David's Journal on Tap

Note: I orginally posted this blog entry on the Oracle Recruitment Blog in Dec 2009.

It has been a while since my last blog post – at first I was thinking that it must just be a case of writers block, which sometimes happens. Yesterday though, I had the chance to meet with @sarahatcarve while she was in Melbourne and after talking to her I started to think maybe it is not a case of writers block but maybe we (general online community) have said all there is to say about social media for the moment.

Sarah and I have been talking to each other on Twitter for a while and it was great to finally get the chance to meet her. Sarah runs Carve Consulting in Australia which is a consulting firm that helps organisations realise value from corporate social networks. (taken from webpage). It was great to talk to someone who gets social media/networks and sees the value they provide in a business capacity. As Sarah and I were talking I found myself answering my own questions about why it has been a while since my last blog post. A few things that I mentioned when I met with Sarah:

• I think there is too much hype around Social Media/Networking at the moment – it is great everyone is finally coming around to using these tools, but there are too many “experts” saying the same thing as each other which I think is taking away some of value of what the real enthusiasts are using these tools for. How many webinars can I be invited to about using LinkedIn/Twitter for Recruiting – especially by those “experts” who have just signed up to these sites.
• I think there is too much white noise on some networks – I always feel a bit dirty when I get those LinkedIn invitations to connect with me like this one below that I received recently:

“If we are not already directly connected and you are open to being a 1st degree connection with me on LinkedIn, then please know that I am an open networker, I will accept your invitation and I will not IDK you [insert: if you press I do not know this person on an invite - LinkedIn views the person as spamming you and may cancel their account]

My LinkedIn profile is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/xxx
My LinkedIn email address is: xxx@gmail.com .
Look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn. JT “

These people remind me of travelling salesman but instead of going from city to city they are going from network to network. They are not adding value to online networks, they are just building up numbers of connections for their own sales reason. I think it is great people use these networks to build business but be open about it. I have over 2500 connections on LinkedIn, but I only invite people I have spoken to or have some connection with.

• A lot of people are starting to use Social networks (this is good) but many businesses or individuals haven’t thought about why they are going online (this is bad). Is to find a job, build a brand, increase sales, increase revenue, etc…. .

  It reminds me of a conversation I had with my sister a while back (she is in marketing) she mentioned that many of her clients always jumped up and down and said they had to create a facebook page as part of their marketing plan. When she asked them why they thought that – they never had an answer, the standard response was always “because it is what everyone else is doing” – it kind of reminds me of when your parents would ask you if your friends jumped off a cliff would you?? People should do what works for them, it is great to try new ways to do things, but think about what you want to achieve before blindly following a trend.

Looking back on the year I think the main focus of many of my blog posts has been focused on using Social Media Tools in Recruitment which makes sense as I am an experienced Recruiter and a Social Media enthusiast. I would like to think that some of the information I have written has helped somebody in their job search.

For those of you who have read enough of my posts talking about the latest and greatest social media tools, next year I am aiming to have fewer blog posts based around Social Media Tools – yes Twitter that includes you!

The feeling I have lately is that there is more than enough talk happening online about these tools. Don’t get me wrong I love using social networks and social media tools – they have helped me in my success here at Oracle, but there is already plenty of information available to help anyone navigate through the world of social media – from the first day novice to the seasoned enthusiast – we do not all have to fill up our social networks saying the same thing over and over about how to use social networks

In my next blog post I want to follow up with a few more things Sarah and I spoke about and talk about some of the things I think will happen in the Social Media space next year once the hype dies down.

It is a long weekend this weekend in Melbourne, we have Monday off work in recognition of Anzac Day. Our original thinking was to throw the tent in the back seat again and set off for another few days of camping with the kids. While this was our intention, the weather did not really seem to want to cooperate as the forecast was for rain all weekend. The weather forecast was actually spot on – and on Friday it was raining so we decided not to take the kids camping.

So yesterday on a wet rainy Saturday with three kids running inside the house, making a mess and getting into mischief – we instead decided to pack the kids into the car and take them to the Melbourne Museum in Carlton.

Our final impressions at the end of a day at the Melbourne Museum far surpassed what our initial expectations of the museum were. For families (especially with young children), the Melbourne Museum offers a great day out at a fraction of the cost of many other attractions. Not only does the museum offer value for money, the kids loved the day and may have learnt a thing or two on the way.

