Is Invisibility Costing You Your Next Position?
How do age discrimination and social media fit together ... at least in my mind?I read two articles in just a few days that made me say ... uh oh! My faithful readers will know that I evangelize the importance of CFOs being visible ... and embracing both online and offline strategies to create that visibility. Here are two quotes, the first from a sourcer and the second from a recruiter.
It’s a nasty dirty secret inside recruiting but the fact of the matter is if you’re over 50 – maybe even over 45 – many recruiters aren’t interested. They say they’ll look at you and accept your name in the lists I generate but they’re really not. No kidding.
If social media is full of young adults and Generation Y, I feel that it could become much more difficult to reach the senior level candidates considering they might be less likely to use social media so extensively due to their age.
How do age discrimination and social media fit together ... at least in my mind?
Well first, at the C-level, I take exception to the sourcer’s general statement regarding age discrimination if you’re 45+. Companies are typically not looking for 20- or even 30-somethings when in need of a Chief Financial Officer. That said, age discrimination is alive and well, and many at the CFO-level only invite that discrimination by the things they do -and- don’t do. Like, not jumping on the web 2.0 wagon, having no presence or an incomplete profile on Linked In, or a headline of “unemployed” under their name on Linked In, or an outdated aol email address. Those things are sending a message, and part of the message is “I’m well on the way to extinction.”
The way to mitigate age discrimination is through value positioning. How can you solve the company’s problems and make them or save them more than it costs to bring you on board? Having a strong marketable value proposition is great ... but if no one knows about it, does it even matter?
Now not being visible doesn’t preclude you from being found by recruiters ... the best ones are pretty good sleuths. So in that respect, you don’t need to be visible, but you should want to be visible. Why? So you can be found, much more easily, by those recruiters who are looking for top-notch talent ... particularly the passive kind.
As I mentioned previously, I believe movement of the C-Suite will pick up in 2011. However, in an employer’s market, companies still have the luxury of waiting for the “right” person rather than accepting just “any” person. Carving out your space and planting your flag - and then waving that flag - will shift the paradigm from being available to take anything to being just the right person to just the right company.
Comments
Company: in-between
Let's face it: most "social media" is full of young people because they don't have anything better to do. It's less age discrimination and more competency discrimination. People who spend their days Twittering, Blogging, Facebooking and Googling each other aren't doing their jobs.
Real professionals, people with responsibility, don't have time to mess around with status updates or wind-bag pontification. Executives who "want to be found" do it through real-world networking. It's little league to assume that you'll be hired based on your blog.
Company:
If I might offer an alternative perspective, Nathaniel ...
A CFO doesn't have to Facebook or Tweet or Google others to be leveraging social media. He could use Linked In as his home base, with a compelling profile, a few of the apps (Amazon reading list, Google presentations, Slideshare); write white papers or articles for his industry magazines; blog if he's a subject matter expert; use the Linked In status updates to share resources, speaking engagements, conferences he's attending. All of these things are, in my humble opinion, critically important for raising visibility among a CFO's target audience and recruiters who specialize in his area of expertise.
Did I suggest somewhere that a CFO would be hired because of his blog?
Company: Independent
Cindy,
Thanks for the good suggestions on LinkedIn. I'd not realized there were so many tools through the site to improve my chances of getting hired! I was still thinking about the site as a little more than a digital resume, but I'm going to try some of your suggestions on my personal page. Thanks!
Just to echo your point, I've found public speaking to be a big boost to my career, especially if someone posts a clip of it on YouTube.
Company:
My pleasure, Alexander. I'm glad the suggestions got your creative juices flowing!
Cindy
Company:
Cindy, great article.
The test is whether the point of view or advice is relevant months or even years later, and in this case it is. While some might disagree that you're not going to get hired over the "pontification" you might post to your blog, it does give prospective employers, and your own employees, further insight into who you are as a leader and the ideals you bring to the office each day. If you are in a job search mode and you have a career that spans the better part of 2 decades, how do you effectively capture that experience, your points of view, and other value-add elements in 2-pages? You need to treat your online efforts as simply a tool/complement to the experience you've accumulated during your career.
Keep up the great efforts Cindy.
Jeffrey Ishmael
Company:
Thanks Jeff!