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 Insights from a Recruiting Specialist [19:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18)

We have a special guest on the Overflow podcast during the holiday break.  Randi Shapiro is the Founder and President of Recruiting Specialists, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Randi specializes in advertising, marketing and public relations placements for client companies ranging from creative shops to Fortune 500 companies.

Randi has been actively involved in the direct hire staffing business for many years, as a second generation recruiter.

The online world has allowed Randi to mine sites such as LinkedIn and Monster.com to get introduced to people who she might not have previously encountered, while simultaneously gaining insights into companies who she can help find candidates. As a relationship business, using all of these tools helps maintain contact with people and growing the extended network.

Randi stills sees hiring taking place even in this challenging economy, particularly with people who have interactive marketing experience.  She cautions candidates not to jump at the first offer simply because the need to find is job is so strong …. rather she tries to counsel that candidates should not settle on a salary unless absolutely necessary.

It truly is a collaborative effort among recruiters, candidates, and client companies so that the best placements are made for a win win scenario for everyone.

Randi’s Rules for successfully finding a position:

• Be proactive, work to establish a relationship with the recruiter so they may best represent you.

• No matter the circumstance, always put on a happy face. You can’t complain about the situation that you find yourself in.

• Have a great resume that demonstrates successes in the previous position. It is also vital to have good recommendations who will vouch for your work.

For those of you just entering the work force, Randi cautions about posting things online that may impact your ability to locate a position in the future. It may be cute and funny now, but there are employers who are constantly using Google search to find more information about a candidate than appears on a resume.

If you would like to contact Randi to see if she can help you to locate that new position, she can be reached through her web site at www.recrutingspec.com, via email she is at Randi @ RecrutingSpec (dot) com, or phone 770.392.4255

 

 Social Networks - Touchin 'em All [28:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (167)

Today’s guest on the Overflow podcast is Jaq Baldwin who is the publisher of The Launching Pad blog with daily posts about the Atlanta Braves and all things baseball.  Jaq provides us some insights into his strategies for using the social networking tools such as Digg, Stumbleupon and bookmarking sites like Delicious and Magnolia.

The first topic takes us to Digg where Jaq has been able to generate enormous amounts of traffic to his site, however he cautions that it might not be the type of traffic that will convert on a site within a niche community.  He has developed a group of followers in his baseball niche at Digg who have helped to elevate the presence of his posts while he returns the favor by supporting theirs.

Jaq has sort of a stated motto; “If it’s something I like, I’ll Digg it. If I really really like it I’ll shout it .. and if I hate it, I’ll bury it and you are not a friend any more.” Using this criteria he has been able to weed out the people that are not contributing to the dialogue by simply pushing their own sites and stories … and in essence spamming other Diggers like Jaq.

Bookmarking sites like Delicious and Magnolia operate a bit differently than the networking sites like Digg and Stumbleupon in that they become a utility for accessing saved site links remotely.  However, Jaq likes the Magnolia aspects of community that has developed, and mentions that there is the ability to subscribe to other Magnolia users streams to see what they are bookmarking.

For baseball related sites specifically there is YardBarker and BallHype .. and some of the smaller submission sites like Reddit have added a Baseball specific section.

The task of working these sites to their greatest potential tends to absorb huge amounts of time and effort, and a take away from the podcast might be to focus on finding the best place for your niche, and developing relationships within that particular social network. It’s a common theme in all of the social media marketing tactics.

Jaq sums it all up best through with the statement “content really is king” … Having quality headlines, categorizing submissions properly and putting some thought into how you intend to get people to click on your post is the fundamental to making sure that the post is promoted.

Thanks to Jaq Baldwin for joining us on the Overflow podcast.  Read his blog at The Launching Pad and follow him on Twitter.

How do you use the Social Networks to promote your sites?  Let us know in the comments what has worked best for you.

 

 King Kustom Podcast One [12:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (68)

Fluid Media is pleased to announce the official launch of a web site for King Custom Cycles.  We are excited about the opportunity to assist our good friends Laura & Phil King in expanding their community base of motorcycle enthusiasts via Web 2.0 tools, and to help them generate business for their parts and repair business.

Let’s share with you some of our initiatives:

First, to touch on the logo design for the brand.  We were brought in on the tail end of the design process and Cameron was able to salvage some of the elements that had been developed, but immediately the concern regarding the “distressed” look revolves around replication issues on merchandise and smaller collateral.

So to avoid losing the little K in custom and other smaller bits, a non-distressed application is being created for certain usage.

We also added a secondary color palette and font styles for use on the web site and collateral materials.

The intention of the web site is to ultimately act as an online community where friends of King Kustom Cycles can interact, exchange tips on great places to ride, discuss new gear for their bikes … or just pass the time during the intervals when not on the road.  In order to achieve this objective we are integrating some exciting new applications and are waiting for others to be released from beta testing!

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I was sitting in the rocking chair during the Labor Day holiday contemplating the future for my young daughters … no, not the rocking chair in the grandpa kind of way, but the rocking chair as the only thing that is helping soothe little Lily at the moment!

Reviewing the conversation during the past week with Sam Harrelson and others regarding the significance of Identi.ca and other microblogging formats, I couldn’t help but wonder about the very long term.  I can see how federated communication platforms will be applied in the near term but I started wondering about the scenario when my daughters are teenagers and will not want good ole’ Dad subscribing to their posts.

There are numerous accounts in the media demonstrating that among the current 100 million users of Facebook, friending between parents and children takes place, for good or bad depending on your point of view.  Compartmentalizing through the Privacy Controls is probably the best approach to keeping some things away from helicopter parents on Facebook.

But, that’s not really the point that I was pondering.  I’m more interested in the whole closed universe versus open platforms.  If Twitter survives as the dominant micro-blogging platform and it remains THE place to be .. how are fathers schooled in Social Media practices and daughters Twittering their friends about the best parties supposed to exist on the same platform?



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WOW, we live in an amazing time in the development of internet tools .. and communication in general. I can’t wait to implement these game changing, community systems that are right now in the early stages of development.

I’ve detailed the enormous potential of using Twitter in brand building, and was very disappointed when the Track functionality was shelved (for business or technical reasons we don’t know) earlier this summer. However, while we were all lamenting the discontinuance of service, the Gillmor Gang podcast of July 21 included guests Evan Prodromou of Identica and Loic Le Meur of Seesmic/Thwirl. I listened to the discussion led by Steve Gillmor about federated communication via microblogging services such as Identica, and it immediately peaked my interest! I set up my account that day.

They discussed many exciting aspects of Identica including the fact that tracking would be available with the platform, plus many more features that would be built by the open source community itself … however, the most powerful element they discussed was the distribution of the Laconica platform (Identica is built on it) to a wide variety of entities.  Evan can envision the ability to add micro-blogging to a community as simply as installing a Wordpress blog is today.

I can envision so many businesses and organizations that would be able to take advantage of this kind of power. Evan’s objective is to get micro-blogging to the level of ubiquity as email is today. Keep in mind that email used to be a silo’d communication tool where you could only send messages to others within your same provider. Did you have a Compuserve or a Prodigy account?  We need to get away from the silo’d limitations of our current micro-blogging platforms.



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