Tim Rowe (Cambridge Innovation Center) on the Innovation Express

On Thursday, the 27th of October, I joined the Innovation Express on behalf of BostonTweetUp. This networking event was an initiative of Boston World Partnership (BWP), an organization that I was introduced to a few months earlier at the Leaders Networking Reception.

The Innovation Express aimed at bringing incubators and entrepreneurs together. On the Red Line of the T this time.. starting at JFK/UMass, all the way to Davis and back to Kendall Square. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work out. Were we supposed to walk over to each location to learn about their services and facilities? Or were we going to stay on the train? If so, how were other participants who boarded along the Red Line able to find us? Entrepreneurs who I talked to had exactly the same questions, but admitted that this was also one of the reasons why they signed up for the Innovation Express. Just out of curiosity next to the networking opportunity.

Paola Mesadieu, BWP

Yoon J. Lee and Paola Mesadieu from BWP did a great job in communicating the details about the Innovation Express. Everybody who wanted to jump on along the Red line, was welcome to join the Innovation Express in the last car of the train.

“The Red Line is a key component in what makes the Innovation District work. It connects important innovative hubs in the city and serves as the artery that brings Boston’s best talent together,” as explained by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who started Boston World Partnership in order to raise global awareness of Boston as one of the world’s foremost centers of intellectual capital and innovation.

About eight speakers, using a bullhorn, explained their services and facilities to the entrepreneurs who joined the Express. Sometimes interrupted by the MBTA personal, making announcements on the loudspeaker as well, but overall they reached their audience quite well. Because of the awkward location – passengers who didn’t have anything to do with the Innovation Express entered the car as well – the atmosphere during the event became informative, but informal and fun almost immediately.

Line up Innovation Express

Venture Café
Back at Kendall Square, everybody gathered on the 4^th Floor of the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), where the Venture Café – held every Thursday from 3 pm – was just about to start. A smart way to integrate these two events into one. Especially because Cambridge Innovation Center, located in the middle of the MIT campus, is one of the most popular flexible office facilities for technology and life science start-ups in Boston. Or Cambridge, I should say.

I’ve been to the Venture Café before and met all different kind of people there. Lawyers, venture capitalists, students, self-employed designers, coaches and marketeers. The mix of these people all together makes every visit a surprise and worth going. Nobody is left alone standing in a corner, which happens occasionally when you visit a networking event in the Netherlands – yes even in Amsterdam.

Not in Boston. Everybody got a story to tell, that’s the common attitude in Boston. This openness creates new ideas and possibilities as well. People get to connect and build new professional relationships with each other. An atmosphere which is in my opinion as important – and an equal contributor to the hub – as its facilitators and incubators for start-ups.

I’m just happy to be a part of it.

Blogging for BostonTweetUp
Guess what I did, when Joselin was looking for interns (or Twinterns as he prefers to call them). I applied immediately. After my first meeting with Joselin, I felt energized. His mind is always full of ideas; he knows how to – and how not to! – organize a Tweetup; he has energy for 3 and is always willing to hear your opinion. In short, I really wanted to work with this inspiring guy.

So since a few months, I also blog about the events in and around Boston for BostonTweetup.com. For example, I covered the What not to web event organized by the MIT Forum, the Boston World Partnership Leaders Networking Reception and a Boston PHP Meetup. During those events, I noticed almost everybody knows BostonTweetup. Either from the MegaTweetup Joselin organized, the online event calendar or its Twitter feed. But next to promoting events and organizing a yearly record-breaking Tweetup, we also help organizers with their event planning and – maybe even more important – the way they can leverage social media before, during and after the event.

Relaunch
At the moment Joselin, the other interns and myself are busy with the relaunch of the website. The site got a new lay-out and includes episodes from BostonTweetup TV, event planning guides, reviews of events, networking tips plus information for venues, sponsors and others. A lot of this is already live, some we still need to work on. In the meanwhile, check it out yourself on BostonTweetup.com or watch this video interview that Joselin recently had during the Inbound Marketing Summit with the Pulse Network.