Only Mel and I had to purchase tickets which were $8.00 each, kids under 8 (I think that was the age) were allowed to enter for free. So for us we had all day access to the museum for our family of five for $16.00. To put into perspective what great value that is – for that price that barely covers the cost of a half hour swimming lesson for one child.

The kids loved the ‘dinosaur exhibition’ and the ‘living forest’, they also really felt that they were exploring the museum as it is very kid friendly and has a number of settings set up with kids in mind. For Mel and I, it was a great way to spend the day with the kids in a family friendly environment that was both fun and educational (well I am sure they learnt something somewhere along the way). There are a couple of different playgrounds where we could sit down grab a coffee and kick back a little bit – what else could we ask for.

Ok, we are not going to the museum every weekend, but we will definitely go there again and we will definitely recommend it onto others. If you are stuck in the city when you should be out camping – a day at the museum will fix up any rainy day.

A few nights ago I received a comment on one of our blog posts that reminded me of a statistic that I heard a while back. The statistic reflected the change in our views towards work and showed how while people in past generations would stay in one role for their working career – now with so much choice people not only change jobs often but also change careers 4-5 times in their working life.

To differentiate between a job change and a career change: when I say job change this could be an IT Sales person moving from one IT Sales role to another IT Sales role. A Career change for example would be that same IT Sales person moving from IT Sales to something outside the scope of their industry – maybe to something like an Engineer or Scuba Dive Instructor.

The reason for Career changes can be as varied as the people who make them. Someone’s motivation could be to pursue a passion or maybe there is a change in their personal circumstances forcing the change or it could be any other number of reasons. I think it takes courage to make a Career change – it can be easy to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know, but to really push yourself sometimes you need to try something new, it is a matter of making that career transition as smooth as possible for yourself.

The comment that was posted is here below (thanks Dean for the kind words they are appreciated).

Hi David,

I just wanted to let you know that I work for a company called
Milestone Search in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. (www.mstone.com.au)
We subscribe to your feed on a daily basis and find your blogs both
interesting and insightful. Not to mention extremely entertaining. I
wonder if you have missed out on getting in journalism as this seems to
be something you’d be great at ?: )

Anyways back to my point about changing careers. This could be anything from going from I.T. to Journalism, Engineering to Teaching or any combination of career you can think of. I don’t think there ever has been a time where we have had so many opportunities to do so many different things in our working life. While this idea sounds great in theory, putting it into practice would be much harder to do I think.

First, in an increasingly competitive job market, employers tend to look for specialists in their field. You may want to make a change but your options may be limited by the number of employers willing to take a chance on someone new to an industry that will likely require a significant investment in time to get brought up to speed.

Also, using myself as an example if I was given the opportunity to move into Journalism/Communication/Marketing career from my career as an IT Recruiter – realistically I would have to take a significant pay cut to make this change as my current salary reflects the expertise I have in my current career. I would not immediately be up to speed moving into a new career and would not be able to justify a similar salary. Yes there are transferable skills in any career change, but even though you may have transferable skills you must realise that you will also have a large amount of learning to do which would take time.

These are two initial hurdles that I immediately think of, there may be more but nothing is insurmountable. If you work out what you want to do with your working career whatever that may be, you then need to just need to work out the steps to get to your end goal. This is where utilising the power of your networks and using Social Media can come in handy. If you are interested in working somewhere why not proactively take the opportunity to research the industry or company – find out who it is you need to speak to and get in touch with them.

We spend so much time working, we should enjoy the work we do and not be afraid to try new things. Waiting for your dream job to fall into your lap or be handed to you on a silver platter is not likely going to happen, so if there is something you do want to do, work out a plan to make it happen and chase after it.

This article was originally posted on David Talamelli’s Blog – David’s Journal on Tap

If you have read some of my previous posts over the past few years either here or on my personal blog David’s Journal on Tap you will know I am a Social Media enthusiast. I use various social media sites everday in both my work and personal life.

I was surprised to read today on Mashable.com that Facebook now Commands 41% of Social Media Trafic.

When I think of the Social Media sites I use most, the sites that jump into my mind first are LinkedIn, Blogging and Twitter. I do use Facebook in both work and in my personal life but on the list of sites I use it probably ranks closer to the bottom of the list rather than the top.

