Despite all the information available about “netiquette” and the importance of networking strategically online, I continue to get dozens of  mystery online networking requests. Sometimes the connection is as weak as being a member of the same group (with 50,000 other members) or as bizarre as asking for a face-to-face meeting based on the fact that we reside in the same city.

Something strange seems to happen to some people when they network online. It’s as if some people think that none of the common rules for building relationships exist. Could you imagine ever saying any of the following things over the phone or in person to someone you don’t know?

1. I’ve seen you walking down this block in the neighborhood before. Want to meet for coffee?
2. Someone told me we used to work for the same company that employs 20,000 people. Want to chat sometime?
3. I found your number in the phone book. Maybe we have something in common.
4. I heard through the grapevine that you work for a company where I would really like to work. Can you tell me more about what it’s like to work there?
5. I found you in the 1997 student alumni directory. I’m a graduate of the class of 1980. Would you like to compare notes?
6. I know I’ve never actually met you before and you have no idea who I am. But someone suggested I say “since you are someone I know and trust, I would like to add you to my network.” Does that work for you? (Hint: that’s verbatim from a LinkedIn template that people seem to use whether they know you or not).
7. You looked like someone I should know so I followed you home, made note of your address and then did a search to find your phone number. Would love to meet formally sometime.
8. I found your name and number written on a cocktail napkin at a local restaurant and I decided to call you. I figured, “what do I have to lose?”

Of course you wouldn’t say any of these things! So why do people think this approach will work online? If you are using LinkedIn or other social media tools to connect with others, create authentic relationships and recognize that the affinity will grow over time. Even on Twitter where there are generally no gatekeepers for connecting with others, it’s still advisable to follow the person for awhile and create a supportive and non-threatening dialogue before bringing the relationship face to face.

I am a fairly open connector on LinkedIn as well as other social media platforms. But I have to know a little bit about you and why you want to connect before I accept. Isn’t that just common sense?

For anyone interested in connecting via LinkedIn, you can find me here. Just be sure to tell me how you found me and why you think we should connect.

The September issue of Oprah Magazine features four women at various stages of their careers: the stay at home mom returning to work, the single mom laid off from her position and seeking a new challenge, the recent college graduate looking for her big break, and the boomer trying to make a career transition later in life.

I was fortunate to work with these women along with colleagues Louise Fletcher and Nancy Collamer to help them create a strategic job search plan. While each one has a different end goal, the course they need to take is in many ways the same. Here are some of the top tips shared with the women.

1. Ask for information rather than a job. When you ask someone if they know if anyone is hiring there is a simple yes/no response (usually no) which leaves the conversation at a standstill. Instead of asking about job openings, ask your contacts if they would be willing to talk to you to share information…about an industry, a company, a recruiter or whatever else will help get you one step closer to the ultimate hiring manager. Asking for a jobs can make the other person feel uncomfortable; asking for information can be flattering.
2. Get on LinkedIn. With 60M+ users LinkedIn has become a “must have” resource for recruiters searching for top talent. If you aren’t on LinkedIn, recruiters may come to the conclusion that you are not current, not serious, or not good enough at what you do to be in the running for their openings.
3. Be on-message. Prepare a succinct, compelling pith about what you are looking for and why you are qualified. Keep this message consistent in your resume, your online profiles, and your conversations.
4. Reach out to companies directly. Do you dream of working for Google, Starbucks, JPMorgan Chase, or the Red Cross? If so, let the employer know that. More and more companies are filling positions through employee referrals and social networking and many never even post their open positions. Become an insider by reaching out to companies and expressing your interest before they have a job opening. If you can become top of mind with them, you increase the likelihood of being considered, should a position become available, or better still of having a position created for you based on the outstanding value the employer thinks you could bring to the organization.

After several weeks of job search preparation, (and some fabulous hair, makeup, and wardrobe makeovers courtesy of Oprah Magazine’s creative team), the women are out working their contacts, setting up networking meetings and interviews, forwarding resumes, and working with recruiters.

You can read more about each woman’s transformation by picking up the September issue (sorry, no link currently available) on newstands now.

According to the second annual Social Recruitment Survey conducted by Jobvite, (via Career Management Alliance), employers are recruiting several ways: employee referrals, professional online networks, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; and the traditional sources, including search firms and job boards. The survey clearly shows a preference based on the quality of candidates and cost-effectiveness for employee referrals and professional social networks, to recruit candidates. Some highlights of the report:
• 76% plan to invest more in employee referrals and 72% plan to invest more in recruiting through social networks
• 80% of companies use or are planning to use social networking to find and attract candidates this year
• 77% of respondents said they use social networks to reach passive candidates who are not actively seeking employment
• 24% of candidates disclose their social networking presence when applying for a job.

