Twitter SMS delivery

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on a couple of small side projects, one of which is a services to get your Direct Messages and @Replies sent directly to your mobile phone via SMS, Tweet2SMS. Basically this is to replace the service that Twitter shutdown about 3 weeks ago for users outside of the US, Canada, UK & India.

The service has been running in a private beta for a couple of weeks and earlier this week I opened the beta up to anyone who wants to register. You still need to request an invite code, but they are distributed automatically based on service volume every hour.

Some of the features are:

  • Sends you an SMS when you receive a Direct Message via Twitter
  • Sends you an SMS when someone mentions you on Twitter using the @Reply syntax
  • Ability to set custom times when you want both Direct Messages and @Replies sent to your phone
  • Ability to snooze your whole account for a specified period, for when you are in that very important meeting
  • Ability to control your account by sending a Direct Message to @tweet2sms:
    • Account On – Turns your account on. Optional parameter for the number of hours you want your account on or the word Today which turns the account on until 3am the following day.
    • Account Off – Turns your account off, which means you will no longer receive any messages
    • Track On – Turns tracking of @Replies to your user name on, a word of warning if you are popular you will run out of SMS credits quickly. Optional parameter for the number of hours you want your account on or the word Today which turns the account on until 3am the following day.
    • Track Off – Turns tracking off, you get the idea.
    • Sleep 30 – Sleeps all SMS notices for 30 minutes
    • Sleep 60 – Sleeps all SMS notices for 60 minutes
    • Sleep 90 – Sleeps all SMS notices for 90 minutes
    • Sleep 120 – Sleeps all SMS notices for 120 minutes
    • Sleep Off – Cancels a previously requested sleep command
    • Help – Lets you know what you can do
  • All SMS messages are sent with a reminder as to how many credits you have left on your account
If you are a Twitter users and need an SMS service go try it out.

Quoted in the AFR

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to Beverley Head a freelance journalist about recruitment and web 2.0. Today the Australian Financial Review launched their IT Innovations special report with Beverley’s article quoting me. While the article is primarily about KPMG’s virtual career fair that kicks off later this month, I do end up with two paragraphs, not bad really and she mentioned Inspecht which is the best part. Unfortunately AFR run a subscription only online model so you can view the article on the AFR website, only if you have a subscription, I went & bought a physical paper to read it.

Oh and for those interested yes I did research Beverley online before agreeing to speak with her.

Glassdoor expands internationally

Over the last few weeks Glassdoor has been expanding its reach into international locations, to the point that over 40% of their traffic now comes from outside of the US. The top 10 countries are:

  1. United States
  2. Canada
  3. United Kingdom
  4. India
  5. Australia
  6. France
  7. Germany
  8. Ireland
  9. China
  10. Japan

Australia is ranked 5th on the list with more Australian organisation being listed every day. I took a run through the top 10 BRW organisations to see who was listed, all were but not all have reviews.

If you work for an Australian company join up and add your thoughts.

As part of the global expansion you can now review salaries by country and in local currency making Glassdoor a great research tool for job seekers. For example looking to work at Telstra, Google in Australia, IBM in Australia, or Deloitte’s?

I wonder how long it will take for Australian job boards to provide links directly to the company reviews? Certainly for referral tools such as 2Vouch and Hoojano it would be an important feature to help referrers understand the reputation of the company they are referring people to.

eRecruitment systems and your employer brand

Today while conducting some research I found what looks on the surface as a bug within PageUp’s PageUp People application, but turns out is not. (For international readers PageUp is the leading eRecruitment vendor in Australia.)

I was reviewing the Optus careers web site and went to review a listing of jobs and I opened the third job listed within the IT group, one for a Business Intelligence Architect.

To my great surprise this is what I saw, begin reading the text:

On the surface this is very strange, what is a role for Virgin Mobile doing on the Optus careers site. Now after a bit more digging I found out the Virgin Mobile is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Optus, which sort of explains things. But then again it does not.

Both companies have very strong brands so to me this seems to mix up the employer brand and will possibly confuse candidates and reduce both organisations employee value proposition (EVP).  Earlier this year Virgin Mobile’s director of HR Angela Foskett was interviewed by Human Capital Magazine and was quoted:

Human Capital: Virgin has such a successful consumer brand – has this translated to your employer brand?

Angela Foskett: Absolutely. The consumer and employer brand are directly linked. People’s perceptions are very much the reality when they come in so there isn’t a massive culture shock. In most cases it’s better than people expected.

Basically the two mirror each other and the culture and environment are the key focus to retaining that connection. We’re fortunate in that any brand research that we do can be used from a people perspective and from an internal brand perspective as well. It’s about the external brand and how that feeds back into organisational behaviour and how that feeds into individual behaviour.

A bit further on she said

HC: What benefits have you seen from a strong brand? Does it help with attraction of candidates?
AF: We recognise we’re not for everybody – that’s fine. The strength of the brand means we do get a lot of expressions of interest whether it’s ad-hoc or tied to an actual ad. People are really engaged in the ads we do write and they’re motivated by that. We’ve got a very successful referral program as well, and I guess our challenge is to ensure the cultural fit continues alongside our recruitment philosophy. When we have technical roles where we require a certain skills set they can be hard to fill because we don’t compromise on that cultural fit. It’s 60% about cultural fit and 40% about technical ability with the belief that we can upskill people.

