Job Seeker subscription for all US veterans and current service men and women. Be sure to knock out a a great profile and join groups like  U.S. Veteran and U.S. Military Veterans Network, to find profiles of veterans who have made the transition to civilian careers.

I’m filled with joy that now, more than ever before, military personnel can start exploring and preparing for their M2C career transition from wherever they have an Internet connection.

P.S. I read a ton of Veterans Day posts but 100 Ways to Honor a Veteran by Breanne Harris  won my heart. It’s timeless and full of splendid ideas big and small for honoring veterans every day of the year. You should read it.

Nonetheless, they have been wondrous. Life, with its never ending cacophony of unexpected melodies, is very beautiful to the curious – even in moments of tragedy, sadness and despair.

Today I can rest. I’m spending the day chillaxing in bed sipping lattes, with the laptop, Chanel and Nena, writing LinkedIn recommendations, catching up on  email, managing a spontaneously contrived disaster relief Facebook page and watching a Mad Men marathon on Netflix – because 9/11 coverage would be the contraindicated proverbial straw on the camel’s back right now – though I did catch Paul Simon and it was lovely and touching.

And now about those 8 weeks.

I wondered how much more organizational pain could be absorbed and dealt with – without something giving, as I left for Boston to meet the city for the very first time and catch up with an Air Force friend I hadn’t seen in 28 years over the 4th of July. We spent fair weather days rehashing old memories, funny and sad stories and catching up on decades of life, and nights under the rockets’ red glare of fireworks over river parties. An email that Tuesday morning confirmed a ‘recommendation’ had been made to eliminate my portion of the organization’s work plan ‘sometime soon’ – and with it my job. I could have turned my back and walked away, but I believed in the work I was doing and I decided to take the risk that a soon to occur regime change would never allow that to happen – eyes wide open.

August 9, another Tuesday exactly one month later, the pages of months to the end of the year were definitively torn from the calendar. I had three weeks to execute a transition, close up shop and extract myself in a tidy fashion. We sat there solemnly staring at one another. Another intrapreneurial position like this one would be next to impossible to find. I emailed my business contacts to prepare them for my departure and stopped on the way home at Barnes and Nobles to purchase Alan Weiss’ book The Consulting Bible for inspiration and perspective. I owned my career and I was making a decision to return to work on my terms and my terms alone. I was rejoining the 1099 movement.

I shutdown, turned off, wrapped up and delegated projects, held meetings and packed. After the condolence and encouragement email slowed it evolved into inquiries and invitations to talk. And talk I did. And it was good.

The earth spoke August 23 as a 5.8 earthquake rolled across the mid-Atlantic, parts of the east coast and under my feet, causing widespread panic for the masses – reminding me to get my money’s worth out of existence by sucking every possible fermion of satisfaction out of my piece before it ends. August 24 I stayed up all night writing a grant proposal for a workforce development project for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities based on conversations with an area nonprofit and met the Executive Director at the crack of dawn for a road trip to the State Capitol to pitch it. We pitched hard and walked out with funding. One down. A huge one.

I spent the next week hauling personal effects, many of which I had little recollection of amassing – a bag a day to the car, wondering what I would do with it all and if it would just end up living in my trunk like the American Legion kitchen. On September 2 I was the last one to leave the office. I left my parking tag and key on the boss’ desk, slipped an ‘I’ll miss you’ note under the admin’s keyboard, shut the light out and left. I forgot to take the fan. Maybe I subconsciously left it on purpose so I would have a reason to visit…

One gap week is all I wanted, forget filing for unemployment compensation – just one week to do nothing, clean the house, go shopping in my laundry hamper, help my mom can grape jelly and read the Bible before jumping in on a new job. The week of nothingness turned out to be a week of oblivion. It started with a few excellent calls that ended with contracts (two more down) and ended with Susquehanna testing the levee system to the unprecedented extreme by cresting above its intended capacity at a record 42.66ft and horrendously flooding unprotected parts of the valley.

And now it’s 12:45am and I need some sleep. I have another early morning road trip I need to get ready for – this time it’s not to pitch, it’s on the clock…

Maybe someday I’ll get to read that Bible…

Connection with force

Although actually a measurement of acceleration, the term g-force is, as its name implies, popularly imagined to refer to the force that an accelerating object “feels”. These so-called “g-forces” are experienced, for example, by fighter jet pilots or riders on a roller coaster, and are caused by changes in speed and direction. The relationship between force and acceleration stems from Newton’s second law, F = ma, where F is force, m is mass and a is acceleration. This equation shows that the larger an object’s mass, the larger the force it experiences under the same acceleration. – Webster’s Online Dictionary

Google+ is the new positive G-force

A few weeks ago on Google+ launch day, the value of the social web accelerated exponentially with positive g-force.

