Big Kid Digital Merit Badges

There was an interesting piece in the New York Times a few days ago titled 'For Job Hunters, Digital Merit Badges', a look at a recently announced MacArthur Foundation sponsored competition for the creation of a system of 'digital merit and achievement' badges, not at all unlike the kinds of badges that have been typically awared over the years to Boy and Girl Scouts for accomplishing tasks, demonstrating skills, or achieving mastery on specific subjects. Merit Badges for Big Kids

Some addtional details on the MacArthur Foundation contest and the goals and expected benefits of the new system of Digital Badges:

(the competition) for leading organizations, learning and assessment specialists, designers and technologists to create and test badges and badge systems. The competition will explore ways digital badges can be used to help people learn; demonstrate their skills and knowledge; unlock job, educational and civic opportunities; and open new pipelines to talent.

The idea being that job seekers, well really everyone, could 'earn' and post these digital merit badges on their personal websites, their social network profile pages, and I suppose even as images on traditional resumes.

The Mozilla organization is participating in these efforts by creating the technical infrastructure to make the awarding, and more importantly the verification and portability of these digital merit badges possible. According the the Times piece, 'The badges can be verified in several ways. For instance, a badge can include a verification link that makes it possible to check with the issuer about authenticity and status, should the badge have an expiration date.' 

More color on this from the MacArthur Foundation announcement:

(the) Open Badge Infrastructure—a decentralized online platform that will house digital badges and can be used across operating platforms and by any organization or user. This approach will help to make digital badges a coherent, portable and meaningful way to demonstrate capabilities. It will also encourage the creation of "digital backpacks" of badges that people will carry to showcase the skills, knowledge and competencies they have gained.

It sounds like a fantastic idea that will be incredibly difficult to pull off. But the idea that workers should be recognized for the unique set of skills and capabilities that they possess, most earned over time and on the job as opposed to in formal education and training settings is certainly compelling. Additionally, one of the sub-projects that the MacArthur competition addresses is specific to a set of badges and recognitions for military veterans, aimed to help them translate their skill sets to better match civilian employment opportunities. And any efforts that can potentially help veterans transition to civilian work should be explored and supported.

What do you think - could a set of standards for the creation and awarding of a more universal set of skill and achievement badges that could operate across the web actually be an effective way to help workers and job seekers better communicate their qualifications?

Note - for readers in the USA, have a Fantastic Thanksgiving tomorrow and enjoy the long holiday weekend!

The Most Interesting Corporate Career Site in the World?

It just might be this one, from stealth start-up Scopely. Scopely is clearly after talent that will match up well not only with the skills and experience that their opportunities require, but that will fit with its, let's say, out of the ordinary culture. When your CTO takes front and center on the company career site, complete with martini and a series of irreverent pitch lines like 'Did GOD use your wireframes to CREATE the HIMALAYAS?', candidates certainly get the impression that Scopely, at least taken at face value, is not looking for 'average' talent.Are you sure you want a job here?

And beyond the CTO as the Dos Equis man picture, and the pithy come on lines, Scopely sweetens the pot with an aggressive and creative sign-on/referral program. Newly hired engineers, (or their friends that make a successful referral), are eligible to receive a package that includes some of today's 'must-have' tech wizard items like a speargun, a 'fancy tuxedo', a year's supply of the aforementioned Dos Equis beer, and oh yeah - $11,000 in cash. Face it, no matter how cool your employee or alumni referral program is, unless you can find some 'sex panther cologne' or have some Cuban cigars laying around in the supply room, our clever friends at Scopely have you topped.

What does Scopely even do you might be wondering? Who knows, exactly? And the careers site, for all its fun and wackiness, doesn't make it easy at all to figure out. But perhaps that is part of the point. While the 'Dos Equis Man' takeoff, and the promise of beard oil and bacon wrapped cash, (did I forget to mention the $11K bonus comes wrapped in bacon?), are mostly designed to grab attention in a really competitive market for start-up software development talent, there is also just a hint of expectation that prospects, (or referrers), would have to do some digging to really learn about the organization and the potential opportunities. Sort of the same way most of us expect candidates for our organizations to do.Your referral bonus

And one more point about Scopely, their sort of insane careers page, and the most bizarre referral package I've seen in ages. No matter what you think of it all, and you're probably thinking it's either stupid, or just amusing, and NOT AT ALL what would be appropriate for your company, they have done all of us a favor of sorts. By setting a new kind of ceiling for recruiting fun and surprise, they in a way have given any of us a type of permission to get more creative and fun ourselves.

