Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v 2.01

(Jan 02, 2009) I'm entering this new year with a problem. These days, more than half of my communications are through social networks like RBC, Facebook and Twitter. More natural and less formal than freestanding email systems, each tool has its own utility and its own idiosyncrasies.

Twitter offers a flow of really fresh professional information tinged with soft personal identifiers. It's sort of a news feed and coffeehouse rolled into one. I pay more attention to people who give value and gloss past some of the other stuff. It's like a permanent river of the left hand column of the old Wall Street Journal. It's getting better for interpersonal (one to one) communications but most people don't manage their @s very well (a direct message is sent with a tweet addressed to @username).

Facebook has a better internal mail system. It has great event management tools and lots of nuanced ways to communicate with known entities. As long as you have a relationship with someone on Facebook, there are an enormous number of approaches including chat, commenting, and email. Simply being someone's friend exposes you to their output. Communicating and network maintenance are an easy extension of watching the feed. The internal email system is pretty reliable (though some messages get lost) but it is a background piece of a deeper narrative. Email on Facebook doesn't have the immediacy and urgency of Outlook or Gmail.

Periodically, I visit LinkedIn. In theory, I have "beelions" of connections. I have mastered the art of accepting invitations to connect en masse. Trouble is that nothing actually happens there. My LinkedIn email box is full of notes from people wanting something from me. My personal takeaway value is exactly Less Than Zero. As a massive resume database, however, LinkedIn has no equal. As a step away from the databases of old, it's miraculous. For business development and hard scrabble networking, it's less effective.

I spend a fair amount of time here on RBC. I have more friends on Facebook (friend me) or Twitter (follow me). But RBC is where my home is. It's the right blend of friendship and professional connection. I love the goofballs, the hard chargers and the community minded barn raisers. Where the other services provide networking, news and slices of friendship, RBC seems to deliver home-iness. The email system here is wretched. I get bombarded with stuff that doesn't matter and therefore lose some important things. Much of my professional email happens through the RBC system.

I opened a FriendFeed account the other day. The idea is good and the execution interesting. What I found was very absorbing. Some of my friends on Twitter, Facebook and services I didn't know I had friends on were communicating with each other through comments, notes, likes and intra friend feed commenting. But, somehow, the very people I wanted to keep track of didn't make the grade. And, there was no way to inject RBC into the mix. Friendfeed offers a very compelling information flow but it leaves out big parts that I want.

I tried TweetDeck. Cool interface, purely limited to Twitter. Nearly useless. I found BudUrl and loved it (it's a tinyurl style service that allows you to track the clickstream of links you post).

Here's the problem.

I can't figure out how to streamline my communication process. I'd like a single interface for some of the things I do on each of the systems. I'd love to hear stories about your experience with this sort of information overload. I wasn't all that good at email to begin with. Now, I'm dropping too many balls.

The email forwarding systems don't work. I know that I can get it all forwarded to outlook or email. But, most of those notifiers are worth way less than zero. My email trash bin contains thousands of notices from he services. I want the meaty stuff only and all in one place. I want my response to go back through the system.

In Recruiting, we tend to operate at the edge of technology. I know that I am not the only one with this problem. I'm sure that some of our RBC family have developed really elegant solutions. Let me know what you're doing.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Sumser on January 1, 2009 at 3:15pm

Even though it's incomplete, this Social Media Map is a great point of departure for the conversation. It's missing important landmarks. But, it indicates the explosion of services.

Ultimately, we'll each need our own individual dashboard. Conversely, employers and recruiters will be hungry for tools that track the whole person. Figuring out CRM in a social media environment will be the real key to 21st century recruiting.

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Permalink Reply by Amitai Givertz on January 2, 2009 at 2:29am

You say, "I can't figure out how to streamline my communication process." That implies you're using these tools primarily to exchange tidbits and for soundbite conversations. Is that right?

Otherwise, do you have a social media strategy? You say, "I found BudUrl and loved it (it's a tinyurl style service that allows you to track the clickstream of links you post." What are tracking and why?

I think we have to examine closely what we are doing and why we are doing it. Too often the apps drive our behaviors instead of our selecting only the tools that get the job done, focusing on that.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Levy on January 2, 2009 at 7:40am

John, I'm siding with Ami with respect to his SMS for the simple reason that is akin to sources of hire: Analyze where the "means" end and focus your time proportionally on the areas that produce the highest ROI (however you choose to measure it). Naturally, this SMS will have a dynamic component to it and will change - perhaps annually or more precisely, quarterly.

What we really need to do here on RBC is attempt to quantify our collective uses of SM tools. I'm putting the final touches on a monthly sourcing metric survey; there's no reason we can't look at every SM tool and create a monthly diffusion index for each.

