Tools to build and manage your reference network (3/3)

26 July 2008 by Olivier Zara.

Post 1/3: How to manage your professional reputation

Post 2/3: Building your Reference Network

Post 3/3: Tools to build and manage your reference network

Your read post 3/3. The 2 previous posts dealt with several concepts:

- professional references
- social references
- recommendations
- contacts network
- reference network
- sphere of trust or context of trust

If you don’t feel like reading or rereading these previous posts, here’s a summary:

1. Recruiters and employers evaluate a professional’s reputation based on their references and recommendations (either oral or written).

2. You have professional references. These can be found among your former or current managers, colleagues, associates, clients, suppliers or partners. You also have social references (friends and people in your social or voluntary-organizations network).

3. Numerous professionals are faced with 2 major problems:

1st problem - The loss of their references. Both your professional mobility (change of identity, of duties,…) and geographic mobility (country, region,…) contribute to this loss of references, the more so the greater this mobility is.

2nd problem - The use of references in crisis mode (when everything’s gone awry). Why only call upon your references to help you in a job search? Your references could help you land a promotion, a raise or a new position! It’s often too late to start managing your references when everything’s already gone wrong.

4. As a professional, it is important to build 2 networks:

a. Your contacts network - This is your address book: all the people with whom you’ve been in contact at least once, face to face or virtually. This network will help you to make connections and probably to find your lost references again! What matters in this instance is the size of your list of contacts so as to reduce the number of intermediaries between you and the person with whom you’d like to connect.

b. Your reference network - This is your network of social and professional references, which we could also call your trust network. This network will help you with your career within your company, help you to win contracts if you’re a consultant, and of course help you in any future job search. This is a qualified network (strong mutual relationship) and a qualitative network (here, the name of the game isn’t quantity!).

5. A reference network or trust network = Those in whom I place my trust and who trust me in return (mutual trust). A sphere of trust is defined for each person within this network. This sphere of trust can include duties, expertise, skills and human qualities. These are the elements upon which you base your trust in a person in your network. These elements will be described through the recommendations of your references, either orally (during interviews with recruiters) or in writing (letters of recommendation). Conversely, outside of the sphere of trust, you’re not comfortable saying that you trust this or that person even if they belong to your reference network. In reality, it is exceedingly rare to have an unlimited and absolute trust in people belonging to our professional and social circle.

This brief summary of the previous posts allows us understand the stakes associated with the management of your professional reputation. There are 2 types of tools to build and manage your reference network:

- Professional social networks such as Linkedin, Ecademy or Viadeo (Xing doesn’t offer any recommendation system). These networks specialize in connections and the management of your professional contacts network. But they also offer functionality to allow users to gather recommendations and testimonials. Through the list of people who’ve penned recommendations on your behalf, it is then possible to get a glimpse of your reference network.

- Tools to manage professional references such as CV 2.0, Naymz, Repvine, iKarma, Rapleaf, TrustPlus or Gorb. These have not all been designed to serve as “reference networks” but they in fact enable users to create such reference networks through the list of people who provide recommendations, feedback or testimonials. iKarma, Rapleaf, TrustPlus and Gorb also offer sellers rating systems, varying in sophistication, modeled on eBay’s system.

I. Professional social networks

The principle underpinning professional social networks is simple: to make connections by putting your address book online in order to be able to use the address book of your contacts. It’s a winning proposition for all parties. You make your address book public so as to gain access not only to your contacts’ address books but also to those of your contacts’ contacts up to 3 or 4 degrees removed.

On a personal note, my 259 Linkedin contacts enable me to connect with 85.600 people (2 degrees removed). These 85.600 people can in turn connect me with 4.263.600 people (3 degrees removed). These numbers change every day. The more contacts people in your contacts network add to their own network, the greater the number of people you can contact… provided you’re a paying subscriber. That’s right, this isn’t free, or at least not completely, depending on the services.