To me it is a very strange method of keeping a strong brand, not confusing candidates and making sure you are attracting the right cultural fit.

Google Chrome is the new hype

It has been speculated for a long time that Google was going to enter the browser market, well on Sept 2nd they did with the launch of Chrome. Now there is lots written by the tech community on the launch about the pro’s and con’s of the new browser so I am just going to plot some of my thoughts.

My first thought is on browser support, Chrome adds yet another browser for developers to support. Well sort of. Google have built Chrome based on the WebKit, which is the rendering engine that Apple uses for Safari. So basically if your site works on Safari it will work with Chrome. But does your site work on Safari? I would suspect there are many a smaller organisation (& probably a few big ones as well) who have only built their site to support IE, and maybe Firefox. A quick review of the major job boards in Australia should that Seek, CareerOne & MyCareer all work ok. On the corporate side of things PageUp, Taleo and NGA sites all seem to hold up as well.

My next point is around privacy. Chrome allows user to browser without leaving a history on their personal desktop by using Incognito mode. But what is more interesting is the collection of data by Google. While they say it is only statistics but I have had reports, unconfirmed, that the URL you are browsing is sent back to Google to help the Googlebot know what to index.

Thoughts from my initial usage (2 hours worth):

  • It is reasonably fast
  • Clean user interface
  • I like the new tab browsing approach
  • Each new tab has a dashboard of frequently used sites, very nice
  • Love the ability to save sites as application shortcuts on the desktop, makes a browser application more like a regular desktop application
  • For developers the Inspect element allows you to view the underlying source code associated with the selected element
  • I spent 15 minutes trying to work out how to spell check a field on a page, I guess not all the UI is easy

I will be using Chrome as my primary browser for the next week and will then decide if I should go back to Firefox. Will Chrome over take Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer, like most things only time will tell.

 

Great places to work in Australia

I missed the launch last year by the Great Place to Work Institute opened their doors downunder. Spearheading by Chris Taylor and Trish Dagg two organisational development types out of Western Australian university.

In mid-August they release their first list for Australia called “Best Companies to Work for in Australia“, no real surprise there. Although the top 8 in the list might surprise you:

  1. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
  2. Dow Corning
  3. Google
  4. McDonald’s
  5. Morgan Stanley
  6. NetApp
  7. Russell Investments
  8. SEEK Limited

There is no reference on the site as to how a company gets selected to participate in the process other than they “work with a respected Media Partner”, I guess is it was News Corp’s The Australian as the results were published there. However to make it on the list selection is primarily based on employees’ responses to a survey and then an evaluation of submitted content by the company.

I am trying to get further information on the complete list.

2Vouch for your friends and get paid

2Vouch

Launching their public beta today, September 1, is Australia’s newest social recruiting service called 2Vouch. (Disclosure: I have done some work for 2Vouch.) Having been in private alpha testing over the last month or so the Melbourne based company is for the first time allowing the public access to their service. The best way to describe the tool is really to quote 2Vouch General Manager Jeremy Samuel:

2Vouch is a social recruiting system that pays professionals $1,400-$2,800 when they make referrals someone who gets hired. For companies, it is free to advertise. They only pay when they place someone through the system and we offer a 110% money back guarantee if the person doesn’t work out. 

The service is fundamentally similar to Hoojano which I spoke about back in February this year, with a few differences. Both basically rely on the refer a friend approach to filling roles.

Employee referral programs are a very common approach used by many organisations and research has shown they are the lowest cost source for hiring in today’s marketplace, even lower than using job boards! In certain industries within the US best in class companies hire over 46% of employees through referral programs.

Cost is not the only benefit research by Professor Emilio Castilla from MIT Sloan School of Management found that employees recruited through employee referral programs can have a higher performance over employees recruited through other means. But back to the tool.

One of the biggest differences between Hoojano and 2Vouch are how they match jobs, although both would say otherwise. Where as Hoojano requires the member to actively review their contacts to find matches 2Vouch uses their Job Genie™ to email the member when possible jobs that match their contacts are available.

Payment is only made on placement, not to advertise so there is no harm for recruiters and employers giving the tool a test run. Further 2Vouch is offering a 110% refund for recruiters and employers if they hire someone through the tool and they do not work out. While this might sound impressive I think 2Vouch will keep their money as research has shown internationally that placements made through referrals are of far higher quality than regular placements.

Members get referral payments, ranging from AU$1,400 – AU$2,800 once someone has been successfully hired. These payments can be made to the members PayPal account or donated to charity.

2Vouch are ranked #26 in the Ross Dawson’s BRW Top 100 Web Applications, original development was completed by Ben Barren and his team from FeedCorp and have recently become part of the Pollenizer gang, Australia leading startup management garage, to create a very compelling tool for the Australian market.

A final note, and a plug, as part of my work with Inspecht we have a research report available on building a business case for using referrals in hiring.

