Social Media in Management

Filed Under blogging, careers, life, my career, social media

CIO Magazine’s Sue Bushell has written an interesting article, called ‘Management 2.0? That’ll Be The Day‘, on the challenges that CIOs — and companies, in general — are facing with the advent of social media technologies in the workplace.

In his book, The Future of Management, Gary Hamel suggests that organizations today face a new set of business challenges that the existing management model does not match. The drone worker of yesterday is giving way to the engaged and vocal employee of today who expects a company culture that replicates the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 — in other words Management 2.0

The name Gary Hamel will, of course, be very familiar to anyone who has done any MBA and has studied the (frequently incorrectly-used) Core Competency concept.

The article is long but useful as it gives managers a lot to think about and hopefully look into:

Managers have a general sense of what Web 2.0 tools are — especially when it comes to applications they’re familiar with like YouTube, Facebook, or Linkedin. But they still struggle to understand these technologies, discover their real business value, address the risks and figure out how to best use them.

This, by the way, is where someone like me would come in: I know both management (theory and practice) and technology (uses and implementations) and can help senior management come up with an implementation of social media that enhances project management, decision making, and internal communication and collaboration.

The trick is that social media integration in an enterprise needs to be a long-term project and not something you hire a consulting firm to do for you in a few weeks. It needs to grow experimentally, possibly slowly, and from the ground-up. And while it will probably change a number of times as it develops — which means it’s not something you can really plan for in advance — you can start with a few basic governance rules (who does what and what everyone is in responsible for), some content guidelines (that cover privacy, security, and intellectual property), and a simple usage policy (like the two-word “be careful” policy that is often a good start).

Speaking of governance…

Challenges of the Multi-Generational Workforce

The discussion on how to manage a multi-generational workforce — which is an issue for many managers these days — reminds me of a blog post on banning Facebook that Toby Ward wrote on the Intranet Blog about a month ago:

Beware of Facebook! It will crush your productivity and hijack your employees!

[…]

Employees prefer to be treated as adults. Judge their performance and actions instead of counting their minutes spent doing “productive work.”

Trust me, the threat and problems stemming from a ban far exceed the embrace option. Prescient Digital Media’s Julian Mills last week highlighted the findings of one recent survey that warned of the perils of banning Facebook:

  • 39% of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube
  • A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban
  • The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16% would consider leaving and 13% would be annoyed

Of course “consider leaving” doesn’t mean they actually will leave but it does mean that they probably won’t join your company in the first place. Especially if they announce your blanket banning policy on the Facebook group about your company that you didn’t know existed.

I know that I, for one, wouldn’t want to join a company that bans sites like Facebook or doesn’t let you blog, read blogs, pay your bills, read the news, check your e-mail, or basically have a life outside work while you’re at work. Limiting YouTube usage makes a little more sense since there’s a bandwidth cost associated with online video but, even then, it shouldn’t be banned outright.

As Ward said in his article, companies shouldn’t be taking the Taylorist approach to management. Of course you’ll get employees who’ll take 30 minutes to make themselves a cup of coffee or spend an hour on Facebook every now and then — but that’s okay as long as they (a) get their jobs done, (b) don’t stop others from getting their jobs done, and (c) don’t use-up too many freely-provided company resources (like bandwidth or, for that matter, coffee).

I guess all I can conclude with is that, with the advent of social media and the existence of a multi-generational workforce…well, the next five years are going to be really interesting

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My Elevator Pitch & Unique Selling Proposition

Filed Under careers, my career

As I wrote in my previous blog post, I met with another recruitment consultant from Hudson this morning.  In order to introduce myself to her, I did some work on my elevator pitch and further developed my Unique Selling Proposition (USP). In fact, I typed all this up and and gave her a printout of it. And, since I’m applying for an Internet-related position and the best place to learn more about me is indeed online, I added a section on that too.

Here’s what I came up with:

(Extended) Elevator Pitch

Experience: Six years of experience in IT consulting and management, over five of which were spent in the strategic planning, technical development, business integration, and marketing of websites, web portals, intranets, and social media sites. Overall, eight years of work experience.

