So I just received word that my former employer, imc2, just laid off an additional 17% of their workforce, which included a group of some good friends. As much as I’m thankful I left before the ax fell, it still truly saddens me. They are laying off some truly talented people and from what I hear and read, most of it is due to poor decisions made versus the economy.

Today, Merck announced they’re laying off 7000 employees by 2011 and CNN’s Money website just posted an untimely article this morning stating that mass layoffs in this country are at the highest they’ve been since the September 11th attacks seven years ago.

Why didn’t anyone tell me when I graduated college in 1999 that in the 9 years I’ve been in the workforce, we would all have to endure the Telecom/IT bubble burst, the economy taking a huge fall during the 9/11 attacks and now our economy being at the worst it’s been since the Great Depression?

Those of you who have yet to graduate college, I hope you savor every minute you’re not in the “real world” as it’s not necessarily the nicest place to be.

To my friends who lost their jobs today, God be with you and know you’ll be better off one day. I promise you.

So one of the highlights of my career happened today when I got an email from my former director, Lori Kinney at imc2. As most of you know, I worked at imc2 for almost two years (recruited for them) and the last few months of my career there, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on getting imc2 up to date on social networking and recruiting. I’ve blogged before about the importance of using Twitter as a recruiter tool and it’s great to know my work with my awesome recruiting team has paid off. Lori was interviewed by the prestigious Ad Age about our efforts as one of the few ad agencies who began “twittering” about job openings with the company and also using other social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Pownce, etc) to recuit top-notch talent.

Lori sent me an email she sent to the VP of HR at imc2 and she was so wonderful in giving the “thanks” to me for spearheading the social networking piece for our recruiting team. It truly made me feel appreciated and valued… which comes as no surprise to those who know Lori as she truly is one of the best directors I have ever worked with.

Here’s the link to the Ad Age article and her interview with them on why it’s important to use social networking as a recruiter. I hope you enjoy it!

Reputation is defined as the opinion of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organization. More specifically, online reputation is a growing concern in this Web 2.0 world of networking and recruiting.

I decided I wanted to write my next recruiting post related to online reputation and the effects some social media sites have on it. Even if you currently are not looking for a job, your online reputation is everything. Just like your credit score, it’s a perception of how you function in life as a human being. Regardless of your present job situation, evidence is growing that show companies do care what you say and what others say about you online. Even if you’re not a popular blogger with your own domain site, companies can view your online reputation within minutes.

In a recent survey by a social network, 59% of employers are influenced by what they find on a candidate’s social network profile and/or online in general.

As a recruiter for 9 years and counting, reputation used to be based on a reference check or a referral. If I found “John Doe” on CareerBuilders.com and I thought he may be a good match for my company’s position, I would bring him to my office for an initial screening and then ask him to provide me two references. These references would then be the avenue in which we assessed the person’s reputation and credibility.

Now, with the creation of social media and web 2.0, reputation has taken a new course. Do you know that recruiters, HR departments, headhunters, and hiring managers not only do background and reference checks, but will also go online to assess your online reputation? Do you think it was smart to post that video on YouTube that showed you and a few friends doing a prank to a neighbor? Or what about those heated, political comments you left on a MySpace bulletin one night after a few drinks? Did you publicly breakup with your partner and then leave a personal yet humiliating message to him/her one night? It’s not as private as you may have thought.

Below are three main areas of where recruiters and your employer may begin assessing your reputation online…

(1) “Google You” - the first and easiest assessment of your reputation online is to google (or yahoo/MSN/altavista) the candidate’s name. These results can vary from your high school entry in your online yearbook to an award you won in college. They also can show results of one’s picture with one’s girlfriend or fraternity brothers on a MySpace page. If you tag your name to any image on any social media site, it can be easily found. “Googling a potential candidate” also shows what social media sites he or she is involved in and some of these sites could be considered questionable by your potential employer.

(2) Blogging - anyone knows that all someone has to do is create a google alert with your name on it and anything that’s in a blog (video, picture, text) has the potential of showing up in one of the several search engines around the world. Blogging has become a controversial topic between employees and employers because some argue that every one has the right to express themselves in any way they see fit. If it’s not on company time then it’s not my company’s business, right? Others argue that your blog and personal branding online can damage the reputation of your employer. So where does the line get drawn? A lot of companies require their new employees to sign an “exclusivity agreement” as well as a “Code of Ethics.” In a Code of Ethics, most companies have now begun to create a “blogging policy”. While it’s true that some companies allow you to blog as long as you leave the company’s name out of it, others absolutely discourage your right to blog about anything, depending on the level of your position. And if you sign this code and continue blogging, your employer has the right to terminate you.

(3) Social Media Sites - Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Pownce, etc. All of the profiles you build, comments you leave, videos you post, tweets you write and other personal promotion can lead to your potential employer OR your current employer making an assessment of you, regardless if it’s accurate or not. Recruiters are using MySpace and Facebook not only as network venues but also to pre-screen their candidates before presenting them to their hiring managers. Assessing your online reputation is huge. Companies are all about assessing risk and that even goes with assessing the risk of hiring a potentially controversial or unethical employee. Take it from me, I recently learned that every message I write on Twitter is indexed by Google. Therefor, I have the potential of someone reading one “tweet” completely out of context. It was eye opening for me.

