In my previous job search post I talked about the CV not being dead and was perturbed about the fact this paper-based tradition of sharing your skills had not yet turned fully digital.
Some recent blog posts about the need to go digital and use the free tools out there have cheered me up.
And Bill Boorman adds some tips for adding some 'bling' to you Linkedin profile
There are loads more advice articles out there but these are the ones I came across since my last job search post.
I'm particularly interested in the Linkedin CV builder . . . going to check that out soon. In actual fact, as I said last time, I am looking for an overhaul of my blog, Twitter etc and am looking at a multi-media approach to presenting me and what I have to offer. Be afraid.
Thinking of getting video testimonials - or is that naff?
Previous job search posts (I am only starting - this list will grow . . .)
Very interesting interview with Louise White, Incisive Media Group marketing MD at Incisive Media Group, over at The Media Briefing.
What stood out for me is the fact that the use of social media is still in its infancy in the B2B market. Hold that thought.
Also, Louise makes good points about data and the fact that spreadsheets and dashboards on customer usage don't in themselves help you make decisions - it is the intelligence that comes from this data that enables you to know what to act on. So, gaining this insight - by talking to customers - is key to giving the data value.
Now, back to social media. This is the big challenge for B2B publishers - customer insight generally comes from hiring specialist consultancies to go out and talk to customers. But social media tools provide us with the opportunity to talk to customers on an ongoing basis. Can the new tools provide this feedback service?
This will be an interesting area for publishers - as customers get more savvy with social media so publishers have an opportunity to build engagement and start opening up new feedback channels.
What then becomes interesting is how publishers organise themselves to engage with customers - is that a marketing job or a content job or a customer service job?
And here I was thinking that a profile on Linkedin, a blog, a Twitter profile, a Google profile etc was where I would be selling me, what I do and think and what I have done.
But no. Spoke to a recruitment consultant today who was keen to see my CV. Eek. How on earth will one piece of paper tell my story and the fact I have a range of skills that could see me do any number of things (according to me!).
Ah well, welcome to job hunting in 2010. I expected CVs to be a part of the job search mix but it seems to still be the main part. A shame as it is such a limited way to tell your story.
I'm thinking of producing an audio and video CV - you have been warned.
Previous job search posts (I am only starting - this list will grow . . .)
Last night, Jeremy showed me Swype on his android phone. Here is his demo. Whether this is your bag or not - touchscreen technologies are changing the way we interact with new devices and the way we interact with age-old technologies (keyboards, for example).
Here Jeremy is just gliding across the 'keyboard' to form words - no tapping at all.
After 18 fun and successful months at XpertHR I’m moving on. My post is being made redundant, which is a blow, but I understand the business imperatives. In many ways my work is done - much of what I came to do is now embedded in the team and I am very proud of that.
I have really enjoyed being part town crier, part sherpa (my definition of a user development editor) working with a very talented team.
So, in early January I will be back in the jobs market, a place I haven’t been for quite a few years (I have been at RBI for 8 years and prior to that I also had a 9 year stint).
My plan is to blog about my efforts to find work. Currently, I am still getting my head around the whole thing so not much to report so far.
One of the benefits of working for Reed Business Information (which owns XpertHR) is that I get some outplacement support. I have my first meeting in just over a week, by which time I hope to feel a bit more together.
I work in an exciting area - content, social media, user experience, lead generation, content marketing, digital engagement etc, so hope there will be some interesting opportunities out there (and yes, I am open to suggestions).
I’ve got a few things to tie up on XpertHR and will post about some of the successes with the team, and at RBI, as I do that. There also seems to be a lot of admin to get sorted . . .
Find out by following one of the premier conferences on hot trends for the web - Le Web - which is currently taking place in Paris.
Check out #leweb hashtag on Twitter and follow the likes of Adam Tinworth who is doing a sterling job live blogging from the conference. Below is a live stream.
Great to see my colleagues at XpertHR get the honours. Better still the fact RBI hosted the event and is now looking to provide data journalism training for journalists.
Reason 22 (No About page)stood out for me because it has always seemed to me that people and brands either do not have these pages or have very poor ones.
As Lake says: I often visit a website simply to find out more information about the company, and whenever the About page is missing I ever so slightly lose the will to live.
From my experience, these pages present businesses with problems - usually to do with the marketing messages that need to be included. Brands do have problems articulating what they do concisely and without using jargon. My rule of thumb for this is to say it out loud and to someone else - not a colleague. If it sounds OK then it will work.
Yes, these pages are important. They are where you tell the world who you are, what you do and how you do it. If you are in business - or on the web for that matter, I am not sure why you would not do that.
A few days ago I posted a comment on occupational psychologist Sukh Pabial's blog about feedback from training sessions.
Sukh's post was timely as I am currently reading Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice. Although the book is focussed on the psychology of decision making and the complexity of choice in decision making it offers up some good psychological insights on behaviour based on research by social scientists and psychologists.
The quote I added to Sukh's post was this:
" . . . neither our predictions about how we will feel after an experience nor our memories of how we will feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring."
This chimed for me both in the training context and also in the usability context too.
In the past I have attended usability labs which have involved eye-tracking. At such sessions, a user is guided through some tasks and their eye movements are tracked. A video also records the user's behaviours at the computer screen. Both the eye-tracking and the video are streamed into a separate room to be viewed by the site owner.
What I noticed from watching these sessions is that users' assessment of how they found the tasks at the end of the entire session (having completed all the tasks) varied from how they experienced the tasks as they happened ie a task they said was fairly straightforward was experienced as being more complex.
Users were also asked for feedback immediately after each task - this feedback seemed more in tune with what they had just experienced ie if they experienced a task as fairly straightforward they said as much.
So if I had just seen a report from what the user had said after completing all tasks it would have been quite different to what they had actually experienced.
However, in these labs, the research teams pull together both the eye-tracking/video footage and user comments about how they felt after each task and all tasks to provide a full view of the research findings. Pulling all this information together is vital for an accurate view of the user's experience.
In his book, Schwartz finishes the above quote with this line:
And yet it is memories of the past and expectations for the future that govern our choices.
What matters most, when it comes to web sites or training sessions for example - is that the memory - what the user or attendee takes away from the experience is all that counts. If it is positive then they will come back for more (and recommend) - be it more site visits, another training session etc.
If there were problems during the experience then 'in the moment' feedback would be really valuable - on sites this could come from on site feedback services/ethnographic studies etc. In usability, this 'in the moment' feedback is key, which is why usability labs using eye-tracking are so important.
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook provide 'in the moment' feedback.
But it is creating an overall positive experience that arguably matters most - users will forgive you usability issues if they can see the overall value in what you are doing and what they are getting ie they like what your site offers and find it useful, relevant etc.
But don't rest on your laurels - those usability issues will need to ironed out because at some point they will affect the overall experience.
Here is Schwartz talking about his book (5 years ago!)