The Goings & Comings of Ant! (Social Recruitment)

I’m outta here!

So, after 3 1/2 years at Trinity I’ve spent the last month weighing up the pro’s and con’s of a great new opportunity and decided that the time and the place and the opportunity are right.

So I’m leaving the great people at Trinity at the end of September.

I’m joining Andrew Woodward (Microsoft SharePoint MVP, Owner & CEO) and James Fisk (CTO) at 21apps as Chief Strategy Officer next month.

21apps is a relaxed, high quality, deep thinking company that enjoys what it does, which is provide companies with the experience, techniques, tools and knowledge to deliver the maximum value from their people, solutions and services.

As an organisation we are currently focussed on adding business value through shared understanding, agile practices, leveraging our deep technical knowledge in the Microsoft stack (in particular SharePoint) to help deliver this value and working with the community to share our knowledge and passion.

21apps also embark on product development that solve real business issues and deliver value like 21scrum which was developed to provide a simple, easy to use, integrated scrum tool that meant companies could do SCRUM without the overhead/waste in using/learning complex products.

I am so excited to be joining Andrew, James and 21apps it’s a scary move going from a 250 strong  Gold Partner to a 3-person SharePoint start-up, but it is absolutely the best thing I could have done at this point in my life.. The opportunities are immense, challenging and just freakin’ awesome!

Interesting (for me) the whole “recruitment” process took a month and was executed completely with Social Media tools (Twitter, blogs & Linkedin) and personal communications both face to face and on the phone.

No CV, no interviews… It all started with just a single Tweet:

AndrewWoody: Fancy working with me and @draken ?http://www.21apps.com/jobs/weneedyou/

LinkedIn to Infectious Generosity

 

Last week, now that my role has changed, I decided to request from a few close colleagues a “LinkedIn Recommendation” for my time as both a Strategic Consultant and Deputy Head of Strategic Consultancy. I don’t know whether I deserve any recommendations, but sometime you have to push a little to take your life forward, and I figure if people don’t want to then they’ll just ignore my request, now worries.

Christmas (or early February in reality) is for giving as well as receiving, so I decided to recommend some people I currently work with whom I felt at the time warranted recognition… these included:

• A Technical Architect at a client
• A Trinity project manager
• Two Trinity consultants
• A Trinity “technology leader”
• A Trinity solution architect
• And a Client Project Manager.

There are of course lots of other great people I do or have worked with, but in the spur of the moment these “felt right”.

It’s a cathartic experience writing a recommendation, but it’s a little weird when you push those little “boats of reputation” onto the virtual lake and hope that they get to their recipient and they are accepted and become reality…

Anyway, the deed was done, I felt good about the “giving” and life went on… One of the recipients of a “boat of reputation” (not sure i like the analogy anymore!) dropped me an email the next morning stating:

It’s nice to feel appreciated – what prompted this then?

I don’t usually give or expect recommendations on Linked in ....

My response was:

Decided this year I need to be more proactive in being positive and giving credit where credit is due..

Plus its always nice to do something unexpected!

So go on, think of the last 3 people that inspired, impressed or were just plain awesome and go to LinkedIn and write a recommendation.. Why wouldn’t you?

Reputation and attention are rapidly increasing in value, give the gift of a recommendation, it’s infectious!

Social SLA

When I hear that “ping” or “boing” or see the flash of a new message, connection, thought, innovation, idea, friend request, poke, check-in, request, event notification, email, updated RSS feed, email or whatever I kinda find it hard to not just check who, what, where pretty immediately…

But responding back is a different matter; I seem to have a brain and psyche that can cope (on the whole) with  multiple sensory inputs\updates\distractions… For me the stimulation is good, new ideas, new perspectives, creative sparks or getting bumped back on the right track.

But if I’m trying to get my “shit done” then responding is a different matter…

So what is the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Social Media? Ask yourself this, when do you expect a response from a:

• Facebook Poke
• Email
• Instant Message (work or personal)
• Friend\Connection Request
• Twitter @Mention
• New Blog Post (comments).

If you mention someone on twitter and they don’t respond within a few hours, does that p!55 you off?  How long should it take for someone at work to respond to a truly important email or an casual IM?

I think the “Social SLA” is determined by three key factors:

• The proximity of the “engager” to your social graph (Family vs Acquaintance)
• The transient nature of the “request” (Twitter vs Email)
• Perceived value in the “payload” (Insightful Blog Post vs Checking-in@Gowalla)

Using a VERY rough rating table such as this:

Proximity	Transience	Value
Close = 1	High = 1	High = 1
Friend = 2	Medium = 5	Medium = 4
Acquaintance = 3	Low = 10	Low = 8

And an SLA calculation based upon:

Proximity * Transience * Value = SLA (Hours)

Lets look at the extremes e.g. Twitter\IM versus Email:

	Proximity	Transience	Value	SLA
Twitter	1	1	1	1 hour

Twitter

3

1

8

1 day

Email

1

10

1

10 hours

Email

3

10

8

10 days

It may be rough, but for a, lot of people this isn’t that far off reality!

Scenario 1 – Twitter, tweet pops into my stream from a close friend, family member or trusted advisor, its a valuable tweet i.e. a great link or breaking news or a fix to an issue – expected response within the hour.

Scenario 2 – Twitter, tweet pops into my stream from an acquaintance, its not a valuable tweet i.e. a link to an event or a re-tweet of something I probably already know – expected response (if any) within a day.

Scenario 3 – Email pops into my inbox from a close friend, valued colleague, family member or trusted advisor, its a valuable email i.e. breaking news, a great offer for something I am interested in, or a request for information that I can add value to – expected response within 10 hours or roughly a working day.

Scenario 4 – Email pops into my inbox from an acquaintance, its not a valuable email i.e. a catch-up email, newsletter or something I probably already know – expected response (if any) within 10 days.

The problem with a Social SLA is that the expectation and the ability to deliver are poles apart…
Maybe the recipient is on leave, currently Twitter doesn’t have an off-the-grid message?
Maybe they are up to their nuts in work?
Maybe they have a few hundred other connection requests, messages, tweets or IM’s to work through?

So maybe there should be some kind of leveller on the SLA according to how much traffic, reputation and engagement you get from elsewhere on the grid (or offline)?

Lots to consider and think about…I’d like to hear your thoughts, in a timely manner?