Training: MBA from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Business School (see list of courses in this blog post, which I also included in the printout).

Immediate career goals: A management or consulting role that involves the alignment of business and marketing strategy with online strategy. This could include the formulation (i.e. research and analysis), implementation (i.e. administration and management), or further development (i.e. testing and advancement) of such a strategy. An online strategy includes internal and external marketing and communications and the use of social media to communicate with stakeholders internally and across the value chain.

Unique Selling Proposition

Online

Comments?

So what do you think? Does that sum things up nicely?

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Career Update

Filed Under careers, my career

My contract job at Linfox finished recently (I’ll write more about that when I continue my MBA-at-work blog post series) so I spent the last week watching the Olympics (which was awesome). Now that I’ve had a nice break, I’m back to looking for jobs.

An Unsuccessful Job Application

Actually, I did interview for a job during my last week at Linfox — the recruitment consultants at Hudson are very efficient — but, after three rounds of interviews and reaching the final stage of the process (with just two candidates in the running) I didn’t get end up getting it.

This was unfortunate because it was a good job, at a good company, and I really liked the people I would have been working with. Oh well. Such is life.

The Silver Lining

It’s not all bad, though: this was only my second serious job application since completing the MBA — i.e. an application to a permanent position that I really wanted to get and could then see myself growing with over the following year or two — and, in both cases, I reached the final stage before being dropped. [More on my job application philosophy here]

What this means is that I have what it takes to do these kinds of jobs — that is, I have the ‘can do’, ‘will do’, and ‘fit’, as my interviewers from both companies told me — it’s just that one of the other applicants was more appropriate for that particular role at that particular time. In other words, that applicant’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) was more suited to that role than mine was. In the job I just applied to, for example, the winning applicant had the marketing agency experience that the company wanted.

This is good: this means the company is paying very close attention to the people it is hiring and, when it happens that my USP is the most suitable for that role, that company, and that team, I’ll win out over the other applicants and will know that the company did it for all the right reasons.

Next Steps

So, what next? Well, the people at Hudson have me on their radar — in fact I met with another recruitment consultant of theirs this morning — so I expect to get a good lead from them (they’re very good at what they do). Hopefully that lead will come sooner rather than later.

Otherwise, I continue to look for jobs online and continue to network for openings in the hidden job market. Let’s see how things go. If you know of anything I might be interested in, please let me know. Thanks.

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Online Community Compensation Study

Filed Under careers, my career, social media

The Online Community Report just released its Online Community Compensation Study.

Most of the study’s key findings shouldn’t come as a surprise to people working in this space: the community team employs more women than men, most team members are between 31 and 50 years old, and most have over five years of work experience. However the compensation figures are a little higher than I expected at an average of US$81k (approximately AU$95k).

I also wasn’t expecting women to be earning 91% (on average) of what men are earning. Assuming that factors like experience, industry, average company salary, position in corporate hierarchy, department within the company, importance of community role for company, etc. have all been statistically removed from this analysis — and they probably haven’t all been removed — then the lower salary for women is most disappointing.

Meanwhile, the most heartening result from the study is, of course, the job satisfaction rating which is an average of 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5 :)

FYI: OCR’s Key Resources blog post category is a great place to look if you want to start or further develop your online community.

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Standard Format for Online CVs in Australia

Filed Under careers, social media

ITWire’s Stan Beer reports that a number of Australian technology recruitment companies have signed on to make the iProfile their preferred CV template for candidates applying through them.

This sounds like an interesting idea and will probably make life easier for recruiters. I don’t know how it’ll work out for candidates, though. If candidates can retain their individuality despite the standard format — as the ‘The CV is Dead - Long Live the iProfile‘ video seems to indicate — then it should be okay. If not, it’ll commoditize them and that’s not good.

Since I haven’t actually seen the iProfile template — you can’t unless you sign up and they don’t have any samples you can view — I guess I’ll just have to wait and see (or, of course, sign up and take a look).

