Investing, Raising Capital, Sales Training, and Recruiting with Social Media
Blogs, social network sites, social software---and how to use all of these tools to become dramatically more successful
My friends at Accolo have some very worthwhile webinars available for free on their site. These are geared to hiring managers and recruiters. You can watch these at your convenience:
The Inside Numbers on the Job Market and the Impending Hiring War
How to Conduct the Perfect Interview
Understanding your cost to hire.
Employment Screening, beware and be aware
Social Network Recruiting – Beyond Employee Referrals
I’ll be presenting on April 27 to the Founder Institute Singapore on "Hiring and Firing for Entrepreneurs". My draft slide deck is below; I would welcome feedback.
I attended tonight’s Social Recruiting Meetup, and heard a talk by venture capitalist Fred Wilson on "Recruiting with Social Media" . This was a highly condensed version of his presentation at the Social Recruiting Summit (video available on that site).
My brief notes:
Social web has vastly connected the number of people you can connect with every day.
I got into VC in the mid 80s.
At the time we would seek out investments by going to conferences, walking halls, collecting business cards, and then work the phones. We would talk to a dozen people a day.
Then with email we could talk to 10x as many people.
Then with social media we can talk to another 10x as many people. My blog AVC.com reaches thousands of people every day.
One of our regular portfolio questions: how do we hire great engineers? This presentation summarizes my answer.
I tell recruiters to go to Meetup.com, e.g., the PHP Meetup.
One of the event attendees runs Jibe (spelling), a new service that shows you jobs with which you have a social connection.
StackOverflow is a great place to get quality engineers, and evaluate their reputation.
Q: Do you use social media for sourcing deals?
A: One of my best leads are the comments on my blog posts. I have a rule: when I hear about a company 2x I write it down. When I hear about it 3x, I write the CEO. We use social media for due diligence. We contact influencers to get their opinions.
Q: How do you recommend introductions to people?
A: I believe in the ‘double opt-in intro’. I ask both parties if they want to be introduced. I do this because that’s how I want other people to introduce me, because i get introduced to too many people to whom I don’t want to be introduced.
Teten: How should traditional high-end recruiters respond to social media taking away their competitive advantage of a candidate database?
A: i’ve come to believe that the cultural fit of the candidate within the small company is critical, so we prefer to recruit via the social web. We go to the recruiters only after trying our own network.
Q: What large companies are using social media well?
A: I cant point to any. Maybe it just doesn’t scale.
Q: How do you get more followers?
A: You put value out , you get value back.
Q: What do you think of recruiting internationally on social media?
A: It should work. I read Russians are greatest users of social media in the world?
Q: Are there tools like Radian6 or a Visible that you think are helpful for assessing sentiment?
A: I dont use any of those sophisticated tools, but I’m sure they’re very valuable.
Q: Talk about how you use LinkedIn.
A: We use it heavily, but not the way LinkedIn would like. We’ve never been a paying customer. We’ll use it to find a certain profile. We don’t ask for a reference list. We just connect with people on LinkedIn and look for the shared connections.
Q: Do you do searches for a portfolio company?
A: We don’t drive searches; the company does. We recommend company hire an in-house recruiter when they get to 20-25 employees. We’re a member of the hiring team.
Yup, the economic news for the new year isn’t what any of us had hoped. U.S. unemployment held at just under 10%, but only because 661,000 workers have “removed themselves from the workforce”, a euphemism meaning they’ve given up looking for a job because they believe none are available. The picture’s not particularly brighter in the rest of the world either.
This hits close to home. Odds are good that you personally know at least 10-20 people who are currently unemployed, or as is increasingly common, under-employed, i.e., they have some part-time work, freelance work, or a full-time position at significantly lower pay than they’re accustomed to.
Sue Connelly wants to do something about that. As founder of KIT List, “an email job posting service where employers and recruiters advertise permanent or consulting job opportunities to over 58,000 high-quality professionals,” she knows that the jobs are there – she sees them come across the list every day.
So what’s her big idea? Simple, really – a “pay it forward wave“, this week – a concentrated effort to be proactive about getting our friends back to work. Here are some suggestions she has for simple ways to help:
And, of course, you can share about this on email lists, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.
If we each just did 1-2 of these things every day, we may not end unemployment completely, but we might at least help the people we know and care about get back to work sooner rather than later.
Image credit: Photomish Dan
DancetimePublications, the largest dance history DVD website, seeking social media marketing consultant: approximately 60-80 work-hours December-January, flexible commitment—New York, NY
My mom, Carol Teten, is seeking some advice:
Our Firm
Dancetime Publications is a publishing company devoted to the creation and distribution of information products based on our heritage of Western social and theatrical dance. Most of our revenues are via the sale of DVDs on our website, http://www.dancetimepublications.com/, and via paper mailings to our proprietary mailing list. In addition, we just launched a directory of other companies’ dance history products on our website, which we are monetizing via the Amazon affiliate program.
