JAFDIP

Just another frakkin day in paradise

Social Media

The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 (H.R. 4170)

This disturbing subject keeps popping up in my social media stream. Therefore, I felt it is time I addressed it head on. Let me open with this dangling carrot legislation is doomed to failure even if it passes no matter how unlikely that may be. It is a political landmine waiting to explode in the face of the very individuals is it purports to help.

The problems with this bill are many but most importantly it is being proposed at such a time of economic turmoil as a stimulus package. Unfortunately, any stimulated gains will be minor in comparison to the costs associated with this individual bailout. How many struggling families are going to stand behind a bill that helps a finite group of individuals. This is irresponsible legislation at it’s best and only strengthens the ‘I’m entitled’ stereotype of this generation.

It is sad because this legislation is doomed to fail even it it is passed and any politician standing behind this bill is really just pandering to the next wave of voters. They are posturing themselves for higher office down the road with this calculated measure. Worse they believe you are too stupid to see through their ruse.

As I said this is truly sad because there are somethings that the government could do in lieu of a bailout. A government sponsored deferment act would be easier to publicly accept as it would not bailout the student loans only delay the repayment until the students were established in their careers. In fact the government could even go so far as to require a portion of any tax refund be automatically sent each year towards repayment.  A long term deferment solution would have greater access and help far more people in the long run. It’s sensible and better for the country.

 

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A disturbance in the force

Recently I received a note which was the first of it’s kind. A longtime colleague informed me that while he valued our friendship he could no longer follow me on LinkedIn because I had too many updates and it was drowning out those of other people he also connected with (see highlight below). I honestly was flabbergasted by this revelation because i generally get numerous messages from business associates commending me on my social  networking acumen.

What was truly disturbing about the event is that my friend simply asked that I turn of the promotion system for this blog. I did this and messaged him back immediately, however; I guess that wasn’t enough. Another troubling aspect of this was the fact that I am actively looking for a new full-time role and this individual could have been helpful in that regard.

I’m now having trouble viewing friends work-related events, (coming/going layoffs/promotions, etc…)

As disturbing as all of this was since he choose to leave anyway I have decided to turn the jafip promotion engine back on. It is a show case of the content I have written and invaluable to my job search. More importantly the promotion of the blog posts also ensures that my data stream on LinkedIn is in constant motion. In this environment you need to maintain your edge over other candidates.

While I feel the days of being able to just tweet your way into a new amazing dream job are over I do believe that your social media presence can have a huge impact on your personal brand. It is this personal brand that you are selling to a potential employer and to not engage in the activity necessary to achieve results is like a pianist cutting off one of their hands. I just do not understand it.

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The pitfalls of the job searcher

Once again I am writing about the current abysmal state of the employment prospects available to those unfortunate enough to be amongst the ever increasing number of unemployed. I wish there was a silver bullet to fix this problem, however; this really isn’t a single fix for the problem. Many people believe it’s just a matter of dumbing down your resume and accepting a lower paying job with less responsibility. I must sadly report that most of the members of this delusional group have never lost their job before and obviously live a rose shaded wold.

Let’s discuss some of the things I have witnessed over the last few years that I find completely disturbing. Many of these issues are promulgated by the job search industry as being essential to the business.

  1. Confidential listings
  2. Duplicate listings
  3. Fictitious Listings
  4. Misleading application process
  5. Missing POC
  6. Perfect round peg requirements
  7. Resume crafting and coaching
  8. Candidate tracking systems

Confidential listings- Almost every employment coach touts the necessity of tailoring your resume or at least your cover letter to the posted job. Unfortunately, there is an alarming trend of companies posting offerings without any information that will assist in the research necessary to achieve this goal. I tend to steer past these listings as I my experience has lead to the assertion that a company who is not honest up front is not a honest company period end of story. The only exception is a company attempting to oust an existing non-performer and they wish to remain anonymous because they do not want to tip off the current employee. Be that as it may I find their lack of professionalism distasteful and again question their ethics.

Duplicate listings- Seems to be most prevalent with the large recruiting firms as well as on jobs listing sites like the ladders, dice, careerbuilder and monster. I believe this is more of a marketing ruse to lure investor as well as job seeker dollars. There is little you can do to thwart this practice so other than not buying into the services of these sorts of purveyors unless you really find it valuable.

Fictitious listings- I have written about this phenomenon several times and it is probably one of the most disturbing. It’s the utterly dishonest action practiced by several presumably high caliber employment listing sites. The more often I observe this the more I question the reputability of certain sites.

Misleading application process- This occurs most usually as a result of the job poster’s unfamiliarity with the posting system. Of course it could also be a test of the applicant’s ability to follow directions. What I mean is that the company could be attempting to filter the applicants but testing to see if they thoroughly read the listing in question. I know it may seem crazy but think about it 90% of applicants will just click the easy yellow “Apply now” button which could be exactly what the poster wants you to not do. One has to carefully read through the entire posting to discover the ‘real’ application procedure. Of course there is always the possibility that this is simply a duplicate posting cut and pasted from the company web site.