Use of Social Networks:
• LinkedIn use grew from 80 percent in 2008 to 95 percent of respondents in 2009 and Facebook use grew from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009
• Twitter, ranked third with 42 percent of recruiters using the tool to source candidates
• 66% of respondents reported that they had successfully hired a candidate who was identified or introduced through an online social network

According to Human Resource Executive Online, Brelyn Hammernik, a technical recruiter, was recently sued by her former company, TEKsystems, an IT staffing firm,  after she sent messages to members of her LinkedIn network — members who also happened to be current employees of TEKsystems. What was the problem? Her former company claims that she had a non-compete agreement that stated she cannot contact former colleagues and clients.

This lawsuit is the first of its kind, and it is expected to create precedent regarding social networking and non-compete agreements.

Here are a few other ways LinkedIn can place users on shaky ground.

Account Ownership

When you create an account on LinkedIn, link it to a personal email address rather than a company email. If the account is linked to a company address, the company may claim that the contacts belong to them and not allow you to have access to your account if you leave the employer.

Endorsements

For decades, many companies have had a clear policy that prohibits employees from giving personal references for people they have worked with at that company. When employers check references on a potential hire, they are often rerouted to the company’s HR department where very limited information such as job titles and dates of employment are shared. With the advent of new social media policies, I think it’s just a matter of time before companies formalize their policies around giving LinkedIn recommendations because they don’t want to be saddled with the potential liability these recommendations can create.

Profile Information

Thinking of altering job titles on your LinkedIn profile or embellishing the truth? Don’t do it. This information can be easily found online and if your representation of yourself or the professional impact you had on the company is debatable, your employer could call you on it.

Slideshare Presentations

Presentations of your work can be created on LinkedIn to add some flair and make your profile more three dimensional. But be careful that whatever you are sharing isn’t considered proprietary by a current or former employer.

LinkedIn is a fantastic social media platform and a boon to job seekers. The benefits certainly outweighs the risks, but it is important to use the tool intelligently and not step on any legal landmines along the way.

I’ve written frequently about the value of journaling during a job search as a way to record your activity and your feelings during the process. By keeping track of what’s happening along the journey you can learn many valuable lessons and potentially minimize the chances of repeating mistakes.

Today I read an article in The New York Times about how Twitter plans to donate their public tweets to The Library of Congress and supply it with continuous updates. When viewed collectively, tweets may provide considerable value to historians. After I read the article, I started thinking of the applications of tweeting your job search.

Think about it. Once a day you would write one pithy 140 character statement about some aspect of your job search…answering an online ad, going to a networking event, going to an interview, getting turned down for a job, etc. You would document the event and how you were feeling about it. Each week you could reflect on these short entries and look for trends to see what’s working and not working. And since tweets are generally shared, others would benefit from your observations and once the word gets out about what you are doing, the number of followers you have may skyrocket and maybe even some recruiters and employers would start following you too. Tweeting your job search could be a very cathartic experience for you and at the same time it could serve as a way to build community with others in the same situation.

While I only recommend this strategy for job seekers who are not currently employed, job seekers conducting a more confidential search could still benefit from keeping a private journal and following the tweets of others in a more public search.

One of the reasons we document history is so we can reflect on the past and be part of a society that makes better, more informed choices in the future. Job seekers can benefit from the same type of reflection and make better choices about their search strategy moving forward.

I’ve never really been a big fan of Poison or Bret Michaels. I don’t have any of his music on my iPod and when Rock of Love came out I rolled my eyes.

But all that changed this week when it was reported that Bret Michaels had suffered from a brain hemorrhage. Maybe it’s because he and I are around the same age or maybe it is because he has young children, or perhaps it is because I have a family member who battles diabetes, but all of a sudden I started identifying with Bret Michaels and felt the need to know his status on a fairly regular basis.

I was using traditional media outlets to source information…mostly TV and newspapers and then moved on to Internet searches. But these methods didn’t give me the quick digestible sound bites I was looking for. So I set up a column on Tweet Deck to search tweets on Bret Michaels to stay informed of his condition. This opened up a window into who his fans (and haters) are and what is being reported on him and now I feel like I know everything about the guy.

Such is the power of Twitter. It allows you to quickly become an expert on anything or anyone and follow that person or topic in real-time…even if you never thought much about that person or topic before.