Our work has been praised by such publications as the New York Times, Washington Post, Library Journal, and Dance Magazine. Our CEO, Carol Teten, is one of the world’s leading experts in historical Western social dance.
Among the dances for which we have DVD products:
20th Century: Fox Trot, Tango, Charleston, Lindy, Rumba, Jitterbug, Twist, Disco, Breakdancing, and Hip Hop.
19th Century: Waltz, Polka, Gallop, Mazurka and Quadrille (square dances)
18th Century: Gigue, Allemande and Contradance (country dances)
17th Century: Minuet and Saraband
16th Century: Volta, Saltarello, and Galliard
15th Century: Bassadanze and Balli
We also have DVD products related to Modern Dance pioneers such as Pearl Primus, Charles Weidman, Donald McKayle, and Anna Sokolov; and Jazz Dance legends such as Pepsi Bethel, James Barry, Al Minns, Leon James, and Frankie Manning.
New DVDs are coming out on THE BIG APPLE and on HIP-HOP.
Primary Job Responsibilities
We are looking for a consultant to work in December-January, preferably about 30 hours/week. The exact hours you work are entirely flexible. Your primary responsibilities:
– build out our database of dance history websites
– build databases of online communities of people interested in historical dance and dance history
– outreach directly to these communities via email, IM, etc.
– Solicit online community leaders to link to DancetimePublications.com website, and/or to advertise our videos to their community.
Based on your performance and our needs, your role may continue as a part-time or full-time job after January.
Qualifications and Experience
The ideal candidate will be a highly motivated self-starter with strong writing experience, social media marketing experience, and a track record of continuous self-improvement, high achievement, and aggressiveness. You have strong interpersonal communication skills, a poised, professional demeanor, and basic proficiency in PCs: Microsoft Office suite. You should be a confident and innovative problem solver with the ability to drive projects forward to timely completion.
Although you can complete this consulting project from anywhere in the US, we have a preference for people based in the New York, NY area.
The following will strengthen your candidacy significantly:
– Diverse social media marketing experience: email, online communities, social networks
– Experience as a leader of an online community
– Experience in the dance world, preferably dance history
– Experience marketing Amazon affiliate websites
Compensation
$10-$20/hour, depending on experience.
Next Steps
Please send us the following:
+ Resume, titled “LastName-FirstName-2009”, e.g., “Spitzer-Eliot-2009”
+ Cover letter, indicating the dates and times that you are available
+ Writing sample (e.g., a report or memo from work, or a paper from school)
Please send your resume and cover letter to carol(AT)teten.com with “Social Media Marketing” in the subject line.
While I was in business school, I worked part-time as a resume editor for the schools office of Career Services. During that time, I wrote the guide below on “How to Write a White-Hot Resume and Personal Marketing Plan”. Given the economy, I thought that many people would find this helpful. It’s also very pertinent to people applying for business school.
I’m speaking twice in the next few weeks on ‘Career Opportunities with Private Equity and Venture Capital Portfolio Companies’ . Institutional investors are certainly paying much more attention now to operational issues, which is good from the point of view of executives who are seeking opportunities at portfolio companies.
My hosts for these two presentations are both private executives group, so the programs are not open to the public. However, I have posted below the slides, also visible at http://teten.com/executive.htm . Of course, I always welcome feedback.
Issues I’ll discuss:
– Common engagement models with private equity and venture capital firms: Expert networks, senior advisor networks, executives in residence, and deal executives.
– How you can work with a private equity portfolio company: board member, deal origination, consultant, employee, interim executive.
– Why operational expertise is now far more important for private equity portfolio companies.
– How private equity ownership impacts a company.
– How you can use online networks and other “Web 2.0” internet technologies to increase your pool of potential employers.
– Non-traditional tools to win consulting projects.
I thought many people would be interested in the insights of Mike Lorelli on “Nine Lives for Executives in Transition”. Mike has been CEO of five private equity-backed companies, and is currently CEO of Water-Jel Technologies.
A little while ago, I gave a speech at NYU Stern Business School on “How to Squeeze Maximum Value from Business School: Leverage Your Education to Accelerate Your Career”. How can you maximize the benefits of all the years and all the money that you invested in your business education?
I prepared the Powerpoint for my personal reference, for my friends starting school, and for any of my future children who may go to business school. My main focus is business students, but the principles I discuss are relevant regardless of the exact subject you are studying.
To prepare this paper I interviewed many of my MBA classmates on what were the most effective uses of their time during school. I also probed to learn about what were the least effective uses of their time.
I thought that you might find the slides, below, of interest.