Professional social networks were designed to manage your contacts network and to facilitate connections, but they can also be used to manage your reference network. Here’s an overview of the market’s major players:

Linkedin is the worldwide leader with 20 million users. Until now its presence outside USA has been limited but, in France for example, its newly signed partnership with APEC — a French non-profit organization which acts as a jobs portal — should help it to grow rapidly in the country.

Xing is originally a German service. It’s the European leader with 5 million members, but it doesn’t offer any recommendation system. It cannot be used to manage your reference network.

Viadeo is the leader on the French market, with 2 million users. It’s most useful if you live and work in France. The service, however, has global ambitions.

Ecademy is a British service with a userbase of 300.000. Very useful if you work in the UK.

6nergies is a French service, 20.000-member strong, which offers original applications without any ads.

Just like dating sites, the added value of these professional networks increases in step with their membership. The more members sign up, the greater the number of possible connections becomes. In theory, it would thus be preferable to register with the market-leading services. But nothing’s stopping you from registering on several services.

Conversely, tools to manage your references don’t have to grapple with the issue of reaching critical-mass. The objective isn’t to put you in touch with anyone but to manage your professional reputation. If you ask 10 people to become your references, the total userbase of the service is of little importance to you!

Most of the professional networks offer a recommendation system. You thus have an all-in-one offering: management of your contacts network and management of your reference network. There are, however, some drawbacks:

- Can one invite a person into one’s reference network and into one’s contacts network in the same fashion (most often through an impersonal message automatically sent to your entire address book)? As a general rule, a contact and a reference are not managed in the same way.

- Is it appropriate to let your contacts freely access the names of your references and vice versa? Being in an address book, in this respect, is a lot less attractive than being on a list of references. Confidentiality may be very important for some people. It is therefore better to have a dedicated space.

- Some people may agree to become references by writing a recommendation but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want:
1. to make their address book public
2. to act as intermediaries or trusted third party in response to multiple connection requests
3. to receive commercial offers or offers from recruiters via the direct-connection offerings associated with Linkedin’s or Viadeo’s Premium subscription package for example. These offers allow anyone to contact your references directly without the involvement of any intermediary. Some have dubbed this “social spam” as a way to describe the spam messages from social networking sites. Social spam is also linked to invitations you receive from unknown persons who want to be added to your contacts in order to reach the list of your contacts. You can read the following blog post to understand this phenomenon Social Media Spam — I Want to be Your Friend. This nuisance could lead your references to shut down their accounts.

- How can you show the recommendations attached to your Linkedin profile on your Viadeo profile or vice versa? If you move to a new country and need to register with a new service, you may well lose your recommendations (for example, Linkedin has a strong market share in the US and so does Viadeo in France).

- If you leave one service to join one that is better suited to your needs, will your references follow you with each new change?

- How can you show your recommendations without requiring that the person you’re talking to register with your chosen service? Currently, a recruiter or a prospect must first register with your chosen service before gaining access to your recommendations and most importantly the profiles of those who made these recommendations.

The above constraints can be partly explained by the ultimate aim of each service’s recommendation system. Recruiters, consultants, salespeople pay subscription fees to be able to contact job seekers or prospects. Since one must pay in order to be connected, it is important to be able to evaluate the reputation of the professional one wishes to contact. The recommendation system provides an answer to the following question: Is it worth it to pay to be able to contact you?

Moreover, on the topic of constraints, it is doubtful that Linkedin would find it in their interest to let you use your recommendations on Viadeo or Xing, just as it’s not in eBay’s interest to let you use your reputation as an eBay seller on competing ecommerce sites. These are closed systems.

New services have appeared to mitigate the problems associated with « All-in-One » services (contacts + references), and they specialize in reputation management.

II. Tools to manage professional and social references

Since they’re not designed to help make connections and manage your contacts, the tools to manage professional and social references complement professional social networks.

They allow you to create a public or private profile alongside which you can display the names of your references and their recommendations. All that’s needed to promote your reputation is to then direct people to your online profile. Additionally, you can print out this online profile and append or integrate it to the hard-copy of your résumé.

