Friday, March 16, 2018

What You Learn From An Applicant's Social Media?


Six things you can learn from a candidate's social media..

As a recruiter, you know that war for talent is fierce. You also know the cost of a bad hire to your clients. Luckily in today's social media landscape, you have numerous tools at your fingertips that can help you paint a more overall picture of a candidate.



Although you might think their LinkedIn is standard procedure, what about their personal social media?

According to career coach Hallie Crawford on career site Glassdoor, social media can help recruiters and hiring managers to get a more accurate idea of a potential candidate outside of their resume and a personal view into their lives. 

"A resume can tell them your qualifications, but your social media profile can help them determine your personality type and if you would be a good fit for company culture," she says in advising candidates.

Hiring managers you can spot a lot of potential red flags when deciding to hire someone — risqué photos, bad language, signs of drugs use — by doing a deep dive into their social media.

Here is a list of what to look for a where to find it.



Facebook

About Me - This is a good way to check if a candidate's description of themselves matches their cover letter and resume.

If there are major discrepancies you want to be careful of a candidate who can present themselves in two different ways.

In addition, pay attention to spelling and grammar to see how seriously they take those skills.

Photos - Checking a candidates photo albums and its descriptions could help you determine how professionally they present themselves.

Profanity, sexual references and drug references may be red flags to look out for.



Twitter

Followers - Check how many mutual connections you have, are they following others in the industry.

This will be a great way to see what network and resources they bring to the table and are they truly interested in the job they are applying for by following industry leaders.

Tweets - Does the candidate share information on their trade, job or industry or is a timeline of trolling.

This could give you an insight into how they spend their free time.



Instagram

Followers - By seeing how a candidate interacts with their followers on Instagram could give you an insight into their personal relationships and if they would be a good cultural fit for the company.

Photos - This is a good way to see how a candidate represents themselves, what they find important and do they share anything inappropriate.

Guest Authored By HR Academy. HR Academy from Human Resources Magazine: High-level HR strategy training workshops led by the world's most respected HR thought leaders and strategists. Follow HR Mag on Twitter.





"As a recruiter, you know that war for talent is fierce. You also know the cost of a bad hire to your clients.

Luckily in today's social media landscape, you have numerous tools at your fingertips that can help you paint a more overall picture of a candidate.."


    • Authored by:
      Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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    Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA

    Thursday, March 15, 2018

    Robots Fix YOUR Social Media Reputation?


    This AI Platform Helps Jobseekers Fix Their Social Media Reputation

    Employers are using AI to scour social media to eliminate applicants for open jobs. Now you too can use AI to buff up your online presence..



    Most people know that posting a booze-soaked selfie on a public social media feed is ill-advised, especially if they are planning to ever look for a job.

    But did you know that cracking a joke about calling in sick can also hurt your chances of landing a sought-after position?

    That's because AI is at work in many employers' recruiting efforts. "People don't realize that screening algorithms don't have a sense of humor," says Patrick Ambron, CEO of BrandYourself, a reputation management software firm. "What this means is that jokes about skipping work to watch Netflix could get flagged as potentially harmful."

    The number of employers using social media to screen candidates is at an all-time high, according to a CareerBuilder survey of 2,380 hiring and human resource managers. Seventy percent of employers use social media to screen candidates, up from 11% in 2006. More than half (54%) said they wouldn't hire someone based on what they saw on the candidate's social feeds.



    Some companies are even outsourcing the scouring of candidates' online presence, like Los Angeles-based Fama Technologies, which offers an AI software tool that helps them screen out undesirable applicants.

    In a report for CNBC, Fama CEO and cofounder Ben Mones were less interested in uncovering recreational alcohol use and the like, rather they want to make sure they're not hiring bullies or bigots. "Employers are looking for folks who don't think that misogynistic comment is wrong," he said.

    Candid posts that use vulgar or insensitive language are clear red flags. In addition, slang usage and unprofessional "funny" posts have been frequently flagged as troubling for hiring managers," Ambron concurs.



    Using AI To Make You Your Best (Online) Self

    While algorithms can be humorless when it comes to reading status updates, BrandYourself's AI claims it uses the same no-nonsense approach to ferreting out problematic content.

