Here are seven modern methods recruiters are using to bring in new talent:

1. Open-ended job postings

You may have heard that Zappos did away with job titles — but did you know that digital media company Upworthy recently listed an “Open-Ended Job” with no title or specifications?

Whether this will become a trend remains to be seen, but it does remind recruiters of an important lesson: hire people, not skills. Whether a candidate is passionate about your company and mission is often more important than whether they can type a certain speed or have experience in a specific field. Skills can be taught; attitude can’t. (Click here to tweet this quote.)

2. Video interviews

Gone are the days of flying a bunch of candidates to your office for final interviews. With today’s video technology, that’s an unnecessary waste of time and money.

Savvy recruiters are interviewing their shortlist on Skype, Google Hangouts, or recruitment-specific video software. With these video interviews, you’ll probably find a candidate or two who’s clearly not a good fit. Once you weed them out, you can then invite the top few to an in-person interview with the whole team.

3. Online networking events

Though attending career fairs and networking events in person can be a valuable experience, let’s be honest: they also cost a lot of time and money.

That’s why many recruiters are now turning to online networking events. Humble brag: This is our speciality! It gives you access to a wide range of candidates, without spending precious hours traveling or talking to people who aren’t a good fit. And we’re not just saying that because we offer an online-event platform; here at Brazen, we use online events to make hires, too.

Want a free demo of our online-event platform? Request one here.

4. Social media

Social media and recruiting seem to be a match made in heaven. Networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are great places to find potential employees, share job postings, and develop relationships with recruits. You can also encourage your employees to recruit people from their own networks.

Even more importantly, studies show people recruited via social media are more likely to be hired, and stay on longer than candidates found via other methods. This is one of the quickest, easiest and most effective ways to update your recruitment practices.

5. Big data

Though it may sound like something out a sci-fi movie, big data is a real tool that’s making recruiters’ jobs easier.

Instead of searching through the filing cabinet to find potential candidates, hiring managers are using specialized computer programs to analyze thousands of applications and resumes, filtering them by skills and qualifications — after which it’s your job to pick the winners. This means better candidates and a more enjoyable job for you!

6. Other effective digital tools

In addition to specialized recruiting software, plenty of other digital tools are now helping recruiters do their job better.

Some popular tools include SurveyMonkey (for assessing candidates on specific subjects), writing tests (to make sure the candidates really want the job), and Google Hangouts (to highlight job openings and engage with potential candidates).

7. Unique company-specific policies

Some companies are really going out on a limb, forging entirely new recruitment paths. They’re experimenting to see what works for them, and in the process, crafting their own unique hiring practices.

For example, online retail giant Zappos (which we mentioned doesn’t use job titles), no longer posts job openings. Instead, they encourage wannabe employees to network with recruiters on their own private social network. Tech company Automattic requires all potential hires to audition with the company, during which they do actual work and are paid $25/hour. Around 40% of applicants make the final cut.

Over the past decade, technology has transformed the world of recruiting, and it shows no signs of stopping. Through it all, however, the special skill possessed by all great recruiters remains: the ability to see through all the tweets, jargon and interview questions to find someone who’s truly a great fit for the company.

Have you tried any of these innovative recruitment techniques at your company?

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist. Follow Ryan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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The post 7 Innovative Ways Recruiters are Attracting Top Talent appeared first on Brazen Life.

Don’t fret, though: there are ways around these challenges. You just have to be innovative. Since you’re in the startup world, that shouldn’t be a problem for you!

Here are four common recruiting difficulties startups face — and how to fix them: (Click here to tweet this list.)

1. You can’t offer huge salaries or benefits

If you don’t have a lot of money for huge salaries or rockstar benefits packages, you’re going to have to offer perks and make your company a destination, a place people want to work for over other companies.

Follow this Geekwire advice: “The true art of recruiting is combining knowledge of the company’s unique culture [to the candidate’s personal goals] so that both parties succeed and prosper together.”

First, focus on making your company a place that people will be happy to work in the long term. Emphasizing a collaborative work environment and an open-minded culture may set you apart from bigger companies. Make it clear you’re willing to discuss perks like stock options and flexible vacation time.

Then try to offer some sort of benefits package, even if it’s not the most comprehensive one around. If you don’t want to handle the intricacies yourself, use a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like TriNet to sponsor and administer benefits and a company like Zenefits to handle the details.

2. You don’t have the budget for multiple job boards or a dedicated recruiter

You may not have a recruiting budget, but you have something even better: your network. And networking is the most important way to successfully recruit startup talent.

This is one great reason it’s worth building a strong social media and email presence for your company — you can use those channels for recruiting. If people are already connected to the company, they probably respect what you do and might be interested in working with you.

As a small company, you have the added advantage of being able to hire quickly. While more established companies may take months to finalize an offer, you’ll know pretty quickly whether someone is right for you and be able to make decisions without a lot of red tape. Use this to your benefit, and present an offer within several weeks of meeting a candidate — job seekers always appreciate that.

And don’t forget: your team has a network, too!

As recruiter Hong Quan says, “It’s everyone’s job to grow the company.” Let your team know who you’re looking for, and maybe even offer small bonuses (or just lots of thank yous!) for successful hires.

The most important thing? Don’t wait until you desperately need to find someone to fill a position — that’s too late. Always be networking, and always be recruiting.

3. You don’t have a lot of time to recruit new employees

Recruiting can be time-consuming, especially when you’re looking to bring in top talent. It takes time to look for candidates, screen them, and tend to the dozens of emails you’ll likely receive when you post an open position.

That’s why we created an online recruiting platform — to save recruiters (and other people connectors like alumni leaders) time and money. Like many of our clients, we use our own event platform to recruit for our company because it allows us to chat one-on-one with candidates right from our own office. It has that personal touch, but without driving to meetings or setting up lots of candidate calls.

This lets our whole team jump into an online event and chat with dozens of candidates in one or two hours. We all see average ratings for each candidate, and we can make decisions on who to bring in for an interview based on unbiased data. It’s also nice to have our entire team weigh in on the hiring process, so everyone has a stake in the new employee.

4. You’re not a big-name tech company

How can you compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world? By appealing to the hopes and desires of the candidate.

As Paypal co-founder, Peter Thiel, says: a “talented person will join your startup because your startup is working on an interesting and important problem.”

By showing the candidate how she’ll be directly involved in solving a problem, and changing the world, you’ll be able to “engage in conversation that transcends job requisitions, company culture, and compensation.”

You might also highlight that the candidate will have more input and reach at a growing company, serving as a big fish in a little pond rather than the other way around. Remember, you’re not just selling a job — “You are selling a bold vision and an exciting experience.”

What other difficulties have you faced while recruiting for your startup? How have you solved them?

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist. Follow Ryan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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The post 4 Recruiting Difficulties Startups Face and How to Fix Them appeared first on Brazen Life.

It’s no surprise that as technology advances, we’re spending more time online — and less time socializing offline. Even when we are offline, we often have our eyes on a smartphone.

Guess what’s finally catching up with our online lifestyle? Networking. (Click here to tweet this thought.) We still have the nametags and handshakes in crowded conference rooms and bars, but online events are becoming increasingly popular, making it easier for companies, universities and organizations to bring their members together regardless of geographical distance.

And it’s only getting better! Here are four reasons online events are truly the future of networking:

1. Online networking events let us blend online with “real” life

Isn’t that what we all want? For online experiences to foster real-life relationships?

Mobile devices, texting and social media have blurred the lines between the physical and the online. Being present is still important, but our online interactions make it far more convenient to show up and interact.

Most in-person events seem to attract two types of people: those who miss half the event because they’re called away to respond to phone calls or messages, and those who have their heads buried in their devices most of the time. The latter group is already exchanging ideas and feedback online through hashtags, email threads and Facebook comments — so why not take that online chatter and bring it to the forefront?

2. Online connections are easier to make — and to maintain

Social media has redefined networking by allowing us to connect more easily to people we know. Online events are an extension of that trend, but allow us to find new, receptive people to add to our networks.

Adding someone on Twitter or LinkedIn is pretty easy. But converting conversations into valuable contact during a physical networking event is difficult. When we start to rub elbows, our memories often fail us. Paper business cards flow freely, but are easily lost or forgotten. Asking someone to “bump” phones usually brings strange looks, but it’s not even as awkward as trying to type someone’s email address into your phone without botching the spelling.

When events take place online, all the information you could possibly want is available in the cloud. Plus, connecting on LinkedIn or other social networks feels more natural and can be more meaningful after an initial online interaction.

3. Online events are accessible and inclusive

We’re so used to face-to-face interaction that it seems hard to replace. But online events can make it easier for participants to exchange information without ever leaving their homes or offices. In that way, online networking events are not only less expensive for companies, organizations and individuals; they also offer a better return on investment.

Potential participants are no longer discouraged by travel costs or tight schedules. If you have an Internet connection, you can attend from your home, office or even the road. For both hosts and attendees, taking events online can return major savings.

4. We value online interactions more than ever

As more of our interactions take place online, we’re gaining more trust in our networks. We’re building personal brands instead of hiding behind screen names. In fact, you often need that online brand to move forward with your career.

As a result, the value of online events is increasing. One survey reported that people were even willing to pay more to attend an online event than they would for a physical one. And when people actually want to attend networking events, that’s where you should show up, too.

What do you think? Would you rather attend an online or in-person networking event?

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

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The post 4 Reasons Online Events Are the Future of Networking appeared first on Brazen Life.

We’ve come a long way from crowded hotel ballrooms and folders stuffed with resumes. More and more recruiters are using online events to find qualified candidates for the positions they want to fill. Suddenly, your best candidates are all in the right place at the right time, which means you can save time finding them.

If you haven’t caught onto this trend yet, it’s time to add online networking to your recruiting schedule or replace some of your in-person events with online ones. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Online networking allows you to go beyond your social media strategy and promote one-on-one engagement with potential hires. Even better, the convenience of online networking will win you over in a flash.

Not convinced? Here are seven reasons to try online networking to fill openings at your company:

1. It’s easy and convenient

Forget booking travel, schlepping boxes of swag and getting mediocre sleep on hotel mattresses. Online networking events allow you to connect with candidates without ever leaving your office — or even your house.

2. It’s the best way to meet qualified candidates

The candidates you’ll find at online networking events are tech-savvy and willing to try new methods of communication. Now, aren’t those exactly the kind of people you’re hoping to hire? We thought so.

3. You’ll meet more candidates without spending all day on your feet

Avoid getting stuck chatting with a candidate who just doesn’t fit your mission. Use the timed structure of online networking events to your advantage. With just a few minutes to connect with each candidate, you (and your potential hires) will be forced to get down to business.

4. It’s easy to access candidates

Online networking puts qualified candidates at your fingertips. You may even find you have access to a wider range of candidates — including those who may not be able to sneak out of their current jobs to meet you or attend an in-person info session.

5. Online networking events can promote your brand

Ready to recruit? When you host an online networking event, your company’s visual branding will be front and center. Candidates will get a taste of what your brand is all about just by attending the event.

6. Your candidates will be at ease

Job fairs and recruiting events can be nerve-wracking at best (and social anxiety nightmares at worst). Online networking takes the pressure off attendees, who can then focus on what matters most: their qualifications and experiences.

7. It shows off your innovative side

Look at you, using the latest technology to reach potential employees through the Web. You know the power of the old-fashioned meet-and-greet, but you’re willing to embrace new methods as well. Candidates will appreciate your willingness to experiment and admire your accessibility. And guess who might also be impressed? Your boss. That can never be a bad thing.

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

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The post 7 Reasons the Smartest Recruiters are Flocking to Online Networking Events appeared first on Brazen Life.

If you’ve ever tried recruiting via online career fairs, you know the value of using this new technology to find the best candidates. Just like in-person recruiting, online recruiting is most effective if you have a strategy, a plan for evaluating candidates and getting the most out of your time at the event.