I have designed a service to help manage references (CV 2.0) and I head the company offering this service. Since November 2007 (in French), this blog has allowed me to share with you my years of research and development in the area of identity and online reputation. For this particular post — given the inherent conflict of interest between my role as a blogger and my role with CV 2.0 — I recommend that you subscribe to the services mentioned so that you may form your own opinion. Bearing in mind this caveat, here’s an overview of the current available tools:

1. Repvine is a service entirely dedicated to the management of your references. You create a network and only those people belonging to it may write recommendations. Once connected with a person, however, you no longer have control over the content of their recommendation, the only recourse is to launch proceedings through a special form. Here’s an excerpt from the site’s FAQ explaining the reasons for this choice:

“With Repvine, you get to decide who contributes, that is, who makes up your community, but you do not get to decide or change what your community says about you. If you invite a friend or a customer to contribute, or accept a request for contribution from a friend or customer, they will most likely say good things, but they might also say something slightly neutral or perhaps something that you think is a little too honest or even negative. None of us are perfect, and our references will reflect that. […] ” Source http://www.repvine.com/footer/faq.php#D

To offset the potential posting of negative content, but also to ensure the reliability of publicly-available content, Repvine offers a rating system for each recommendation. Each member of your community may vote on the public content posted by the other members of your community. If you receive a recommendation, be it positive, neutral or negative, members of your community can decrease or increase its value or relevance by voting for or against it.

Repvine allows you to bring into your reference network people who fall into 4 relationship categories: friends, family, professional and dating. The video entitled « Dating » is no longer available on their webpage (click here to see it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NcUQAd-YuA); if you’d like to take a break, you can also watch the other 2 videos that are available: http://www.repvine.com/videos/.

To get a glimpse of the service, you can visit the profile of this user who could be one of the founders of Repvine (it is nigh impossible to find the names of the project leaders):
http://www.repvine.com/members/hyardeny/

2. Naymz was originally designed as a content aggregator to be hosted on an online profile (based on your RSS feeds). Naymz enables you to promote your profile in the sponsored links of search engines. At the end of 2007, Naymz added new functionality aimed at managing professional reputation. You can ask for recommendations and create a network that mixes contacts and references. The difference between a contact and a reference is the writing of a recommendation. Contacts do not write recommendations.

Here’s a list of the features offered:
- Creation of an online profile (photo, presentation, contact information,…) and your reference network (limited to 10 people for free accounts),
- Aggregation of the RSS-feeds (photos, videos, blogs, favorites,…) of the services you use (Flickr, Youtube,…);
- Creation of your Naymz Reputation Network. This is your network of contacts and references, just as on Linkedin;
- A people search engine to search through all of the Naymz members for partners, clients,…
- Advertising of your Naymz profile in the sponsored links of the 3 biggest search engines (for $4.95 USD a month);
- Monitoring online postings about you (Reputation Monitor)

Naymz has also set up its own system to evaluate your reputation (your RepScore). The more transparent you are as measured by the quantity of information you post in your profile, the more points you receive. For example, you get 5 points for every web link you add to your profile, 5 points for every tag and email added,… Your RepScore is displayed on the right side of your profile with a rating from 1 to 10.

Your profile is publicly displayed, but you can hide your contact information. Only users registered on Naymz may contact you through a form or through your contact information (phone, address,…). If you have a Premium account, people not registered on Naymz may also contact you. This subscription level not only enables non-registered users to contact you, it also removes the banner ads that surround your profile’s content.

When a person belonging to your contacts network writes a recommendation about you, you can not turn down or modify its contents. But if the content doesn’t suit you, the quick solution is to remove the recommendation author from your network (their name and recommendation disappear from your profile and network).

To get a glimpse of the service, you can browse through the profile of one of the 3 founders, Nolan Bayliss: http://www.naymz.com/search/nolan/bayliss/5

Recommendations can be found in the “Endorsements” box below the contact information while the list of references is in the right-hand side column.