I'll write more details as the comments come in. By the way John, Happy New Years; remember our call about 2-3 weeks back? I'm working on it. ;)

Amitai Givertz said:

You say, "I can't figure out how to streamline my communication process." That implies you're using these tools primarily to exchange tidbits and for soundbite conversations. Is that right?

Otherwise, do you have a social media strategy? You say, "I found BudUrl and loved it (it's a tinyurl style service that allows you to track the clickstream of links you post." What are tracking and why?

I think we have to examine closely what we are doing and why we are doing it. Too often the apps drive our behaviors instead of our selecting only the tools that get the job done, focusing on that.

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Permalink Reply by John Sumser on January 2, 2009 at 10:51am

So, no, I'm not using these conversations for soundbyte stuff.

Unfortunately, the really huge distraction comes from the various email systems. With solid, useful and productive email within RBC, Gmail and Facebook (and now, occasionally Twitter), I don't have a central place for email communication management. That's the big problem.

I know lots of people are using multiple communication channels. Hell, every consultant in the Recruiting game touts using some or all of the same services for recruiting. So, I know that at least some people are wrestling with the same communications volume problem.

It's really not a focus issue. It's more like the problem you'd have if you had four telephones and you could only call certain people from certain phones.

I guess you could always ask your correspondents to "meet me in email". But that adds an element of clumsiness and follow up. I want streamlined.

If the email is on RBC, I want it to continue there.

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Permalink Reply by Amitai Givertz on January 2, 2009 at 2:04pm

John, your pointing to the internal mail on RBC illustrates part of the problem, some of the solution.

If I get email from an RBC connection I get a copy of the message in my inbox [see your preferences]. The problem is that if I want to reply I have to come online because the return address is a "don't reply." Pretty much the standard across all my networks. Yours too I suspect.

I reply to 70% of that mail directly from my personal address book because I have those contacts personal email in my regular contacts. I am, indeed, connected with them in the "real" world. In effect I am switching the channels along which subsequent traffic flows. Remember, clicking through to open a new mail item takes no more time or energy than clicking on a hyperlink that takes you, say to Twitter, for a direct reply.

The other 30% emailing me are my network "friends." In most instances they are trying to get my attention for something that typically can wait until I'm logged onto the system.

This setup also works as a filter to minimize the noise and distractions. If I don't want that buzz I just change my preferences. We think of preferences as being fixed. Better to see them as being temporary controls to be managed as the circumstances change. If that is daily, so be it. If it is on the fly, that's OK too.

Increasingly I think, for SM citizens at least, traditional email is an outmoded form of information exchange. We can -- and do -- exchange information across multiple platforms in any number of open and closed communications. Once you let go the notion that you have to have it all in one place you can quickly find workable solutions for your information management.

I am migrating pretty much everything to the cloud. There are many reasons to do this not least of all Google's ability to search through all my crap -- and yours -- from my desktop, and on the go. If not Google there are alternatives for sure. We have to evolve from the idea of archiving to searching, from filing to tagging. Likewise, most SM conversations are personal, intimate and/or direct whether in an open forum or "offline." So does any particular inbox really matter; does it really affect the conversation?

Last, the nature of SM is that it is dynamic, fluid and constantly evolving. It makes no sense to build a house [or centralized inbox] on shifting sands. Imagine that you had your "ideal fix." Then a new widget, gadget or whatever comes online and you follow and your followers go off/sign up to find new friends to be "social" with!

All that said, if your purpose is to be in the mix because you want to promote yourself, advocate a cause, drive traffic to a blog or whatever, that requires a rethinking of the solution. Even so, the two approaches can be easily integrated because that's the nature of the SM beast.

It is what it is, and will likely remain so. What it is is a "mash-up." The beauty is in the imperfection. Like Mother said, you can't always have what you want but you can always have what you're prepared to work for.

John Sumser said:

So, no, I'm not using these conversations for soundbyte stuff.
Unfortunately, the really huge distraction comes from the various email systems. With solid, useful and productive email within RBC, Gmail and Facebook (and now, occasionally Twitter), I don't have a central place for email communication management. That's the big problem. I know lots of people are using multiple communication channels. Hell, every consultant in the Recruiting game touts using some or all of the same services for recruiting. So, I know that at least some people are wrestling with the same communications volume problem. It's really not a focus issue. It's more like the problem you'd have if you had four telephones and you could only call certain people from certain phones. I guess you could always ask your correspondents to "meet me in email". But that adds an element of clumsiness and follow up. I want streamlined.
If the email is on RBC, I want it to continue there.

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Permalink Reply by Amitai Givertz on January 2, 2009 at 2:24pm

Interesting comments: Social Networks are Killing Email

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Permalink Reply by Steve Levy on January 2, 2009 at 2:29pm

Folks said the same thing about the Internet/Email with respect to snail mail (I worked at Pitney Bowes from 1984-1992 and I remember many conversations about this)...

Amitai Givertz said: