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 have all kinds of ‘tricks’ in my Special Agent portfolio… including seeing many things about candidates before I even click.

My favorite trick today? Turning the applicant into a pre-Halloween Frankenstein to scare the bejeezus out of job seekers from ever posting a profile pic anything less than grandmother approved.

P.S. Thank you Rapportive

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 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?

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?

There are certain circumstances in which a purposeful trifecta strategy is desirable and appropriate, like job postings, important public announcements (I got a promotion, graduated college, won the lottery and I’m out of here), and information to be shared that you are certain would appeal to those at the water cooler as well as in the boardroom.

Tweets like the ones imported into my LinkedIn home page at this very moment by my contacts add zero value taken out of their Twitter context (actually, some have no value posted anywhere).

yep– my laptop battery is already dead

I got blisters on my fingers and my toes

Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Good Evening! Good Night! Good Day! Wherever you are, you can make it “good.”

Did I just see@temauk on tv at the sugar bowl?

I’m at DStroyerRadio.com (Wilkes-Barre) — foursquare check in

I’ve lost track of #tchat . Waiting for the next question.

And on and on.….

Rather than connecting Twitter to Facebook via the official Twitter app use Selective Twitter. It’s easy to use. When you want a tweet to post to Twitter, simply end it with #fb. This way, your club’s tweet chat convo doesn’t end up in your Facebook timeline to confuse and frustrate your other friends. It works for fan pages you manage too.

If I’m at an event I can post updates and pics with my Blackberry to one of the many fan pages I manage easily to both Twitter and Facebook (I use ÜberTwitter — available for iPhone too). If the content is also appropriate for LinkedIn I can post there too at the same time by adding #in or #li.

When you configure your LinkedIn account settings to connect with Twitter, be sure to select the “share only tweets that contain #in or #li.” LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Twitter’s Biz Stone made a video to talk about bringing the peanut butter and the chocolate together for maximum effectiveness. Using the two together can be a smart strategy if done the way they suggest.

Be sure to send a reminder to disconnect as an ecard to those you know — better yet, forward this post to them!

Dust off your LinkedIn profile, ensure it is updated and get familiar with new features that were added over the past year. Read the LinkedIn blog for all the skinny.

Join 50 groups (50 is the limit and they are free and all contain a job board) according to industry, location, Alma mater, etc. and introduce yourself through a post on the discussion board with a mini bio and mention you are a job seeker.

Search the Questions & Answers feature for questions you have expertise in and can answer and ask questions of peers — great way to get your name visible and dialog with people you would likely otherwise not have the opportunity to.

Export your contacts and send an email to them monthly, the first time with a re-introduction and monthly with an update on your job search. Be sure to bcc everyone so you don’t disclose their email addresses.

Learn how doing your job search via LinkedIn jobs shows you who you are connected to at the companies you are interested in that have jobs posted. This allows you to apply through the front door and network through the back door.

Follow companies you are interested in employment with by doing a company search and clicking the follow button. See who works there and get busy making connections.

If you have a professional blog link it to your account to introduce it to visitors.

Don’t link your Twitter account to LinkedIn if you tweet random things — it’s truly annoying to everyone but you. Use select tweets. Actually, please use select tweets with Facebook too.

Do a strategic contact search, pick up the phone and start calling!

Realize that every time you make a profile enhancement or post an interesting status update you show up in the time line of all you connections — stay in their face, in a professional way — of course.

There is a lot I haven’t covered, what’s your hot LinkedIn tip?

I wasn’t affected as much as some of my colleagues because I keep a lot of my work on a cyber cloud or thumb drive so I always have access to it. Though this isn’t a tutorial on external backup I’m going to tell you that if you don’t do it you need to start or you’ll end up exploring ugly disaster recovery if you have a systems crash.

Whether you run a one person consultancy with a laptop or a larger networked enterprise with multiple computers churning out mega data, it is a huge disruption and inconvenience to conducting business as usual if what you need is not available. If it’s not retrievable — and quickly, might I add — you can suffer potentially irreparable loss.  If you back up to an external hard drive located next to your computer or server that is located in the same building and that building burns down or some competitor sends a ninja to steal it, you’ll wish you had used an off site back up service and that your data was encrypted in a vault on a cloud with multiple data centers around the globe for ensured retrievability, security and peace of mind. With all the technology available at very reasonable prices to back up and secure personal and business data, if you don’t don’t do it and do it the right way — don’t expect sympathy if all your  digital media and hard work go up in smoke.

