Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category

I’ve met a Jon Gauthier a few times and while I  knew he was an entrepreneurial fellow, I didn’t know he was starting up his own courier company.

The company, Good Foot Delivery, “provides a personalized point-to-point delivery service on foot or via public transit as well as employment opportunities to people with developmental disabilities.”

I think this is a great idea, and while I don’t want to downplay the hard work that Jon probably put in to get Good Foot off the ground I also think its a great example of how easy it can be to get a project like this off the ground with the help of social media. Its great to see that Jon was able to use his skills to do something he was really passionate about while also giving back to the community.

Read more about Jon’s company, Good Foot, in the Toronto Star and then vote for them on the Pepsi Refresh Project website.

Keep up the good work, Jon!

-Parker

Recently over lunch, a client explained to me that her company once tested its employees to find out what “type” of person each of them was. The test asked a series of hypothetical “What if..?” and multiple-choice questions (for example: “You win the lottery. What do you do first?”). How that individual answered the questions—for example, either emotionally (“Throw a party”), or analytically (“Call your accountant”), and so on—determined the person’s type, particularly related to the employment.

The company revealed the results to the employees, and everyone in the company learned a little bit about most of their co-workers. My client found the test to be enlightening, and talked about how she came to better understand some individuals as co-workers based on their test results.

I gave some thought to this from my perspective as an employee of a large multinational. If presented with a similar test, would I want my employer to know (or better yet, to think they know) what type of person I am based on an arbitrary test of my hypothetical reactions in differing situations? I concluded no, I’d be uncomfortable revealing personal information that might lead to my employer making a decision about me.

My thinking is simple: if I were to reveal aspects about myself to my employer that I would otherwise not reveal in a professional setting, then I might be judged on something that never happened. If a test found me to react emotionally to hypothetical questioning, who’s to say that I would react emotionally in a professional setting? My employer may be making an incorrect assumption about me without basing it on my actual performance. This would trouble me as an employee, even if the test results matched my actual performance on the job.

Another fault I found was that we think we know how we would react to the news that we had just won the lottery, but until we’re actually faced with that scenario, we will never actually know the correct answer. It’s the Minority Report problem: until someone commits the crime, they shouldn’t be convicted of it.

I took something called Myers-Briggs in college and found it to be mostly nonsense. Have you ever taken a test that revealed your “personality type”? If so, did you find it to be an accurate indicator of who you really are?

Moreover, I’d like my employer to understand me by my performance—to the point that they’d find a personality test useless after years of their own knowledge gathering. How would you feel about sharing your personality type with your employer?

Last year, I wrote about how MAVERICK offered an internship position via an American Idol-type of competition.

Now that I work at MAVERICK, I’m excited to see that the agency is doing it again. One of last year’s contestants, Katie Boland, is still a full-time employee here and I work with her on a couple of different projects.

This year’s competition will mean that the aspiring intern has to face two rounds of questions from a panel of MAVERICK employees. I think this is a great chance for the applicant to show that they are good at public speaking and can think quickly on their feet.

The winner will be notified that day, and will receive an twelve-week paid internship (from what I’ve heard, the pay for this is above average for similar internships). More importantly, they’ll get experience in media monitoring, writing, planning and social media. While there is no guarantee that they will end the internship with a job, the experience will help them in their career.

For more details, please see Julie “The Maven” Rusciolelli’s blog post about the contest (or check the MAVERICK website) . Interested applicants should send an email with their resume to idol@Maverickpr.com by May 7 at 5:00 p.m. They will then have to show up in person at the MAVERICK offices on May 12 at 10:00 am.

Is this a good way to find interns? If you are a student, would you apply for a position this way?

-Parker

Last week, I gave a presentation at Centennial College’s Talk Is Cheap unconference. The talk was Music Blogging: Posting, Pitching and PR, and if that sounds familiar, its because I wrote a blog post with the same title a few months ago.

I’ve gone to #TalkIsCheap for the past few years, and I’ve always had a great time. I think it’s one of the better social media events in Toronto these days, and the organizers deserve a round of applause. (Thanks for letting me speak!)

The gist of my talk was that as much as I enjoy writing the occasional post here on BlogCampaigning, I don’t really like writing about PR, and I don’t like reading about PR and and communications. By the informal polls I did of the audience, it seems like most people agreed with me. (I mean, c’mon: do you REALLY enjoy reading about PR and communications?)