No matter how offbeat, unusual, unexpected, and crazy by your standards idea you have seems, the kind of idea that the suits and the bigwigs would NEVER approve, there is almost no chance it would top Scopely in those departments. So you have a kind of out, an excuse, a way to play the 'Look, I know this idea seems wild, but it really isn't all that crazy, just look at what these idiots at Scopely are doing. See, my plan is actually kind of conservative.' 

Maybe the comparison won't get your idea approved after all. But even if it doesn't, you'll at least get to have a few laughs with the boss while you Google 'Sex Panther Cologne'.

The Invented Crisis

Many years back when a few friends and I were plugging away deep in the bureaucracy of a massive American corporation, occasionally the lunchtime conversations would veer from fantasy football to strategies for how we might get ahead and progress our careers, (and earnings), in such a large organization where it was not always easy to get noticed for doing good work.Crisis? - Stay on the Line

Then as now, simply showing up on time, getting your job done quietly and efficiently, and not drawing attention to yourself might have been a little more welcome an approach to career management in the eyes of most of our managers, but to us, it never seemed like a strategy that would adequately separate you from the army of similar looking, sounding, and performing staffers that had the same aspirational ambitions as you did. Back then for sure, remaining anonymous would probably only guarantee you one thing, you'd definitely stay anonymous.

One guy in the group my colleagues eventually settled on a personal strategy to help differentiate himself, a little plan we ended up calling 'The Invented Crisis'. The details were fairly simple, for every problem you solved, for each even small process improvement you developed, and for any new idea to improve information quality or service levels, you first 'invented' and communicated a 'crisis', that your eventual solution, (one that you had already figured out), would be the salvation for.  As my friend saw things, there was not much value to solving problems if no one, especially some well-place managers and executives, did not have a sense of the nature and scale of the 'crisis', before he stepped in to save the day and deliver a solution. I think his strategy worked to some extent, over time he began to be seen as the kind of person that was a 'problem-solver', and occasionally would get assigned some interesting and challenging, (and higher profile), kinds of projects because of this reputation.

It is kind of common for some people to have a hard time taking credit for the good work that they do and to have their accomplishments duly noted and registered by those leaders in positions in power. By generating a sense of artificial tension and drama by virtue of the Invented Crisis, my friend never seemed to have that problem. Whatever good work he did, he made sure not only did the 'right' people know about it, but they also knew about the dire consequences and outcomes that had been avoided by his quick thinking, intelligence, and ability. He ended up moving up the hierarchy somewhat faster than the rest of his peers.

Was the Invented Crisis kind of phony, devious, and self-serving? Yep. 

Was it a pretty successful approach (for him), to competing in a tough and crowded organization? Yep.

What do you think - how do you make sure you get credit, recognition, and reward for the good work you do?

Networking and Numbers - Does Size Really Matter?

Over the weekend I tipped a milestone of sorts - 1,000 first-level connections on LinkedIn -   . I know connection numbers and social network graphs are relative; 1,000 connections may seem paltry to some of the folks reading this post, (particularly the well-connected recruiters out there). To other folks, even ones that are really successful and accomplished, one thousand so-called 'professional' contacts may seem like a huge amount. We all know from personal experience executives that might not even have a LinkedIn profile, much less a large, cultvated online network spanning organizations, industries, and backgrounds. The last VP of Human Resources that I worked for reached her position, (at a Fortune 1000 company), without ever having a LinkedIn profile.

It seems clear that while 'networking' has always mattered, for some, at least up until very recently, online professional networking has not necessarily been a pre-requisite for career advancement and success. But most of us 'professionals' these days are on LinkedIn, might be doing at least some work or career related connecting on Facebook, (check my piece on BranchOut from last week), and many have even dived into the Twittersphere, (where at least for me, a tremendous amount of 'work' is going on). It is kind of hard to imagine a young professional today that would rise to the most senior level of a large organization in the next 20 years without having developed an effective online network and presence to supplement or complement their close, personal, and real-world connections.

But as to the idea about whether sheer size of one's professional network is really important or not, while many would reflexively respond that it doesn't matter that much, that quality, diversity, engagement, etc. is what matters; no one I know has completely stopped accepting connection requests on LinkedIn, or decided they have 'enough' online contacts. If you are someone that actually has done this, please drop a comment and let us know.

