How many times have you said, or hear, “I can’t believe they hired that guy…” We’ve all been connected to a bad hire (or sometimes been that bad hire).

CareerBuilder.com recently asked pollsters Harris Interactive to survey hiring managers about the worst resumes they’ve seen. Some of the interview comments heard and resume statements were quite zany to say the least. Among them, some razor sharp candidates…

·         Specified that availability to work Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays is limited because the weekends are "drinking time."

·         Drew a picture of a car on the outside of the envelope and said the car would be a gift to the hiring manager.

·         Listed hobbies that included sitting on a levee at night watching alligators.

·         Explained an arrest record by stating, "We stole a pig, but it was a really small pig.”

I suppose there are worse hires. I once had a client’s employee come to me (13 years ago) with a wad of cash that a customer used to pay (rather than a cheque or Visa) and said, “So, let’s split it.” My client was a charity.

HIRING AN INTRANET CONSULTANT OR MANAGER

In honor of these bright lights and some of our own favorites, I’ve compiled my own fictional list of those potential comments you don’t want to ever hear from a prospective intranet manager or consultant:

1.      “I’ve used the Web and that’s the same as an intranet.”

2.      “It doesn’t’ matter what management thinks, it’s users that count.”

3.      “The intranet is just a communications tool… like a newsletter.”

4.      “You don’t need Sharepoint, my cousin designed the local Hooters site for only $900."

5.      “I think it would be cool to take the Velvet Revolver website concept to the intranet.”

6.      “What’s IBM?”

7.      “What a CMS?”

8.      “Wiki…? Is that the hot receptionist in HR?”

9.      ”I write a lot better if I get a couple of crantinis in me!”

10.  “I personally believe… that U.S. Americans…. And the Iraq, and such…”

I wonder what Alberto Gonzales will say during his next job interview?

I've done some writing on the intranet consulting profession over the past few months.

READ:

10 things to ask your intranet consultant

Avoiding dangerous intranet consultants

How to hire an intranet consultant

Hiring an intranet consultant or manager

Now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. My company, Prescient Digital Media, is hiring. Although candidates who live in Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, New York and Boston may have an edge, I really don’t care where the person lives if they’ve got the skills and the experience. The ideal candidate could potentially work from home.

Here’s the job description (feel free to poach this listing if your company or firm is also looking to fill a similar position):

Title: Senior Consultant & Account Manager
Status: Full-time Permanent (Part-time or Flex-time arrangement is an option)

Prescient Digital Media is a rapidly growing Internet and intranet business consulting firm. Based in Toronto, Prescient delivers strategic e-business consulting and planning services to organizations in both the private and public sectors throughout North America.

We are currently seeking a Senior Consultant who is attracted by the prospect of an exciting and fast paced work environment with great potential for career development.

Reporting to the Vice President of Client Delivery, as a Senior Consultant you will be responsible for managing all aspects of client engagements. You will employ superior analytical skills, proven project management expertise, excellent written and verbal communication abilities and a strong understanding of intranets and websites. You will be a member of a highly specialized team of consultants responsible for assisting clients to develop and achieve their business objectives for their Internet, intranet and extranet sites.

Major Responsibilities:

·         Communication excellence: There will be a high degree of communication with clients and potential clients. Written and verbal communications will be one of your key strengths.

·         Engagement: You will possess the ability to independently and efficiently manage a project from start to finish with minimal supervision.

·         Analysis & Reporting: You will be able to gather and analyze client business specifics, as well as user requirements and develop detailed reports and recommendations based on this information.

·         Planning: You understand the intricacies of strategic planning, modeling and facilitation including research techniques and tools such as surveys, and focus group testing, and are able to effectively execute these practices.

·         Marketing: You will have experience in delivering powerful presentations and demonstrations. As well, you will be called upon to contribute web-related articles to Prescient’s monthly newsletter.

·         Teamwork: Knowledge sharing and collaboration with colleagues, as well as our partners and clients is essential to your success as a Prescient team member.

·         Business Development: Identifying opportunities to extend client engagements to help drive Prescient’s growth.

Requirements:

You will have a BS/BA degree or equivalent work experience combined with 6+ years of relevant online business and consulting experience. MBA preferred. Candidates must possess a strong e-business understanding and be comfortable dealing with senior management within client environments.

The successful applicant will have well-rounded, multi-vertical business experience; exceptional executive communication, presentation, negotiation, analytical and conflict management skills; and a high commitment to customer satisfaction.