That said, the good thing about the iProfile standard is that a whole bunch of recruitment companies have signed up to work with it. Without that, it’d be no better than your standard Seek, LinkMe, or SixFigures online profile: good but maybe not as widely available as you’d want it to be. Also, the privacy and viewing controls that this system seems to have are really nice too.

More generally, I like the fact that this announcement evangelises the use of online CVs to the Australian recruitment industry. So while all recruitment agencies won’t be using the iProfile, maybe they’ll start to pay more attention to things like LinkedIn profiles and other social media attributes of their candidate pool. Here’s hoping.

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I Can Has Senior Producer?

Filed Under careers, technology

Very, very, very rarely do I wish that I had stuck with web programming for a little bit longer. This is one of those times. As posted on MyCareer.com:

Executive Producer (M5)

I’m looking for a Senior Project manager / Senior Producer to work with my outstanding client who is a well known and highly regarded organisation pioneering some of the most innovative and in-depth communications strategies in Australia.

Due to massive success the Production team requires the services of a Senior Producer to support the production team in online, print, marketing and digital media initiatives.

O’rly you say?

Ya’rly!

If you are a 733t project manager or senior producer, with mad skills (over 9000!) from the delivery of flawless web projects, as well as the Real Ultimate Power of performing under pressure and delivering spectacular results then this is the role for you.

For this senior level role you will be involved in:

  • Supporting and guiding business strategies
  • Manage Producers, Designers and Developers on significant projects
  • Deliver agreed outcomes throughout the Project lifecycle
  • Implement new developments throughout the business portfolio and ensure business agenda’s are met
  • Engage with all facets of the production process.

You will demonstrate:

  • Experience working within the internet, media and print industries
  • Exposure to formal Project Management and methodologies such as Agile and or Prince2
  • Articulate, concise communication skills with the ability to assert a point with empathy
  • The ability to work from both a strategic angle and a creative one
  • Good technical understanding of web design and development as well as print production and media environment skills and knowledge
  • Strong time management skills

Communication and interpersonal skills will be just as important as having the following experience and education:

  • Tertiary qualifications
  • An absolute minimum of 5 years experience in a Project Management or producers role in a web based environment utilising Flash, .Net, ActionScript and Adobe products. Seriously, save the Internet some bandwidth by not applying if you don’t have a significant web background.
  • Previous experience managing the code grinders and the colouring in types.
  • Strong scope management
  • Excellent judgement on best action to take
  • Excellent documentation skills
  • Best practise knowledge in Project Management practices
  • Excellent time management skills

Put on your robe and wizard hat if you have knowledge of:

  • Developing solutions in .NET and 3D modelling
  • Games development
  • Managing Production Shoots

A passion for the web is essential, my client represents the best in Melbourne and we are only looking for the crème de la crème of the marketplace. You MUST attach a compelling cover letter to your application for this role. 

*sigh*

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MBS MBA FAQs: Career Prospects

Filed Under careers, mba, melbourne business school

Every couple of weeks I get an e-mail from someone looking to do an MBA from Melbourne Business School. I get asked lots of different questions in these e-mails but the ones I get most often cover admissions advice, post-MBA career prospects and the MBS careers office, and what my impression of MBS is now that I’m in the job market.

I’ve been meaning to blog about my replies to those e-mails for a while now but have only just gotten around to doing so. Here then is the first of those blog posts, this one covering career prospects and questions about MBS’ Career Services Centre.

Q. What is the Career Services Centre at MBS like?

A. It’s pretty good and it’s getting better. To give you an example: Back in 2006, when I started my MBA, the concept of an “MBA internship” was relatively new in Melbourne (and maybe even in Australia where internships and apprenticeships are generally 6-12 months long and are often something you do after your undergraduate degree). My MBA intake was the first to have an internship built into its program and, of the 30 or so people who wanted to do an internship, only 12 managed to get one. Things have improved drastically since then: of the 50 or so people who wanted to do an internship this year, over 45 got one. Most of that is thanks to the Career Services Centre’s efforts of the last couple of years.