    Ambron contends that its software goes deep (in some cases up to 10 years) into search engine results, social media posts, images and video content that you posted or were tagged in, and then gives the candidate recommendations of negative content to remove. For an annual fee of $99, says Ambron, the software will continue to monitor your social platforms and online presence, and alert you if anything new shows up that needs your attention.

    Among the problematic content, CareerBuilder identified the most common deal breakers, including provocative or inappropriate photographs, videos, or information, drinking or using drugs, posting discriminatory comments related to race, gender, religion, and bad-mouthing their previous company or fellow employee.



    Does it ever really go away? Ambron says that depends on what kind of offending information it is.

    "If it's simply a poorly judged social media post, you can hopefully delete it right away, which minimizes the chances of it being flagged during an employment screening," he explains. Employers don't have access to deleted tweets or FB status updates unless they had a legal subpoena or if someone took a screenshot.

    "If it's something in Google that hasn't been deleted, they can still find it," he says, "but it's much less likely and will have a smaller impact on the impression you make." Still he cautions that a negative Google result that someone else wrote about you to harm you such as a review, news article, or a slanderous post or image, could take months to bury with more accurate, positive information.

    "The idea is that if there's negative information out there about you (like an ex bashing you online), you want to surround it with more accurate information that better represents your personality, professionalism, and overall brand," he explains. This strategy takes both time and maintenance, Ambron admits.



    For instance, a Google search for a former high-level Disney, AOL, and AG Interactive executive who is a pioneer in the VR world used to yield multiple results for a singer-songwriter by the same name before any of his own work showed up. Populating a website, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and Medium accounts with regular, quality content about his expertise changed the game. Now a search has him as the first result on the first page.

    The same CareerBuilder survey found that 44% of employers found social content that supported making a hire. Among the primary reasons were that their experience and expertise shone through social and that they presented great communication skills and creativity. An older survey from CareerBuilder emphasizes the importance of such soft skills. Among 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ overall.

    Guest Authored By Lydia Dishman. Lydia is a reporter writing about the intersection of tech, leadership, and innovation. She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and has written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others. Follow Lydia on Twitter.





    "In a tight job market..

    Jobseekers who demonstrate a sterling online presence by communicating professionally, showcasing their expertise, and interacting with a variety of people on social media will be more in demand than ever.." -LydiaDishman

      • Authored by:
        Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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      Wednesday, March 14, 2018

      Social Media Myths YOU Should Know?


      Seven Myths of The Social Media Age



      The internet was expected to renew democracy, tackle the hegemony of the monopoly news providers and draw us all into a global community.

      Over the past six months, that idea has been undermined by a new myth which suggests that democracy is, in fact, being overturned by the spawn of the internet: Russian bots and fake news – and that news organizations are losing their power to keep people informed.

      There is no evidence to suggest that made-up stories from fake news sites have had any significant impact.

      The BBC and the mainstream media are still our major sources of information both on and offline.



      Research during the EU referendum campaign for example found that, of all Twitter links analyzed, 63.9% led to stories from professional news organizations. Junk news made up around 5% of the total and there was “little evidence of Russian content”.

      1. The Has Improved Democracy

      The internet was supposed to do this by breaking up the media monopolies and allowing everyone to join the conversation. However the internet always boosts the most popular voice in every niche, so the biggest news providers are still the most read, and small news publications struggle for funds. More than 200 local newspapers have closed in the UK since 2015.

      Certainly there is more choice if you look for it, but the biggest concern is the number of people across the world who have simply tuned out altogether and choose to watch kittens and comedy rather than news.



      2. We Are All Journalists Now

      We can all broadcast from our smart phones, but mostly we share pictures of our children. The effect of digital disruption has been that the media landscape is becoming more concentrated and the number of paid journalists is dropping as “legacy” media organizations struggle with falling revenues. But audience members have not replaced them – those smart phone witness reports, tweeted by passers-by, would vanish into the ether if they were not found and shared by a diminishing number of paid journalists.

      On the other hand, the internet has created an army of social media “influencers” who, if they are canny, turn themselves into “brands” which they leverage online to recommend – or sell – everything from make up to luxury cars in return for payment in kind or cash. Meanwhile, the few genuinely new voices being created online rise and fall as they have always done, clinging to the margins and hoping to get noticed in the mad rush of information.