3. CV 2.0 offers a solution for managing references that allows you to integrate the recommendations written by your professional and social references into your hard-copy or online résumé. CV 2.0 is an open system (non exclusive) which allows you to collect your recommendations in one place and post them to all the services and formats of your choice, including Naymz and Repvine!

Collecting your recommendations in one place is especially useful if you’ve registered with several professional networks. CV 2.0 allows you to keep complete control over the content produced by your references. If the content of a recommendation is not to your liking, you can suspend the user from your network (they become invisible on your public profile). You may then launch a review process to adjust and discuss the content of your recommendation with its author. The main goal isn’t to set aside negative or neutral content but to bring the text around to certain actions rather than others so that your recommendations may be consistent with your future career plans. This way you can describe the skills and achievements most important to helping you implement your plans. CV 2.0’s approach is thus one of Personal Branding.

Here is the list of features offered:
- Online profile in the form of a mini website (which can be either public or private);
- Choice of several different color schemes for your profile’s template;
- No ads displayed on your profile, even for free accounts;
- People visiting your profile do not need to register on CV 2.0 in order to contact you or look at your recommendations;
- The option to display your mini website in 2 languages of your choosing - the translation of your content, however, is left up to you;
- The possibility of adding a video to introduce yourself (via a hosting service such as Google Video);
- A password system to protect the security and confidentiality of your pages. You may, however, set your profile to open access and even list it on the main search engines and in specialized directories.

Some options described above require a Premium account. During the launch phase, however, the Premium-level service is free. What’s more, if you gather 2 recommendations by the time the launch phase closes in a couple of months, you will get a free Premium account for life. After all, early adopters and above all the readers of this blog should be rewarded

Directories will be added to the current service in a couple of weeks to allow you to list your CV 2.0 in several kinds of specialized directories.

You can visit www.mycv20.com to see an example of a CV 2.0!

4. In closing this overview, here’s a group presentation of 4 services: iKarma, Rapleaf, TrustPlus and Gorb. These services all draw on eBay’s reputation management system. You can find a description of how these services work in a previous post, which you may read here:

That post will help you to evaluate the relevance of these tools when it comes to managing your professional reputation. If you don’t feel like reading the post or simply don’t have the time, here’s a brief summary:

iKarma, Rapleaf, TrustPlus and Gorb are relevant for evaluating your reputation as a seller or buyer. They are, however, ill suited, and even dangerous, for evaluating your professional reputation. Indeed, they allow neutral or negative testimonials to show up on your profile and some even allow anonymous postings. As a result, you run the risk of ruining your professional reputation in short order.

III. How to choose?

If you find that the choice isn’t obvious for you or if you have trouble evaluating your own needs, here are a couple of questions to help get you started:

- Given my availability and career plans, should I use a professional social network (an « all-in-one » service, meaning contacts + references) to save time or an additional specialized service?

- Will my preferred service meet my current and future needs?

- Is the service available in my native tongue or in that of my profile’s visitors (recruiter, prospect, references,…)? Is the service local or international?

- Are the ads displayed on my profile, alongside my references, acceptable to my page’s visitors? For example, what if you apply for a job at Ford and your profile displays ads for Toyota.

- Does the service force my profile’s visitors to register in order to view my references and their recommendations? Must people register in order to contact me?

- Is it possible to export or to grant easy access to my references on other sites or in a hard-copy, paper format? In other words, is it possible to show my Linkedin recommendations on Viadeo or my Viadeo recommendations on Ecademy?

- Is the design of my online profile consistent with the demands and expectations of my page’s visitors? (Usability, layout,…)

We are all unique and your choice will be as well! Don’t hesitate to share your advice or findings in the comments. Your opinion, buttressed by your arguments, will help to move the debate forward and to improve all of these services

Posted in CV 2.0, Personal Branding | 1 Comment »