Which leads me to job search. If you are looking for a job, one strategy is to decide what companies you would like to work for and target them directly. Once you determine that a particular target is relevant, it is important to learn as much as you can about the company and its brand attributes and even its evangelists and competitors. It is also important to create a dialogue with people who work at that company or others who are talking about them. Enter Twitter. I think Twitter is a phenomenal tool for doing company research and learning everything you need to know about a company, warts and all. You can complement your research on Twitter by adding the Google Buzz application to your LinkedIn profile to search on multiple companies at once.

Scratch the second sentence of this post. I’m going to go download Every Rose Has its Thorn to my iPod now…and maybe catch an old episode of Celebrity Apprentice that is on the DVR…and hope Bret Michaels recovers soon.

The boomers and Gen X’ers are often the first ones to point fingers at the Gen Ys for being too relaxed about what they post online. But the way I see it, this generation may actually be the most enlightened when it comes to managing their digital dirt.

The New York Times recently reported that many junior and senior high school students are creating aliases on Facebook as a way to keep curious college admissions officers off their trail. Some make simple spelling changes like changing Amy to Aim E. and others get more creative (my favorite name change referenced in the article is the student named Albert who changed his name to Al Isin Wonderland). But the bottom line is that kids aren’t stupid. They have grown up with this technology and so they in turn are probably the most likely demographic to be able to manipulate it. Perhaps they have found a way to have their digital dirt…and eat it too?

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not recommending creating an alias as a sound online identity strategy for anyone and obviously as we become established in our careers and referenced under a certain name, the clean up becomes more challenging. But it does make me wonder where these kids will take social media and online identity and what types of tools for hiding, deleting, changing, and manipulating search engine results lie in the not too distant future.

My high school junior daughter is familiar with the trend of creating an alias on Facebook and has several friends who have one. She has assured me that she has not created an alias and that her online presence is squeaky clean. But a part of me wonders if having an alias at her age, when life is all about making mistakes, is such a bad thing. I have already thrown out several ideas for her alias and suggested changing her last name from Safani to something like So-Phoney, So-Funny, or So-Rice-a-Roni. Unfortunately, she wasn’t amused.

Perhaps the takeaway here is that kids are starting to think about their online identity and the consequences of their online behavior. And that means they are headed in the right direction.

Recently I sat down with Evan Watson, VP of Sales and Chief Evangelist for Brand-Yourself.com to learn more about how this company is helping  people better manage their online reputation. If you are interested in building an online presence (and these days, who isn’t?). be sure to check out their site.

1. What is Brand-Yourself.com?
Brand-Yourself.com is an award winning toolset that empowers you to promote yourself across the social web and diagnose, build, manage and monitor your entire online reputation from one central hub. Job applicants, professional service providers and small businesses use Brand-Yourself to create an online presence that wins them new jobs and clients. Brand-Yourself’s personal branding algorithm grades how effectively you are building your brand as you improve your visibility, credibility and involvement across the web.
2. How did you come up with the idea?
We started noticing that the way people find information and develop perceptions and opinions about one another had fundamentally shifted. 80 million people are Googled every day. Our reputations have always mattered but now that communication shifted so dramatically online most people don’t know how to effectively take advantage of that opportunity. We watched as our colleagues began losing (and winning) opportunities because of what was out there about them on the web. That is why we built a toolset that empowers the average Joe to become visible and connected online to win new jobs, clients and business.
3. What are the biggest online identity issues for entry-level professionals? For mid career professionals? For boomers?
Across the board, people from all generations tend to fall into one of three categories when they are inevitably searched on the web: The content is negative, the content is irrelevant, or nothing at all shows up. Many people jump to the conclusion that controlling your presence so that nothing negative comes up is enough, however, the biggest issue for most people is that they are nearly invisible on the web. These days, people expect to find you online, and when they don’t, they make the assumption that you have nothing worth finding. It is so important these days to differentiate yourself that the number one online identity issue is actually having no online identity at all.
4. What makes Brand-Yourself.com unique?
Brand-Yourself.com is unique because it is the first platform that combines all of the steps of creating an online presence in one central hub. Our process demystifies search engine optimization and social media promotion for the average person. A user is walked through our distinctive process: Build, Optimize, Promote, Monitor. Throughout that process, they are given the tools and education necessary to most efficiently create a strong personal brand on the web.
5. Any new features that will be released soon that you can share?
We are constantly releasing new functionality and new features. The most recent additions include a Google Grader tool which will give you a grade based on your personal Google results and track changes to your results as you use the system to improve that grade. Picture a personal stock ticker for your Google results. We will also be releasing a social media resume and a step-by-step wizard for our website builder so that you can easily create a personal professional website in under 20 minutes.
6. How can people find out more about you?
You can find out more information about Brand-Yourself at www.brand-yourself.com At the website you can try a free trial, get more in depth information on our system or use some of our free tools including the Google Grader and our ebook: From Tweet to Hired.

