Skill vs. Mojo: How Technology is Making the Job Market More Competitive

There are a number of articles on the Six Degrees website that talk about the future of online networking and whatnot. Some of the articles are cautious and question the value in online networking when applying to a job.

When wizard Draco Malfoy was set to take his job examination, he said this: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Surprisingly he is not far from the truth, or rather that technology not magic is making it easier for employers to asses and judge potential employees.

Picture this, you apply for a position for a new company, it can even be an internet based company. Fine, you send in your resume, link to your blog and friend him on facebook.

What do employers do with that information? They judge you. If on your blog you complain about life or use bad grammar, your employer might think "man this guy is going to be a real downer and he uses bad grammar." But is it wise for an employer to base such decision off of "fun" rather than skill?

My answer is that: they can now. In the olden days, people weren't as smart, for gods sake look how fast I can order shoes online. So you have a ton of educated people ready to pounce the job market and then you have the Internet.

In the olden days if you wanted a PHP/Assembler developer you would use the people you could get a hold of in the area and the person you found was probably the person you use, because Assembler is a hard language to learn and the chances of someone knowing both PHP and Assembler were pretty rare.

In today's world a potential employer can, look someone up on facebook then pick and choose between multiple candidates. He will send out interview requests to the person he likes the most. Because there are multiple people with the same skill level Technology makes the job market more competitive, it really then becomes who you know and also if that person likes you.

Maybe Draco Malfoy was right?

Update: Whoops this is a good article that adds to my post.

Small Creative Teams Equal Greater Collaberation in Basecamp

Don't try to get your 100 person company to switch to Basecamp at the drop of a hat but if you are lucky enough to own a small business then Basecamp might be the perfect product for you. Collaboration is good for small independent teams like this but not everyone has the luxury to work in an environment where in which employees have a great deal of creative control.

If you look at the Basecamp customer success videos on the Basecamp website you will see that all of their showcased customers are someway involved with the creative end of things.

• R.Bird is a branding company.
• Elsewares sells and makes creative products.
  
• NYSE Transaction Tools are created by software developers.
• and the list could go on.

The tough thing here is that I can see tool like Basecamp being very ineffective when it comes to larger organizations that aren't necessarily involved with the creativity business.

Work for an IT department and I suspect that Basecamp would be an awful way to manage helpdesk requests because management has a product that is more effective at doing the job for a larger group of employees.

Relationships within a large corporation are also different. Small independent companies have less corporate hierarchy while large companies do. Yes, Basecamp does allow for hierarchical restrictions but more often than not a piece of software does not change the fact that large companies like to restrict information internally and small companies are less likely to do that.

If you have your own business, more power to you but if you work for a large company the chances of you needing Basecamp are probably less so. What do you guys think? Does any of you have any experience with these collaboration tools cause I know I don't.

Online Fame: Reputation as a Motivating Factor

The admiration or even hatred of celebrity status is what drives people to invest their time, money and mindshare. In real life, celebrities influence us into buying, cloths, support political causes or even influence our lifestyle choices.


Robert Scoble and Shel Israel authors of Naked Conversations. Don't ask me how I found it.

In the online world, reputation has a habit of pushing a business forward. Communities like digg.com were pushed forward by former TV host Kevin Rose, colossus business failures like Seth Godin's Squidoo, or Mike Arrington's Edgeio were all given ampule amounts of leeway thanks to the creators reputation.

I personally follow an online community called 9rules simply because I think the founder has a great sense of humor and is a real stud but how does that relate to the rest of my online activities? It probably doesn't affect my buying habits nor does the profile on 9rules transfer over to site's like Amazon.com or Zappos. And while I don't invest any money into the business, I do invest a significant amount of time and mindshare.

So maybe there is value to online web celebs and the businesses that they run. I think when we look at a website like digg.com we not only look at the stories but we also look at the users/leaders involved and we want it to succeed. Digg a story on digg, and visit an article that talks about Kevin Rose and you're already helping him make his dollars.

I think that there is a valid business in supporting the chase of success. The Internet is such an effective/cheap tool for distribution that a single charismatic person could probably create his/her own successful website and in some cases a business. Not everyone would have to support him nor like him. Even the controversy surrounding a person could be enough to fuel the publicity and thus sustain attention around that person's product/business/service...just like the celebrities of old.

Sidenote: There's a really good podcast interview that might give you a better perspective on things. The internet is diverse and sometimes hard to understand. Click through and listen to the mp3.

Also sorry for the late post. The weekends are intense.

Direct Access, The Hybrid Between Journalism and PR

When a company starts a blog, that business takes on inherent risks. In the case of GM's Fast Lane blog, was meant to replace coverage lost when GM pulled advertising from the LA Times. The reason? Because, there was no specific reason but Lutz (a GM executive) criticized the media for unbalanced and inaccurate reporting.

Blogs according to Lutz are great because they "can be...an equalizing factor." Basically what he is saying is that a blog can allow a company to control what types of information flows in an out of the company.

And if you think about it, he's absolutely right. Blogs can potentially compete with newspapers due to the fact that they can release information faster than any reporter. So in a sense you have the corporate blog, defeating the slightly out of control but nonetheless important watchdog and companies can instead use their blogs as a sort of hybrid of press PR and press coverage. And if the company pulls away money from advertising or PR (strangely enough PR is a huge part of getting press coverage), then it's a win for the company and a loss for the newsmedia.