The event reconfirmed to me why it’s a good thing I monitor my reputation online to ensure it would never be a liability or embarrassment to me, my employer or my mother (hi mom =)). The first couple days after the crash I got filing and cleaning done, went out for lunch and made calls about things I would normally send email for. After the second day when I stopped believing it “would be up in an hour” I started bringing my personal laptop and picked up free wifi from downtown Public Square.

People found me.…

Facebook and LinkedIn message traffic picked up and my personal email account started to receive work related email. I received more text and instant messages. No one complained, most never even mentioned that the email they sent to my work account was being kicked back. The rerouting of communication and data migration  happened naturally without me posting even one message anywhere about my email being down. It reminds me of a documentary I watched in grade school science class about ant colonies. The worker ants carried things many times their weight along a path and if the path was obstructed they would just find another path. But they would get there.

People who had my vcard info or to whom I had given a business card did not have my personal email, social media profile info or personal website URL. Yet, they found me. If you are thinking I’ve lost it and that’s what Google is for… that’s exactly what a professor at Kings College said when I met with her after receiving a notice about a Global Landscapes Conference planning meeting to my personal email.

Well Karla, you know, in these days of Google… Dr. Bindu Vyas

**As a side note, if you are interested in attending or speaking at the conference check it out — I would love to see you here in Wilkes-Barre, PA!

She had googled me for alternatives… To my credit, I was easy to find because I understand and practice good SEO. To my credit what she found when she searched me didn’t make her think twice about sending the planning meeting invitation to me. To my credit, my personal email address isn’t something like sexyhrlady@virtualkiss.biz — my email is innocuous and wouldn’t be offensive to anyone, it’s my name. To my credit, I understand I could jeopardize my credibility through carelessness or not understanding the importance of positive professional branding.

There are many lessons here to consider if this has never happened to you.

The multiple ways I have enabled people to communicate with me could be seen by some as a curse, an encroachment on my personal life.. and I know people who do feel that way. In my opinion they helped me survive the crash of 2010 in a fairly seamless way with minimal impact.

Have you had to deal with a crash or extended downtime? How did you deal with it?

P.S. Because of this experience, my mind is wheeling about the way we employ communication tools. Another day I’ll post about my thoughts on individual unique identifiers for seamless communication and in the meantime if you are an Internet architect looking for the next big step in evolution and would like to talk about it let me know.

OK… I’m back! There were about 40 students in the class. All but three were from out of the area. Most were business students with a sprinkling of nursing majors. I asked them a lot of questions so I knew where I stood.

How Many have a Facebook? 38

Twitter? 3

LinkedIn? 39 — Seriously? The professor chimed in… it was a class project.

How many of you use your LinkedIn profile? 2

Who has a personal website or blog? 1

How do you think social media can advance your career goals? Nada.…..

It might be shocking to learn that most college students think that companies just use social media to see if you posted “bad” photos of yourself and to read your online resume. That’s why I love to speak to students.. to let them know they can be in the driver’s seat of their careers by following and friending their future colleagues, gleaning expert advice from industry professionals, meeting mentors, questioning companies about career paths.. all while they are viewed as non-threatening knowledge seekers.

When I entered the room I put a stack of business cards on the desk and invited students to network with me. Though they didn’t ask many questions they did ask important ones. On the way out several took me up on my offer to connect. I also suggested that perhaps Career Services might consider creating an online community for each graduating class and recruit mentors to interact with students.

Students who take advantage of online professional networking early in their college career will grow an army of soldiers that will be their best resources when it comes the second half of senior year and the job search begins.

What advice do you have for students?

Those are just some of the things I am über excited about and can’t wait to share with you. It was another very good day — the kind I typically have.

Then there was this…

Before I powered down the portal to the world I clicked on the news. Look closely at the screen shot in this post and you’ll see what I saw at that moment. No amount of Karunesh quiets the ugly voices of escalated hatred and intolerance that become louder and louder each day — in print, radio, TV, electronic media and organized gatherings by our own brand of home grown extremists who con us into Genovese syndrome and jumping off virtual bridges because everyone else is doing it. Propping up their popularity through promoting fear in society they delight in fanning the flames.

The difficult times of the past nine years and resulting trauma to our national psyche have put us in a position of fear and defensiveness. It’s not an intelligent stance and it’s not becoming to us as a nation and a people. We are better than this. We are more innovative than this. We love life more than to allow ourselves to be dominated by this.

I’m calling for all rational thinkers to stand up and speak up, to help others understand that following celebrity cult politicians and preachers who are extreme or fundamentalist in their views are a danger to our freedom and liberty — for they have little or no tolerance for those who think, act and look differently than they do. I am heartbroken to see us losing ground in diversity and acceptance of others and gaining proficiency in divisiveness and hate.

Life is too short to live in hate.