I went on to talk about how much more I enjoyed writing about electronic music and science fiction for my other blog, and how doing that has taught me way more about PR and online communications than writing posts for BlogCampaigning.

While I didn’t get too deep into the details of music blogging, I did talk about some of things I’d learned about PR from my other blog:

1. Your pitches don’t have to be personalized – I feel like PR and communications pros who blog are the only ones who insist on pitches being personalized. The rest of the blogging world will post about something if they feel its relevant to their audience. Personalized pitches can help, but they aren’t necessary.

2. Your pitches should be well targeted – if they aren’t, you’re just wasting everyone’s time. When talking about this, I used an example of a PR person that sent me an album to review for my music blog. I normally only blog about electronic music, but the album was folk guitar. I’m going to ignore every e-mail I get from that PR person from now on, because I’ll just assume it is the same type of music.

3. Don’t send fancy HTML emails – once again, you’re wasting everyone’s time. They don’t show up well on mobile devices, Outlook frequently blocks the images and even Yahoo! and Gmail don’t seem to like them.

4. Don’t follow up – it just pisses people off. While admittedly I’ve gotten some great coverage out of following up with a journalist, and have also posted something just because some guy followed up so often that I started to feel guilty, nobody feels good about a PR pitch being followed up. It’s one of those things that everyone just feels awkward about. In the case where you have a good relationship with a journalist or a blogger, then its probably alright to follow up because you’ll know when it is appropriate. As someone else commented during my presentation, if you’re pitches are well targeted then you probably shouldn’t have to do a lot of follow-up.

In the end, I tried to encourage the audience to start a blog about something they care about. For example, if they want to work in PR for one of the big car companies, they should start a blog about cars. If they want to work in fashion PR, they should start a fashion blog. Seeing the world in the eyes of an online journalist will be far more valuable than writing the occasional post about something like the “intersection of PR and social media”.

So what do you think—should students blog about their thoughts on the PR industry, or should they be blogging about something they care about?

Have you started a blog, and given up after a while because it was about something you weren’t interested in?

-Parker

The following is a post by my friend Amanda Laird:

Earlier this week I participated as a mentor at Humber College’s Personal Brand Camp. During the event, I heard many students express that they were apprehensive about, if not confused by, building an online presence.

Before we go any further, let me give you a little background on my online presence. I started writing online in 1997 as a way to connect with other young writers and artists (let’s just say my high school had more sports teams than poetry clubs). After college I realized that the skills I acquired building websites in my parents’ basement were transferable to the real world. My knowledge of and passion for online communication set me apart from other job candidates, and so my personal brand was born.

I started to wonder if the exercise of forcing students to create an online presence was futile. Making them get online isn’t going to do them any good; in fact I think it might even be counter-productive. If students are keen on getting involved in social media, by all means encourage them to do so—in a smart way; it will go a long way in helping them create a personal brand. But if they’re not, don’t force them. If a student doesn’t want to blog, their blog is going to be lame, and how is that going to set them apart in the job market?

Here are a few tips that Rayanne Langdon, my Personal Brand Camp partner-in-crime and I shared with those students who were interested in getting online, but weren’t sure where to start.

Be where you want to be. If you’re not comfortable with being online, don’t be online. What makes the Internet awesome is the passion that drives people to tweet, to blog, to engage in social media. If, to you, being online means tweeting and not blogging, or blogging and not tweeting, go for it!

Be your fabulous, funny, smart, creative, passionate self, and the personal brand stuff will come on its own. Being authentic will set you apart in a job interview and online.  Unfortunately, if yourself is an asshole, you might be in trouble.

Be passionate. While I am certainly passionate about my work, I’ll leave writing about PR to the Dave Fleets and Martin Waxmans of the world. I write about home cooking because that’s what I love; not only am I better at it, my “personal brand” is better for it, too.

Be nice. This one’s easy. If you can help someone online (and in real life), do it. And don’t do it because you think you’ll get something out of it. Do it because being nice is a good thing.

Be smart. I’m all for sharing online, but you’ve got to give yourself some guiding principles. I’m friends with my dad and my boss on Facebook, so I generally don’t post anything I wouldn’t share with them over coffee. And now, as my professional and personal lives blend together, I even give my actions a second thought. I don’t spend too many nights dancing on tables with lampshades on my head anymore. (But man, those were good days.) You never know where those pictures will end up.

A personal brand isn’t a limiting checklist. Sage advice from a wise man. People aren’t one-dimensional, so there is no reason to limit yourself online. Have multiple interests? Have multiple blogs! Contribute guest posts to other blogs or segment your website into sections with posts on various topics. Your online presence is just that: yours. Do it your way.

