The quote is a minor aside in the article on facial recognition but I really like the term “crowdsourced data management”. I’d also love to hear Chipchase and Nicholas Carr together on a panel — contrast with this article on ‘New frontiers in social networking‘.

You can often find what the market will pay by looking at similar job postings for in your area or checking out salary guides like Salary Expert or Monster’s salary guide. This should give you a rough band of wages that they’ll offer and you’ll be able to get an idea of how good the offer is. Go through your costs and figure out what your ideal wage is, what you’re expecting for, and what you’re willing to take. These 3 numbers should create your negotiating band and you should have a rough idea of what they translate to in appropriate measurements — per annum, monthly, hourly, etc.

Also, try to think of what non-salary things you’re willing to accept if they have a strict pay structure — things like extra vacation time, better health care, paid training/ education vouchers, flextime scheduling, etc. Another item could be accepting a lower starting wage but having faster scheduled increases, either benchmarked to time or targets. Make sure that these are in your contract when you sign, as performance reviews always seem to slip on the importance scale for busy managers. The more prepared you are, the better your bargaining position.

If you’re going to bring it up, first make sure you’ve talked about the position and what the duties are and what you’ll excel at — you don’t want to position yourself as only being there for the pay cheque. But at the end of the meeting, if it hasn’t been brought up then it’s okay. Try to place it in the larger context of the job, “So now that I have a better idea of what you see as the job deliverables and feel comfortable about my ability to really add value to COMPANY XYZ, perhaps we should discuss the compensation package.”

It’s generally better to have the other person bring up a number first but if you have to, always start with your ideal or perhaps a bit above and give it as a band. Refer to the fact that your market research suggests $XX,000 – $XX,000 is the industry standard to improve your position.

When negotiating, remember to focus on the value you add. “Based on my past success at reducing costs over 300k for COMPANY XYZ, I feel that $XX,000 – $XX,000 is a good number.” Be honest, both with the company and yourself, and you should do fine.

I think about this lately because I need to get back to emailing people who I think could give me some helpful information about topics I’m interested. Only now its my career path I want to discuss in greater detail. Employment services are good because I help people market themselves with their documents, a resume that succinctly outlines their qualifications or a cover letter that speaks of passion and authenticity. For more committed clients, I can talk about efforts that can make with social media to further their career. And while I like the underlying communication and professional development aspects, I’m getting ready to make my next move. I’m just not quite sure what that will be, so I’m thinking I need to ask people who seem passionate about what they’re doing.

One of the things I’ve got to focus more on is transferable skills I’m developing and see what other industries I can apply them to, looking were I can help out a company and continue to grow. Recently, I listened to a podcast by Llyod Grofton of Liberate Media where he commented about one the biggest crises facing the PR industry, a lack of skills. He offers some suggestions about perhaps reaching outside PR and journalistic areas and look for talented candidates that have client-focus, technology or design backgrounds. I’ve been following Liberate Media for a couple of months, as I’ve enjoyed their blog articles.

In a bizarre coincidence, or, assuming there is a skill shortage in PR, not so much, Nicky Fried from Strategic Communications wrote about skills needed from internal communications and engagement employees:

A recent article from Ragan talks for the value of hiring journalism graduates in corporate communications. Maybe – if you are hiring for writing ability and someone who understands a variety of different social media. But you better make sure that person is able to develop other skills.

Internal communications is about a great deal more. Key to effective internal communications is the understanding that this is a strategic endeavor focused on facilitating discussions throughout the organization with the goal of performance improvement.

Whether it’s external or internal communications that’s next up for me, continuing to develop new skills is clearly a necessary component.

One of the challenges I’m currently facing is how to get more buy in from other team members about using social media to improve productivity and knowledge sharing. Our internal blog hasn’t been getting quite the impact me and senior management were hoping for. I think having an info session to really introduce it properly and getting a chance to show just how easy it is to interact with will improve engagement. The other key piece is that through our initial internal testing we’ve been able to more closely define who the target audience will be.

When we first started looking at having a blog, some of the questions I asked was who the intended audience was – clients, industry peers, internal or funders. I think the newness of the project – for both management and me – made it harder to determine, and the fact that the blog is in addition to my other duties instead of being it or primarily it. Now that we’ve been posting for a month internally, directions are becoming more defined and we’ve realized while clients will gain some benefit, they’ll probably be our smallest audience.

Instead, our audience will probably be industry peers. I haven’t had the opportunity to do a lot of vigorous community monitoring but it does appear that we’ll be one of the early adopters within the local employment services field. The benefits of course will allow the organization to become a leader (hopefully) in the use of social media and this should also allow for individuals to establish reputations for being leaders in their niches. By outlining the value of the blog to team members in terms of what’s in it for them, buy in will likely increase and improve the ROI for the organization.