Penned by Matt

1. Focus on networking more than looking at job boards. People give you jobs. Most of the people I talk to that get a good job had some kind of “in” –  either with someone that refers them or recommends them for a job or works at the place where the job is offered.
2. Focus on the smaller, local companies. Great opportunities abound in your backyard. Small companies have less hoops to jump through, are often fun places to work, and you are more likely to develop a relationship that will result in a job. Compile a list of cool companies in your local area and be sure to check their websites, call them, or give them a visit (if appropriate!)

It took me years to figure these two things out. I hope that helps. Have a great weekend! – Matt

penned by Matt

Here at Bright Green Talent, we talk a lot about social media. We try to figure out how to use the tools at our disposal to best reach our audience. At a social media webinar last week focusing mostly on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, the moderator asserted that the more connections that you have through these outlets, the closer you get to reaching your target audience (based on 6 degrees of separation) – whoever that may be (a potential customer, employer, etc.).

But can social media be green?

This question struck me while working on a Pottery Barn photo shoot this week (I work occasionally for them while I career transition – see last week’s post on how to transition into a green career) producing their print catalog (the ones you may get in the mail every season).

Although I have been working with this client on and off for a few years, things had dramatically changed this time; a morning debriefing session revealed that 80% of their product sales (sofas, tables, bedding, etc.) were purchased online. During this morning meeting, a flurry of keywords and web 2.0 concepts (pre-coffee, mind you!) was dropped on us: Blogs, Tweets, Search Engine Optimization, YouTube, Owning a Category for Search-ability on Sofas, etc.

Now since this is exactly what I have been working on with Bright Green Talent, I got excited, but my enthusiasm didn’t stop there…

You have to realize that Pottery Barn is quite a conservative organization and has been resistant to change for many years — it’s a subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma Inc. and very large, with over 200 stores nationwide and millions of $ in annual revenue. It didn’t always used to be sales ratio of 80-20 (internet-catalog) — in fact it used to be the exact opposite. The mail order catalog has been integral to Pottery Barn’s past success, filled with enticing images of fine living that are very effective at selling LOTS of product. Now, although times are tough in retail, Pottery Barn is still a robust company with a surprisingly nimble quality – they may be late adopters to such things as digital photography and e-commerce, but once they move, they move fast.

And fast they are moving to (what I can see will be) the elimination of the paper catalog completely, replacing it with e-commerce and interactive web tools. We are seeing this trend with all forms of printed word, including newspapers and magazines. All of these businesses are trying to reinvent themselves – to become more transparent, more authentic, and more engaged with their audience. Not only is this a better option for all the trees of the world (Pottery Barn puts out tens of millions of catalogs a year), it also opens up a HUGE opportunity for a generation of facebook-savvy social media web nerds.

I can only imagine that there is a team of web gurus, leading the “new” Pottery Barn through the darkness that is social media and e-commerce. You may think that this is a waste of time or not really sure how to use it, but the numbers do not lie…Facebook  reaches 79 million/month, LinkedIn has 30 million professionals, Twitter reaches 6.1 million/month, YouTube – 80 million/month (Quantcast).

If you can learn how to leverage this opportunity and become a social media expert web guru, you WILL be an asset to any organization. At the very least, you can put these skills in your tool belt.

It has helped me

And used creatively you may also be able to call it a green job.

Penned by Carolyn

As this is posted, I’m off for a week in Colorado, enjoying the end of ski season up in the mountains. I know you’re on the edge of your seats waiting for the continuation of Bright Green Resume Boot Camp, but another temporally-relevant subject is on my mind this week as students are off sipping (chugging?) tequila drinks on spring break.

So, this week’s subject? Keeping your personal life separate from your job application process; or “how to keep the 457 photos your friends posted on Facebook of you blacked out in a club in Cabo from surfacing as you’re applying for a job in the real world.”