Back to the content. Because that’s what it’s all about. Whether in employer branding, on your blog or in a resume.

Work life balance
As for work life balance goes, I realized a 4 day workweek isn’t as common in the US  as in the Netherlands. First of all, simply because the Labor Code requirements eliminate most employers and employees from choosing schedule options such as part-time and compressed workweeks. Plus, most corporate companies still think physical presence of their employees is the only guarantee that they are working. Start-ups seem to be the exception here. Since many of them start with a virtual office, they even require new hires to know how to manage or work in this kind of environment.

LinkedIn and Facebook
While recruiters usually spend a lot of money on the services LinkedIn provides, there are also a few tools that aren’t that well known, which are free to use. Like  LinkedIn Signals which makes it possible to search through updates from users, on keywords like unemployed.

A great example on how to engage with your candidates is the way Deloitte in New Zealand used their Facebook page. On a livestream young professionals where telling their Facebook fans how their life has changed after they graduated and how they experience their first job, at Deloitte of course. These ambassadors also met up with graduates during campus recruitment activities. No, not on the traditional job fairs, but on a BBQ on campus!

Engaging with these candidates through social media, seems to be more effective than spending the budget on traditional recruitment advertising. UPS only spends 3% of their recruitment media budget on print, according to Mike Vangel. More about the UPS case and the importance of tracking social media in this video.

How to convince corporate to go social
However engaging with candidates through social media still needs a lot of time and effort. Not only from social recruiters or employer brand managers, the management needs to trust their employees as well. Your recruiters hired these people, right? That means they understand the concept of appropriateness, whether it is in the elevator at the watercooler or on Facebook. Don’t confront them with the rules and regulations that state they’re not allowed to say anything on the company’s behalf. They are grown-ups who can take their responsibilities and use common sense. Trust them.

A social media policy therefore should not be longer than one sentence stating something like: don’t burn bridges or don’t put anything out there that you don’t want your mother to see.

Once the managements fear is turned into trust, don’t think that those employees who were enthousiastic from the start will become active bloggers, and use Twitter and Facebook and engage with potential candidates immediately. Many of us have experienced that they also needed reinsurance after the kick-off meeting that they are not going to be fired for writing a blogpost.. ..

Educational gap
One of the other things that was mentioned in several tracks is that there is a gap between education and the requirements graduates need  in their first job. Offering students internships from an earlier age, could decrease this gap. According to Mark Babbitt, founder of  Youtern “nobody ever graduates from a music major without having played the instrument, but students do graduate for a business major without having stepped foot in a business department.” More on this in the video internships, employability and career services

These were just a few topics that we discussed on TRU Boston. In short, it was an inspiring event for everybody in the recruitment, HR or employer branding business. It made me wonder, why isn’t there a meetup group yet for professionals who work in these industries in and around Boston? Well…. the idea of starting such a group also came up, so in the near future @leanneclc and I might start one. What do you think, are you in? Let us know!

Also check out these other posts and videos on TRU Boston:

• True, it’s the #TRUBoston Review – @radicalrecruit
• The Future of recruiting (video) – @levyrecruit
• Livestreams made by Bullhorn – @bullhornreach
• Secret Sourcing Skinny from the Radical One (video)  – @radicalrecruit
• What I learned at #TRUBoston (video)

Smart, smarter, smarterer
By making them answer 10 questions, Smarterer puts applicants to the test. Within 60 seconds or faster, you have to choose one of the multiple-choice answers. If you answer correctly, then the next question will be one of a more difficult level and vice versa. The final score is benchmarked with all other participants. So the better the competition, the lower your score turns out. The consequence of the benchmark model is that users need to maintain their score. Because if more people do the test, your score is going to change as well. My score – see badge below – was initially 470 and see where it is now…

Crowdsourced
Whether it’s for Matlab, Final Cut Pro or Outlook, all questions are created by users themselves – crowdsourced – and approved by the team of Smarterer.  CEO Jennifer Fremont-Smith told me that everyone is free to add a test. Multinational corporations, small businesses and software developers, whether they speak French or Spanish. “Just make sure you mention the language in the title”, Fremont-Smith said.