Basic community manager role

The role below floated across my desk on Friday, specifically targeted at students as it was advertised on the Swinburne University employment site for students.

A few interesting points.

Firstly there are more and more of these roles requesting skills within social media, and secondly they are targeted to university students. I suspect employers have decided that it is mainly Gen Y who know this “stuff” called social networking. Finally the role is not for a large multinational, or technology firm or even a digital media outlet. No it is for an automotive company!

IT/Web Guy – IT/Web Girl required.

Do you love working on websites and chatting with people on internet forums? Have you dabbled in eBay or used Google Adwords/Adsense for your own or company sites? Are you a blogger and YouTube user? If you answer yes to these questions, we want to hear from you.

JHP Vehicle Enhancements are an automotive company in Blackburn (VIC) and we need a Web person with general IT support skills. The bulk of your work will be web related. Maintaining our current web site (HTML/PHP), conversing on automotive forums, SEO, implementing a new ecommerce enabled website (using an open-source CMS). EBay, Web orders and electronic communication will be your responsibility.

Your role will also include basic IT Support, before addressing external technicians. Light administrative work such as invoicing will be required when the accounts lady is not in. A pleasant phone mannerism and good verbal comprehension and conversational skills to help field calls.

This opportunity is great for anyone with some identifiable experience. Whether that be personal or professional doesn’t matter to us, we just want you to provide real proof that you can do what you say you can.

So if you live and breathe the web, can do basic IT support and have a willingness to learn, we want to hear from you now.

October is Anxiety and Depression Awareness Month

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from Beyond Blue an Australian not-for-profit that works to help people with depression and anxiety announcing that October was Anxiety and Depression Awareness month. The email was calling for people and organisations to get involved in raising awareness of anxiety and depression and help reduce the associated stigma. Now this is a major issue, just look at the impacts in the workplace costing around $4.3 billion in lost productivity!

Given I have suffered from depression on and off for several years I figured it was time to get involved and help out. So I put out a call on Twitter last night for some interest from Australian Twitter users and got several replies and Direct Messages, here are just a few:

Alegrya @mspecht add me to the list too, I’d love to get a STUB happening to raise awareness about 11 hours ago from twhirl in reply to mspecht

jyesmith @mspecht i would love to help out with beyondblue. about 11 hours ago from twhirl in reply to mspecht

limburger @mspecht count me in…but no ideas as to what yet. about 12 hours ago from m.slandr.net in reply to mspecht

stilgherrian @mspecht Count me in for doing SOMETHING for Anxiety & Depression Awareness Month. Rather important. about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mspecht

dnwallace @mspecht count me in about 13 hours ago from twhirl in reply to mspecht

jjprojects @mspecht Participating in Beyond Blue’s ADA month sounds like a great idea. about 13 hours ago

lozzz @mspecht I would. about 13 hours ago from web in reply to mspecht

Over the last year or so there have been several meme’s that have floated around Twitter, resulting in the changing of avatars to bring attention to a cause. In addition there is the concept of blog action day’s where a number of bloggers all blog about the same topic on the same day, BTW the next one is October 15 about poverty. So how about we look at combining the concepts?

It seems that October 10 is World Mental Health which gives us a focal point, so here are my ideas for October 10:

  • We change our avatars on Twitter to something blue, maybe look at creating a set for people to download so it is easy.
  • Write a blog post about depression or anxiety, a personal insight would make the best reading.
  • Look at organising some meet ups on the day, and wear something blue.

Next step is to get this organised.

Update: If you are interested in getting involved leave me a comment or drop me an email.

10 tips to build your network

It seems today you cannot go anywhere without hearing about social networks and their value to business.

This is all very good but what happens if you don’t have a large professional network? Below are 10 easy to implement tips on how to build up your professional network.

  1. Join the social networks online
    The first step for anyone today wanting to expand their network is to join LinkedIn. Further look to join more specialised services such as LinkMe, FaceBook, MySpace and industry specific services ad these will provide you with different connections.
  2. Attend industry gatherings
    All industries have key groups and organisations where people of similar background gather, many are free or require minimal investments other than your time.
  3. Get a personal business card
    When you build your network you want to make sure that it is transportable from employer to employer. By handing out a personal business card, not one from your current employer will assist with this process.
  4. Meet 5 new people
    Don’t always associated with the same people. Every time you go to a professional or social event make sure you meet at least 5 new people.
  5. You are a brand
    Brand yourself to your network in order to build it further, the more people know you to more people will want to know you.
  6. Globalise the network
    When you were growing up, perhaps you had a pen-pal in a different country, in a global marketplace you never know when knowing someone in Tanzania will come in handy.
  7. Become an information sponge
    Use a contact management tool to record e-mails, phone numbers, and everything else you can about the people you know.
  8. Take control of your virtual presence
    Make sure that when people look for you online, your image is both accurate and flattering.
  9. Join the virtual communities where your target market lives
    Once you have joined one group, ask the members where else they connect with like-minded people. Be sure to look for smaller groups within larger sites.
  10. Take a leadership role in your industry
    Write a blog to cover your domain, and perhaps create an online community around your unique interests

What are your best tips?