Since we’ve run hundreds of events over the last few years, we’ve seen how top recruiters use online events to find and entice the exact type of candidates they’re looking for. Here are a few strategies that consistently work well, ideas you can apply at your next online recruiting event:

1. Talk to as many candidates as possible

To find the candidates best suited for the positions you’re recruiting for, talk with as many people as you can. This is your chance to get a lot of quality interviews under your belt in a short period of time!

Just think: no need to walk the last candidate to the elevators, take them to lunch before you even know whether you click, or even waste time on 10 minutes of small talk. In fact, at Brazen, we see value in time limits, with eight minutes as the sweet spot. That’s just enough time for you to see whether each candidate is a good fit, and enough time for the candidate to want the job — but short enough to make sure you don’t miss your lunch break.

2. Prepare standard questions and answers

Before the event, open Microsoft Word or Google Docs and type out answers you expect to use frequently and questions you think you’ll ask more than once. When you’re ready, copy and paste them into the chat window. By having these questions and answers ready, you’ll be able to speed up the conversation and move onto what really matters for hiring.

3. Break the ice

Just because the event is online doesn’t mean everyone’s less nervous than in-person events. Use the chat to put candidates at ease and share fun facts about your organization. You can even add these ice breakers to your file of prepared questions and answers so you’re not scrambling to come up with ideas.

Something like, “Thank you for participating today! I’m as happy to meet you as I am on Doughnut Day here at XYZ Corp,” followed up with, “What’s your favorite type of doughnut?” makes interacting with you less intimidating for the candidate.

Plus, the interviews will go more smoothly when everyone’s relaxed and able to present their best self, which means you’re more likely to walk away with the perfect candidate in your virtual file.

4. Take advantage of the platform’s tools

Every online career fair platform has built-in tools to make recruiting easier. Take a few minutes before the event to familiarize yourself with them so you can get as much as possible out of the time you have with candidates.

Brazen’s platform, for example, offers ratings for candidates, notes and a dashboard. Take a moment after talking to each candidate to give them a rating between one and five stars and jot down your thoughts; those notes will come in handy later.

When the event is over, use those ratings to choose which candidates to follow up with. The dashboard makes it easy to identify the top candidates, and your notes will help you strengthen your initial connection when you follow up.

5. Use digital content to make your brand stand out

Adapt your promotional materials to the medium. At an online event, you want solid digital content that informs the job seeker about your organization and sets you apart from everyone else. Videos, PDF downloads and employee testimonials are all excellent options.

6. Have your employee ambassadors participate, too

Online career fairs make it easy to get others on your team involved because they can participate without leaving the office. If you’re hiring for a specific position, ask your top talent to help recruit. As a bonus, being able to talk with current employees is appealing to candidates. If you’re hiring engineers, for example, letting the candidates talk with your top engineers can go a long way toward bringing your favorite applicants on board.

7. Follow up

Just because the event is over doesn’t mean your work is done. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Don’t forget to follow up with your top candidates! While some recruiters might sign off from the event having added a new member to their team, most will need to follow up to seal the deal.

If you spoke with a quality candidate who isn’t a good fit for the positions you’re recruiting for at the moment, stay in touch. You never know when a position will open that would utilize that person’s skills. Use the data you collect during the event to populate your talent community — and keep them informed of new openings or other online events.

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

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The post 7 Tips for Recruiting the Perfect Candidate at Your Next Online Career Fair appeared first on Brazen Life.

Lucky for you, quality online events, including ones we run on the Brazen Careerist platform, are easy to navigate, even if you’re a first-time user. But you’ll still want to do certain things to maximize the short time you’ll have to chat with each employer or participant.

As one of the leaders in the online recruiting and networking space, we want to help participants walk away from online events feeling like you’ve met your goals, whether that’s to get your foot in the door at your dream company or connect with a fellow alum from your university.

Here’s what we find works best for our participants:

1. Dive right in when the chat begins

Don’t wait for the other person to begin the chat — introduce yourself right away! At most of our events, each text-based chat session lasts around eight minutes. Each of those minutes is an opportunity to strengthen the bond between you and the person on the other end, so be bold and start the conversation right away.

2. Prepare your intro ahead of time

Write a brief introduction for yourself before the event begins, one you can copy and paste at the beginning of each chat. Three sentences or so about you, your experience and your goals should do the trick. That will keep you from spending the first few minutes thinking about how to best introduce yourself, and help you put your best foot forward right from the beginning.

3. Plan a few key questions

Come up with several questions you can use to start the conversation. Keep in mind that open-ended questions tend to elicit the most insightful responses. For example, if you find yourself stuck for something to talk about, asking “why” often sparks interesting answers and conversations.

4. Bring your positive attitude

No one wants to hire or even be friends with someone who will bring negative energy into their life. Even though the person on the other end of the line can’t see you smile, they will be able to sense your attitude, and you want to come across as positive and optimistic. Don’t complain about your job or your boss; instead, frame those negatives as what you hope will be positives in your next position.

5. Do your research

Especially if you’re attending an online career fair (as opposed to a networking event), make sure you know which employers will be there and what skills they might look for. At our events, you can log in ahead of time, prioritize who you’ll want to chat with and research those organizations. While virtual career fairs tend to be more relaxed than in-person fairs, you’ll still want to make a great first impression and show you’ve done your research.

6. Avoid casual abbreviations

For text-based platforms like Brazen’s, you’ll type to communicate — but that doesn’t mean you should lean on abbreviations like LOL and ROFL. Put your most professional foot forward, just like you’d do in person, and you’ll be far more likely to hear from those hiring managers down the line. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

7. Have your resume ready

You might not need your resume for a networking event, but if you connect with employers at a career fair, they’ll likely ask for a (virtual) copy. Update your resume before the event just like you’d do for a job interview, and have it on hand. Employers are always looking to hire people who come prepared, and this is one easy way to show that you care about working for them.

8. Follow up after the event

After the online event, be sure to connect with the people you met. One of the best places to keep that relationship alive is LinkedIn, where the other person will be able to learn more details about your background and easily get in touch down the road if an opportunities arises. We know how important this follow-up is to your networking experience, so Brazen’s platform makes it easy to connect after the event by saving conversations and contact details from each chat.

If you’re keen to join us for upcoming virtual events, sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list!

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

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The post 8 Tips for Making Meaningful Connections at Virtual Networking Events and Online Career Fairs appeared first on Brazen Life.

Ryan Healy here, Co-Founder & COO of Brazen Careerist. I want to let you know about some exciting developments at Brazen.

As many of you know, we launched in 2008 as a tight-knit network of bloggers writing about careers, salaries, work and everyday life as a young professional. We then quickly grew into a networking site for professionals to discuss, connect, grow and learn from each other through conversation. Hundreds of thousands of you made real connections that turned into real friendships, shared your experiences with a supportive community of peers, established and built your professional brands, and generally had fun in an online environment that was built for you, by you.

You might have noticed over the past 12 months that the number of virtual career fairs and recruiting events we host is increasing, and that’s because more and more employers are asking us to help connect them with job seekers through our virtual events (which grew out of Network Roulette through the help of all of you, our community!). Registration, participation and the number of hires made from these events continues  to climb, and the feedback from job seekers and recruiters alike has been incredible.

After more than a year of testing and learning, we’re committing to this new and unique way of creating the right connections and conversations through our virtual events. With this new focus, we have made the decision to shift our attention away from the social networking portion of our site.

When we make the switch, we will officially “retire” the Brazen Careerist professional networking site. What this means is that if you are a member of the social network, your profile, groups, conversations, fans, trending discussions, private messages and your fan feed will no longer be available.

This does not mean Brazen is going away. In fact, it means just the opposite: we’re here for you more than ever, we’re simply shifting our attention to the products that provide the most value to you and to our clients. The community will still be alive and well, and we sincerely hope you remain a part of it.

Our core communication and engagement will shift from the social network to the Brazen Life blog. We have an awesome team of writers and editors creating great career content every day, and you can always find interesting debate and conversation in the comment section.

Thanks to the foundation we’ve built here, within the community, our content is now reaching more people than ever. Outlets like The Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, AOL Jobs, and Business Insider all want to share the “Brazen” voice with their audiences. We will also continue providing valuable skills and career training through our bootcamps and our soon-to-be-released partner courses.

If you want to save any of the information from your Brazen profile, you have the next two weeks to do so. Please note that any personal information you submitted as part of your profile will no longer be visible on this website and will not be used for any purpose. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@brazencareerist.com if you have any questions.

I’m incredibly excited to take this next step in the evolution of Brazen. Stay tuned for many more great products, enhancements and updates in the coming months.

Again, thank you for being a valued member of our community. Your continued support of Brazen means the world to us.

Cheers,

Ryan Healy
Co-Founder & COO
Brazen Careerist, Inc.

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The post Exciting Changes at Brazen Careerist: More Chances to Get Recruited appeared first on Brazen Life.

A quick look at the jobs data will tell you that while there is still high unemployment, companies of all sizes are hiring.

This is great news: the recession is finally coming to an end, but the catch is that most companies are hiring for hard-to-find skills like software developers, data scientists, social media strategists, digital marketers, and user experience designers. Each of these skills is very specific and not possessed by most of the population, which explains why so many unemployed people are out there despite so many open positions available.

The fact of the matter is that there will never be enough talented people who have the exact skills that companies need, because technology is changing at lightning fast speed and skills that were relevant five years ago (or even two years ago) are often outdated today. Every time a new platform comes along (think Facebook, IPhone, Adwords), old important skills become obsolete and new skills that often never even existed before become critical, and as we all know technology is not slowing down.

Nurturing, retaining talent more important than ever

If this rapid pace of innovation continues, we will soon see industries being disrupted and new types of jobs created every other week. The ramifications of this on the workplace are enormous, and every talent management professional, executive and entrepreneur needs to be aware of how this affects their company.

First off, the need for recruiting, nurturing and retaining the “best of the best” talent is more important than ever. It is the single most important function in a company. Most of us understand this already, but more and more even the executive suite in major corporations are beginning to realize that they can no longer ignore the “soft stuff” like HR, talent management, and succession planning.

This “soft stuff” is all about people — and people are what ultimately determine if organizations win or lose. Whether you’re a massive company who needs to continue operating at maximum capacity, or you’re a three-person startup who needs to innovate and iterate at rapid speed to beat your competition, the people you hire and don’t hire, the people you promote, and the people you let go, will ultimately determine your fate.

Second, the definition of “talent” has fundamentally changed. Talent used to be someone who had years of experience in a particular field or a particular skill set. But when the skills you need to win change every other month, you need a new type of talent. You need someone who knows what skills will win, and who is motivated and savvy enough to learn those skills on their own.

The changing face of “talent”

This new type of talent may be from a tier 2 or tier 3 school, and they may not have any experience in your industry, or in some cases, any experience at all. As someone who is growing a team, you need to create your own definition of talent, identify the traits that they need, and hire folks who fit the bill.

For example, at Brazen, we’re always looking for people who are hungry, flexible, honest and most importantly, curious. I know that someone who has all of these traits will succeed.

If the first experiment doesn’t work, they will try the next experiment. And while they’re in the middle of that experiment, they’ll be writing down ideas for experiments three, four and five. One way or another, someway, somehow, they will figure it out. I also know that someone who is constantly curious and motivated will never be able to rest until they have learned the next critical skill.

When technology changes so fast, and things go in and out of focus, the only way to stay ahead and stay relevant is to stay educated, and to never stop learning. To me, that’s what a start-up is all about, and those are the types of traits we look for when we’re hiring.

As technology continues to outpace education, and new skills become critical overnight, the true “talent” will be the people who stay hungry, stay curious and never stop learning. The most successful organizations will be the ones who identify, hire and retain these special people.

“Talent” may not look like it used to, but it is without a doubt more important than ever before.

