NEPA BlogCon is a day long blogger conference with beginner and advanced blogger tracks – something for everyone, novice or experienced in blogging for business or just for fun.

The event is not a profit making venture, it’s an organic community collaboration. ALL proceeds will be donated to a local charitable organization.

We are asking NEPA (northeastern PA) bloggers take a few minutes to weigh in and answer the survey by April 15. For helping us out you’ll receive VIP advanced notice of the event with an extra special earlybird discount!

Click here to take the survey. Repost and send to the NEPA blogger community for maximum impact!

NEPA BlogCon is a ‘green’ event by the Fearsome Foursome because we ♥ NEPA. We are @darlingstewie, @karla_porter, @mandyboyle & @mhryvnak.

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!

Here are some queries based on my Metro Area, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Check out where the opportunities are in your area based on statistical data and industry focus trends here.

Considering that I have a Google Labs widget on my iGoogle intelligence dashboard, I thought I was much sharper than I apparently am – being a Special Agent and all. Apparently not – there’s an obvious gap in intelligence data.

In any event, I had to check it out. Google Search Stories allows users to make a video clip of a search, using web, images, blogs, maps, books,news and product search.

How I missed this in April I’ll never figure out.

I have been consistent in tying many of life’s facets into this blog on human capital & new media, to include food, celebrities, Spock, aircraft and human dominoes – by golly I was going to find a way to incorporate Search Stories.

And then…… The light bulb went off. What if job seekers could use Search Stories to create an attractive clip that would visually depict their :30sec elevator pitch?

I couldn’t find other examples of Search Stories used for this purpose so I decided to be a crash test dummy and try it out on myself.

I’ll have to say I’m rather pleased with the results. Complimented by my Tag Résumé, this shows the skills I have not in a vanilla but rather a Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors kind of way – quite the additions to a digital portfolio.

Obviously, someone with little online presence would be challenged to tell their Search Story using their own work, as I did. However, it could certainly still be done with creative searches.

What’s your Search Story?

Working on a project to find the preferred web sites/resources that people use to search for jobs. What are your favorites or those that you recommend ??

What I found in the handful of answers was that many of my peers across the country dwell within the federal or state systems (one-stop shops) and don’t often peek their heads out – however, to their credit they are beginning to use LinedIn. Besides one-stop shops, answers ranged from LinkedIn, Jobcentral national labor exchange, following Jim Stroud (rock on buddy-great advice for felons today!) and AARP WorkSearch, to DOL’s Job Search Challenge where one must search through over 16,000 responses listing over 600 resources  (slightly overwhelming?) many of which really could use a good weeding out.

The question was asked in earnest by someone conducting research for a Workforce Investment Board. I cringe at the fact that with the information he was provided, the government is actually going to receive feedback that  the products they designate our dollars to  are  highly effective…. And so the vicious circle continues.

I could not help but to fight the good fight… and so I contributed this:


Whether true or not, the corporate perception is that state one-stop system and its job boards are for labor, blue collar and low paying jobs. Therefore, many employers of white collar and well compensated jobs do not use the system – they do not wish to attract what they would perceive to be unqualified candidates.

Other obstacles for employers are that state systems tend to be cumbersome (it could be compared to filling out a US Census American Community Survey) and not user friendly to post and market jobs, do not tie in with applicant tracking systems (ATS), and are not linked with social media sharing tools. Good recruiters have so many creative and effective free ways to make their job postings viral and wide reaching they prefer to use those tools.

Companies with slashed recruitment budgets are posting less and less on big job boards because of the cost and avalanche of untargeted, unqualified resumes that pour in from all over for any job due to the high amount of unemployed. When a company is not prepared to pay relocation costs it makes little sense and is not cost effective to conduct a national search on a big job board.

Our solution in northeastern PA was to create a free to post regional job board supported by chambers of commerce, business and industry and other economic and workforce development agencies, in 2004. The platform became outdated and it became time for a new look, updated functionality and features.

I took over project management from another organization and relaunched the new WorkNEPA last week. It is well branded in our region and employers and job seekers know to use it. From all indications since the relaunch last week, with the incorporation of web 2.0 and mobile features and functionality (now powered by Job Rooster), it will have more success than ever. Even the smallest employer now has access to free job posts that aggregate to Indeed, pre-qualifying questions, text SMS capability and social media sharing, to ensure jobs are promoted widely. We have a Facebook Fanpage and Twitter account that repost all jobs into the far reaches of cyber job search and also repost on the appropriate targeted LinkedIn local group job boards – all nicely indexed on search engines like Google.

I also recommend to job seekers that they use LinkUp – a job board aggregator that scrapes corporate career pages for jobs that are often unadvertised on external job boards. Additionally, when I speak to job seekers, whether it is at a local job club or networking event, I refer them to my own website for job search tips and techniques (OK so I self promoted a tad LOL).

I’m interested in knowing your take on government sponsored job boards. Whether you’re a Recruiter of Job Seeker, do you use them, and if so, which ones and are you happy with the results?