To learn more about how Career Solvers and Brand-Yourself.com are working together to help job seekers build a compelling online identity, check out our services here.

I had the pleasure of being on the Career Clinician’s Radio show last week to talk about the importance of online identity and online networking in a job search. During this one hour show I answered the following questions:

• Can you explain to our listeners what you mean by the term digital footprint?
• How can job seekers find their digital footprint?
• How important is it in today’s tough economy for job seekers to “be found” on the Internet (talk about the importance of building online profiles and participating in social media / business networking sites)?
• What are the websites you recommend that job seekers have a presence on (LinkedIn, Google Profiles, ZoomInfo, Facebook, and Twitter)?
• Can you briefly tell our listeners the differences and benefits of each site you mentioned?
• Which sites are best for which type of job seeker?
• What are recruiters and / or employers looking for when they search for a candidate?
• Can you explain the term “digital dirt” to our listeners and how they can cover that up?
• What can a job search candidate do if they have a common name, such as John or Jane Smith?
• What privacy concerns should job seekers be aware of?

You can listen to the show here.

I recently spent two weeks touring college campuses with my daughter. I quickly became fascinated with the process…everything from the information sessions to the student guided tours to the admissions requirements made me think about what hiring authorities at companies could learn from the college admissions process.

What struck me on these tours were six things that schools practice routinely that you would think would also be important to the corporate hiring process, but are rarely the norm. I know that the admissions processes for schools and the hiring processes for companies are different, but there is certainly crossover between the two and I think corporate America could learn a lot from the way schools manage the process of sourcing and recruiting the best talent.  Here’s what I observed.

1. 100% of applications are read. Some of the schools we visited receive more than 30,000 applications annually. And generally, at least two people in the admissions office review each application. Compare that to the number of resumes that are actually read for open positions at a company. Why is it that admissions counselors can read so many applications with one or more essays attached to each, yet recruiters can barely spend more than 10 seconds scanning a resume?
2. There are clearly defined  standards and guidelines for applicants. Colleges and universities are very clear on their academic standards. Admissions requirements for standardized test scores and GPA are laid out in plain English. Company job descriptions rarely if ever, outline the job requirements as efficiently. Most are packed with language that focuses on nebulous personal attributes such as self-starter, team player, or individual with strong written and verbal communications skills and few describe the tangible requirements of the job beyond years of experience or knowledge of a particular industry. And then hiring managers wonder why they get so many unqualified applicants. I doubt Yale gets too many applicants with a 2.0 GPA and a standardized test score in the bottom 25%.
3. Visits to the facility are welcome. Colleges and universities invite prospective students to visit their campuses. Admissions counselors agree that it is important for students to get a feel for the culture and community of the school. They only want you to apply if you think you would fit in. We looked at dorm rooms, ate in the campus cafeteria, rode on the school run transportation, and looked at student projects in the library. We observed interactions on campus, read about school activities on the bulletin boards, and peeked inside of classrooms. How many companies invite you on to their premises to see what it is like to work there?
4. Websites are engaging and interactive. Before touring any colleges, we checked out the online presence of each school we were considering visiting to gain a better understanding of what the school had to offer. All the websites were excellent and offered multi-media options for learning about the school. We viewed YouTube videos, FAQ pages, student interviews, and even went into a student chat room to gain a better understanding of what it would be like to attend that school. Every website had a strong social media presence and offered several electronic options for following what was happening on campus. The majority of the company career portals I view lack this level of engagement and to make matters worse, they often make applying for open positions so cumbersome, that it seems like only the most desperate job seekers would bother.
5. Every applicant is informed of their status on a set date. Every school had a clearly defined time frame for informing students of their admissions decision. Expectations are clear and there are no surprises. Imagine knowing that you would actually receive a call from a hiring manager on the day they say they will call you. Unfortunately that rarely happens and more frequently the norm is that the process is delayed by several days, weeks, or even months.
6. People in the organization support and even evangelize the brand. All the campus tours were went on were led by students….happy, excited, and spirited students. These kids weren’t faking it. They were incredible brand ambassadors and they were authentic. They discussed what they loved about their school and were candid when answering questions from prospective parents and students. I know of few corporate environments that offer such a credible take on what goes on inside their organizations.

I really think corporations can learn something from the way schools recruit and I definitely think there is room for improvement in corporate hiring practices. What do you think?