If you’re a recruiter or HR professional, check out Brazen Careerist’s free one-hour webinar on April 10, when Ryan will discuss how to win the war for Gen Y talent. Sign up here!

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The post Why Recruiting the Right Talent Matters Now More Than Ever appeared first on Brazen Life.

The idea behind the app is to give you 1) a way to easily visualize your personal profile information; 2) a unique and creative way to show an employer who you are and what you bring to the table so you can stand out from the crowd; and 3) career feedback and advice that highlights your strengths and areas you can improve.

Infographics are all the buzz right now, and there’s good reason for that. An infographic is all about clear, concise, visual communication. An effective infographic can break down complicated stats, data and ideas into a simple, easy-to-read document.  Major brands are jumping on the bandwagon and creating infographics to communicate big data and big ideas, and with our new Facebook app, we let you do the same for your resume.

The best part is, we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you. As long as you have complete and up-to-date LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, you can automatically create an infographic resume with the app. If you realize you need to update your information (like specialties, skills or honors on LinkedIn), just go ahead and update them, and refresh your infographic.  For all the fun details, you can check out the FAQ here.

As a bonus, a personal Career Portfolio is automatically created as well. Our algorithm scans your profile info on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to determine your strengths. Those strengths are then given to you as badges with explanations of how you earned them. You can also see other badges you can earn over time with clear explanations on how to get them.  Turns out I’m a Schmoozer because I have more than 500 connections on LinkedIn, a Loyal Colleague because I’ve been at Brazen for 3+ years and almost a Social Media Ninja because I have more than the required 400 twitter followers, but less than 800 Facebook friends.

One of our key goals with this app is to strike a healthy balance between fun and practical. In this vein, you’ll also notice that you can easily export and download your infographic resume to a pdf with one click to share it with employers. Also, your unique URL will live at http://Brazen.me/u/yourfacebookid (check out the FAQ section to learn how to make sure your URL is customized to you and not a number string), so when you share this with anyone, the URL will be short, sweet and personally branded.

Some of my other favorite features include your Career Success Score (Mine is a 65, so apparently I still have some work to do), which is calculated by the number of badges you’ve earned or partially earned and is out of 100, and the Top Schools and Companies leaderboard (Penn State isn’t cracking the list, any Nittany Lions out there? Help!).

Resumes are boring, but managing and growing your career doesn’t have to be. We’ve put a lot of time, effort and late nights into building an application that can actually help you think about and improve your career in a number of ways, and be fun at the same time. Give it a shot for yourself and let us know what you think.

As always, you can continue to count on Brazen to push the boundaries when it comes to your professional life, so stay tuned for more engaging products, interesting content and important updates to help your career in the coming months.

Ryan Healy is the co-founder of Brazen Careerist where he is the COO. He was recently named one of Worth Magazine’s 20 Entrepreneurs To Watch.

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So, what should you be worried about now, while you’re in your 20s?

Learning and discovery.

As a recent college grad, your most important job is to learn as much as humanly possible, gain as many critical and desirable skills as you can, and discover what you’re good at and what you love to do every day.

The old model for managing your young professional career was to start on the bottom rung, put your head down, pay attention and get a few promotions. Eventually you’d work your way up the ladder and all would be good – you’d retire with your gold watch after 30 years. That’s not the case anymore.

Today, the safest job you can have is to be self employed. If you’re self employed, you have complete control, you’re not at the mercy of a corporation. Today, the most successful young professionals have a full-time job, a side project, and a commitment to constantly learning new skills that will lead to countless money making opportunities in the future.

The most at-risk young professionals are going through the motions. They’re working 9 to 5 at a single job, leaving any kind of learning and work at the office and never thinking about the skills they are acquiring. These are the people who are also worrying about saving money instead of investing in learning new skills. When downsizings come, everyone’s at risk of losing their job, but the people who are going through the motions are the ones who will be in big trouble when they’re cut.

In Thomas Friedman’s interesting New York Times piece, “The Startup of You,” he points out that the top companies are now smaller and more nimble than ever. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are hiring considerably fewer people than major companies were even 20 years ago. On top of that, everything can be automated, and companies aren’t hesitating to automate. Bottom line: if you don’t have a unique skill set, you’re in big trouble.

Friedman says that professionals today need to think of themselves as a startup. I love this analogy because when successful startups first get off the ground, they are obsessed with learning and discovery while they try to find a business model – just like a young professional needs to be obsessed with learning and discovery while they try to find a career path.

What Friedman misses in his article, however, is that for the most successful people, your twenties are the time where you really need to think of your career as a startup. Your later years are when your career should be much more like a fully functioning company. When you’re 40 or 50, you should know what your good at, you should absolutely be worried about making and saving money as much as possible and you should be a well oiled machine. You want to be like Apple or Google at this point, you don’t want to be like a startup!

Here’s the thing. If you don’t start learning and discovering your skills, strengths, likes and dislikes in your twenties, you’re going to be behind the eight ball. If you take the old advice and spend your twenties worrying about things like saving a lot of money and what you’re going to do when you get out of work at 5 pm, then you’ll probably be worrying about that 401K and that savings account for the next 50 years. If you spend your time learning and discovering the right career choice for you, working your ass off to make it a reality, and if you always keep your eyes open for new opportunities, I guarantee that you will watch your savings account magically grow beyond your wildest dreams.

Ryan Healy is the co-founder of Brazen Careerist where he is the COO. He was recently named one of Worth Magazine’s 20 Entrepreneurs To Watch.

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We’ve learned a lot over the past year. Above all we’ve learned that in order to provide you, our members, and our millions of future members with a truly valuable resource, we must be three things: 1) highly educational, 2) incredibly useful, and 3) totally live. Let me explain.

Brazen will teach you how to achieve your career goals, fast

Today’s higher education system is broken.  Students spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get an education that leaves them with a nice looking piece of paper and not much else.  This is especially true when it comes to parlaying that education into a career.

College majors don’t teach things like: how to effectively market online, how to create a real social media strategy for your company, how to generate sales leads and reach new potential customers, and how to manage a team of engineers to create a truly transformative product.

Brazen will fill in these holes. We will offer webinars, e-books, bootcamps, Facebook apps, and premium content from our hand-selected network of experts, all with an eye toward educating you on how to succeed in today’s workplace.  We’re starting with the Brazen Life blog, expert interviews and webinars, and our soon-to-be-released Facebook app.

Brazen will put you in live conversations with recruiters to help you find your dream job

Online recruiting is broken. Employers are inundated with unqualified resumes, professionals blindly apply to jobs that are re-posted on dozens of sites to drive eyeballs through click arbitrage, and the chances of even hearing back from a company you applied to are slim to none.

The problem starts at the very core – job postings are not the answer.  They are a relic from a time long passed. We are beginning to solve this problem with our Virtual Recruiting Events. The events give you five minutes of uninterrupted time with recruiters from companies that interest you.  It’s an opportunity for you to show your personality, explain why you are the perfect hire and make a great impression.

You just don’t get the same effect when you click “apply” and submit a resume online. If a recruiter doesn’t get back to you after the event, it sucks, but at least you know that your resume didn’t get lost in the big black hole. We’ve already had a number of companies participate in these events and we’ve helped many people find their next job or internship in the past couple of months.

Brazen will connect you live with your peers to help you build your professional network

We’ve believed it for years, and now that Sean Parker said it, others are jumping on the bandwagon too: the future of social is live.  At Brazen, we also know that the future of professional networking is live. Serendipity is a major part of our lives, and it’s often where the real magic happens. Simply put, you never know who will help you achieve your career goals. Brazen is facilitating serendipitous connections between professionals through our live Network Roulette events.

There are few things more powerful than an uninterrupted conversation between two people.  The things you learn about the other person when there are no distractions allow you to think about all the ways you may be able to collaborate. On Brazen you can do this without leaving your house or office.  Network Roulette is not replacing offline meetups, but we are providing you with an extremely useful and efficient alternative.

This is just the beginning, so stay tuned.

—–

Ryan Healy is the co-founder and COO of Brazen Careerist. He was recently named one of Worth Magazine’s 20 entrepreneurs to watch.

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The post The Future of Brazen: Highly Educational, Incredibly Useful and Totally Live appeared first on Brazen Life.

I also had to smile and nod my way through a handful of conversations with service providers looking for sales leads. Don’t get me wrong, all of the service providers were nice people. But, Brazen Careerist is not in the market for business loans or internal software; we’re in the market for members, funding, and friendly entrepreneurial connections.

When it was all said and done, I spent about one hour driving to the event, one hour talking with service providers, one hour talking with entrepreneurs and investors, and one hour driving home. The next day I followed up with 3 people and came down with a serious case of bronchitis. I guess I deserved it for pushing too hard.

The point is, networking is hard, time-consuming and scary. Today, we’re launching Network Roulette to help make the networking process easy, fast, and most importantly, fun. (And maybe we can even prevent a few unnecessary cases of bronchitis in the process.)

If you haven’t been to one of our beta events, here’s a quick summary of how Network Roulette works.

After answering two simple questions: What are you looking for? And What are you providing? You’re randomly matched for a 3 minute conversation to determine if the person on the other side can help your network.  After the networking session, you can then choose who to follow up with through your network dashboard.

That’s it. A dead simple online speed networking service that helps you build a network in your pajamas or from your cubicle, and lets you have fun while you’re doing it.

We’ve had a lot of product releases since launching Brazen back in March 2008, but I’ve never been more excited for a launch. I could literally feel the excitement during the beta events. One person told me they haven’t felt this way about a service since logging into Facebook for the first time, another even told me that Network Roulette is the future of networking.

If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. We have themed networking events every Tuesday and Thursday evening, but you can stop by anytime you’d like to randomly connect with strangers. I’ve already found a couple of people that I plan to approach when Brazen is hiring, and I’ve helped others connect with job leads and reporters. Who knows, you may just find the person to help bring your career to the next level.

Still want to know more about Network Roulette? Check out the video:

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The post Introducing Network Roulette: Networking Made Easy appeared first on Brazen Life.

We’ve also taken our first step towards a real-time experience by utilizing the PubSubHubbub protocol, which allows us to import your new posts immediately. It works for most of the big-name blog platforms that you all use, including: WordPress, Blogger and TypePad.

Our goal is to let you show the world what you’re really all about by going beyond your traditional resume and sharing your top ideas in one place. We launched Social Resumes last month to make this possible and to make your everyday use of social media truly useful for your career.

With today’s real-time feed management launch, you now have the ability to import even more career-related ideas and conversations, and then curate the content that best represents your professional brand by adding it to your Social Resume. And of course, it can all be done in real-time.

To get started, I recommend that you check out your new feed management page. If you’ve been waiting all this time to import your 2nd blog because we only allowed you to import one at a time, you’re welcome! If you think that it might be relevant to import a feed from Twitter or LinkedIn, give it shot, but use caution! We highly recommend that you only import feeds that are; a) professional in nature and b) don’t “pollute” your activity stream with content that is not relevant to your Brazen Careerist network or to your career.

This is also a good opportunity to update or delete any feed URLs that you’re no longer using. If you notice any issues with your feeds, you can contact Ryan Paugh for community support.

In the meantime, enjoy these new tools. If you have any feedback leave a comment below or head over to the Community Feedback network and let us know what you think.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we integrated with PubSubhubbub and Superfeeder go read this excellent post by one of our developers, and the brains behind this new feed system, Blake Hall.

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The post Share Even More Ideas! Introducing Real-Time Feed Management appeared first on Brazen Life.

A New Sidebar

The most obvious change we made was redesigning the sidebar. Whether you come to Brazen Careerist for the blog posts, networks, jobs, events or all of the above, you can now customize your Brazen experience by hiding or expanding each section of the sidebar to fit your needs.