I like portals and command centers (throwback to the military?) and as a compliment to the extensive suite of many other very fine apps the big G provides, Google+ promises to provide the one-stop communications command center I have longed for.

Over the past few weeks I have been informally polling people from various professional backgrounds, “Are you on Google Plus” I ask? The typical response is “Oh that new Google Facebook thing?” So, while there have been several very good tutorials to share written by other bloggers, my thoughts are that there is no need to recreate the wheel …. I have enough work to do. I choose to share the best by far – it comes right from the source. However by all means, add your favorites in comments – please.

Until the launch of Google+ I was a Mozilla Firefox maven. But, the same day David Graziano hooked me up with an invite, I decided to take the final plunge into the Google pool of goodness and go Chrome. What I have found immensely useful are a few of browser extensions to customize the experience. Since I added the extensions I have spent little personal time on other social networks – with the exception of LinkedIn (yes it is). If I didn’t manage so many Twitter and Facebook Fan Page accounts I doubt I would continue to spend time on them at all.

G+me for Google Plus – Enhances the Google+ web app to make it much easier to process a large stream of incoming posts and comments and unlock the potential of its real-time updates.

SGPlus - Complete social network integration: post to Facebook and Twitter, see your feeds inside Google Plus, and much more.

Plus One (+1) Button – With this extension, you can ‘Google +1′ all web pages and websites. Great for sites that do not have a +1 button installed (hellooooo ST).

This week, Google pulled out all the stops with a campaign to convert holdouts of email accounts from other web based email providers over to the dark side. I approve of this type of conversion…

I have resisted all the annoying inadvertent auto invites from my friends because I’m already connected to them, I can find candidates without a Facebook app and I have been down this path with other well intentioned similar apps – most recently BranchOut, which I was slightly interested in at first, have never used and have stopped accepting invitations to. It shares many similarities with BeKnown.

The only other piece of critical analysis I have seen this early in the ‘game’ is from Jason Buss at TalentHQ. By the way, the comment left on his post left me with a funny feeling, kind of like when I post something positive about my Blackberry Playbook and the iPhone squad converges on me.

Giving credit where it’s due, I applaud the great timing. Many of my peers are holed up on a man made oasis in the desert collecting vendor swag and blogging away between speakers, many about BeKnown (and doing other things that I’m sure will stay in sin city). Monster can count on them to recruit plenty of joiners. Like cult members, my contacts are joining, joining, joining…

You’ll have fun competing with your connections to see who has the best badges.

Seriously?

Facebook is fun, or serious, or fun and serious depending on how you use it – but do we really need to earn badges and compete with our friends based on work history, education, size and composition of our professional network and endorsements we’ve given or received?

I have mental images of a swarm of bees.. I’m going to stay behind this time I got stung once and it meant a trip to the ER. If it turns out I’m being ridiculously narrow minded I’ll put my big girl pants on, self-inject some epinephrine and blog an apology – but I highly doubt that will happen.

You guys have fun collecting and comparing your badges for being professionals. Been there, done that in Brownies.

I get a lot of these types of requests and I’m limited on time so I often think that’s nice and move on, as much as I would love to have my hand constantly in the candy jar.. but Pete’s email provoked chemistry.. I had to check it out.

The principle is simple yet genius, the add-on (Firefox only right now) allows you to highlight a name on a page and instantly find the person on multiple popular social media sites recruiters commonly use –>LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others.

This is what I have been missing…

No more copying and pasting URL’s, searching sites and search engines for profiles. It also allows you to send a message to the person from the application which sneaks into the profile messaging system of the site you are on. In other words, it carries a set of extremely useful sourcing tools to each social media site with you.

Good bye LinkedIn paid InMails – You’re the weakest link!

Yes – you can do these things manually, but now you don’t have to so my recommendation is that you fire up this add-on, watch the video and continue doing what you do best, but now in a much more efficient and dare I say fun way! It took me only a few minutes to install, watch the video and get the hang of it – less than the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

I like it so much I stopped what I was doing to write this review. What are you waiting for?

Hey….. come back after you check it out, I want to hear your thoughts. Are you excited about this as I am?