      3. The Many Are Smarter Than The Few

      Books with titles such as The Wisdom of Crowds have suggested that the internet would lead to a form of pure direct democracy because, if you ask enough people a question, the answer will always be correct.

      But this naive optimism did not factor in the myriad ways in which people (or in this case their data) could be manipulated. In countries with no reliable and trusted source of mainstream news, people make money by inventing stories tailored to press buttons of fear and prejudice.

      In the US, where news has become highly polarized and mainstream news has lost the trust of large swaths of voters, researchers studying the swing state of Michigan, found stories categorized as fake news were just as likely to be shared as news from professional sources in the election period of 2016.

      But fake news is not the preserve of junk-news factories. In late February, The Sun removed from its site an entirely specious article about savings to be made from Brexit after a mauling by economist Jonathan Portes.



      But by that time the story had already been retweeted by leading Conservative Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, to his 121,000 followers. Rees-Mogg has not (to date) corrected or apologized for his tweet – but then he only follows five people so he may not know about his error.

      4. The Internet Has Produced A 'Global Village'

      The “global village” was the brainchild of American media scholar Marshal McLuhan who – as early as 1964 – expounded the idea that in the electronic age, everyone would have access to the same information through technology. This would seem to have been borne out by the internet.

      But evidence suggests that the centralizing tendency of monopoly global media is growing. A tiny number of companies including Facebook and Google are now the gatekeepers to information across the world – and they are nearly all American. And, in emerging economies and authoritarian states, the hopes about democratizing social movements are being undone by the growing incursion of government propaganda into the online space.



      5. The Internet Brings Us Together

      There is much to be grateful for in the ways in which the internet and social media allow us to communicate laterally. It takes only seconds to communicate to thousands via WhatApp and minutes to produce a petition and upload it to Facebook. What is less certain is its ability to unite people across the boundaries of personal affiliation and to encourage genuine debate.

      American researchers Michael Beam, Myiah Hutchens and Jay Hmielowski tried to pick apart the different effects of reading online newspapers and sharing material on social media. They found that reading online, like reading offline, increases knowledge – but, on social media, people may share without reading. This may be partly why some scholars fear that political polarization goes hand-in-hand with rising use of social media.

      6. Nobody Trusts The Mainstream Media

      When asked whether they trust the media, the tendency in many countries is to say no – but when asked whether they trust their favourite news outlet, trust levels rise dramatically. However in northern Europe, one factor stands out: people trust their traditional media more than they trust online and social media news sources. More importantly public broadcasting tends to be trusted across the political spectrum drawing people together rather than splitting them apart.



      7. The New 'Digital Generation'

      Here is the biggest myth of them all – that there is a new digital generation that is mistrustful of mainstream news and busy creating a more democratic, and less “dutiful”, “self-actualising” future. It is reassuring to think that young people have the answers and will usher in the newer, nicer world that their elders failed to produce. But none of us is born digital. Young people are no more instinctively able to navigate online than they would be able to drive a car without lessons. Exploration alone won’t teach young people how to sort out misinformation and propaganda from facts.

      Guest Authored By Angela Phillips. Angela teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of: Journalism in Context (2014), Routledge, co-author of Changing Journalism (2011), Routledge and the author of Good Writing for Journalists (2007) Sage. She launched www.eastlondonlines.co.uk a local, multi-media, news website that is run by Goldsmiths journalism students and has a significant local audience. She has been a journalist for over thirty years, starting in the alternative press of the 1970s and moving on to work for national newspapers, magazines, television and radio. She trained initially as a photographer and worked for several years as a photojournalist before moving into print and online media. More recently, she has moved into the arena of journalism research, working with the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. She is also the chair of the Ethics Committee of the Coordinating Committee for Media Reform and gave evidence to the Leveson enquiry into the press. Follow Angela on Twitter.





      "As my Norwegian co-author Eiri Elvestad and I discuss in a new book, Misunderstanding News Audiences, seven myths of the social media age, technology is changing our democracy – but we are not helpless in the face of it, nor are we liberated by it.

      As with previous major technical shifts, we are in the processing of adapting it to our needs and that process varies according to who we are and where we live.

      Democracy will be strengthened if we learn how to use the internet wisely.

      If we leave it to the winds of the free market we may indeed find that it overwhelms us.."


        • Authored by:
          Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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        Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA
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