Missing POC- One of the common aspects of the current jobs search criteria is to always address your cover letter to a specific individual. Preferably, this individual should be the one who holds the key to the interview door. Unfortunately, this information is not always available and calling the company may be an issue it we are dealing with one of those anonymously posted confidential listings as noted above.

Another closely related issue I personally find perplexing it properly addressing my correspondence to the original job poster. It is relatively easy when that poster is a male as no male will complain when addressed as Mr. however, I have been called to task once or twice by attempting to foster the appropriate level of consideration and respect by addressing something to Ms. Only to have my application handed to me because she is a Mrs. Gatekeeper. This is a dubious distinction and speaks ill of the company for allowing such an environment to exist.

Perfect round pegs- I wish I had the fortitude to screen capture some of the listing that I read nearly a year ago that I am reading again. In fact many of these listings seem to resurface on at least a quarterly basis which leads me to believe that the posting company is an extremely difficult one to actually work for or that they have  crafted a set of completely unrealistic requirements. After discussing this with several individuals I have come to the assertion that the latter is more likely the case. Far too many companies are searching for the perfect round peg fit for their employment needs. While these candidates may exist it is likely that the prospective hiring managers spend too much time dithering over the details. The likelihood that this candidate has move on is extremely high, because if they have truly marketable skills they will not be on the market for very long.

This phenomenon has created a serious deficit of employed skilled workers and honestly the fault for this lay squarely on the shoulders of the hiring companies themselves. Unfortunately, for the citizenry of the United States too many of these companies have sway with political forces and have called for easing of the immigrant hiring. Thus our unemployment levels will remain higher than acceptable because of corporate ignorance.

Resume crafting services- These services are pushed ad nauseum by the vary companies that claim to assist the job seeker in landing that ever elusive interview. I am certain you have received the email only moments after uploading your resume onto your profile page. Offering unbelievable results for mere hundreds of dollars to completely rewrite your resume into the perfect vehicle for landing you that dream job. However, where are these services for the unemployed? Honestly, far too many are debating whether to put food on their table or pay their mortgage and do not have disposable funding for something so frivolous as hiring a professional resume writer.

The most infuriating thing I have experienced from these supposed ‘Professional’ services is the form email where it is evident that they did not even bother to read my resume in the ‘Free professional critique.’ The other frustrating factor is that so many coaches insist you have to tailor your resume to each listing. Imagine how expensive this endeavor would be if you had to consult a professional each time.

Candidate or applicant tracking systems- These solution have been touted as the solution to the unemployment problem but in reality they are the absolute bane of the job seeker. Each of these systems claim to objectify the job seeker into a database of skills that the hiring department can use to evaluate candidates. Unfortunately, they eliminate all of the value in researching the company, crafting properly addressed cover letters and having professionally tailored resumes. It is a sad fact that in reality these systems promote mediocrity on a 1984 level.

Ultimately, this industry is about one thing and one thing only which is to squeeze both the posting companies and job seekers for as much money as possible. Of all the current solutions at least LinkedIn has the appearance of transparency and objectivity. There is little innovation in the industry and even LinkedIn the 800 pound gorilla that it has become has a long way to go.

The bottom line is that this business is in business to keep you searching for your next job. There is little incentive for anyone to actually help you regain useful employment as the cards are definitely stacked against you.

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Social media can make miracles happen

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A story of accomplishment:

It was almost a year ago that I was presented with the opportunity to change a life. My decision that day was out of friendship, kindness and empathy. In May of 2011 I was working on a special technology project in Genting, MY. Malaysia was at that time exactly 12 hours ahead of New York which made facilitating conference calls relatively easy. I had been in the country for nearly a month and missed my family terribly which I believe gave me great insight into the plight of a friend of mine.

It was very early in the morning on Sunday May 8th and I was catching up on my email as I do most mornings. I read a blog post in my RSS feeds from my friend Brooke Farmer who is also a member of the JAFDIP family. The title simply read My plea for a Mother’s Day miracle. In that post Brooke detailed a heart wrenching account of being not seeing her teenage son for several months because the father had taken steps to intervene. Preventing her form talking with her son et cettera.

All that she wanted was to simple things to be able to talk to her son on Mother’s Day and to find an attorney in Colorado that could help enforce the custody agreement. Unfortunately, it was Mother’s Day and she had not lived in Colorado for several years. To make matter compound her predicament she had gone to Melbourne, Australia in search of work and ended up staying longer than expected. Thus the prospect of locating a sympathetic lawyer in the states was exceedingly grim.

Upon reading the post and all of the subsequent comments I decided that I needed to do something. I think my desire to help besides being the right thing to do is that I was nearly 10,000 miles away from my children. I know that if anything had happened to then I know I would have felt utterly helpless. In fact on one trip I received a call from my wife at approximately 3:30 AM because the truck broke down on the highway and I spent 30 minutes on the phone talking to her calming her down while she awaited help. In any event since it was still Saturday evening in the US which meant that I was in a unique position to help I thought more and more about what I could do a idea took hold of me.