I was thinking about these ideas around importance of social network size in my incredibly shallow self-absorbed run-up to 1,000 LinkedIn connections because I knew I wanted to write about the topic. In doing some research, I found a recent piece in the July/August 2011 Harvard Business Review, titled 'A Smarter Way to Network', by Rob Cross and Robert Thomas. 

In the piece the authors recommend some practical network-building and cultivating strategies that they feel lead to the development of the most effective networks. Several of the recommendations, (culling redundancies, eliminating energy-sapping contacts), have at least the short-term effect of reducing absolute network size in favor of building a more balanced, strategic, and opportunistic kind of collection of 'trusted advisors', rather that a massive throng of online connections. In the entire piece, Cross and Thomas do not mention LinkedIn, (or any other online networking site), at all, and only very casually refer to online networking in a general sense. In fact, the article's focus on the 'network' as really consisting of those dozen or so close, personal, and trusted confidants, allies, and mentors makes one sense that for true benefit, chasing the next thousand LinkedIn connections at the expense of assessing and developing these personal relationships would be a colossal waste of time.

So I will end by simply asking the question. Or really a few questions.

Does 'size' of network really matter?

Is growing your online set of connections important to you? What benefits have you personally accrued?

How do you personally balance the need for rich, deep connections with trusted advisors with maintaining your thousands of friends in your social graph?

One last comment - that VP of HR I worked for? She is now on LinkedIn as well.

No, let me see YOUR references

We have heard it time and time again - top talent always has options - they can play off one company against the other, play the counter-offer game to score additional pay and benefits, and particularly in hot technical fields, seem to remain immune from the tough employment climate. For the most part, talented technical workers, with skills in the 'right' areas, are in demand and will likely have many more options to consider than the one you are trying to recruit them into, or if they are currently on your staff, are probably getting weekly overtures to make a jump.Kandinsky - Title Unknown (someone knows it, just not me)

So in an environment where this sliver or subset of the employment market seems to be playing by a different set of rules that the broader world, it is quite likely that strategies, tactics, and candidate expectations also are unlike 'normal' and traditional processes. And in the recruiting/assessment process, no step is no more 'normal' than the good old fashioned reference check. Of course you know the drill - candidate makes it past the phone screen and rounds one or two of the interview process, and then it's time for some diligent HR pro to call in those references that are always 'available upon request'. Where the reference check goes from there depends mostly on your belief in the importance of such things and the level and scope of the position you are hiring for. But either way, the candidate is almost always the one on the hook to provide some level of external validation of how wonderful they are.

But for super-talented and in-demand technical and other folks is this model beginning to shift? Take a look at an excerpt from an interesting piece on the User Interface Engineering blog earlier this week:

The advice I’m giving to senior, more experienced folks is not to think about their next project as much as they think about their next manager. What traits should that manager have? How do they support their team? When things get rough, how do they deliver guidance? Do they regularly give out praise? Do they take a deep interest in the work and in their employee’s future?

I recommend folks interview the entire team and learn what it’s like to work for that manager. What happens when the going gets tough? What examples are there of team members growing, learning, and getting encouragement? Do team members talk about how the manager exhibits the desired traits?

My good friend, Amy Jackson, who works as a talent agent for wünderkind UX designers, suggests you take it a step further and ask the hiring manager for his or her references. Amy says to tell them you want to make the right decision and you need to check them out. Her thinking is that if the hiring manager isn’t secure enough give out sound references, they may be sending a signal.

Nice. A good old fashioned 'reverse-the-heat' scenario that some hotshot young, (ok they don't have to be young, but it reads better that way), one day soon is going to call you out, Mr. or Ms. hiring manager and ask you to hand over that one-pager with three of your references. The names of three people, that you managed or mentored that would stand up for your ability as a leader, manager, mentor, and someone that should be entrusted to the next step of the candidate's career, and likely much of their day-to-day happiness and engagement at work. Sure, many interview processes have the candidate 'meet the team', but the existing team members that are currently under the manager's control are not likely to be too forthcoming, particularly if the 'reference' would not be all that positive.

Interesting spin and a challenging one at that. Now I have never actually heard of this happening in the wild, but I bet it has.

What do you think? Has a candidate ever asked you to pony up some names of past employees they could run references on? 

Could you hand over three names on demand?

What might your former staff say about you?