FACT: The vast majority of people in senior positions right now are in an age demographic that will be retiring within 5 years. This group tends to hold “traditional” bricks and mortar beliefs with some exceptions (although not many) when it comes to hiring. They will mainly look at your resume, experience and education when considering you for a job.
As the new, online, social media generation demographic fills their spots I feel there will be significant changes in beliefs and hiring practices. Our generation of hiring managers will search for a job applicants authority level & reputation online. They’ll be asking such questions as:
- who are their online networks?
- what to their connections say about them?
- do they blog?
- do they have a podcast?
- are they in touch with new trends in the industry?
- do they frequently speak an unconferences?
- do they have a website?
- are they on SecondLife?
I can think of a great deal of “old-school” professionals in the field of marketing whose reputation and authority is undisputed, however, only with their generation and like-minded peers. While I must admit, they do share privileges of established old-boys networks, their authority is nowhere to be found online. In contrast, there is a whole breed of young self-branded industry experts (Mitch Joel,. Joe Jaffe, CC Chapman) that are quickly becoming much more powerful and connected simply because they get it.
They are engaged/connected with their audiences and constantly “out-there” walking the talk of all Web 2.0 has to offer. In the eyes of many, this can be much more valuable than investing all your efforts in traditional career advancing routes (e.g. relying solely on an MBA). Just “Google” any of the names I mentioned and see for yourself. Who would you hire?
In my opinion online personal branding and identity creation will be a booming business in the coming years. Imagine getting a universal online identity score as easily as you can get an Equifax credit score online. This score could be based on a multitude of factors such as ratio of positive to negative blog entries written about you , trackbacks to your blog, subscribers, rank of your name in Google search results, amount of people tagging you, # of offensive photos of you, density of your name online…etc…All nicely packaged to provide a final score and recommendations for improvement (if anyone is interested in pursuing an application of this nature give me a call!). The biggest problem right now of course is the fact that many of these social media tools and networks are operating in silos.
What do I mean? Just ask yourself this question: How many different user names and passwords do you have? 5, 10, 20? Would it not be easier to have a single access point to everything? Perhaps we should have one private identity and one business identity, (see my last blog entry) what do you think?
If you want to get a good grasp of the identity concept, take a look at this great presentation by Dick Hardt on the newly coined term Identity 2.0 .
Great post.
One of the main topics of conversation I bring forward in my live presentation is the idea that it’s “attitudinal” and not “generational.” Meaning, it’s not about how old you are, but rather what your frame of mind is.
I think it has little to do with “an old boy’s club” and way more to do with what works for whom.
As much as I love online social networking, I know that it’s not going to work for certain types of people in specific industries.
I think it’s fun to know about everything and them purge what is not useful, but that simply is not how the mass population operates.
Mitch, do you not feel that attitude is at least correlated to age? What I am referring to by “old-boy’s club” is to the senior execs out there who are not yet aware of what is going on online. Many of them could potentially be all over it if they knew about it. Think of all the people that come up to you after you give your “Six Pixels of Separation” Speech. Many of them are fascinated, and completely amazed as to what is going on. Others, could care less, I agree, however my point is that in the coming years an increasing number of senior managers will get it. You are right though, age is not direct determinant.
אירועים חוגגים בגן אירועים במרכז מומלץ! וגם ב גני אירועים במרכז וגם ב אירועים קטנים