You’ll also notice a dropdown displaying your 10 most frequented networks so you can easily find the conversations that are relevant to you or you can  quickly browse through15 featured blog posts for your reading pleasure.

Content Specific Search

The next feature we launched is a content specific search. We’ve been using Google custom search for a while now, and a Brazen specific search was long overdue. However, we decided to take search a step further and let you filter your search for networks, people, companies, jobs or blog posts directly from the header. This new search feature should help you navigate Brazen quickly and easily, and discover content and people that you never even knew existed on the site.

The Brazen Bar & Brzn.me

The third feature we rolled out is the official Brazen bar. When you click on a job post or an external blog post link, you’ll be sent to the original site, but with a Brazen bar that lets you easily share the content with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. When you share the URL, we’ll automatically produce a shortened URL beginning with http://brzn.me. As we work towards optimizing our User Interface to drive more eyeballs and traffic to your blog posts, the bar and URL shortener will become even more feature rich and useful. For now, it’s a great way to share Brazen content with all of your networks.

Hopefully you enjoy these new features and they improve your Brazen experience. As always, if you have any questions, comments or feedback, leave a comment below or post a message in our Brazen Community Feedback network.

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Today, we’ve completely opened up, and taken a huge leap forward by allowing you to manage your entire professional identity from Brazen Careerist. You can now share your ideas and professional conversations with your contacts on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, or you can keep them in house by sending updates to multiple Brazen Careerist networks with one click.

Managing both a personal and professional online identity is a hard balance to strike. You could end up spending hours a day jumping from network to network to carefully craft your image. Unfortunately we’re all pressed for time, and this isn’t always possible. Our hope is that by providing you with a dead simple integration with the big 3 social networks you can continue to exchange ideas on Brazen Careerist, but you can now decide what kind of content is more appropriate to share with your personal network, what content is more professional in nature, and what content happens to be a little bit of both.

To take things a step further, we made some big improvements to the site design and overall user experience. You no longer have to go from network to network to leave comments. You can send a comment to up to 5 networks directly from your Fan Feed. You can also reply to comments, tweets or blog posts, and even “recommend” content directly from your Fan Feed.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for these features to finally be live. The best part is, this is just a prelude to the next big release, but you’re going to have to wait until March for that one. For now, go check out the changes on your own, or visit our informational page to learn all the juicy details.

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Linkedin started the concept of Social Recruiting when they launched in 2003, and now it’s the buzz of the recruiting world. ERE just hosted a social recruiting conference to discuss the do’s and don’ts of social recruiting. Of course, some of the hot topics are around whether Twitter, Facebook and blogs are a good way to recruit candidates, and if so how do you go about recruiting them?

Whether or not these sites can help you recruit talent is not really a question. Of course they can. But because these sites are not built for recruiting and do not offer products to aid the recruiting process, it’s not an easy task. There are hundreds of ways to source candidates through these networks and if you spend enough time on them, you’ll find the talent your organization is looking for.

Unfortunately, sorting through all of the crap on Facebook and making sense of the rapid fire tweets on Twitter to find the right candidates takes a ton of time. Considering most recruiters are hard pressed to find an extra second in their day, it can be difficult to justify giving social recruiting a try.

One thing a company could do is ask their recruiters to work more hours. Of course, this won’t work. Recruiters will leave for another company so they can have a life.

Another option might be to have social media specialists. Put your least experienced, most tech savvy recruiters in charge of social media and don’t have them bother with phone calls or emails. Again, probably not a good idea. Phone calls and emails still work; social media will not change this.

What you should do is listen to the advice from two recent posts by John Sullivan on ERE.net. The author tells companies to stop worrying about how to get recruiters to use social media for recruiting and instead get your recruiters to start thinking of themselves as managers and organizers, responsible for getting your employees on the front lines.

Sullivan says, “Social media erupted as tools to facilitate interaction, and interaction in too many aspects of one’s life can be time consuming and exhausting! Fortunately there is an answer to this problem: don’t do it alone. Use employees to build relationships, and then take advantage of those relationships!”

There are hundreds of millions of people on social networks, and each of your employees is probably connected to thousands of them. It’s already a proven fact that the number one source of new hires is referrals. If you want to improve your situation and attract top talent, your organization should be focused on how to get even more new hires through referrals.

When you really think about it, social media is built for this; it’s the ultimate referral tool. Social media is based on relationships, conversation and existing connections. When you have those things, the need for cold calls, random job postings and advanced search techniques goes way down.

If you really want to capitalize on “social recruiting,” figure out how to make each of your employees your #1 recruiter, than sit back and watch your successful new hires go through the roof.

For some great tips on how your organization can do this, check out John Sullivan’s most recent post on ERE.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Use Social Media to Make Every Employee a Recruiter appeared first on Brazen Life.

We rolled out an improvement to the fan feed that lets you follow all of the conversations going on in your groups. Before this release, your fan feed displayed what your fans were doing, but the only way to see all of your group activity was to go directly to the group or to receive an email notification. Now your fan feed displays all of the activity going on in your groups, even if you’re not a fan of every group member. We hope this allows the interesting group conversations to spread quickly across the site, making your groups even more interesting, timely and useful.

We’ve had multiple requests for new ways to see what’s going on across the network, and this release should be a good start. As we work on improving the overall usability of the site, we’ll be rolling out more features to enhance the conversation. If you have suggestions for new features or improvements feel free to leave a comment, or better yet, join the Brazen Careerist community feedback group.

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The post Follow Group Activity From Your Fan Feed appeared first on Brazen Life.

In a recent talk, Tony Hsieh, the CEO and founder of Zappos was asked about how the company manages work-life balance. Hsieh replied,

“For most companies (work-life balance) implies that work must suck so much you need a life on the outside. At Zappos we’re more focused on creating a lifestyle. We don’t think of it as one or the other. Most Zappos employees leave work and hang out with other Zappos employees.”

He’s right. While it’s usually done with good intentions, focusing on work-life balance is killing your corporate culture. Like Hsieh says, the mere term implies that work must be so terrible that you need to stop thinking about it the second you walk out the door. This was a great philosophy – in 1890. In the days of 8 hour shifts on an assembly line, everyone had work-life balance. When the machines shut down, there were no widgets to be made; you couldn’t work if you wanted to. And there was no point in dreaming about how to get the job done better or faster or how to beat the competition when the machine dictated everything you did. Its 2009 and things are different now. We live in a knowledge based world. The companies who dream, innovate and change the world are the ones that win. No one is making world changing innovations in 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week. Ideas come in your sleep and breakthroughs come at happy hours. Start-ups are doomed the second people start talking about work-life balance and begin thinking of each other as nothing more than “coworkers.” They need to be best friends, they need to work around the clock, or at least be thinking about work around the clock, and they need to kick and scream and fight together, just to survive. So start-ups create a culture where work is a lifestyle. Zappos is well past the start-up phase, but they’ve managed to do this too. Stop worrying about work-life balance or how to give people as much time off as possible, and start thinking about how to create an environment where people never want to take time off. Not because they’re scared or intimidated, but because they can’t think of anything in the world they would rather be doing than working with their peers and friends to achieve a common goal. The employees you really want aren’t looking for a job, they’re looking for a lifestyle. Create one for them.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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You might be thinking, why does Brazen Careerist keep changing what they’re doing? My response to that question is, we didn’t really have a choice. Over the past six months we’ve listened to the community and we’ve listened to the marketplace. And what they both keep telling us is that young professionals (Gen Y) are looking for a professional home on the internet.

On the community side, our groups feature has continued to take off and members now think of Brazen Careerist as a full scale social network. New members are joining every day and engagement on the site is increasing dramatically.

When I read the bios on some of these new profiles, I’m blown away. We have successful entrepreneurs, marketers, freelancers, IT workers, and more. And they’re all driven, motivated and accomplished. Our members now think of us as a professional network, and it became glaringly obvious that we had to give them what they wanted.

On the other side, the marketplace needs a young professional social network. Here’s why.

Facebook is home base. We all know this. Facebook is where you share your personal information, send messages to established offline friends, and browse through photos from the good ol’ days of college. Facebook is not where you meet new people, build a network, and have work related conversations.

Linkedin is the dominant player in the online career network space. It’s where you should have a professional profile because it’s where your boss and your future boss probably hang out. But the average age on Linkedin is 40, and the profiles emphasize experience – something people in their twenties are a little short on.

When we looked at all of these factors, we realized, there’s a huge niche that needs to be filled – a professional network for Gen Y – and our community that started as a little blog aggregator is in the perfect position to fill that niche. So, with this launch, that’s what we’ve done.

First of all, we gave the site a complete facelift, improved the user experience and made just about everything customizable to you – the way a social networking site should be. But most importantly, we completely revamped our profiles to emphasize ideas over experience. The new profiles aggregate everything you say or do on Brazen Careerist. From blog posts to group chatter to profile updates, the new profiles display all of this activity in a feed to show that your experience and background aren’t the only indicators of success. Your ideas and potential matter too.

The other part of our profiles showcase standard resume information including work experience and education to give a complete picture of who you are and what you have accomplished – even if it’s not 20+ years of experience in a single field.

On a personal note, the past few months have been crazy at the Brazen Careerist office. We’ve pulled countless all nighters, we’ve had our fair share of arguments, we’ve had plenty of great discussions, and Photis, our lead developer even managed to lock himself out of his office an hour before our final load balance test, only to pull a MacGyver and climb through the roof to get to his computer. (This was hilarious, you can see photos here) All in all, it’s been everything a pre-launch period is supposed to be and we’ve all had a great time doing it.

So please, check out the site, create a profile if you don’t have one and let us know what you think because community feedback is what made the site what it is today, and it’s what will make the site great in the coming months!

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The post We’re Live! Check Out the New Brazen Careerist Right Now. appeared first on Brazen Life.

Groups give our community the ability to create whatever content they want to see on the site. For a small site, we have a lot of user engagement and we can’t express how much we appreciate that. But like any true startup, we’re never satisfied. So the team came to a decision that it was time to put more control in the hands of our community, and groups was the best way to do this.

Groups have three main features. The first is chatter. Chatter is quick thoughts, ideas, relevant links, questions etc. Borrowing from Twitter, we decided to make chatter short and sweet, so 140 characters are all you get.

The next feature is events. Group members can create an event, including time and place, and an address with a Google map so attendees don’t get lost on their way. We anticipate that people in the location based groups will use this feature to organize tweet-ups, Brazen meet-ups and any other networking functions. But it’s also just as easy to organize online events or promote your webinars and other events.

Finally, we developed forums to let group members really dive into a discussion about a particular topic. Members can create a forum topic that they would like to get feedback on, and the rest of the group can leave comments and ideas without the restriction of 140 characters.

As we work towards becoming a full scale social network for young professionals, we will be introducing new features on a regular basis. All of the features will come from the crazy ideas that we throw around in the office and the feedback we get from you all. So if you want to have some say in what comes next, let us know what you think. You can even join the Brazen Feedback Group and start a discussion on what you think we should do.

As always, we asked some of our most active members to beta test the product, so there are already more than 35 active groups. My personal favorites right now are; Fit Freaks, Madtown Crew, Bookshelf and Drupal.

Definitely go browse through groups, join the ones that interest you, create your own groups, and don’t forget to participate!

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The post Brazen Groups Are Live! appeared first on Brazen Life.

Generation Y is annoying to manage. We’re annoying to manage because, get this; we actually want people to manage us! Gen Y grew up very close with our parents, and we got a ton of feedback from teachers, coaches etc. Because of this, managers are encountering entry-level workers who are basically begging and pleading to be managed closely.

The problem is that over the last 20 or 30 years, management has become a lost art. People are promoted after a few years on the job. They get more money, more responsibility, more work, and oh yeah, they get to manage three other people too.

Finding time to care about three other peoples career when you’re so intent on advancing your own career is not an easy task. So the trend has been to let people figure it out on their own.