Amanda Laird is a Communications Specialist at CNW Group, a gig she got through this very blog.  Her personal brand is about home cooking, complaining about the TTC, and the odd smart thought about PR. Find her online at mise en place or @amandalaird.

I really don’t mind wearing a suit and tie. When you’re walking around, they’re perfect.

When you’re sitting down, in a meeting, they’re less perfect. I find that jacket always bunches up, and since most meeting rooms are at a temperature for shirt sleeves, I find that the extra thick layer of suit jacket always leaves me feeling a little bit warm.

However, you can’t just loosen your tie, undo the top button of your shirt, take your jacket off, and roll your sleeves up in the first few minutes of a meeting.

In fact, I’m not even sure you can do any of those things in most meetings.

This normally leaves me with an internal dialogue as I sit across the table in a discussion: “Okay, we’ve been talking for fifteen minutes… Can I take my jacket off now? Or do I have to wait until someone more senior does so first? Or do I have to wait for a break in the conversation? Or should I wait until there is a break, and then just come back without my jacket, like nothing happened?”

Tired of this endless internal debate, I threw the question to Twitter and got some good responses.

Brad Buset and Greg”Blazer” Blazina both agreed that if you’re the client, you can take your jacket off.

Buset also adds that if it is an internal meeting, and the senior colleagues their jacket off first, then it is appropriate.

I still feel like this leaves a lot of times when I’m going to be left sitting down with a suit jacket on.

Any other ways to justify taking it off in a meeting?

Suit-related etiquette tips also appreciated.

-Parker

Congrats to a few members of the BlogCampaigning crew:

The official notice of Heather Morrison’s new position at Sequentia Environics went out (over the newswire, no less) last week, saying that she’ll “supervise the daily operations and performances of client service teams.” A good move indeed; Sequentia is  a digital communications firm that “focuses on the online relationships between companies and their customers.” It’s also part of the Environics Group.

In other celebratory news, Jens “Schredd” Schroeder sent me an email last week to say that he handed in his doctoral thesis last Monday. “I can’t really believe it’s over… ” he wrote. “But I suppose you never reach the point where you’re convinced that it’s the right moment to hand in a project of this size.” The paper is titled ‘Killer Games’ versus ‘We Will Fund Violence’ :The Perception of Digital Games and Mass Media in Germany and Australia, and Jens is hoping to make it available here on BlogCampaigning sometime soon.

-Parker

January brings lots of new years’ resolutions to be better at this, that or the other. Career aspirations are often somewhere on the list. I recently started a new position as Manager of Client Services for Sequentia Environics, which basically means I am responsible for account and project management and anything in between. I am now two months in, and the novelty has far from worn off. I’m learning new things every day and love the feeling of being challenged. Unlike most of my previous jobs, this role did not land in my lap with little to no effort. Quite the contrary.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to pursue a career in digital media and communications. By the fall I was ready to start seriously putting myself on the market. I started where most people start, by dusting off my résumé, shining it up with new achievements and aspirations, and sending it out to a few job postings that fit my desired role. Tick-tock went the clock. I got a few call-backs and a couple of interviews, but nothing major and no real offers.

I decided to enlist the help of so-called professional recruiters. I focused on the firms that specialize in the digital media and communications industry. I  only got one or two more interviews from a total of three recruitment firms. Sigh. Time to take matters back into my own hands.

Throughout the last year and a half, I attended a ton of different networking events and met people who were heavily invested in the social media community. I decided to start with this network. I set up phone and coffee meetings with my contacts. These meetings were never phrased as interviews in any way. Their purpose was for me to ask questions to experienced professionals about what skill sets they would look for in a potential hire, and also to tell them about what I wanted to do. They were never formal.

I found these meetings really beneficial and educational. Often times, if the person I was speaking with wasn’t looking to expand themselves, they led me to speak to someone else who might be. I also got to talk shop with some pretty interesting and well respected people. Once the well of my own soft contacts (and their contacts) started to dry up, I was still jobless, BUT I was definitely making some inroads.

