Lindsay Olson

Call for Guest Bloggers

Ok, it’s about time I pull my “get out of jail free” card. Every woman should be able to do this in my situation.

I’m very pregnant. Enough said?

In two very short weeks, Baby Fernandez-Olson will be joining us. I’m planning to take a bit of downtime for baby and my sanity. I expect I won’t have as much time to write and the frequency of my posts will slow down for at least several weeks. It’s already happening. Between working as much as possible, last minute preparations, waiting for doctors and test results, appreciating interior bathroom design, and spending more time trying to find a comfortable position to sleep than actually sleeping, I just can’t find enough energy to keep up.

Of course, I plan to return to my normal self as soon as possible and you’ll be able to find me on Twitter and Facebook.

I don’t want to leave the blog too quiet. I’m looking for a few guest bloggers who are interested in being heard and could help me maintain my content over the next couple of months. In addition to being posted here, the posts are syndicated on a few different networks including Brazen Careerist and cross-posted to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn networks.

Main criteria for a post: The Night We Called It a Day dvdrip

1. The post must follow the theme of this blog: job search and employment related content, recruiting (written for hiring managers and/or candidates), social media, or anything about the public relations industry.
2. Original content and not previously posted on another blog.
3. Provide links and any images you want to go along with the post with appropriate attribution.
4. A short (two- to three-sentence bio).

If you want to make sure I’ll post your idea, feel free to email me

about it. Please send post submissions to Lindsay (at) paradigmstaffing (dot) com.

I’m also accepting ideas for baby girl names that work in English and Spanish. Two weeks to go and no names - we need all the suggestions we can get!

Photo credit: Mark Strozier

Quick Tip: Job Searching on Facebook

If you haven’t noticed already, Facebook Search has become much more powerful. You can now search by keyword your Friends status updates. If you are looking for a job, this is one extra tool to add to your daily search routine.

It’s easy. Search for any keyword terms you want (i.e. job, PR Manager, AE, etc.) Once your search results appear, take a look at the filters on the left side of the page and click Post by Friends (or everyone depending on your search terms).

Ta-dah!

Golden Rules to Keep a Mentor

This is a guest post by Ken Jacobs. Follow Ken on Twitter.

As a coach, consultant, trainer, and adjunct college professor, I’m often asked by soon-to-be and new PR professionals for my assistance in their search for internships and jobs.

For the most part, these young professionals are extremely buttoned up, generous with their thank-yous and thorough with their follow-ups.

However, in the past six months, I’ve experienced a number of situations that lead me to believe there may be many younger job seekers who’ve never been trained in the “rules of the road” when it comes to asking PR pros for assistance in their job searches.

First I’ll share these situations, and then a few tips on how you can avoid similar ones.

• I helped land an interview for an internship for one of my best students at an agency where I know the CEO.  A few weeks later, the student mentioned she hadn’t heard anything from the agency.  I asked what she had said in her follow-up to the firm, and the resulting silence made it clear she had sent neither a thank-you note nor a follow-up email.  She was apparently waiting to hear from them to see if she had landed the internship.  As you can imagine, it wasn’t offered to her.
• One of my agency clients asked if I had any students who might make a terrific intern.  I had a great one, and encouraged her to contact them.   While she thanked me for making the initial connection, I heard nothing more, so I assumed that the agency declined to interview her.  You can imagine my surprise when I met with them a few weeks later, and learned that they not only had interviewed her, but had offered her an internship.
• I mentored a young professional on an informal basis, and noticed a pattern that concerned me: I’d hear from her when she had a particular work issue, and I’d offer her advice to the best of my ability.  But there was never any follow-up regarding if that advice worked, let alone a thanks. But when a new problem arose, my phone would ring.

Here are some golden rules that might help newer seekers and “mentees” avoid similar situations:

Until the End of the World hd

• Within 24 hours of an interview, respond with a hand-written thank-you note, on the best possible stationery you can afford. If you’re worried that it will take too long for your note to arrive, precede it with a brief follow-up email.
• When someone puts you in touch with a potential employer, be sure to thank them.  If the contact leads to an interview, let them know, and thank them again.  After your interview, follow-up with an email to share your perspective on the meeting.
• If you’re being mentored informally, be sure to thank your mentor for their time, counsel and perspective, even if you don’t follow their advice.   Let them know about your successes, and in particular, when their advice has worked. Send an extra thank-you once in a while for good measure.