I know Facebook is engrained in everything these days – but really I am not a huge Facebook fan – and I am finding that over the past 3-6 months my interest in Facebook is going down rather than up. From a work perspective – SM sites let me connect with candidates and communities and they help me talk about the things that I am doing here at Oracle. From a personal perspective SM sites let me keep in touch with friends and family both here and overseas in a really simple and easy way.

Sites like LinkedIn give me a great way to proactively talk to both active and passive candidates. Twitter is fantastic to keep in touch with industry trends and keep up to date on the latest trending topics as well as follow conversations about whatever keyword you want to follow. Blogging lets me share my thoughts and ideas with others and while FB does have some great benefits I don’t think the benefits outweigh the negatives of using FB.

I use TweetDeck to keep track of my twitter feeds, the latest LinkedIn updates and Facebook updates. Tweetdeck is a great tool as it consolidates these 3 SM sites for me and I can quickly scan to see the latest news on any of them. From what I have seen from Facebook it looks like 70%-80% of people are using FB to grow their farm on farmville, start a mafia war on mafiawars or read their horoscope, check their love percentage, etc…… In between all these “updates” every now and again you do see a real update from someone who actually has something to say but there is so much “white noise” on FB from all the games and apps that is hard to see the real messages from all the ‘games’ information. I don’t like having to scroll through what seems likes pages of farmville updates only to get one real piece of information.

For me this is where FB’s value really drops off. While I use SM everyday I try to use SM effectively. Sifting through so much noise is not effective and really I am not all that interested in Farmville, MafiaWars or any similar game/app.

But what about Groups and Facebook Ads?? Groups are ok, but I am not sure I would call them SM game changers – yes there is a group for everything out there, but a group whether it is on FB or not is only as good as the community that supports and participates in it. Many of the Groups on FB (and elsewhere) are set up and never used or promoted by the moderator. I have heard that FB ads do have an impact, and I have not really looked at them – the question of cost jumps and return on investment comes to my mind though.

FB does have some benefits, it is a great way to keep in touch with people and a great way to talk to others. I think it would have been interesting to see a different statistic measuring how effective that 41% of Social Media Traffic via FB really is or is it just a case of more people jumping online to play games. To me FB does not equal SM effectiveness, at the moment it is a tool that I sometimes need to use as opposed to want to use.

This article was originally posted on David Talamelli’s Blog – David’s Journal on Tap

Earlier tonight I received a comment on the Oracle Recruitment Blog that reminded me of a statistic that I heard a while back. The statistic reflected the change in our views towards work and showed how while people in past generations would stay in one role for their working career – now with so much choice people not only change jobs often but also change careers 4-5 times in their working life.

To differentiate between a job change and a career change: when I say job change this could be an IT Sales person moving from one IT Sales role to another IT Sales role. A Career change for example would be that same IT Sales person moving from IT Sales to something outside the scope of their industry – maybe to something like an Engineer or Scuba Dive Instructor.

The reason for Career changes can be as varied as the people who make them. Someone’s motivation could be to pursue a passion or maybe there is a change in their personal circumstances forcing the change or it could be any other number of reasons. I think it takes courage to make a Career change – it can be easy to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know, but to really push yourself sometimes you need to try something new, it is a matter of making that career transition as smooth as possible for yourself.

The comment that was posted is here below (thanks Dean for the kind words they are appreciated).

Hi David,

I just wanted to let you know that I work for a company called
Milestone Search in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. (www.mstone.com.au)
We subscribe to your feed on a daily basis and find your blogs both
interesting and insightful. Not to mention extremely entertaining. I
wonder if you have missed out on getting in journalism as this seems to
be something you’d be great at ?: )

Anyways back to my point about changing careers. This could be anything from going from I.T. to Journalism, Engineering to Teaching or any combination of career you can think of. I don’t think there ever has been a time where we have had so many opportunities to do so many different things in our working life. While this idea sounds great in theory, putting it into practice would be much harder to do I think.

First, in an increasingly competitive job market, employers tend to look for specialists in their field. You may want to make a change but your options may be limited by the number of employers willing to take a chance on someone new to an industry that will likely require a significant investment in time to get brought up to speed.

