Unfortunately there are AR professionals who are getting caught up in recession-related layoffs. While this is never a pleasant occurrence, AR professionals have new tools for maintaining their network and seeking new positions. In addition to updating resumes and posting them to places such as this blog AR professionals should use this time to increase their expertise by developing or honing their social media skills.
SageCircle Technique:
- Set up a blog (it’s free) mainly to provide an on-line backgrounder on yourself, but also to do an occasional post (two or three times a month) to show off your writing skills and expertise on AR
- Create or update your LinkedIn and FaceBook pages – search these sites to expand your network at the same time as demonstrating you know how to use social networking sites
- Set up a Twitter account
- Experiment with Twitter by engaging analysts and other AR professionals in online conversations
- Search Twitter for key words to expand your contacts and develop your network
- Send SageCircle your Twitter handle and we will add you to the AR Twitter Directory as an “Independent”
Bottom Line: It is a net connected world. By being an active user on Twitter and having a blog, AR professionals can demonstrate that they have social media expertise in their skills portfolio. While the vast majority of AR programs are not currently utilizing social media, many are considering pilot programs so AR professionals with demonstrated social media skills will increase their attractiveness to prospective employers.
Question: AR managers – How important do you consider social media skills when considering a new hire?
SageCircle has published or will be publishing a series of posts addressing a variety of recession-oriented topics
How AR needs to work differently in a recession:
- AR & recession – It’s about refocusing priorities and activities (overview)
- AR & recession – briefings need to focus on customers and fast business results
- AR & recession – telling stories of AR delivering business value to the company
- AR & recession – refocusing metrics to emphasize outcomes not activities
- AR & recession – revisiting analyst lists and service level agreements
How AR needs to spend differently in a recession:
- Why it is a really bad idea to cut AR, even in a recession
- Budgeting cutting can help AR focus and innovate
- Budget cutting part two – Alternate solutions for analyst contracts
- Notes on managing your budget in a recession – SageCircle’s Coffee Talk notes
- AR & recession spending – re-considering analyst contract priorities
- AR & recession spending – determining what out-tasked activities to bring in-house, if any
Purchasing analyst services best practices are more critical in a recession:
- Using five rights to avoid a wrong when it comes to purchasing Gartner or Forrester services
- Right reasons – Evaluate why you are purchasing analyst services
- Right services – Align the services you buy to better match the reason for info or advice
- Right firms – Search out alternative services providers that better match your reasons
- Right price – Acquire those services that meet your basics requirements
- Right usage – Drive usage of the services you buy to ensure maximize business value
Building a Community 
This is sage advice (pun sort of intended).
Knowing social media and leveraging it in the job hunt & awareness phase will give job-seekers a significant leg up in today’s environment. Analysts and others in the extended Twitter network always seem to have up-to-the-minute intelligence and info on job openings that come available through their discussions with their vendor clients. Seeing as most good jobs are scored through connections and contacts, having a powerful social network is just too important of a resource for AR practitioners to miss out on.
Also, having demonstrable social media skills (and more importantly, combined with the knowledge of how to leverage it for AR) is fast becoming de riguer for AR qualifications — or at minimum is a skill that many employers will find valuable in an AR practitioner.
Hi Gerry, Thanks for the comment.
Great point about analysts knowing about AR job openings. While AR pros between jobs no longer have access to client inquiry, they can network with analysts via social media.