Please note that I’m not saying all Gen Y job seekers and mentees make these errors.  In fact, I’m currently helping two job seekers who are following all the rules, and then some.  Even after they’ve thanked me profusely at the end of every phone conversation, they send a note, an email, or a Linked-In message, and send me regular updates on their search.   In fact, a few minutes ago I got a LinkedIn message from one of them inquiring if his thank-you note had arrived.

I’d do just about anything to help these two job seekers.  And that’s exactly the way you want your mentors and job search coaches to feel about you.

Ken Jacobs is the principal of Jacobs Communications Consulting, LLC, which helps organizations grow business and develop staff through its coaching, consulting and training programs.  He can be reached at ken@jacobscomm.com.

Photo credit: Jack Crossen

Skills for the PR Professional in Today's Job Market

Attention Public Relations Job Seekers: The Bridge of San Luis Rey the movie Social media knowledge and experience is almost as important as traditional media relations skills. Check out these statistics from IPressroom’s Digital Readiness Report.

Some of the key findings I found interesting in this study about the current communications job market:

• 82% of hiring managers said media relations expertise was either important or very important.
• 80% said knowledge of social networks is either important or very important.
• 72% said an understanding of micro-blogging services like Twitter are either important or very important.
• Hiring managers also ranked SEO (62%), email outreach (56%), web content management (52%) and social bookmarking (51%) as important skills and knowledge for PR professionals in today’s job market.
• 18% of hiring managers have no interest in traditional PR skills.

More often our client companies are asking for candidates with social media knowledge and experience (outside of personal use), however, these employers are still expecting to hire a well-rounded communications professional - one who can demonstrate he or she has both the traditional and the digital skills.

The survey further notes that a majority of organizations employing communications professionals are considering hiring dedicated staff that specialize on the social media front.

I hear frequently from entry-level and junior level candidates who only want to focus on social media. What do you think? Good idea, bad idea, indifferent?

Cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod

• Fortress ipod

Links:

IPressroom

Sunday Links - August 9, 2009

Some interesting links I’ve come across in the last month.

Social Media

100+ Resources to Boost Your Social Media Savvy in 2009: Top Tips & Advice from the Experts

100 Useful Twitter Tools and Feeds for Your Job Search

Job Search

100+ Career Blogs ALL Professionals MUST Read - Career Rocketeer

Employers who use Twitter to recruit and resources to help you use Twitter for job hunting -Examiner

Six Things to Do if They Take the Job Offer Back - CNN

43 Weird Things Said in Interviews - CNN

Job Hunting: How Much Preparations is Enough? - Fortify Your Oasis

Business

50 PR Professionals on Twitter

A Complete List of 100 Attributes of People Who Start Companies:How You Can Be One of America’s Entrepreneurs - What Would Dad Say

All I Do Is Work Here - Seth Godin

Managing an Online Reputation - Wall Street Journal

Reflections on Global PR Blog Week

Do you remember Global PR Blog Week 2004 and 2005? Way back in those ancient times when only a handful of PR professionals were actively blogging and asking someone if they tweet wasn’t part of an every day conversation? Yeah, way back then….

John Cass spent the past few weeks interviewing the participants of the event in celebrations of the 5th anniversary. I participated with a post in the Second Annual Global Public Relations Blog Week. This one event changed my life forever! Hint: the photo above.

Here’s my interview with John about my experience.

Originally posted by John on his blog (http://pr.typepad.com).

John: What did you learn from the Global PR Blog Week?

Lindsay: This event brought together many of the early PR bloggers’ ideas and experiences into a week of interesting online discussions, which helped me get a better grasp on industry trends. Although I’d always been an active follower of what was happening in the PR field, this event helped shape my views on the importance of having a strong online presence. At that time, I wasn’t blogging and even though I was aware of its growing importance, it still took me a few years to come around. The event laid the groundwork for where I am today.