This worked great for Gen X, a group of people who take serious pride in independently getting the job done. But not so much for Gen Y. We would much rather work with our managers, our peers and our team to get the job done, and have fun doing it.

Because of this, Gen Y is creating an incredible shift in what management means, and the managers who accept and adapt to this shift are the ones who will be leading successful organizations in the coming years.

So, if you’re managing Gen Y you can do one of two things. You can say they are annoying to manage and whine and complain about how needy they are. Or, you can embrace this as a gift. The next time a Gen Y employee comes into your office with a question on how to do something correctly, put everything aside for ten minutes and push him in the right direction.

The ten minutes of your time it takes to give detailed feedback or correct a mistake today, can save you days or weeks of fixing the mistake in the long run.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Generation Y Is Annoying to Manage, But That’s a Good Thing appeared first on Brazen Life.

Brazen is officially one-year-old this month. We actually launched the site on March 1, 2008, so I’m a couple of weeks late with this announcement, but better late than never.

If you were with us the first day we launched you’ll remember the photo on the front page was of a woman in a tank-top shirt showing her stomach and flashing a handful of $100 bills for everyone to see.

It was obnoxious, a little risqué, and quite frankly, a poor representation of our brand. We really figured this out about a month after we launched. Ryan Paugh and I were driving down the road in Madison and we saw a billboard. As we crept closer, we couldn’t believe our eyes, the woman from the homepage was on the billboard, staring us in the face, flashing $100 bills and telling us to go to Ho-Chunk casino!

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Brazen Careerist and Ho-Chunk casino should not be using the same stock photos. And in this case, Ho-Chunk got it right. We made a branding mistake. But that’s cool; we’ve made a ton of mistakes in the past 18 months. Luckily, we’ve learned from every mistake we’ve made, and I’d like to think we’re a better company, and better community because of it.

Now we’re taking a step back and trying to figure out what to do next at Brazen. We have a million ideas. In fact, our tiny development team could probably spend the next two years building the ideas we’ve already thrown around. But we want to make sure that the next thing we do really benefits the community.

So we’re asking for feedback from Brazen Careerist members, readers or potential members who are just waiting for us to do something really cool before they join. If there was one feature or addition that you would like to see on Brazen Careerist, what would it be? Some of the ideas we’re throwing around are creating groups, voting posts to the front page, and playing with the layout of the site so we bring each user the content that they specifically want to see.

Please let us know what we can do to make your Brazen experience better.  No matter how large or small the change is, we want to hear from you, because our community is what will ultimately make Brazen successful.

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The post Brazen Turns One, And a Request For Some Community Feedback appeared first on Brazen Life.

Last May, I wrote a post titled 10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace. It received a lot of attention and more importantly a lot of conversation. The gist of the post was not to say that Generation Y is great and we will make everything better. Rather, it was a testament to what I witnessed during trips to different companies and what I heard from my peers in the workforce.

Nine months later, the economy has collapsed and the workplace is changing before our eyes. This next year or two will be a defining time for our generation, and I believe it will shape our world view and work view in many ways. Based on this, I’ve come up with 10 more ways Generation Y will change the workplace. Hopefully it will strike up just as much conversation and maybe even some action, so things can start changing for the better.

1. We’ll reduce executive compensation for underperforming companies
It’s already happening. Obama put a $500,000 cap on executive pay at the banks that were bailed out. In 2007, the average CEO salary at the largest companies was more than $11 Million. It’s hard to justify paying anyone that much. In some cases, these executives probably do provide more $11 million in value to their respective companies. And when that happens, they should be compensated for it. But having a CEO expect $11 million regardless of performance is just bad business. The Obama administration is setting the precedent, and as Gen Y takes power we will follow through and reduce executive compensation for underperforming companies.

2. Discussing salaries will be completely normal
Transparency is king. You hear it everywhere these days. Social media is forcing companies to open up their doors and show the world what’s really going on. Obama has promised budget transparency to the American public. And the vast majority of the world’s under-30 population are living their entire lives online. Transparency is no longer an option. Websites like Glassdoor and Payscale let you compare your salary with others in the industry. My company, Brazen Careerist practices complete transparency. Even financial gurus like Suzie Orman say it’s great for business. As Gen Y continues to work our way up the ladder, it will just be a matter of time before companies of all sizes have transparent salaries.

3. Employees will be more loyal than ever before
Transparency does not just mean that everyone knows what everyone else in a company makes. It means that the company must educate their employees on everything that is going on. When Pepsi was ready to release their new “Gen Y Friendly” logo to the world, they wanted to make sure that their employees weren’t surprised when they found it in the grocery store. So they invited their staff to a party and introduced the product. The employees were excited and they felt like the company actually cared about them. When employees feel like they matter and the company thinks about them first, they feel a sense of pride and true loyalty to a company. Expect to see this trend continue as Gen Y comes of age.

4. There will be less mass layoffs, but more pay cuts
When someone feels a true sense of pride and loyalty to their company, they’re more likely to figure out a way for everyone to pull through when times are tough. We watched our parents and our friend’s parents being laid off when we were young and we’re going through it now. We know the hardship that comes with it. Don’t be surprised to see across-the-board pay-cuts instead of mass layoffs when times get tough. Start ups do it all the time – my company did it without thinking twice. And it’s already happening at large corporations; HP just instituted a 5% or more across-the-board pay-cut rather than laying off hundreds. When you’re part of a team, you want that team to succeed, and you’ll do what’s necessary to survive. And as we all know, Generation Y is the ultimate team player generation.

5. We’ll truly get over the “punch clock” mentality
It’s easy to say you have a progressive workplace and that you don’t care what hours people are actually working at the office or what they do outside of work. But the truth is, companies care and people care. At the typical company, everyone notices what time someone leaves the office and what time people get in. We’re still stuck in a workplace that was designed around producing widgets on an assembly line. As life moves more and more online, and new technologies are invented that allow traditional offices to be truly optional, the punch clock mentality will slowly disappear. By the time Gen Y is ready to retire, people won’t even know what a punch clock is, and maybe then we will finally be working in the environment that knowledge workers are meant to work in.

6. Independent contractors will become part of the team
Nearly every company hires independent contractors to work for them. Contractors are great. They don’t require health insurance and you don’t have to pay the extra taxes. But they’re often treated very differently than traditional employees. As more people develop skills that allow them to be effective independent contractors, and some form of universal healthcare is finally adopted, companies will begin to think of their contractors as their employees. When Brazen had a big budget, we worked with a ton of contractors. When people asked how many employees we had, I would always mention that our team felt much larger because of all the freelancers. As the number of independent contractors increases, they will become a vital part of the team.

7. Corporate branding will work in conjunction with personal branding
Companies spend a lot of money on branding. They throw huge budgets at PR firms and superbowl ads. It usually results in a ton of brand recognition. But brand recognition is no longer enough. Consumers want transparency, conversation and experience. Generation Y doesn’t want a company to talk AT us, we want to talk WITH a company. The only way for a company to talk with a person is to give employees the freedom to interact. It’s already happening as people like Sharpie Susan are branding themselves as social media players and helping their companies in the process. Who knows exactly how this will play out, but as Gen Y invents new technologies and new marketing strategies, corporate branding will never look the same.

8. Leadership will be a team effort
Jack Welch was a larger than life CEO. Everyone knew who he was and his personal brand may have been just as big as GE’s brand. In Good to Great, Jim Collins determined that dominant CEOs like Jack Welch actually have a lower than average ROI during their tenure. This is because CEOs need to be respected and admired by their employees, and they need to be selfless and always thinking about the organization. As a team-oriented group, Generation Y will not stand by and watch one person insert his will on the company. We will figure out a new form of leadership, where one person is the decision maker, but leading is a team effort. With all the new social technologies, there will always be a place for people with huge personal brands and huge personal egos. They will make a lot of money and still be well-known, but they won’t be the ones running large organizations.

9. We will really know people before we hire them
I can’t tell you exactly how they will look, but sooner than later, resumes will be extremely different. It’s not because a hard copy piece of paper is outdated, it’s because people are becoming more and more complex. Resumes were created when people went to school, graduated, got a job and maybe another job. But today people blog, job-hop and have multiple hobbies outside of work. We live our lives online. It’s too limiting to judge someone based on one sheet of paper. Social technologies give employers a window into people’s souls. As Gen Y become responsible for hiring decisions, you can bet we will know almost everything we possibly can about someone before we give them an offer.

10. Entry level employees will be students and teachers
In the old days, entry-level employees had to pay dues before they moved up. This makes sense, it’s impossible to know how a job or an industry works when you’ve never been there before. Young people had everything to learn and nothing to teach. Things are different now. For the first time in history, the youngest people in the workplace have the most knowledge about a very important topic – technology. And get this; we want to teach our bosses and managers how to use these technologies. This trend will continue. Young people will stay on top of the newest useful technologies. As Gen Y grows up, cross-mentor programs will be instituted. Old will teach young and young will teach old. Sounds like a great environment to me.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post 10 More Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace appeared first on Brazen Life.

Most of the team has a unique online identity. And as Dan Schawbel would tell you, that’s great for personal branding. But we also need a collective voice from the company. People want to know what’s new at Brazen headquarters, where we’re headed in the future and why we’re doing what we’re doing. So this will be the place to find all the latest Brazen gossip.

At Brazen, everyone has a unique job (in most cases, multiple jobs) and a unique personality.

Ryan Paugh, our Community Manager/Editor/Fill in Designer, loves talking to people. In fact, Ryan genuinely wants to be friends with every single person on our network. I often wonder how he’ll do this when we have a million users, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds a way. Ryan is determined to showcase as many community members as humanly possible through his community member Q&A’s. I’m sure he’ll also write about life as an online Community Manager – the coolest new job around.

Dan Healy, our Sales Ninja/Corporate Community Manager/Social Chair, wants to close deals and build relationships. You can find him on the phone for hours a day making calls and signing companies up to the network. He also likes to party, you can’t blame him; he’s less than a year out of college. Dan will give you some intimate details about the companies joining the network through his company profiles and Q&As. If we’re lucky, he may even tell us about his crazy nights at the Great Dane.

Photis Patriotis, our Development Manager/Entire Development Team, desperately wants to manage. The problem is, we’re five person show and there is no one for him to manage. So he makes it happen anyway by outsourcing his work to Ecuador and not telling anyone. He also happens to have the strangest name anyone has ever heard, but that’s a whole different post. The truth is, Photis is really good at his job. He’s managed large rollouts for us and he will share what he’s learned about technical management, Drupal, and start-up life as a tech dude.

Penelope Trunk, our CEO/Celebrity blogger and author, loves to blog and loves to talk on the phone. You can find her in the office two to three times a month if you’re lucky. And when she’s there she’s either focused intensely on her current blog post or yelling at some unlucky soul on the phone. Hopefully she’ll be providing some interesting anecdotes about life at a start-up in Madison WI with four twenty-something guys, but I can’t make any promises. We’ll do our best to pull her away from life as a hot shot web celebrity. Of course, you can always find her ranting about something on her personal blog.

As for me, our Finance/Marketing /Fill in Sales Guy, I like to tell people what to do. I always have a new idea and I always know just the person to execute on the idea. The problem is, everyone is doing a million other things and no one can take on more work. So I spend most of my time developing strategies and plans and bothering people in their offices. I also spend way more time than I’d like arguing with Penelope about how to best manage the little money we have. I’ll be writing about new features we release, why we released them and what our plans for the future are.

This blog will evolve as the company moves forward and we add new team members and try out new business models. A start-up is a rollercoaster, it’s never static, and that’s what makes it so interesting. This blog will reflect that same attitude, we’re always open to new ideas. If you guys want to hear anything in particular from us, or if you have ideas for types of posts you’d like to see, please let us know and we’ll do our best to please.

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The post Welcome To The Official Team Brazen Blog appeared first on Brazen Life.