What if I could help bridge a connection between one of my followers or even one of their followers and Brooke? I felt confident that someone in my circle of friends could help her find the local assistance she needed. I mean I have a huge network of attorneys in NY in addition to a respectably focused twitter following. Thus I carefully crafted the following note and sent it out to my stream simply hoping that someone would read it and retweet it.

RT @ mikelking : Ok peeps we gotta help a mom out PLS READ -> http://bit.ly/iBiLMO & RT @ brooke_farmer : Looking for a miracle on Mother’s Day.

As I watched the retweets stream in I decided to reach out to some of those individuals that had DMed me in the past asking for a tweetout. I carefully wrote a personalized message to each asking if they could help but sending out the above message which I DMed separately.

What happened next wasn’t entirely anticipated. Dozens upon dozens of people began retweeting the message. While it did not exactly ‘Go Viral’ on a crazy scale creating a tweet meme or anything the result was better than expected. Ultimately I was able to help Brooke make that important connection through another friend Shelia Rose (@ShebaJo) in my stream. Shelia Rose lives in Colorado and happened to have a few attorneys available to refer Brooke to.

Fast forward to now. Since Mother’s Day Brooke has returned to her home in LA and visited her son several times. They even went camping which is something that Brooke is not known to do. In fact if you read her post on the subject you’ll know she is kind of afraid of the outdoors. What is important is that she did what every parent learns to do sooner or later they conquer that fear even temporarily just to spend that quality time with their child.

I have taken the liberty of linking several key posts from her blog that update the state of affairs between her and her son. I think we can all agree that although she may have not gotten that call on Mother’s Day ultimately she got her son back and that is what truly matters.

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Empire Avenue and what it means to your influence

If you have not experimented with Empire Avenue (EAv) by now you should consider giving it a try. One thing you will notice about EAv is that it allows you to aggregate many of your other social media accounts into one location for the purpose of generating your score. Unfortunately, this linking is limited and the following are the only networks with 100% connectivity;

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • YouTube
  • Foursquare
  • WordPress.com

Unfortunately, both Instagram and GooglePlus are still beta invitation only options. On of my major misgivings with the inclusion of Instagram is that it is a limited platform being only available on iOS devices like the iPhone. You can not even sidestep this requirement with web access so as far as influence is concerned I am no buying into this option.

In addition you can add RSS feeds which can be upgraded to upgrade these to the status of blog with enough EAv user endorsements. Personally, I have a minor issue with these two icons as most RSS feeds appear orange. In any event this is the only way you can add you own hosted WordPress blogs as the WP connector only works with your .COM account.

The short of this is that all of your activity is aggregated into a stock valuation which is measured in eaves. Let’s take a look at an example of an EAv stock profile.

Mikel King's EAv ProfileThere are several items worth noting. The first being the stock ticker price. In this case the price for the (e)MikelKing ticker was 62.89 and was down (-0.41) from the previous day. Next you should examine the index that the stock is listed under which is Software: Open Source in this particular case. In addition consider the users position on the index. Being in the top three CEO, President or CFO seem to offer a premium on earnings.

Your connection and network activity scores determine your position on an index. The amount of activity in each network connection contributes to your overall standing. Many users have speculated that some networks are valued higher than others, however; I have conducted extensive research. I have experimented with various networks and determined that consistency and irregularity tend to give the appearance of weighted valuation.

What I mean by this is that if you are a huge Twitter user and tweet consistently from day to day your valuation will actually be flat. If you are an intermittent Foursquare user and suddenly increase your check-ins this will have a positive impact on your total valuation. So one thing that EAv is good for is seeing what arenas of the social media fabric you are neglecting. If you increase your activity in those weaker areas your stock will improve as a result. Let’s examine another example.

Mikel King's updated Profile on Empire AvenueThe first you will likely notice is the stock ticker and stock price have changed. This is not a different profile I decided to shorten my EAv ticker to just (e)MK. The next thing you might notice it the Net Wealth has more than doubled since the previous screen shot. This is because I follow a simple pattern of buying and selling. I buy new people in large quantities and when they start to drop I sell off most of my stock. One important point to note is that I try to spend no more than 15 minutes on a given day interacting with EAv directly like this.

I used to be extremely active in the communities but learned through careful experimentation that they do nothing to increase your EAv Actions value. That being said these interactions are good for your overall social media standing. I made many connections through EAv that have crossed linked into Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook. In fact many people have followed me to Flickr and YouTube as well so the tangent blessings are numerous.

By now you are probably pondering why EAv Actions are important well unlike all of the other network activity scores these are definitely weighted higher. The more EAv activity you can generate the higher your index rank will be as well as you stock value. So the next time you are about to buy 200 shares in a person consider buying that same amount spread over multiple smaller transactions. Al that I will say is try it and report back here in the comment thread your own findings.

I hope that you’ve learned something about Empire Avenue and are considering signing up. I believe that you will learn to extract value from the service possibly in the same way that I have. As with anything in social media your mileage will vary and honestly what you put into to it will determine what you take out of it.

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