Problems Being The Popular One

I am finding recruiters, including myself talking about the quality of social/mobile recruiting that is starting to look more like “self promoting” and “abusing the freedom of expression”.  Don’t get me wrong, I truly believe in sharing and freedom of speech. But why does this come with a price of wanting to be the popular one?

The other day I was chatting with someone and they shared with me and I quote “I want to be popular like you” (me).  I was thrown by that statement, which prompts this blog post J.   I wasn’t really excited to hear this, because I believe that anyone can (and should) be heard.

Most recruiters, from many conversations I have had, say that it is popularity that gets you heard; seriously folks are we still in high school? For a very long time, I too felt that I didn’t have anything to share, or anyone really cared about what I have to say.   I mean who am I? A nobody?  However, that all changed when I had the opportunity to speak at SourceCon 2008, (thank you - Leslie O’Connor for believing in me,) and I was given a platform to present what I was passionate about; with this opportunity I found my voice!

This helped me to realize that we all have voices in this industry and that we need to start speaking up!

The real problem with popularity-driven people is not the existence of their popularity; it’s the lack of examination and evaluation of the fuzzy lines between perspective and truth. The real problem with popularity-driven people is that they reduce both the breadth and depth of the sources, topics and viewpoints being expressed across our communities. Popularity-driven people water down the value to those who are trying to find their own voices. These voices need to be heard and to be encouraged to develop new findings and new ideas that can grow within our industry. We shouldn’t have to feel that we need to be popular to be heard!

As social media becomes integrated into our world of staffing,  it enforces that now is the time to build a level of karma high enough to break through the controlling moderator hierarchy that somehow has been growing for too long in the our world of recruiting. Social Media removes many of the layers we feel to be popular and gives an individual an opportunity to grow, and, contribute their voice in recruiting.

What have I done?  I can l only speak for myself, I have used most of the popularity-driven people as mentors and found my own voice without feeling the need to be popular to be heard! Amazing self empowerment realization came to me; that I do have value to add to the recruiting industry, and which brought rewards in finding and surrounding myself with like minded folks who wish to continue to give back.

Your focus should be on what you can give back to the community that you want to build, and recognizing that in doing so you will gain the popularity you seek, and in return feel proud, and valid!

Rather than broadcast to a few “popular people” that you think matters and to make you popular, you should be broadcasting to your peers that share your ideas; and social media should be used to help YOU help other people to discover fresh, new, voices and find what matters and NOT worrying about being popular!

Posted via email from Kay Kelison's Digital-Log

Using Boolean Searching On Twitter

Twitter Search  www.search.twitter.com

Twitter search is fairly straightforward. Because it is real time Boolean Searching String capable however, don't expect to get number of results since that's fairly pointless in this situation. Just expect to get results from the last few seconds back, and you get the full tweet.

Twitter Search defaults to AND, and it recognizes the “OR” option, and assumes that “NOT” is a search term, although the minus “-“sign works in place of it. Unfortunately phrase searching isn't an option which is a huge bummer, except that there is if you use the advanced search option.

Search Using Hashtags (#) is a useful option. How do we use “#” hashtags Kay?, you may ask. Well, a hashtag such as #sourcecon is a neat and easy way to collate a series of tweets together on one subject, such as the sourcecon conference for example. A search on said hashtag will then result in a series of tweets discussing that subject. This works in both basic and advanced search in the same way, with the same results.

People Search Options Both search options allow search by an individual with the function “from:” so from:Jaxx_Magee provides a result listing all of my tweets, though you could get the same information from my profile page. However, you can then add in other search terms to limit results to my tweets that also contain a particular word. It's possible to search for tweets to a particular person, so to:insert your handle here shows tweets to that handle and adding in more terms limits the search to those tweets that also contain the searched keyword. Finally in this section it's possible to search for references to an individual using the @name option, so @Jaxx_Magee will list replies to me but also Retweets (RT) as well.

Location Search Options The concept is simple, working in both basic/advanced search, you can run a search for your keyword, a location, and a distance. A search for internet near:seattle within:15mi will provide results for the keyword in a radius of 15 miles of Seattle. However, if we run the search globally such as near:londonuk within:15mi we get a response based on London but a some searches results will not find the geocode you are looking for. While not exactly broken, I would have to say that searching by location is not perfect.

Search By Date This option lists Tweets since a particular date using the function since:2009 03 11 (note the global dating system if you're not from here) or before a particular date using the function until:2009 03 12 This works well in both basic and advanced search.

Attitude Searching This is very cool - very simple concept based on the emoticons “:)”for positive, :( for negative and ? asking a question. Unfortunately it's not possible to search for other symbols such as $ or % which is a real shame. This is in my opinion pure fun search to break up your day

RSS Feeds Both basic and advanced search options allow for RSS feeds for any search, which is clearly useful. However, only the advanced search option allows for results to be tweeted in turn, for no good reason as far as I can see, other than the discontinuity between search engines.

Posted via email from Kay Kelison's Digital-Log