I’m one of those people who’s generally disgruntled about how connected we all are and how much information is out there (yes, ironic given that I work on a lot of Bright Green Talent’s social media). However, if you just can’t step away from your iPhone, Facebook, MySpace, etc, here’s a common sense checklist for cleaning up your image.

Facebook:

• First off, fix your Facebook privacy settings to keep people from being able to find you.
• And control who can see your photos.
• And consider – as hilarious as they are, how many photos of you with a drink in your hand do you really need? Detag where necessary.
• Are any of your groups incriminating?
• All that stuff we said about professional networking? Keep it separate from Facebook. Avoid “friending” professional contacts – people you might ask for a reference from, your aunt’s friend who has connections with a green marketing company you’re interested in, etc. Use LinkedIn for that.

On the interwebs:

• Google yourself: look for news, web hits, and images.
• Check on YouTube for embarrassing videos that your friends uploaded.
• Check Flickr and other public image hosting sites as well.
• If there’s anything incriminating up there, try to get it removed, or at least have an explanation prepared.

Twitter:

While I’m still trying to wrap my head around Twitter and why people need to know/care what I’m doing every 4 minutes, there are lots of reasons to tweet, but do be aware that it is, in fact, public.

• If need be, create one “professional” twitter account that makes you look studious and mature, and another where you can tweet things like “omg SO hungover for interview this morning; hope they didn’t notice”

Gmail:

• Ever notice how random people you emailed once show up on your chat list? Yeah, you show up on theirs too. Careful with your gmail status.

Hope I didn’t ruin your spring break… have eco-friendly fun, and enjoy the time off before you get back to the grind of jobsearching.

Oh, and looking for a cool summer gig?
Check out these opportunities to take charge on a green project:
http://www.grandaspirations.org/index.html (Nationwide)
http://www.green.dc.gov/green/cwp/view,a,1233,q,461478.asp (Washington, D.C.)

Penned by Tom

According to my dictionary, the word ‘twit’ means a silly or foolish person. Is the current rush to Twitter a great drive towards April 1st, where we’ll all be declared fooled, or is there real value out there for the wise that are looking to get into a green job?

I’ve certainly been interested to dive in and you can follow my posts here – twitter.com/brightgreen. It also feels good – to mix fun and pierce the sometimes overly-formal veil that lies between a company’s public image and the people that work within. Yes, stop the press, we here at Bright Green Talent find people meaningful careers, but we also have tipsy evenings, days of despair, and laugh… (a lot and very loudly in the case of Christina). We want to be able to share these moments too, to prove that it’s not all work and no play, as well as reward people with more up-to-date action and reaction from Bright Green Towers.

But onto twitutility – there are some useful ways to use twitter to help you find a green job, or research a green career. Here’s my list, in a lot more than 140 characters:

• Find out if your future employer twitters. Use this as a method of doing your research and enabling you to go into interview, or to pitch to that person/company with a better idea of what they like/don’t like.
• If you have a big enough following, ask people questions about your resume, your interview technique, or anything you want quick answers to. Use your followers to do research and get reactions.
• Use the searches. Although unrelated, the best way my friend in Madagascar could keep up with the crisis there was to check Twitter rather than the news (which was always too slow). Beat the rush by searching for green jobs, or using some of the # (hashtags) to find out what’s going on. You might find out about opportunities before others if you’re on the ball. By way of example, we launched a new job search for Wal-Mart which we tweeted about first today.
• Follow those specifically targeted at green jobs, or other categories that fit your needs. e.g. greenjob, Green Jobs in the USA, Green Jobs.
• If you’re twittering, be sure that a future employer can’t follow your posts about your communist past, love of beer or flirtation with illegal substances. Recruiters will start to use twitter more and more to do a check on someone.
• Be careful, you can screw up.
• Use it as one of a number of tools, but don’t go overboard. Having 20k followers isn’t necessarily going to result in your getting a job. At some point you have to drop the keyboard and get stuck in. There’s nothing like face-to-face time.

Tom aka @brightgreen