The Reward:

If you are a self-starter looking for a challenging, creative atmosphere, then Prescient is the place for you. Our leading methodologies and innovative corporate culture keep us on the cutting edge of our industry, and fuels our exceptional year-to-year growth. We offer a flexible work environment with great career advancement potential. Compensation will be based on a combination of salary and performance-based pay.

Location is flexible and working from home is an option for the right candidate. Interested candidates should email a copy of their resume. No phone calls, please.

Please visit our Job application form if you wish to apply or to recommend a colleague.

Intranet Blog is an intranet news blog featuring best practices, case studies and everything intranet -- plus the relevant musings (but often irrelevant musings) of Toby Ward, a senior intranet consultant and Founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media.

In addition to editing Intranet Blog, Toby is the CEO and Founder of Prescient Digital Media. Prescient consists of Internet and intranet consultants for hire that plan and build highly effective intranets and websites.

Toby has had the pleasure and good fortune to work with dozens of intranets and many more interactive clients including:

• Amgen
• Atomic Energy of Canada
• BC Hydro
• Bell Canada
• Boston Scientific
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
• Federal Reserve Bank 
• Gartner
• HSBC
• Intrawest (Playground)
• Manulife Financial
• Mastercard
• Nintendo
  
• Ontario Government
• Pepsi
• RBC Financial Group
• Schneider Electric
• Sodexo
  
• Sprint PCS
• Thomson Financial
• Vancouver Coastal Health
• WestJet
• and many others. 

A broadcast journalist turned consultant, Toby founded and launched Prescient in early 2001.

Toby has contributed to two books, has his own in the works, and is a recognized expert on effective web planning, communication, benchmarking and best practice measurement (ROI). Toby is the author of Finding ROI, a leading study conducted on intranet Return on Investment that included participants such as KPMG, Scotiabank, Volvo, Shell, Royal Bank, New York Life, HP and others. Leading companies such as the New York Times, Intel, PBS, the Bank of Canada and many others have bought his white paper that has been read by thousands.

Toby is a regular writer for an assortment of magazines and is popular speaker in North America and Europe at conferences by the Conference Board, IQPC, IABC, Ragan, and others. He is also a regular blogger at IntranetBlog, GetStrategic, eHealth News and Communitelligence.com. You can also read his articles at CorporateWebsite.com and Ragan.com.

He has led Prescient Digital Media and clients to win 15 awards in the past two years from the International Association of Business Communicators, Canadian Public Relations Society, a the 2004 Webby Award for Best Government + Law Website on the Internet (for HealthyOntario.com). 

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please download the free white paper, Finding ROI.

You can contact or hire Toby and Prescient Digital Media please phone  416.926.8800 or via email at Contact Us.

CRITERIA FOR COVERAGE OR GETTING 'INK' ON INTRANETBLOG.COM:

If you or your organization has a good piece of research, a case study with a screenshot(s) and some form of KPI attached to it (some metric), or just a plain good ol' story, then I'll write about it (how much we write depends on the quality of the story or case study -- the more marketing-speak and smell of a blatant sales pitch, the less we write. We're okay with a soft sales pitch if its contained in the context of the aforementioned research, case study or good ol' story).

We do not however (with a very odd exception) cover product launches, special events or white paper releases if the above criteria are not met. On occasion however, I will cross-promote a launch or an event with a piece if the above criteria is met, or if I'm personally attending or addressing said event and I provide a sneak preview or advance teasers.

IntranetBlog.com contains no advertising or sales whatsoever (that includes you Google Ads) until such time as we get foolish and greedy. It will continue however to promote the research, and findings, and those events that support the two, of its principal author, Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media.

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There are many intranets that have been built in-house by the organization’s own people. IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP are just some that have been featured on IntranetBlog.com. Most of these however are technology companies that are highly web savvy and have had a constantly evolving intranet for more than 15 years.

There are many advantages to building or redesigning an intranet with internal staff resources:

·         Costs less cash out of pocket

·         Internal stakeholders are forced to learn the ropes

·         Internal jobs are reinforced

The disadvantages of building or redesigning an intranet with only internal staff are obvious:

·         Lack of skill and experience

·         Lack of people to execute

·         Internal politics on what and how to do it

·         Lack of available time to execute

Many organizations however don’t have great resources or experienced staff that know what it takes to build a great intranet (see Good to great intranet). Hiring an external consultant makes sense for many that face some of the above hurdles. However, an Internet consultant is not an intranet consultant. A web design firm has deep creative skills, but rarely has any business acumen and intranet expertise. A big-five consulting firm has very smart people but is very expensive.

