People in our “space” — technology — are always hoping around from job to job on all levels. It’s a way of life, bro’!
However, tech companies have yet to fully use that job-hobbing to their advantage in the conversation driven-market of the blog and web world. Sure, high-level exec level movements are usually chronicled officially by companies and the news, but what I’m talking about here is companies announcing the hire of all the other people who don’t have access the the executive wash room.
There are exceptions – in particular from Sun where the hire of Dave Johnson and “The JRuby Guys” got quite a lot of coverage…at least in the spaces I pay attention to ;>
As RedMonk regulars know, there’s much value in the people who have to share toilets at the company: indeed, we’d posit there’s a ton of the pragmatic, ongoing value in engaging with and amplifying the brain-power and will of those people. It’s one of RedMonk’s “trade secrets”: low barriers to entry and bottom up in addition to taking a top-down approach to engagement and IT-knowledge/advice harvesting.
Even more so, people who have active web and Internet presences are big influencers in the market today. If I want to find out the value of HP-UX, I go to my online communities of toilet sharers, not to the clean and tidy exec bathrooms: we know what the second group will say, “we rule!/they suck!”
So, the suggestion to companies is: make a much bigger deal and fanfare when you hire a “low level person” who has any modicum of influence. There are dozens (probably in the low hundreds) of people whose hire would make me think that the hiring company was smart. And yet, whenever such people are hired, it’s usually through a LinkedIn update that I find out rather than “officially” from the company.
What this amounts to is straight from Cluetrain, Gonzo Marketing (which never got enough attention), and, more recently, Brand Hijack: open up your fire-walls and let your people marketing and influence. Otherwise, you’re wasting a valuable resource. Counter-intutivly, companies love to hire smart people and then treat them like they’re dumb. For companies, part of the recovery is telling the world how happy they are to have a new person working for them, rather than relying on LinkedIn and IM.
Disclaimer: Sun is a client.
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