Every test needs a minimum of 20 questions.  However, Smarterer is making an effort at this moment to approach experts to come up with questions as well whenever the creator could think of a few questions but not up till 20.  According to Fremont-Smith, ‘pending’ tests do need to be interesting enough for a large audience in order for Smarterer to proactively search for more input.  After the minimum of 20 questions, applicants who want to obtain a higher score can add questions themselves as well.  Users who do, are rewarded with a higher score.

Badge

After 10 questions you will get a score between 1 and 800. You can either choose to continue and improve your score or stop at that point. You might even want to publish a badge on your LinkedIn profile or another (digital) resume to show off!  So with only one click the recruiter will see right away what your level is with a certain program compared to other (so-called) specialists.

Currently Smarterer is still in beta. In June 2011 the company received an investment of $ 1,250,000 of  True Ventures and Goolge Ventures.

Do you have an idea for a test or just want to see how smart you are? Click on the badge for an invite.

Benefits
Katja’s main goal is to help companies from New England and eastern Canada establish their European operations in the Netherlands. She provides them with the necessary information and connects them to valuable networks and institutions in Holland. Through benchmarking and case studies, her team brings the benefits of a location in the Netherlands to light. For example, the Canadian company Bombardier Aerospace estabilished its European service center at Schiphol,  because of its central location in relation to customers. And Vistaprint chose for an office in the south of Holland, near the Belgium and German border, due to the quality of the distribution infrastructure of that area and the competitive tax rates in our country. For the life science industry, the quality and availability of skilled employees in our country can be decisive. At least, for the MA-based biotech giant Genzyme it was.

Today the interview with Katja Berkhout was published on one of the mayor career sites in the Netherlands, intermediair.nl (in Dutch).

This social media recruitment campaign included training nine management trainees on how to blog and use twitter as an ambassador for the company. But what was in it for them? And what exactly did we want from them? Most of these trainees were not familiar with writing a blog or using Twitter as a professional networking tool at all. Moreover, they were just getting comfortable in their new role as a management trainee…

A bit afraid to scream out loud already that we prepared the rails for winter pretty well #wintermaatregelen #NS, but up til now I'm kind of proud!

Taking away fear
Of course, explaining that a blog and Twitter are useful tools to build your professional network is one thing. But letting them experience it themselves is another. Especially, when they’re not used to expose themselves as a professional on the web. Once they got in touch with collegeaus from other departments through Twitter and graduates started to ask them if they could talk with them in real life, it all seemed to be worthwile.

Attended a nice workshop! With a #FF as a result. @PR57, follow this guy! #nstrainee

Lessons learned
However, it took some time and a lot of discussions, before the benefits for the ambassadors became visible. And there was an0ther lesson I, as a social media trainer, learned along the way. There isn’t just one good way to blog or tweet. It is all about finding your own tone of voice and feeling confident to post it on a blog that was developed by your employer. By addressing the fact that there wasn’t one kind of graduate that the company was looking for, but many different kinds of young ambitious adults that could contribute to the organizations, the ambassadors were able to start to write about their work freely. In other words, the feeling that their boss was looking over their shoulders in order to make sure everything they wrote was appropriate, disappeared. But it took time…

is that ok for a guy?”]Since April 2010 the  ambassadors blogged and tweeted about their experiences at NS. On nstrainees.hyves.nl (a Dutch version of Facebook) the blogs and tweets came together and followers were able to ask questions and start a dialogue with the current trainees. In this way, potential candidates not only got a better understanding of the content of the traineeship and if it would fit with their values and ambitions.

Online and in real life
During the recruitment campaign in the autumn of 2010 we also organized the first Tweetup in a pub  in Utrecht. The trainees told their story and there was ample opportunity for the nearly 50 new graduates to ask questions. The Tweetup led to considerable media coverage in newspapers, (career) magazines and websites.