John: Reviewing the post(s) you wrote for the Global PR Blog week, what has changed? What has not changed since you wrote your post?

Lindsay: Social media has continued to grow and the tools PR professionals use are expanding beyond just blogs. The main point of my post was how PR professionals may be viewed in the eyes of a potential recruiter through their online presence. This has become a growing concern for most as Facebook is opening up to the general public and Twitter is becoming a more mainstream tool. Not just bloggers, but everyone, are becoming much more aware of how their tone and the subject they tend to write or tweet about shape their online presence and may affect their career.

John: Recruiting and PR have been two professions that became immersed in blogging early on. From your perspective as a recruiter for the PR industry, why do you think the communications profession got involved so early on with blogging?

Lindsay: Well, communicators love to talk and spread their ideas. Blogging gave communications professionals another platform to quickly distribute their messages to a broader audience - something very appealing to anyone who is in the profession and loves to write.  As blogging and social media gained momentum and the communications industry began to feel the pressure to counsel their companies/clients on how to deal and communicate in a new environment, it grew increasingly necessary to become familiar with and aware of these new types of tools.

John: Looking back over the past five years, how has social media become important to employers and candidates, both for skills needed for employment and for using social media to demonstrate expertise?

Lindsay: More and more of our clients are asking for candidates who are well-versed in social media. Employers expect communications professionals to be able to counsel them about why they should (or shouldn’t) be involved in social media. So much has developed over the past five years. Four or five years ago, it was all about blogs and now we have a whole assortment of tools to learn and use to communicate. Knowing when and why to deploy these tools is becoming a concern for organizations. While social media is becoming much more important, it’s necessary to note that employers value a well-rounded communications professional. Those candidates who can demonstrate they have both traditional and digital skills are highly valued in the current market.

John: Give an update on what you’ve been doing in the last five years. What you are doing now?

Lindsay: I’ve continued to run my public relations staffing agency, Paradigm Staffing. I’ve moved from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina and work remotely here with a small team supporting the hiring needs our U.S. and European clients.

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t blogging at the time of this event, but I finally put an end to that in mid-2008 and launched a blog (http://LindsayOlson.com) about PR and recruiting and to help advise job seekers and companies on the best hiring practices. I’m also very active on Twitter (@PRjobs) and Facebook, and I write a bi-monthly guest column on MediaBistro’s PRNewser blog.

On a personal note (yet very relevant to PR Global Blog Week), I got married in February 2008 to Matias Dutto (a 2004 and 2005 participant). We met the week of the 2005 event because of the connection and we were both living in Buenos Aires.  A few years later, we married and we’re now expecting our first child in September!

Check out the other interviews with 2004 and 2005 participants including: Todd Defren, Tom Murphy, Chris Bechtel, Elizabeth Albrycht, Trevor Cook, Colin McKay, etc.

Photo credit: Matias Dutto

Unemployment and the Job Search on PRNewser

It’s that time again. I write a bi-monthly guest column on PRNewser. This post is about how employers view unemployed candidates and a job search tips for those who find themselves in this position.

Here’s an excerpt:

Olson’s latest column answers a question that has been popping up with increasing frequency as of late: is unemployment a disadvantage in your job search?

I’m asked this question every day. Maybe you saw the recent Wall Street Journal article, Only the Employed Need Apply, about employer’s attitudes towards unemployed candidates? That one got me very fired up and I ended up writing a bit more about it on my blog.

I wish I could say that employers today equally evaluate the skills of the employed versus the unemployed for their open positions, but it’s simply not true. Unemployment raises a whole slew of questions and judgments that doesn’t affect employed candidates. Some hiring managers, especially those who have never been a victim of a reduction in their careers, admittedly or not, equate the laid off with the damaged. Others believe that a company would never let go of their superstars - if the unemployed candidates were any good they would be still employed.

See the rest of the post and three tips to help in the job search on PRNewser.

Links:

From the Recruiter’s Desk: Is Unemployment a Disadvantage in Your Job Search?