If you live in Northeastern Pennsylvania, affectionately known as NEPA, and you dream of being an entrepreneur, I challenge you to stop thinking of all the reasons you can’t turn your dreams into reality and find out how you can, July 30 – August 1, at NEPA StartUp Scramble, at the University of Scranton, Kania School of Management.

We are very fortunate to have a region with an ingrained, developed and encouraged entrepreneurial culture. Keystone Edge has featured the region several times in recent years, and even suggested we are a mini “silicon”. The NEPA StartUp Scramble provides a welcome additional platform to pitch and launch entrepreneurial ideas.

For the investment in yourself of $75 for a weekend of collaboration, candid coaching and tools to move your ideas from the dream to proposal stage and beyond toward implementation, if you don’t do this you just don’t want it bad enough.

I’m delighted to have been invited to be a featured guest by Stephen Douglass, Chief Impact Officer of Young Impact, along with local and national sizzling entrepreneurial super stars. I’ll be there among all the talent talking about the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.. Join us to see if you have what it takes!

Stable small businesses are becoming the strength of our region. ~ Faith D. Clark

I decided to put a spin on the event to provide added value.

You see, we have local chapters of some great professional associations that many of us belong to, but the truth is that HR, Recruiters (corporate and 3rd party), Workforce Development Pros, Employment Specialists and College Career Services, we never get together across disciplines to meet one another and network. It seems it’s always for a meeting, seminar or conference and it’s difficult in those environments to find time to establish rapport, build relationships and learn how we can help one another.

And, we can improve how we work together and share best practices and resources… we can have fun doing it too.

So, won’t you join me and the other enthusiastic employment professionals who have already jumped on this incredible opportunity for networking and a cash bar? You are welcome and encouraged to forward this invitation to your network – to your co-workers, peers, colleagues, bosses, reports, wherever they may be – if they can crawl, walk, drive, fly or row in they will be most welcome!

Join us Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at River Grille in Plains on the deck overlooking the river.

Please RSVP and if there is something you would like to add to the event, don’t hesitate to let me know!

How do I know if it’s gone well?

Many times after a seminar attendees stick around and ask questions and I always stay around until they have all been answered.  I look at the evaluations to see how well the content resonated and if there are suggestions for next time. But for me the real feedback comes from what happens in the days and weeks after the presentation.

I feel I have done well when people connect with me and want to stay in touch. I get a lot of technical questions on how to do this or that and I get plenty of requests for one-on-one sessions and people asking to tap into my network. I think that’s fantastic, and it shows the experience met or exceeded their expectations.

So, when Wendy sent me the message in the screenshot today on Facebook it struck me that she didn’t want anything other than to tell me that she realized the importance of what I presented and made a decision to implement the strategy. I offered further support and she wrote back that she wasn’t looking for me to do the work for her but she would let me look at it when she has it up and running. A huge smile came to my face, she got it.

Recreate Wendy and then show the world…

Another mission accomplished.

THE Conference is the multi-track business conference of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce and will bring professional development and networking opportunities to northeastern PA on Tuesday, April 27 at The Woodlands.

The day long, comprehensive professional development and business conference will begin at 8 a.m. with Myra Golden, nationally renown keynote speaker and author of Beyond Wow. Myra consults for organizations that represent the brands and services you know and love to help them differentiate their service experience from that of their competitors.

Multiple tracks in business and nonprofit disciplines will continue throughout the day for C-level, marketing, fund-raising, human resources, entrepreneurship and management. Participants will enjoy interactive sessions on social media, media relations, branding, green marketing, ethical fund-raising, grants, board governance, employment law, recruiting and retention, diversity, business financing, business start ups, economics of technology, digital time management, global trends, capacity building, C-suite challenges and more.

I’ll be conducting a session on how to attract quality candidates and retain top performing employees through employer branding and employee engagement. There will be several panel discussions and a number of “Toolkit” sessions from which participants will walk away with ideas and strategies that can implemented in their business or nonprofit right away.

THE Conference concludes with Cocktails & Connections, a business mixer at 5 p.m hosted by POWER! Wilkes-Barre. What other way would you end an event like this?

If you’re in northeast PA you can’t miss this professional development and business networking event. If you are not in the immediate area but are looking for a mega quality event at a price that can’t be beat then by all means join us! Registration is $99 ($79 for Chamber members and nonprofit employees) and includes continental breakfast, lunch, conference materials and entrance to the Cocktails & Connections networking mixer.

For 6 tracks and 30+ speakers and events for only $99 it’s worth driving from NYC, Philly, Harrisburg and even flying in from Texas or Timbuktu… <<—- Go back and read that sentence!

If you’re interested in a great way to showcase your business why not rent an exhibitor booth for $150?

Tip for Students: Take advantage of the very special deeply discounted student rate of $49 to come for professional development and to network with potential future employers.

I can’t wait to see you there!