Also, using myself as an example if I was given the opportunity to move into Journalism/Communication/Marketing career from my career as an IT Recruiter – realistically I would have to take a significant pay cut to make this change as my current salary reflects the expertise I have in my current career. I would not immediately be up to speed moving into a new career and would not be able to justify a similar salary.  Yes there are transferable skills in any career change, but even though you may have transferable skills you must realise that you will also have a large amount of learning to do which would take time.

These are two initial hurdles that I immediately think of, there may be more but nothing is insurmountable. If you work out what you want to do with your working career whatever that may be, you then need to just need to work out the steps to get to your end goal. This is where utilising the power of your networks and using Social Media can come in handy. If you are interested in working somewhere why not proactively take the opportunity to research the industry or company – find out who it is you need to speak to and get in touch with them.

We spend so much time working, we should enjoy the work we do and not be afraid to try new things.  Waiting for your dream job to fall into your lap or be handed to you on a silver platter is not likely going to happen, so if there is something you do want to do, work out a plan to make it happen and chase after it.

P.S. – If anyone is looking for a writer – feel free to ping me a message

If you have read some of my previous posts over the past few years either here or at the Oracle Recruitment Blog you will know I am a Social Media enthusiast. I use various social media sites everday in both my work and personal life.

I was surprised to read today on Mashable.com that Facebook now Commands 41% of Social Media Trafic.

When I think of the Social Media sites I use most, the sites that jump into my mind first are LinkedIn, Blogging and Twitter. I do use Facebook in both work and in my personal life but on the list of sites I use it probably ranks closer to the bottom of the list rather than the top.

I know Facebook is engrained in everything these days – but really I am not a huge Facebook fan – and I am finding that over the past 3-6 months my interest in Facebook is going down rather than up. From a work perspective – SM sites let me connect with candidates and communities and they help me talk about the things that I am doing here at Oracle. From a personal perspective SM sites let me keep in touch with friends and family both here and overseas in a really simple and easy way.

Sites like LinkedIn give me a great way to proactively talk to both active and passive candidates. Twitter is fantastic to keep in touch with industry trends and keep up to date on the latest trending topics as well as follow conversations about whatever keyword you want to follow. Blogging lets me share my thoughts and ideas with others and while FB does have some great benefits I don’t think the benefits outweigh the negatives of using FB.

I use TweetDeck to keep track of my twitter feeds, the latest LinkedIn updates and Facebook updates. Tweetdeck is a great tool as it consolidates these 3 SM sites for me and I can quickly scan to see the latest news on any of them. From what I have seen from Facebook it looks like 70%-80% of people are using FB to grow their farm on farmville, start a mafia war on mafiawars or read their horoscope, check their love percentage, etc…… In between all these “updates” every now and again you do see a real update from someone who actually has something to say but there is so much “white noise” on FB from all the games and apps that is hard to see the real messages from all the ‘games’ information. I don’t like having to scroll through what seems likes pages of farmville updates only to get one real piece of information.

For me this is where FB’s value really drops off. While I use SM everyday I try to use SM effectively. Sifting through so much noise is not effective and really I am not all that interested in Farmville, MafiaWars or any similar game/app.

But what about Groups and Facebook Ads?? Groups are ok, but I am not sure I would call them SM game changers – yes there is a group for everything out there, but a group whether it is on FB or not is only as good as the community that supports and participates in it. Many of the Groups on FB (and elsewhere) are set up and never used or promoted by the moderator. I have heard that FB ads do have an impact, and I have not really looked at them – the question of cost jumps and return on investment comes to my mind though.

FB does have some benefits, it is a great way to keep in touch with people and a great way to talk to others. I think it would have been interesting to see a different statistic measuring how effective that 41% of Social Media Traffic via FB really is or is it just a case of more people jumping online to play games. To me FB does not equal SM effectiveness, at the moment it is a tool that I sometimes need to use as opposed to want to use.

In my role as a Recruiter at Oracle I receive a large number of resumes of people who are interested in working with us. People contact me for a number of reasons, it can be about a specific role that we may be hiring for or they may send me an email asking if there are any suitable roles for them. Sometimes when I speak to people we have similar roles available to the roles that they may actually be in now. Sometimes people are interested in making this type of sideways move if their motivation to change jobs is not necessarily that they are looking for increased responsibility or career advancement (example: money, redundancy, work environment).