Authenticity
The jury was particularly impressed by the authentic way in which the 9 ambassadors communicated with their audiences. In addition, meeting their followers in real life during the Tweetup made this social media campaign a case that can be seen as an example, the jury said. “This is how a social media campaign should be done,” the jury said.

Woohoo, an award #SANaccent for the campaign for the #ns traineeship. How cool!

Thanks to this approach the number of applications for the NS Talent Clinic, the selection process for the  NS Management Traineeship, was achieved easily. Even with a media budget that was 30% lower than the previous years.

By the way, just because I am living in Boston nowadays, didn’t keep me from being virtually present at the award show

Divided
However, walking around in my old neighborhood, dropping by at what I once called the office and talking with friends over diners and drinks, can feel pretty weird as well. There’s not a place that you call home anymore and you’re a visitor in your own country. This makes you realize that you had it all: a career, your own apartment and a great social life in Amsterdam.. But I gave it all up, which made my visit hard as well.

Small steps
On the other hand, it really made me want to go back to Boston, to be able to work on my long term plans again. To continue building my new network and exploring the local industries in Boston. I couldn’t wait to look for new assignments, jobs or projects in the communication, PR or social media field. Since my new me, had to focus on building a life on the other side of the ocean. After several weeks of searching on the web, visiting network events and a drink with a well-known entrepreneur in Boston, the first steps are made.

To be continued..

I will start as a self-employed copywriter and PR consultant. Hoping that in the near future I will get to know the local markets clustered around Harvard and MIT a little more.

I’ll keep you posted.

Not an easy assignment for media titles that make money out of selling job ads and subscriptions to their resume databases. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, 80% of the recruiters say they are going to use employee referrals and Facebook and LinkedIn instead of spending the money on ads on job boards. And according to my own little research, 48% of the recruiters in the Netherlands say they’re going to cut the budget for job boards this year. No wonder, some job boards therefore consider social media as their biggest threat.

Monster’s social media strategy
On the 22^nd social media breakfast, Kathy O’Reilly, Director of Social Media Relations at Monster, explained how the company embraces social media and sees it as an opportunity. She shared some great insights on how Monster is incorporating social media in its day-to-day operations.

First of all, Monster calls itself a powerful job matching engine instead of just a job board. Their social media objective is to increase traffic by engaging with users through Twitter (@monsterww) and Facebook, plus giving them career advise (@monstercareer). Not just by pushing job vacancies to their fans or followers, also by helping out job seekers and employers who experience difficulties using their online services. Like many other companies, Monster integrates social media into their customer service strategy.

Not a vacuum
So who is responsible for these social media activities? According to O’Reilly social media shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. Therefore the social media team is part of the Marketing & Communication department. It exists out of 4 people. In addition they appointed some members in other departments. How she knew who to pick? Simple, a questionnaire was spread internally, which researched the level of engagement on social media of the employees. Those who already interact with audiences on Facebook or Twitter in a responsible and genuine manner, are well on their way to become ambassadors anyway. Why not make them part of the team? Monster is even thinking about certifying certain employees as official ambassadors.

Learn them how to drive
To make sure everybody is on the same page, Monster took the IBM social media guidelines as an example. They organize toast & tweet masters in order to talk about the do’s and don’ts. They give each other tips about what blogs to read, like Mashable, Social Media Today or Social Media Explorer for example. However, you do need one core group within the organization who enables these learning processes. In other words, somebody needs to give them the key so they can learn how to drive.

For my Dutch readers: Lauri Koop, VP eCommerce Europe at Monster Worldwide also explains the way Monsterboard integrates social media on Marketingfacts.

Three teens from Lacey were actually charged after texting a nude picture of a girl to everybody in their contact list. It took them just a few seconds.

While I was walking through the corridors at Brookline High School, this poster caught my eye. I guess the next generation learns the rules of social media the hard way…