I do a lot of speeches and meetings where I’m educating people much older than me on a specific topic. So it’s important for me to appear competent, knowledgeable and quite frankly, older than I actually am. Over the past two years, I’ve learned a few things about fitting in when you’re the youngest one in the room. Here are six tips for you to remember.

1. Talk about technology
This is the first time in history that the youngest generation in the workforce has the most knowledge on a very important business topic – technology. This gives Generation Y a ton of advantages that past generations didn’t have. We can provide ideas for new marketing techniques and new recruiting strategies, and we can implement these ideas at very little cost. Regardless of whether or not it’s true, people assume that if you’re in your twenties, you are an expert on technology. The next time you’re in a room full of people talking about a topic that’s a little over your head, pick the right time to chime in and talk about technology. Explain how Facebook, or blogging or Twitter can help. People will listen because when it comes to technology, you’re the expert.

2. Ask questions
When you’re the youngest in the room, it’s important that you appear confident and competent. But you have to be careful that people don’t mistake confidence for arrogance. You’re not expected to know everything at 25, and older folks will expect that you’re always trying to learn. The best way to show people that you want to learn and that you don’t think you know everything is to ask a ton of questions. Be sure the questions are relevant to the topic being discussed, but remember, there’s no such thing as a stupid question (only stupid people…just kidding!)

3. When the kid convo comes up, keep your mouth shut
I hate the kid talk. But somehow, someway, a room full of 30 and 40 somethings will ALWAYS end up talking about their kids. Whether its little league, ballet, their latest illness or anything else, my only advice is to nod your head, force a smile, keep your mouth shut and pretend like you’re interested. At IBM I made the mistake of chiming in on a few of these, but all I could come up with were old war stories about my little league days. Relating to their kids is a quick way to remind everyone how young you are. Avoid this at all costs.

4. Talk about your weekend fun
This may seem a little counter-intuitive, but I’ve found that older folks love hearing your weekend party stories. I’m sure it’s fun for them to relive the old days of late night parties. Usually they will talk about a few stories of their own, it’s a great conversation starter and it allows them to relate to you. This is one case where it actually is ok to show your age because you are relating to the other people in the room, not their kids. Just be sure you don’t give too many less than professional details and you’ll be fine.

5. Be an expert, but don’t flaunt it
You should be an expert in something. There is no excuse for you not to have some sort of specialty or at least a career-specific topic that you are highly interested in. When that topic does come up, it’s the perfect opportunity to display all the hard work you’ve put into becoming an expert. Talk about your ideas and give some background on how you learned about the topic. Just be careful that you don’t flaunt your “expert status” too much. Nobody likes a show off.

6. Accept every favor you’re offered 
In college, I wanted to be a psych major. Turns out, I’m much more into analyzing my own issues then other peoples. But that’s beside the point. One thing I learned in a Social Psychology class is that people actually like you more after they do a favor for you. It seems strange, but it’s true. And when you’re the youngest in the room you probably have the least money and least connections, so if they like you, people will offer you things like sports tickets, introductions to high-powered friends etc. Next time, remember that they want you to accept this favor and they’ll actually like you more if you do!

Depending on how you look at it, being the youngest in the room can be a good thing or a bad thing. Some people will never give you a chance if you’re under 30, but if you remember these six tips, you’ll have a better shot at fitting in with the older crowd.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post 6 Ways to Fit in when you’re the Youngest Person in the Room appeared first on Brazen Life.

Take a look at the newest Best Places to Work list by Fortune and you will see an interesting pattern. More often than not, the same companies show up on the list every year, and its not a coincidence. Sure, these companies are probably pretty good places to work, but more importantly, they recognize the value in employer branding.

Brand recognition is not employer branding. Brand recognition is easy – it’s advertising. Authorize a huge budget; hire a creative advertising firm, make a funny Superbowl ad and people all across the country will recognize your company logo. That’s great if you just want people to buy what you’re selling.

Employer branding is much different and equally important. It gets the right people in the door to create and improve what you’re selling. But, employer branding is all about the story you tell – its marketing.

A funny Superbowl ad is not going to make me think “Wow, that looks like a great place to work.” In fact, I’ll probably forget about the ad by the time the game comes back on. On the other hand, a well crafted story that I read on my favorite blog or on the Best Places to Work list will make me consider rewriting my resume and passing it on to your company.

Google has a story. Googlers get to work at the coolest company on the planet. They sit on brightly colored bean bag chairs and they get on-site dry cleaning and free lunches. Oh yeah, they work hard too, that’s cool.

Zappos has a story. Zappos employees get fee lunch, concierge service, and 100% health insurance premium coverage. If you start with Zappos and decide after training that you don’t want to work there, they will GIVE you $2,000.00 to go home. Zappos does not want dead weight, and neither do their employees.

During the Q&A session of my Gen-Y speech at State Farm last week, a gentleman asked if strictly branding to Gen Y would alienate other generations. It was a great question. And the answer is yes; strictly trying to appeal to people in their twenties will alienate older employees. But that’s the beauty of marketing, you don’t need just one story. As long as every story you craft is true, you can and should have multiple messages for multiple audiences.

For example, State Farm’s story for Gen Y could be that becoming an agent gives you a great taste for entrepreneurship without all the risk. Learn how to run your own business with the guidance of people who have been there and done that.

For Gen X the story could be that starting an agency gives you the freedom to spend time with your spouse and kids while earning plenty of money to support your family. And you become an important part of your community.

And for Baby Boomers the story could be that working at State Farm is a great way to finish your career on your terms. You can call the shots and make your hours. And if they’re interested, you can get your kids involved in the business.

Each of these messages is completely different and from what I learned at the conference, completely true. Different audiences want to hear different stories. And if you actually are a great company like State Farm is, crafting a story is easy. Take a good look at how your business operates, ask your current employees in every area and at every age level why they like the company. I guarantee the answers will give you the perfect story for every demographic.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Employer Branding: It’s All About the Story appeared first on Brazen Life.

Most high performing people don’t stick around one place their whole lives anymore. They’re generally attracted to large cities with like-minded people. Because of this, companies based in small cities need to work especially hard to recruit top talent. But from my experience, if the right job presents itself, most Gen Y go-getters are totally open to new opportunities and new cities of any size. Companies based in small cities may be at a disadvantage, but there are things they can do to compete. Here are five.

1. Embrace your city
A lot of people grow up with dreams of moving to New York, L.A. or Chicago. So, if you’re headquarters are just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, you better have something up your sleeve to compete.

Epic Systems does. They’re competing by embracing their city. The Madison Art Fair is the place to be when the weather gets nice. When springtime rolls around, Epic encourages their employees to go to the fair and buy a piece of art. Epic will then hang the piece on the wall and reimburse the employee 100%. Epic has figured out how to embrace their location and you better believe they tell visiting recruits where all their beautiful art came from.

2. Put your young people on the front line
The biggest reservation that Gen Yers have about moving to a small city is that nobody our age will live there. When you don’t have a family, a social life is extremely important. Companies need to show recruits that there are other young people working there by putting them on the front line.

Be sure the career fair recruiters are young. When you bring recruits in for an interview, send a young person in as an interviewer, greeter, or tour guide. Finally, let your recruits spend a night out on the town, all expenses paid, with your top young employees. Don’t be shy to instruct your employees to talk about the cost of a night out, or the discounted rent in your small city compared to what it costs in New York or Los Angeles. If they still don’t want to take the job after experiencing the best your small city has to offer, then you’re probably out of luck. But this is one surefire way to find out.

3. Brand yourself as a great place to work
It seems like every year, the same companies end up on the best places to work list. Giants like Google, Ernst & Young and Deloitte are always named. They make the list because they consciously brand themselves as employers. Sure, they brand their products and services, but they know the value of people, and they make sure people know the value of working there.

This year, Quicken loans hit number two on the list. Quicken is located in Livonia, MI, a small city 20 miles outside of Detroit. They manage to attract top talent despite being located in a small city in the Midwest because they are consciously branding themselves as an employer of choice. And they’re making a lot of money doing it.

4. Be a great place to work
Branding your company as a great place to work is a great idea. But an even better idea is to actually practice what you preach and be a great place to work. W.L. Gore has been a great place to work since they started in 1958, and the media has in turn, branded Gore as a great place to work. Without actively pushing their agenda, people (like me) have discovered that Gore is a unique company with no hierarchy, no job titles, and the opportunity for leaders to emerge from anywhere.

They were number 15 on this year’s list, and they’re located in Newark, DE. Newark is a nice little town, but it’s certainly no New York City. Gore has managed to overcome their small city location and thrive for more than 50 years.

5. Expand your recruiting network
You may think that being headquartered in a small city requires you to stay local when it comes to recruiting. I disagree. By staying local, it’s very hard to recruit the top talent. If you want to create a world class business, you need world class talent, and world class talent is probably not all local.

At Brazen Careerist, we knew that finding all of our talent in Madison was probably not a great idea. There is certainly a lot of talent here, but limiting ourselves to local recruiting would eventually hold us back. We managed to recruit one person from Philadelphia, and another from Chicago. They came to a small city because they saw opportunity in the job. If you expand your recruiting network and provide a unique opportunity, people will come to a small city. It just takes a little extra effort.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post 5 Things Small-City Companies Can Do to Recruit Gen Y appeared first on Brazen Life.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a “future of work” retreat. Many people presented their research, but one specific trend consistently showed up, and truthfully I’m amazed by it — Generation Y values job security more than anything else.

At first glance, this seems crazy because Gen Y is job hopping every couple of years and employers can’t figure out how to get us to stick around. But as I thought about it a little more and I discussed the topic with other retreat attendees, it made total sense. We grew up watching our parents get laid off, then we went to college and saw the collapse of Enron, Arthur Andersen and others, and even now, we’re watching Wall Street completely screw up the economy. Couple that with the rapid pace of change we’ve seen throughout our lives, and a little security sounds pretty comforting.

But here’s the thing. We shouldn’t be looking for job security. And companies shouldn’t promise it. Promising job security means promising employment. And when everything changes at the blink of an eye, no company can promise employment. But what they should be able to promise is employability.

Promising employability means that a company is promising to provide you with the right mix of training, skills, experience, and mentoring, which will ultimately leave you employable no matter what happens with your current job. The best security you can have is the security of having the skills that employers need—the skills that make you employable.

So, when you go on your next job interview or when you talk to your boss about your career plans, ask him what the company is doing to make you employable. If he can quickly give you a list of five things, congratulations, you’re secure. If he’s stumped, it’s time to rethink the job you’re in.

Many companies have no idea how to provide Generation Y with the skills we need to be employable. So, they need our help. Jeanne Meister is researching and writing a book to help companies understand what Gen Y really wants. She has the ear of corporate America, but she’s asking for a little help and insight from us – Gen Y.

CLICK HERE to take the Four Generations @ Work survey and do your part in helping Corporate America understand what changes they need to make. And hey, if for no other reason, there are some pretty cool prizes you could win if you take the survey by October 15.

The Prizes:
1. Ipod Touch
2. Flip Camera
3. $50 gift certificate to Amazon

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Job Security Is a Dumb Goal (And a Survey with Some Cool Prizes) appeared first on Brazen Life.

Since founding Brazen Careerist, I’ve blogged less and less each month, to the point that I only posted three times in December. And that’s not cool. Especially since blogging has given me more value than any other activity I do on a day-to-day basis and is the reason I have my dream job today. In short, blogging has changed my life.

So here are five reasons why every college student that wants their dream job needs to start a blog in 2009.

1. You stand out from the crowd 
Jarred Taylor works in the legal department at Google in Mountain View, CA. As far as dream jobs go, Google headquarters is probably right there at the top of a lot of lists. Jarred loves his position, and he’s pretty convinced that he got the job because of his blog.