However there are times when after walking through a specific role with a candidate that they may say to me – “You know that is very similar to the role that I am doing now. I would not want to move unless my next role presents me with the next challenge in my career”.

This is a far statement – if a person is looking to change jobs for the next step in their career they should be looking at suitable opportunities that will address their need. In this instance a sideways step will not really present any new challenges or responsibilities. The main change would be the company they are working for. Candidates looking for a new role because they are looking to move up the ladder should be looking for a role that offers them the next level of responsibility.

I think the best job changes for people who are looking for career advancement are the roles that stretch someone outside of their comfort zone but do not stretch them so much that they can’t cope with the added responsibilities and pressure. In my head I often think of this example in the same context of an elastic band – you can stretch it, but only so much before it snaps. That is what you should be looking for – to be stretched but not so much that you snap.

If you are for example in an individual contributor role and would like to move into a management role – you may not be quite ready to take on a role that is managing a large workforce or requires significant people management experience. While your intentions may be right, your lack of management experience may fit you outside of the scope of search to be successful this type of role. In this example you can move from an individual contributor role to a management role but it may need to be managing a smaller team rather than a larger team.

While you are trying to make this transition you can try to pick up some responsibilities in your current role that would give you the skills and experience you need for your next role. Never be afraid to put your hand up to help on a new project or piece of work. You never know when that newly gained experience may come in handy in your career.

This article was originally posted on David Talamelli’s Blog – David’s Journal on Tap

With Melinda, myself and the three kids living in our house, it is pretty safe to say we are just about at full capacity. The house is full, but little did I know just how full it is was (well I hope was is the right word).

I have been doing a fair bit of reading and research over the past couple days- my topic since Friday night – Possums: How to Know You Have Them and What to Do About Them.

We have a high roofline on our house, and over the past week or so at about 10:00-11:00 pm I was regularly hearing possums running up and down on our roof tiles. I wasn’t sure if they were just using the high roofline on our house to look over the neighbourhood or if they were actually living in our roof. On Friday I noticed some of the mortar on our roof tiles at the front of the house had chipped away and it looked like there was a nest in the house. I went into our roof but couldn’t really see anything.

Rather than just filling up the crack in the roof and potentially trapping a family of possums in our roof, first I put some gutter guard in the hole. I was thinking that if possums were living in our roof then they would have to push the gutter guard out to go out for their nightly stroll. Sure enough on Saturday morning the gutter guard was pushed out and on the front lawn. Ok, before I walk through what I did, I should mention Possums are protected in VIC so killing or moving them is not allowed. So here was my plan.

Step 1) Fill in half the crack with mortar and leave a small opening for possum to escape (again put gutter guard in the small hole)
Step 2) Go into the roof and get rid of the nest
Step 3) Build a Possum Nest and put the Nest in the Gumtree beside the house.

My thinking is that I hope I have discouraged the possums from living in our roof and encouraged them to move to the new Possum House. This morning after doing this the gutter guard was not pushed out so I am hoping the possums are out of the roof. I filled in the rest of the crack and so far tonight there are no signs of possums (it is only 10:00 pm but this could be good or bad). I havent seen them in the Possum House yet but equally I haven’t seen them on the roof yet either. I will keep you posted but hopefully our visitors have decided to move on.

I met with Justin Hillier a few months ago and he gave me the chance to talk about how I have incorporated Social Media and Blogging into my work as a Recruiter in my job at Oracle. Justin was only able to post the video online recently and he posted it online today. Here is the video below:

I have not blogged or tweeted as much this year as I have in previous years. Bill Boorman asked me today if the reason I was not online was because I did not see any value in SM. Even though my writing has been down I still think Social Media (SM) is an invaluable tool. The main reason I have not been blogging too much lately is that I am in the middle of (another) case of writer’s block.

I see some blogger’s who post every 2-3 days religisiously. Some of these bloggers are great but there are some blogs posts I have read where I get the feeling that some people think that they must blog every 2 days to be succesful. What this results in I think is that people just end up writing blog posts for the sake of writing them rather than trying to write something honest and original. I would rather blog something that means something to me rather than put up a blog post just to keep up the numbers.

Watching this video posted today on Justin’s website may give me that combination of energy, motivation and ideas to get out of this writing rut.