The result is groundhog day. Everywhere you click it’s like a ritual; Facebook, Twitter, and all too often errant integration to LinkedIn … The same post by the same people on every network. It’s flat, unamusing, highly unoriginal, clogs up channels and turns social streams into parking lots like PA Interstate 81 S in this era of unrelentless American Recovery and Reinvestment Act construction that never seems to yield results. People even post images of quotes on Pinterest and flickr. It’s beguiling to me.

It’s not to say that the words of philosophers, politicians and old and new age gurus can’t hold some salt, but instead of just playing whisper down the lane – why not rip one apart and analyze it, explain why you dis/agree, talk about the impact it has had on your life, why every single human for eons should take it to heart and live by it, or why the author is unstable?

You figured out I’m about to do just that, right? Here are 10 quotes about the world of work and my takeaways.

 1. Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance? – Edgar Bergen

By this logic, many more people should be immortal besides those kids in Twilight, though there is much truth to this. People who tend to make work their life tend to have high blood pressure, stress and lots of anxiety. I wonder if Edgar and Charley ever really thought what they did was work or play.

 2. When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt. – Henry Kaiser

OCD types have great difficulty with this. Better to wrap it up, call it a day and go swing on a hammock with a piña colada while basking in the glory of your accomplishment – rather than nitpicking and regurgitating it to death making people sick of you.

3. Our great weariness comes from work not done. – Eric Hoffer

I’m pretty sure it usually comes from procrastination. After all, all that thinking and stress are hard work and tiring. I’m also fairly certain I should be a size 000.

4. Getting fired is nature’s way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place. – Hal Lancaster

Not only does job fit play a role, but so do your personal life, mental and physical health, Facebook relationship status,  irritating co-workers and inept boss, what you had for dinner yesterday – and a million and one other contributing factors. Yeah Hal.

5. All things are difficult before they are easy. – Thomas Fuller

I just don’t agree this should be some blanket rule as I find myself reflecting on the 3 days I spent on the rubber band line at the old Eberhard Faber plant in Mountain Top, PA. Day 1, interesting. Day 2, challenging. Day 3, painful. See, it just got worse as the minutes ticked away on the clock. For the uninitiated, I blogged about it in November.

6. And to get real work experience, you need a job, and most jobs will require you to have had either real work experience or a graduate degree. – Donald Norman

This doesn’t have to be ‘chicken or egg’ and isn’t rocket science Don. Volunteer Intern with a nonprofit. They typically can never have enough help or resources.  It will reflect brilliantly on you in your résumé and social profiles and during your interview. In fact, forever.

7. Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work. – Al Capp

Reading Al’s quote got me all incensed and I figured there must be something wrong with him, a hard core right-winger most probably. So I checked out some of the other insightful things that have dribbled out of his corn hole like this and confirmed my suspicions, “Like all New York hotel lady cashiers she had red hair and had been disappointed in her first husband.” Andy Capp was more intelligent and less biased.

8. It can be liberating to get fired because you realize the world doesn’t end. There’s other ways to make money, better jobs. – Ron Livingston

I’m such an example of this, kind of… I thought I had the best job ever. I wasn’t ‘fired’ but I was downsized and ended up  with really the best job ever. I know a few other people this has happened to as well. However, for the majority it doesn’t. People are overwhelmed and overcome with anxiety, financial distress and the need for immediate week to week cash. They have never been able to accumulate an emergency cash reserve and that frightens the bejezus out of them.

9. If you put all your strength and faith and vigor into a job and try to do the best you can, the money will come. – Lawrence Welk

If Lawrence were alive today I would tweet him that this just isn’t so. When this past wave of joblessness hit I met people in the unemployment line with 30+ years of service and loyalty to their employers. And a pink slip. And the inability to get another job at the same wage they were downsized from due to compounded annual pay increases. Stick to tickling the eternal ivories Larry.

10. It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction. – Pablo Picasso

Pablo knew, “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.” He was a poor student who lived doing what he hungered for and lived till 91. He recalled, “for being a bad student, they would send me to the ‘cells’& I loved it when they sent me there, because I could take a pad of paper and draw nonstop.” He stands alone as the most celebrated and influential painter of the twentieth century. His technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy distinguish him as a revolutionary artist.

My top takeaway is that all those people out there, who have ever been and ever will be, that are quoted say things like Picasso, and of course Confucius - “Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,” are the ones who find the golden goose egg. And those are the quotes to teach your children.

If I had a child, I would get some word art for her bedroom wall with those words on it, drill it in a pleasant way into her head. Let her know her passion should be her opportunity to contribute to the world and her own well-being. I would do everything possible to encourage her and help her explore and develop her aptitude and talent so that one day someone could quote her saying that she chose a job she loved and never felt like she worked a day in her life.

P.S. You need to know that if you click on that wall art link and end up buying some you’ll be putting a tip in my jar as well as helping to change a child’s life for the better =)

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. 

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!

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?