The Career Services team is pretty impressive, too: they have a general careers consultant who can help you figure out what you want to do with your life and a bunch of industry specialists who really know what they’re talking about. The industry specialists also have great relationships with all the big companies in their designated industries. They also have a coordinator and general manager, both of whom know pretty much everything that’s going on and are a valuable resource in themselves.

The Centre also runs weekly career-related workshops (which are invaluable), holds a two-day residential careers/leadership training session (which is awesome), and manages the relationships with all of the companies that recruit from MBS (see next question).

Q. What kinds of companies recruit from MBS?

A. All kinds, including some of the biggest, most successful, and most well-known companies in Australia and the world. There are on-campus recruitment sessions/presentations held throughout the year and here is a list of some of the companies that held one during my last term there:

Q. How do MBS students get/find their jobs? What kinds of jobs do they get, how much do they get paid, and which countries do they get these jobs in?

A. For details on all of this, read MBS’ graduating class survey for 2007. The data for the 2008 survey hasn’t been collected year (that should happen next month) and I’ll blog about that once the results are in.

Keep in mind, though, that 2007’s “average” starting salary of AU$105,211 doesn’t actually tell you much because it doesn’t capture the massive difference between graduates starting in, for example, C-suite positions and earning over 150k per year and graduates working in non-profits and earning under 70k per year. This is problem with averages.

What you can do to supplement this data is to look at industry-specific salary ranges as reported via salary surveys conducted by these four recruitment firms:

Notice how salary averages change across cities and industries and how they vary among the surveys themselves.

Q. What are the chances of using the MBA to switch industries?

A. It’s never easy to switch industries but the MBA is a great degree to switch with. That said, unless you work really hard, are incredibly persistent, and get a little lucky, you are unlikely to get your dream job in your target industry right after you graduate (particularly if you want to get into something like investment banking!). Instead, you’ll probably start at a lower-than-expected position in your new industry and will then work your way up to your dream job. This, by the way, is compared to the position someone from that industry would start at if they went and did an MBA and then came back. However, once you do make the switch, you’re likely to move up the corporate ladder (i.e. to your dream job) quicker than someone who doesn’t have an MBA.

The best part: you have tonnes of resources to help you make the switch. This includes not only books, elective courses, and industry clubs, but also your classmates, faculty members, Career Services staff, and alumni.

The most powerful industry-switching tool available to you, however, is your MBA internship. Assuming you manage to get one in your target industry, you’ll not only get some industry experience on your resume, you’ll also get networking contacts, lots of news and information about that industry, and maybe even direct contacts in companies that you might want to apply to for a job.

Q. What does it take to get a job in management consulting?

A. Lots of hard work, a love of numbers, the ability to see the big picture and the interconnections between elements, and the right (i.e. management consulting) attitude. The advantages you’ll have in being an MBS student include:

That said, there are two things you have to be ready for.

  1. Consulting firms will only hire you if your grades are really high (i.e. top 20% of your graduating class high) and, even then, only if you do really well on their case interviews (which are never easy).
  2. Only one or two people get into any of those firms in a given year and there are lots of smart people at MBS who want to get into management consulting so there’s plenty of competition.

In other words: the prospects are great if you work really hard, do lots of preparation, and get really good grades. If not, your prospects are still good but it might take longer and may be harder to get in.

Finally, the Career Services Centre and the student-run MBS Consulting Interest Group will guide you in all of this.

On to other topics…

Those are the most popular career-prospect questions I tend to get. I’ll move on to other topics next time but if there are any other specific questions you want me to answer on this topic, please let me know and I’ll cover them in a subsequent blog post.

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I Have a Job!

Filed Under careers, my career

So I haven’t been posting much recently. Why? Because I have a job! Indeed, as of last Wednesday, I am the Online Coordinator (OC) at Linfox.

