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When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.

“Join Company X, and you not only get a great job, but you also gain a family”

Trite as it may be, employees are expressing a sentiment that is widespread and based in truth. The workplace is a community. A community made up of people that you often see more than your own family. There is an undeniable group cohesion that resembles “family” that the work company-employee work contract generates.

When making a career choice, candidates are searching for information about a potential employer and if they will spend time to look for it. Use your career site as a venue to publicly display your community of passionate employees. Lead the search results by authentically communicating your employer brand and providing a window into the “employee-experience” on your career web site. Openly illuminate your employee-experience by incorporating social features into your corporate career web site and encouraging employees to participate in online communities where your candidates are spending their time. Don’t fight the decentralization of your employer brand… *enable it*.

Controlling the flow of information to employees, customers, partners etc, used to be easy with newspapers, TV, radio, print, email, and the like. Today, your brand is being watched, augmented, and de-located. People are writing their own stories, thoughts, ideas, and developing new products and services using social media technologies. These simple technologies and services: Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Tagging, Podcasts, and RSS are connecting people and information in new ways, conversations, faster than you can say oh shit. (via Advancing Insights).

Companies try to hide what it is *really* like to work for them like they are a secret society that you get to have no real knowledge of until you are accepted and initiated. There is the reality of a group being its own worst enemy, and a need exists to balance the idealistic view that companies will suddenly open up and allow completely public free speech, with the freedom and open spirit needed to create a thriving online community.

Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep. When it comes to communicating what the real employee experience is and helping to foster a public online community that potential candidates can explore when researching your company – do not put your head in the ground and fear your employee experience being public – embrace it and handle it with grace.

I awoke this morning to a subtle reminder to make every minute in your life count. I have a Google Alert set-up for ‘Shannon Seery’ as this last year of blogging has certainly taught me how important it is to monitor your online reputation and personal brand.  This morning there was an alert waiting for me. It was a link to an obituary for a Shannon Seery of Bourne, Mass.

There’s nothing like seeing an obit with your name on it first thing on New Year’s Day to make you take stock of how you are living your life.  Here’s to a New Year filled with Love and Laughter!

Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

~Hal Borland

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

I finally sat down to participate in the 5 things meme – mainly because I am dying to talk about something else, I finally have a few moments to breath, and I was tagged 3 times by women that I respect very much: Heather, Astha, and Rosie. (Funny how we seem to all stay to our side of the Mechitzah in the Recruitosphere ). Anyway – I have procrastinated a bit about this one as I have been wavering back and forth between, “I am boring as hell – what would be interesting enough to write about?” and “I CAN’T write about THAT – thats TMI!” This would be more fun for me if Julian was tasked with writing 5 things about me and vice-versa…’cause I’ve got PLENTY to tell you about him. Maybe in the next meme.  So here we go:

1. I wanted to be an Art Therapist right up until I graduated from school and feel head over heals for the web. My degree is in Neuropsychology and Art. Art Therapists use different art forms to help people understand and work through their problems through the creative process. I was going to focus specifically on Dance therapy as I took ballet up through high school and wanted to incorporate that into my life.
2. I have a problem with organized religion. My dad’s side of the family is Catholic and my mom’s side – well…not so much. I grew up as the oldest of five children and my mom tried to expose me to various religions so that I could make my own decision one day. I went to a variety of churches every Sunday (with my friends – not my family) and learned about various denominations. When I was about 8 – I was officially baptized at the Wilton Manors Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They do the full dunking there. While there wasn’t one organization that stuck with me – a deep intellectual fascination with religion did. I took so many religion classed at Colgate that I could have double majored. Julian likes to say that I haven’t had something happen to me yet in life to turn it from an intellectual pursuit to a matter of the heart – maybe – I am open to that. I do know that Harry’s second item in his 5 things meme resonated deeply with me.
3. Julian and I met almost exactly 6 years ago in Phoenix, AZ at a Knight Ridder Digital National Sales Conference. It was a messy time in both of our lives to meet. I was just getting out of a really hard break-up and he was just getting out of his first marriage. I am not very sappy, but to this day I can describe it no other way than love at first sight, soul mate, ability to overcome everything type of love (not mean that overcoming everything was easy). Most people don’t know that Jules and I didn’t marry until 3 years ago when we were having our second child. I come from a family full of divorce and a common refrain for me was “I can’t guarantee that I won’t get divorced unless I don’t get married”. Since Julian had a hard time getting a ring on my finger – for my 26th birthday, we got matching tattoos in the shape of an infinity. On my 27th birthday, he bought me an infinity ring from Tiffany.
4. The obsession with the number 8 in our blog names comes from item number 3 above. Turn the 8 sideways, and you have the infinity. Forever.
5. I love to cross-stitch. Seriously. My last project took me 4 years to complete.

So – how did I do? TMI? sorry.