“Everyone who interviewed me,” Jarred says, “from the recruiter in the phone screen to the senior attorneys during the videoconference, asked me about the blog. ‘What do you blog about? Why? Give an example of something you’ve learned from what you’ve researched.'”

His blog didn’t have a huge following or a ton of readers, but the interviewers at Google understood that if Jarred took the time to write about his career interests in his free time, he would also go above and beyond at work. Including his blog on his resume allowed Jarred to get his dream job by standing out from the crowd.

2. People find you
I’m not all that good at seeking out people or new opportunities. I push myself, but it’s not my strong suit.

The beauty of blogging is that people find you. When I posted several times per week, the amount of emails in my inbox from seemingly random people was through the roof. Publishers contacted me about writing a book, journalists sent interview requests, generational researchers asked for input, companies requested speaking engagements, and readers wrote in with career-related questions on a regular basis.

On the days I post, good things happen. And I can say for certain that it’s not a coincidence. By putting yourself out there with your blog, people will find you, and your dream job could come knocking at your door. Just make sure you recognize the opportunity when it does.

3. You can show your true personality 
I get a lot of applications from people applying for a job at Brazen Careerist. We have a special set of questionsthat we ask everyone to answer when they apply so we can get a sense of their interests, goals and personality. The answers always give me some good insight, but I often want to know more, before we decide to do an interview.

Because of this, I love when someone leaves a link to their blog along with their resume. It’s like saying, “Here’s a sneak peek into my world. I have nothing to hide.” Other than face-to-face interaction, nothing shows who you really are more than a blog.

Unfortunately, we are in a temporary hiring freeze (click here to read more), but if we were scaling the company at full strength, the people who directed me to their blog would be at the top of the interview list.

4. The connections are amazing
I’m confident enough to say that if I needed a job tomorrow, I could skip the typical Monster.com or Careerbuilder job search and find a great one through the connections I’ve made blogging.

I’ve networked with executives, authors, entrepreneurs, CEO’s, professional speakers and more. I’ve maintained as many relationships as possible, some as mentors and others as weak-tie connections, but simply having the opportunity to meet such a diverse and influential crowd could have never happened without writing my blog.

5. You grow up, quick
I never would have admitted it at the time, but before I started Employee Evolution I was pretty immature. I thought I knew more than I did, I didn’t work as hard as I could, and I didn’t fully appreciate all the things I had. Two years later, I still have a lot of growing up to do, but the amount I’ve grown as a person has been astounding.

Someone tells me I’m wrong on nearly every post I write. Sometimes I listen and rethink my position, while other times I chalk it up to the other person being wrong. But I’m always able to re-evaluate, compose myself and reply with an insightful response or a nice email. Learning to deal with people who disagree, and treating your blog like a business will teach you a lot about how the world works, giving you a huge leg up on your “non-blogging” peers

It may not be easy, and it certainly won’t happen overnight, but starting a blog and following through can take you anywhere you want to go. What are you waiting for?

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post 5 Reasons Every College Student Should Start Blogging In 2009 appeared first on Brazen Life.

I’m stressed out. I’m stressed about money. I’m stressed because we’re rolling out a big feature that should change the way people interact on Brazen Careerist. I’m stressed because we can’t seem to hit a development deadline to save our lives. And I’m stressed because I’m traveling to New York and Boston all next week, right in the middle of all this chaos. But most of all I’m stressed because after what happened on Monday, I think that being stressed out is a total waste of time, yet I continue to do it.

My friend, Valerie Ludwig, passed away on Monday morning. She had been sick for a few years, but as far as I knew, she was doing much better. We’d drifted apart since High School. Sophomore and junior year we were close. We traveled in the same group. My guy friends dated her girl friends. We hung out on the weekends. She was a great person. Always happy. Always smiling. Always having a good time.

When I got the call from Andrea on Monday morning, I had eerie flashbacks to junior year of high school. It was too similar to the morning I found out about my friend Mike passing away in a car accident the night before.

I pictured Val at Mike’s funeral with the rest of our group, tearful, sad, and most of all confused about how something like this could happen to a 16 year old kid. I remembered Val at my best friend Ben’s father’s wake three years ago. I walked out of the funeral home, balling my eyes out after a tearful encounter with Ben and his mother. Guess who was there to comfort me? Val, strong and compassionate, she gave me a huge hug and told me everything would be ok.

Now it’s her turn. Her wake is tonight. I can’t be there. I wish I could. Now she’s gone and it just doesn’t seem fair. Nobody should die at 25.

I’ve come to find out that she was sick for a long time. She was on steroids that changed the way she looked. But she was never down. At our high school reunion, she looked a little different but she was the same old Val. Happy as hell and chatting with everyone – from the theatre kids, to the bandies to the jocks, she didn’t care. She never cared. She was never stressed. Or at least she never let it show.

And that’s why I was so disappointed in myself for stressing out. I have a good life. I have a healthy family. I have great friends. I have an amazing girlfriend. I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do with my career. Why stress about the little things?

Then I spoke with a mentor of mine. I told him how silly and unimportant all of this stuff seems when you hear about something so tragic. He told me it’s not silly. It is important. We’re put here to do something – to make a difference. What we do with our lives should be very important to us. So we continued on and talked business.

Tragedy will happen more and more as we get older. When it does, we sit back and reflect, but unfortunately we probably forget too soon. And we go on stressing out about life.

But you know what; I’m not going to forget. Maybe for an hour, maybe for a day, and maybe even for a week, I’ll get wrapped up in my own head and my own worries. But somehow, I’ll remind myself of Val and how she handled her hardships – real hardships, and I’ll snap out of it.

But I will continue to care about the things that are important in my life. And for me, with caring comes stress, and that’s ok. I just can’t let the stress consume me and bring me down. Instead, I’ll put it to good use and fight like hell for my friends, my family, my company, my career and whatever else is stressing me out. Because that’s what Val did, she fought like hell for her life. And even though she didn’t win that fight, she made the world she left behind a better place for everyone who knew her. And that’s what really matters.

Rest in Peace, Val.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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Social networking is not a fad. It’s not one of those things that people think is cool for a few years and then it simply fades away. Much like the internet did, social networking and social media have changed the way the world works. We’re now connected to every friend, acquaintance, girlfriend, boyfriend, and business contact that we have ever encountered – it’s a powerful and even revolutionary tool.

Social media has already changed the way people communicate and interact with each other and it’s changing the way business works – for the better. But still, a recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas study found that 20% of companies have banned social networking sites from employee computers! If your company is one of those 20%, you should seriously reconsider. Here’s why.

It’s called social NETWORKING for a reason

Network, network, network. It’s all you heard from your parents growing up, your professors in college, and every successful person you’ve talked to since. Companies inherently understand (I hope) that employees need to network both inside and outside the company because you never know where that next big sale, or new hire will come from. In a recent press release, Nick Ragone, Director of Ketchum’s Communications & Media Strategy Group says, “Banning these types of sites would be the equivalent of asking your boss, ‘Do you think I really need to make sales calls or network; can’t I just hang out in my office and wait for the phone to ring?’ ”

Of course not! Why then, would any company consider blocking a website that allows all of your employees to be in one giant virtual room with the best and brightest from inside and outside your industry? Sounds like a case of short-sighted management to me.

Social networks are the best place to recruit

Yes, I’m aware that “passive job seeker” is the big buzzword in recruiting these days, but there’s a reason for that. Passive job seekers are the people your company really wants to recruit. They are the ones who are perfectly happy in their situation. They make a good salary, they enjoy the people they work with, and their employers are happy with their performance. But they still hang out on social networks, they’re actively involved in online communities, and they read blogs. And they will listen to a more attractive job offer if your company can create the online presence you need to connect with these people.

Active job seekers on the other hand, are actively searching for a job for a reason. They’re on Monster, CareerBuilder, and JobFox because they really want to get out of their situation. But, chances are, they are in a less than perfect job because they couldn’t get anything better. You may find the occasional gem of a resume in your inbox, but you’d be much better served to connect with the people you really want through Linkedin, Twitter, or Brazen Careerist.

Social media can directly impact your bottom line

Social networks and blogs are very much about networking, connections and conversation, but if your company big whigs won’t go for anything that doesn’t directly impact the bottom line, show them that social media can do that too.

The Washington Post reports that Marriott made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s corporate blog. I don’t know the exact traffic numbers for Marriott’s blog, but I do know that the longer blogs are around, and the more you write the more direct traffic you get. And in this case, an increase in direct traffic will no doubt lead to an increase in revenue.

If you hired right, your employees will not waste work time on social media

Ketchum’s press release pretty much sums it up when they say, “Yes, there are a few bad apples that may waste time on these tools, but they will find ways to waste time even if they don’t have social networking sites – they will find something else to distract them.”

Top employees, the employees you should hire, will spend time on social networking sites, but they will not do it at the expense of getting their work done. There are only two possible reasons that your employees are wasting time on these sites. One reason is that you hired the wrong people, and you should get rid of them ASAP. The other option is maybe your company needs to provide more work to employees or re-think how you define employee engagement.

Some companies are so obsessed with controlling employees, they’ve failed to see that banning social networking at work is no different than controlling the number of employees who received a PC in the ’80s and limiting the number of employees with internet access in the ’90s. And we all know what a great idea that was. So go ahead, ban social networking at your company. But do so at your own peril.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Why Your Company Can’t Afford to Ban Social Networking appeared first on Brazen Life.

Social media is changing everything. Business Week recently published an article about the power of social media and how companies are beginning to embrace it, because they really don’t have a choice. Not everyone has a blog, or wants to blog, but you would be hard pressed to find many people who aren’t on some type of social network. Now it’s time for corporate America to follow suit and meet their potential customers on their own turf, or risk falling behind the times.

The article says, “It’s as if the walls around our companies are vanishing and old org charts are lying on their sides.”

There is truth to that statement. Social media is changing how business works, so businesses better figure out how social media works. Here’s why every company needs to embrace social media, now.

Brand Awareness and Traffic

Brand awareness is crucial, it always was. But today you have to go beyond old media to market your message to the masses.

On Friday, my post about Gen Y changing the work place was picked up on Stumble Upon and Digg. On Sunday, 60 Minutes re-aired a segment featuring my blog. Guess what? Our site received 4 times more traffic and 10 times more comments on Friday then it did on Sunday. When prime time national media attention can’t compete with a couple of niche websites on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, you know that things just aren’t what they used to be. These days, if you want to create real brand awareness, you better start with the niche communities.

Passive Job Seekers

Job boards are dying, fast. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Lou Adler, a chief executive of the Adler Group, a company that trains corporate recruiters on hiring practices, says, “I certainly see many, many companies posting their jobs on job boards….and not getting any results and wondering why.”

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The reason why is because people aren’t actively looking for jobs. They are, however, actively browsing social media sites and spending time on social networks, and even if they don’t know it, they’re passively looking for jobs. The smartest companies are taking advantage of this and creating a social media presence.

Someone may not be looking for a job, but if they stumble across an interesting blog post, Facebook page, or Twitter profile that mentions a great company, they will take the time to investigate further. So everyone is a passive job seeker. It’s up to every company to create a large enough online presence so the right people will stumble on them.

Credibility

Online credibility comes from the way you handle your brand and the links and references your blog or website receives. When people link to you, it’s like an unofficial endorsement from that person. Think of it like politics. When John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama, it made a big splash. A company can gain serious online street-cred when one of the big guns endorses them.

But again, like politics, the common folks matter too. You must first establish credibility with the masses, and then the big fish can provide you that final push. Even if it takes a while, online credibility will eventually lead to mainstream coolness.

The Coolness factor

The majority of social networks and social media sites are not “mainstream cool.” Outside of Silicon Valley and the 900,000 tech crunch readers, the majority of people don’t know what Friend Feed, Digg, or even Twitter is. But your company should, if you want to be cool. Why be cool?