These are just three ways for anyone to assess your online reputation. What you create about you is the most easily controlled. What others say about you or how they react to a comment you made or a video you published is much harder to control. The reason I wrote this post is to make people more aware of your online reputation. Your “online footprint” isn’t in sand… rather it’s in wet cement and it can stay online for years and years to come.

If you’re further interested in managing your online reputation, LifeHacker wrote a brillant article about how you can begin managing your online reputation proactively.

I’d also LOVE to hear YOUR comments about this. Do you feel like companies and recruiters are taking this too far? Is this an argument about freedom of speech or privacy issues? I’d love to hear your comments below.

I’ve been a recruiter, professionally, for 9 years and I’ve recruited everything from Creative Directors to Designers to Information Technology peeps to Finance people. One of the hottest trends in recruiting is the ability to announce job openings on social media sites. The biggest example is Google. Google’s HR recruitment campaign on YouTube went viral in a less than a week. Companies all across the world are beginning to create profiles on MySpace, Facebook and upload videos to YouTube.

So enough about us HR folk. What I want to discuss is how YOU can find a job by using social media.

The hottest social media site, in my opinion, on the ‘net is Twitter. So how can you use Twitter to find a new job? Easily.

If you think of Twitter as the “center of the ‘net” or as the “watercooler of the net,” (these comments coined by Geekbrief’s @calilewis) then you’ll soon realize the potential of Twitter. It’s easy. It’s quick. It’s instantaneous. You can read 40 people’s “what are you doings” in less than a minute, thanks to Twitter’s 140 character response field. If recruiters spend, on average, less than a minute to brief over a resume then recruiters should love Twitter. And we do.

So if more people are beginning to use Twitter, what better avenue to market yourself and your resume! As a recruiter, my team has begun the social media route in finding the top, best talent. The Monster.com’s of the world are, in all honesty, over-populated with resumes. If I’m looking for a designer who has a love for the web and who knows the latest and greatest in advertising as well as social media, would I find that person more quickly on Monster or on a social medium, such as Twitter or Facebook? To me, it makes perfect sense to use social media sites to attract top-notch talent.

We’ve begun advertising our job openings on Twitter, Pownce, Facebook and MySpace because we know that the talent we’re looking for are going to be more involved in these sites rather than they would be on the regular job boards. All you need is your resume and portfolio online and then you can just broadcast your website on Twitter or follow someone you know who is a recruiter (example: www.twitter.com/imc2recruiter).

Most HR departments these days have created their own MySpace and Facebook profiles. They’re there to not only give more presence to their company but to also “add friends” (aka add potential candidates) to their network.

Should you not upload your resume to the job boards? No, I think you should. But you definitely should think outside the box and begin to use social media sites as well to network. Network, network, network.

Watch the video below to see how companies and recruiters are using social media to find YOU.

http://www.vimeo.com/948866

Cali Lewis, from Geekbrief.tv, just informed all of us viewers about an awesome new technology that, to me, is so moxie I couldn’t help but write about it as well! Publicis and Hal Riney have a new way to surf their site… WITH THE MOTION OF YOUR HANDS! No more touching the keys on your keypad. No more using the mouse to navigate. As long as you have a webcam, you can use the “Air Hands” technology to navigate!

Check out the demo I made while on the site… it’s fantastic and quite moxie!

You will see, at first, the intro to the website where you do a test to make sure your webcam is monitoring your hand signals. Then you’ll see the actual site and me navigating my way (left, right, and top) through it.

Please DIGG this if you think it’s interesting/cool…

http://www.vimeo.com/933053

I have a lot of people ask me why I’m always talking about my job.  As most of you know, I work for a privately-held top 10 digital advertising agency as a recruiter.  There are several reasons I love the company that employs me… but one of the best reasons is I get to bring my ”best friend” to work every day.

So why is this important to blog about?  It’s not to brag, I assure you.  It’s for the shimmering hope that someone will see this and think, “you know, my company should do this.”  And what is it I wish more companies would do?  It’s simple.

Bring your dog to work.

The ad agency I work for lets us bring our dogs to work.  We have over 300 employees in our 2 Dallas offices (and 300 in Philly, New York and London) and although we work in a casual work environment, the office is clean, quiet (when necessary), innovative and yet still professional.  How is this possible with dogs running around everywhere?  Easy.  We’re allowed to bring our dog to work and he/she can stay in our cube or come with us anywhere in the office as long as they’re on a leash.  Our owners have provided us a doggie walk area that’s fenced in so that our doggies can do their business. 

Deco comes with me when I interview candidates or meet with VPs or even when I talk to our clients.  It’s fantastic.

I spoke with one of the volunteers from the Animal Rescue of Texas about this and they’re wanting to now write an article in their newsletter about my company as well as a few others in Dallas that allow our dogs to come to work with us.  It’s really a revolutionary idea.  No worrying about your doggie being stuck at home or your apartment and being all alone!

So, in summary, I think if everyone wanted to bring their dog to work then they should vocalize it to their senior leadership/HR and discuss the benefits of how really cool and fun it will make your company.  After all, we were voted one of the top 5 best places to work in Dallas!