Linfox, for those of you who don’t know, is Australia’s second-largest logistics and supply chain company, earning over AU$2bn in revenues last year. It employs over 16,000 people, owns over 5,000 vehicles, has over 1.8 million square meters of warehousing space, runs 2 airports, and operates out of 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Yes, it’s big. Not quite as big as Deutsche Post, of course, but it’s getting there. Oh, and it privately owned. (More fun trivia on Linfox in a future blog post, perhaps…like how it transported eight elephants last year and how, every year, it does all the logistics for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix.)

Based in the Communications department, the OC’s role has two main components:

This job is also an excellent next step for my career: it puts me well on my way to becoming a more senior level web strategist/consultant and the Linfox brand is great for my CV.

Why am I concerned about how this job will look on my CV when I’ve only just started it? Because I’m on a three month contract so, two months from now, I’ll be back to looking for another job and preferably a permanent one. Why, then, did I take a three month contract job? Because Linfox and the OC role were not to be missed. Opportunities like this do not come along often and I’m really happy to have been selected for this one.

Of course, what this means for me in a practical sense is that I have a great deal to do in the short time that I’m here. Fortunately, having come off the MBA program at Melbourne Business School, I should be able to handle the speed, pressure, and volume of work quite well. (Thanks, MBS!)  Meanwhile, the role will also give me the opportunity to apply all that I learnt from courses like E-Commerce, Information Strategy, Brand Management, Managing People for High Performance, Negotiations, and Leadership.

So here I am. Let the, er, online coordinating begin!

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Stop Writing Cover Letters…

Filed Under careers

Phil Rosenberg wrote a great article in Social Media Today called Stop Writing Cover Letters and You’ll Get MORE Interviews.

He argues that it’s your resume that needs to include key words from job postings since it’s those that get placed into recruitment databases and, as a result, searched. Cover letters, meanwhile, don’t even make it to the database so there’s no point in putting keywords (or, according to Rosenberg, any effort at all) into those. In other words, resume search engine optimisation (SEO) for job description keywords is crucial. In fact, that is precisely what will get you through to the interview stage.

He has a point and I wonder how true this is for Australian companies and recruiters. It sure sounds plausible enough. That said, this is not going to stop me from writing cover letters. Doing at bit of SEO work on my resume may get me past the first cut but I’m pretty sure my cover letter will have a bigger role to play in subsequent stages. The resume SEO tip is really useful, though.

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What Community Managers Get Paid

Filed Under careers, social media

The Community Manager role is still relatively new and somewhat hard to pin down:

Because of its newness, the confusion surrounding its place in the organizational hierarchy, and the many different ways in which companies are engaging their customers and employees, this role is handled in different ways by different companies.

However, increasingly, the Community Manager role is becoming an entirely separate job position. That is, as social media has increased in usage, importance, relevance, and impact, community management tasks can no longer be simply added-on to a communications person or marketer’s job description.

Okay, Now What?

But now that companies are creating these roles, they want to know how much they should pay Community Managers and, more fundamentally, what the job position’s ROI is.

The latter question is harder to answer and, even if you work through the numbers, sometimes the best answer is “If you don’t have someone dedicated to engaging your customers or employees, you will get left behind.” Which is much like the answer to a question that a lot of companies were asking themselves in the 90’s: “But why should we have a website?” :) 

Of course, all this depends on how strategically important customer interaction is to your company. Theoretically, the more important customer interaction is — and assuming your customers are increasing their social media usage — the more you should be investing in a social media manager.

Theories aside, however, Connie Benson recently conducted a social media-based survey on what Community Managers are being paid these days and how companies are arriving at that figure. She wrote that all up in a blog post which concludes that, in the US, Community Managers are paid anything from US$60,000 to $110,000 (about AU$64-117k). Presumably this variation represents the amount of strategic importance placed by companies on customer engagement and the social media usage of customers.

What About Australia?

However, based on the few (and far between) community management-type job openings I’ve come across over the last few months, I can safely say that the Australian salary range for Community Managers is significantly lower. That’s mainly because social media still doesn’t figure in most Australia companies’ strategies. Oh well.

Hmmm…I wonder how much Telstra’s Now We Are Talking site or its competitors’ Tell The Truth Telstra site pays its community managers :)

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