If your company can adopt a bunch of these new technologies and figure out how to properly use them to leverage your brand, at some point it will pay off. Not only will your company immediately be considered cool in the tech world, but when one of these sites becomes a legitimate hit, like Twitter is about to become, your company will be mainstream-cool as well.

And when you’re mainstream cool, everything changes. You’ll have people knocking down your doors trying to get an interview with your company. Just ask Google.

Controlling the conversation

Social media is a constant conversation and because of this, business is now a constant conversation. It’s acomment string on Brazen Careerist, its someone’s Facebook wall, and it’s a Linked In recommendation. Someone, somewhere is out there talking about your company, and they can say whatever they want. All you can do is control the conversation.

Controlling the conversation does not mean telling people how to talk about your company or spamming a couple bloggers with job postings or company descriptions. It means creating a presence where you can initiate and continue a conversation.

What social media requires is authenticity, because even a newbie social media user can sniff out a phony quickly. But authentic conversation isn’t what most companies do naturally. So when corporations want to initiate a conversation, they have to find the right people, and they better empower those people to tell the truth, which isn’t always great news to deliver.

Starbucks is a great example. When things started going south, they publicly admitted to being at fault. They started a social networking site to ask for help from the customers. And we all remember when they shut down the stores across the country for an afternoon to address some fundamental problems. Smart decisions like that come when you take the time to start a conversation and then remember to listen, too.

It’s not easy. It takes a ton of time and it may even consist of a couple full time hires, but establishing a social media presence is worth it. Sooner or later every company will be actively using social media, but the trendsetters are the one’s who will get the most out of it. Don’t be left behind.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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There’s no doubt that Generation Y will fundamentally change corporate America. It’s already started. Managing Gen Y is the hot topic among consultants, Human Resource executives and talent management professionals. For a Gen Yer like me, this is great news.

We have a voice, and we have the ear of the decision makers. Not bad for a group of lazy, entitled, twentysomethings. We’ve learned the importance of balancing work and life from our overworked parents, and we’ve watched our older siblings and cousins struggle with their baby boomer bosses who refuse to retire. Now we’re primed to change the workplace for the better. Here’s how we’ll do it.

1. We’ll Hold Only Productive Meetings
Meetings are important, sometimes. A good meeting will pull everyone to the same page while motivating them to get the work done. It’s rare when that should take more than 30 minutes. Efficiency is the name of the game with Gen Y. We know that a drawn out meeting really means, “we have no idea what we’re doing,” and these time suckers actually halt productivity and stifle creativity, the qualities that they were supposed to encourage. As soon as Gen Y is running the show, watch wasted meeting time drop dramatically.

2. We’ll Shorten the Work Day
The work day is eight hours. Or so they say. A real work day for most of us, if you include the commute, lunch, breaks and maybe dinner, is at least 10 hours. But how many hours of the day are actually spent doing real work? I would guess about half. To truly balance work and life, you cannot mess around and waste time at the office. Gen Y knows this. We’re productivity machines; we will figure out how to get as much done in six to seven hours as the average boomer does with his eight.

3. We’ll Bring Back the Administrative Assistants
Back in the day, nearly everyone had a secretary. These days, you have to be a CEO or high level executive for a Fortune 500 company to have an assistant. Sure, this saves the company a ton, but Generation Y won’t stand for it much longer. We recognize the value of time. Two extra hours per day not filing papers and mailing checks adds up to over 500 extra hours per year that we can spend with family and friends. Even if it comes out of our own pocket, Gen Y will cough up the extra dough to get a part time or virtual assistant.

4. We’ll Redefine Retirement
Retirement is dead. It’s dead for a number of reasons, including the issues with social security and middle class America’s inability to save any money. But Gen Y will figure out how to save money to retire–we’re already demanding 401K’s and excellent benefits. However, we will re-invent retirement by taking multiple mini retirements instead of calling it quits a few years before its time to croak. Maybe in our late twenties we’ll take a few months just to travel the world. Then, as we approach parenthood and our kids grow up, we’ll take a year off to enjoy time with our family. Then we’ll return to work, refreshed and ready to go. When we hit 65, it will be the new 45 and we’ll have a solid 15 to 20 years left before we take our final, very brief, mini retirement.

5. We’ll Find Real Mentors
Gen Y is obsessed with career development. We understand the importance of great mentors and we seek them out. The problem is that many older workers weren’t effectively mentored and they don’t always know how to mentor Gen Y. When it’s Gen Y’s turn to be senior mentors, we’ll know how. As we seek mentors now we’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. And from the time we enter the workforce until the time we’re senior employees, the smartest Gen Yers will figure out how to mentor up. We will teach our older co-workers about new technologies and the power of online communities, and they will respond kindly by guiding us through the insane office politics that exist everywhere.

6. We’ll Restore Respect to the HR Department
Ten years ago, human resources got no respect. Today, companies are just beginning to see the importance. Gen Y recognizes that people make the company successful. Maybe it’s not tangible and maybe it’s not easy to see the direct ROI on keeping people happy, but happy people create successful organizations. All you need to do is take a look at Google, the company that’s quickly taking over the world, to see that happy people are successful people and successful people make a lot of money for themselves, and for the company. HR is not a cost center, its vital to the bottom line.

7. We’ll Promote Based on Emotional Intelligence
For some reason, companies assume that when you pay your dues and you know the business, you can be a manager. They’re wrong. The truth is that seniority does not make a good manager. People skills make a good manager. By the time Gen Y is running the world, we will be smart enough to promote people to managers because they can manage, not because they’ve worked for ten years. For managers, personal work must come a distant second to developing employees both personally and professionally. If you can’t help others, you don’t deserve a promotion to manager and you will be left behind.

8. We’ll Continue to Value What Our Parents Have to Offer
Sure, Gen Xers can laugh about it now, but Gen Yers respect our parents, and our parents are interested in every part of our lives, even when we’re 30. Don’t be surprised to see Gen Y employees giving their parents a tour of the office and calling up mom and dad for a little advice on their lunch break. It’s not about being babied or refusing to grow up, it’s about a level of mutual respect that Gen Y has for our parents and our parents have for us. My mother is coming to visit in a couple weeks, and guess what our plan for the day is? A tour of the office and a couple hours of work for each of us before we go out and do the tourist thing.

9. We’ll Enjoy Higher Starting Salaries
Sure, Gen Y is interested in volunteering, putting a halt to global warming and all that other good stuff, but we’re not our idealist parents. We watched our parents get laid off and we know that companies look out for themselves, so we do the same. Gen Yers will gladly accept a higher starting salary than promises of raises and promotions that we may never see. Additionally, all we have to do is go to Payscale.com or some other site to find out what the average starting salary is. Then we will ask for more, and we’ll probably get it, because we know we can get it elsewhere if your company won’t give it to us.

10. We’ll Re-invent the Performance Review
Semi-annual or annual performance reviews do not work. Gen Y wants constant feedback. If we’re only at a company for two years, we cannot wait for our one year review to find out how we’re doing. Gen Y will invent the on-the-spot performance review. The smartest companies will train their managers in giving frequent feedback, and the companies that don’t will get a quick reality check when their Gen Y employees demand them. Spot reviews lead to consistent improvement, and consistent improvement is what truly matters to Generation Y.

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The post 10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace appeared first on Brazen Life.

This post was originally posted at Employee Evolution

Seth Godin claims that Henry Ford’s greatest achievement was not the assembly line, but rather that he understood (and exploited) the power of productivity. Godin argues that Ford understood that paying workers more than the average salary would make them work twice as hard, and pump out twice as many Model T’s, each one making him wealthier and more powerful.

The strategy worked because people were dying to make more money in Ford’s day, so any assembly line worker could be easily replaced. And when you’re easily replaced, you work much harder.

But they didn’t work harder because they wanted to, or because they had an inner drive to succeed. Instead, they worked harder because they were terrified of losing their jobs. Ford created the ultimate workplace culture of obedience and fear.

Which begs the question, “What happens when we start using our heads, not our hands, when our collars change from blue to white?”

The answer is that fear no longer works and hands-on-management is no longer optional. When we use our minds rather than hands, there are no widgets to produce; there are no cars to build, but there still must be results.

Fear worked in Henry Ford’s day. People knew they would be fired if they didn’t produce, so they worked harder. But fear does not work anymore because instead of working harder and pumping out more products, the fear of being let go for doing the wrong thing will cause people to sit back and do nothing.

Managers correctly expect employees to have initiative and get things done. But it’s a two-way street. Employees should expect managers to take initiative to properly train and manage them. When I read articles bashing Generation Y for lacking in confidence and behaving like idiots, I can’t help but question the manager’s effectiveness at his job.

There will always be way too much “non managerial” work to do and important milestones to hit. But the good managers, the managers who don’t complain about their employees, are the ones who manage first, and work second. These managers know that if people know what’s expected of them, they won’t be scared to take action. Fear used to drive results, but in today’s workplace it’s nothing but a productivity killer.

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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The post Henry Ford Didn’t Need to Manage, But You Do appeared first on Brazen Life.

It’s not easy to be a good boss. Managers are responsible for nearly unattainable results, multiple daily meetings and managing their employees.

With all of this responsibility it’s hard to blame a manager for not being the world’s best boss because; after all, results move you up the ladder. I can see why the actual managing part is not always priority number one.

But happy employees are productive employees. The most successful managers understand this and put their people before everything. Here are three signs of a cool boss, from a Gen-Y perspective.

They take an interest in your career

Sure, it makes total sense for a manager to take an interest in your career within the company, but a great manager takes an interest in your ENTIRE career.

The best conversation I had with a co-worker at IBM was at lunch one afternoon with my boss. He asked me point blank:

“Do you see yourself working as a consultant for a while?”

For some strange reason, I felt totally comfortable replying:

“Actually, I really don’t think so. My goal is to start my own company.”

Then he replied and told me that he had a feeling I wanted to be an entrepreneur because every time I spoke about my brother or my friends running companies, I was really excited. We discussed the pros and cons of entrepreneurship versus corporate life, and the best age to start a company. It was great.

This was important for two reasons. For one, my boss actually listened to what I had to say in our past conversations. Secondly, he did not try to convince me to stay in the consulting field or with the company. He took an interest in my ENTIRE career, and I have great respect for him because of that.

They ask for feedback

I recently spoke with Globoforce CEO, Eric Mosley. Globoforce is a forward thinking company that provides online employee recognition programs. For example, if an employee goes above and beyond at work, a co-worker or manager will send them a “thank you” award. The award may be a gift certificate or any number of small gifts.

One of the best parts of these recognition programs is that they provide a means for two-way feedback. Not only can my boss thank me for putting together a great PowerPoint presentation, but I can thank her for taking the time to help train me in SAP.

This two-way feedback is great, but a cool boss will take it a step further and provide me with consistent feedback, both good and bad. And, most importantly, she will ask for feedback. After all, who better to analyze your management skills than the people you manage?

They are your friend, at work

This may be a uniquely millennial trait, but I believe your boss should be your friend, at work. A great boss will do whatever he can to find common ground with his employees. When you’re trapped in an office together for 8-plus hours a day, it’s important to take breaks and just “shoot the shit” with your boss every once in a while.

I used to wander over to my boss’s office and poke fun at his favorite football team, the Steelers, for losing a big game last weekend. He would then make a crack about Penn State being terrible or the Patriots choking in the playoffs the year before. These conversations were really important for our work relationship.

No one wants all business, all the time. A cool boss understands this and finds common ground with his employees. That being said, I’ve come to realize that it’s dangerous to cross boundaries and become close friends outside of work. A good boss understands this and makes a point to keep the friendship at work.

I’m sure there are a ton of different criteria that can make someone a cool boss, but these are my top three. What do you guys look for in a boss?

Ryan Healy is the COO/Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist and regularly writes and speaks on all things Gen Y, Careers and Entrepreneurship‬

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