Next, I started doing some further research to find other firms and individuals who were making digital waves. This took me all over the place, from Advertising to PR to Marketing and In-house. I figured my best bet was to cold call and cold e-mail the people at the top of these organizations—often with the same aim of grabbing a coffee and chatting about the industry and what I was hoping to achieve. I was surprised how many people said yes within a day of receiving my e-mail or phone call. Almost everyone I reached out to was really receptive and open to sitting down with me. Now I was finally getting somewhere. This is exactly how I landed my new role at Sequentia. I saw Jen Evans speak at The Canadian Institute’s Managing Social Media conference and e-mailed her to see if they were expanding. As it turned out, they were. Within two weeks of that initial e-mail I had a firm job offer.

Like I said, this was not an easy process. It took about four months and a lot of networking, reaching out, tons of coffee and not being scared to pick up the phone or send someone an e-mail (no matter how high up their title read). If you want to make a move, be your own recruiter. It will pay off, but be patient and stick with it.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any job-seeking secrets to share?

Over the past few months, I’ve really come to enjoy reading Timothy B. Lee’s blog. The computer programmer, writer and think-tank worker bee is now pursuing a PhD in computer science, and is blogging his thoughts about “bottom-up” thinking.

What is bottom-up thinking? Its not something racy, nor is it about chugging beer. As Tim says:

“I’m convinced that Silicon Valley’s fundamental strength is the fact that it embodies what I’ll call a bottom-up perspective on the world. The last couple of decades have brought us the dominance of the open Internet, the increasing success of free software, and the emergence of the free culture movement as an important social and political force. More generally, Silicon Valley is a place with extremely low barriers to entry, a culture of liberal information sharing, and a respect for the power of individual entrepreneurs.”

For the most part, Tim’s posts have reinforced some of my own opinions about the way things should work. He has also occasionally caused me to second-guess my own actions; but never as much as a few weeks ago when he wrote a critique of the Public Relations industry (“The PR Firm As Anti-Signal“).

“PR people seem to be floundering in this new environment,” he writes, before going on to explain that hiring a PR firm sends the message that your company “doesn’t get the web.” Tim feels that if your product or company is good enough, you don’t need PR. People will talk about you, write about you, and do business with you. It was particularly tough to swallow considering I’d just made the move from Product Management to Public Relations (the two really aren’t as different as you’d think).

However, upon closer inspection, it seems that his complaint is about PR companies that also don’t “get the web”. You know, the kind that we always complain about, the ones that send the cookie-cutter pitches to thousands of reporters on the very off-chance that they might write about their client.

What Tim doesn’t understand is that PR isn’t just about sending pitches. Its about communicating.

Tim is fortunate enough to be able to write clearly, and I’m going to guess that this isn’t a skill that every computer sciences PhD candidate has. In fact, I bet that Tim is a bit of a renaissance-man rarity in his world.

But at the same time, there aren’t very many Public Relations professionals that know much about computers (seriously, as a group, we’re not as tech-savvy as we like to think we are).

Computer programmers (coders, developers, etc.) need PR pros to help them tell people about their product, explain what it does and communicate with the user base. They need designers to make it look nice. They need sales people to sell it.

And the patent lawyers that Tim talks about, the ones that he recommends start a blog instead of getting their PR people to offer to comment on various issues? If they’re really experts, they’re probably too busy with cases to start a blog. But a PR team could help lawyers set one up, and teach them how to write concise posts that draw on their knowledge but require a communicator’s skill to make them more palatable to a wider audience.

As I heard someone say about this same issue a year or so ago, “Sure I can paint my house myself, but why wouldn’t I just hire professionals who can do a better job?”

Tim, if you read this I hope you give PR a second chance. We’re not perfect, but we’re learning. And there are some public relations practitioners who are redefining the profession using the bottom-up thinking you preach.

-Parker

Earlier this year, I suggested that PR students wanting to get involved in the online world should avoid starting a PR-focused blog.

Now, I’m going to suggest that we all stop even reading PR blogs. They aren’t that representative of the real world—the wilds of the internet.

Rather than focusing on how this tightly knit community (I believe David Jones referred to it as a “circle-jerk” on Inside PR) does things and communicates, why not spend that time getting more involved in understanding the way actual people use the internet?

Learn how your clients’ audiences look for things online. Learn about what they’re interested in. Become passionate about what they are passionate about, or at least try and understand their passion.

I’m willing to bet that most of you don’t spend your evenings re-reading your old PR textbooks (nor do you buy the latest version every year), but that you probably do browse your region’s daily newspapers on a regular basis.

Do you have any idea how few people care about RSS feeds? How many of your friends (outside of those involved in the communications industry) actually care about Twitter or even understand what it does?

Forget case studies. Forget best practices. When is the last time you did something truly new and interesting?

-Parker