So what should you look for in an intranet consultant? Here’s 10 questions to ask potential consultants or intranet consulting firms:

1-     How many intranets have you worked on?

2-     How long have you been in business?

3-     How well do you understand our organization / our business?

4-     Provide a written understanding of our needs / requirements.

5-     Provide client intranet case studies.

6-     Provide intranet client references.

7-     Provide bios of the proposed consultants.

8-     Provide detailed pricing

9-     Provide documentation of your project methodologies.

10-Provide evidence of vendor neutrality / technology neutrality or evidence of experience with the organization’s chosen technology.

Some things to look for and to be cautious about:

ADDITONAL READING:

Hiring an intranet consultant

About the author: Toby Ward is an intranet consultant (Internet consultant too) and the founder of Prescient Digital Media. He has worked with and improved many, many company intranets including Amgen, HSBC, Mastercard, Manulife, PepsiCo, Royal Bank, etc. Toby and his company are consultants for hire and can build your intranet or improve an existing intranet You may contact this intranet consultant directly via the Prescient Digital Media website or email him at: toby{at}prescientdigital{dot}com.

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Gerry McGovern says that you will earn more money if you start proving the value of the intranet. Sounds like something I would say (yeah, I know, a broken record).

Gerry is a firm believer “if you are in charge of your company's intranet you are in pole position to further your career.”

The bottom line: the vast majority of executives think the intranet delivers little value for the cost – and some believe it’s a waste of money. But most of these suits aren’t ignorant fools, they’re just ignorant. They need a sheppard to show them the way – to show them the money (see Measure your efforts).

Watch the vlog-like video clip Intranet Task Master with Gerry talking about the value of intranet measurement.

A reader recently asked me how to find and test a potential candidate to run internal communications and the corporate intranet.

I’ve helped a few clients hire an intranet manager and here are some of the key duties and skills that I suggest are necessary – based on a job posting for the slightly more prolific Editor-in-Chief (feel free to take out some duties and skills for a less prolific position):

Duties:

• Provide the editorial leadership for Intranet, editing and overseeing daily content and news production.
• Support alignment of timely and effective Internal Communications by developing and maintaining an editorial schedule and by being a key writer of homepage content including corporate news and polls.
• Develop, maintain and manage the necessary infrastructure for content publication including policies, process and procedures.
• Create and maintain standards to ensure quality control of the content on the Intranet, working in partnership with Business Unit and Divisional site administrators and content owners to enforce content-editorial policy and corporate identity guidelines.
• Chair the Intranet Editorial Board and be an active member on the Intranet Council.
• Partner with the Intranet Council, IT, Business Units, web administrators, content owners and project stakeholders to identify opportunities and implement solutions that drive usage, streamline processes and facilitate communications, ultimately developing goals and strategies for future content growth.
• Review and analyze employee feedback and site metrics on an ongoing basis, taking action where appropriate to drive usage and enhance content.
• Support the implementation of the Intranet revamp launch communications plan. 
• Support the implementation of employee communication initiatives including quarterly employee updates, employee cascades, electronic newsletters and special projects. 

Qualifications:

• Accomplished and fluent business writer and editor, preferably with experience working in a daily newspaper, publication, news, business Internet or Intranet environment
• Experience in communication management of Intranets including the use of Content Management Systems (CMS), internet content presentation and web writing style
• Familiarity with web technology and how it can be leveraged as a communication/business tool
• Strong relationship building and negotiation skills
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment with the ability to adapt to change and meet timelines without sacrificing quality
• Basic knowledge of HTML and ASP and some experience in design software and web implementation tools/languages: Photoshop, Illustrator/Freehand, Flash, html,dhtml, javascript 
• Post secondary training or a degree in a related field
• Effective interpersonal, communication, time management and collaboration skills
• 5+ years applicable experience

Keep in mind that the Editor-in-Chief is more than a writer. The Editor-in-Chief is a manager – they manage people, apply standards, and know a thing or two about stick-handling through corporate politics. Writing skills are important, but less important than management skills.

There are a number of personality and management tests that could be employed for testing these skills. My suggestion and one of my favorites is the DISC Profile Personality Test. This is to test apptitude, personality, and management skills. Other writing and skillset tests would be above and beyond this DISC profile test.

The User Experience Design Group at Ultimate Software in For Lauderdale is looking for UI Designer.  Ultimate has been using agile methods (Scrum) for over one year.

If you already live in the Fort Lauderdale / Miami area, details on the position are available on the company website (www.ultimatesoftware.com).