Lego Vs group interviews

I used to love Lego as a child, I could build an awesome tower using all the bricks out of the bucket fobbing off any of the instructions to build an airport or submarine as that was dull, no instead I'd make some Picasso style creation which in my eyes, was simply amazing and another bonus was how quickly you could swallow one and then end up in A&E (mine was within approximately thirty seconds, and it was a red specific brick).

Lego is still just as popular as it was back in my youth, I visited a friend who has a five year old boy and this young whippet had recently moved on from the big Lego bricks to the small ones (growing up you know) and I found myself losing all sense of time and reality working alongside him, then I suddenly thought; I have done this before in adult hood and no, I didn't choke on one.

Adult Lego

So where have I, as a fully fledged adult toyed with Lego before. I had this terrible flashback to when I was about 18 and I went for a interview for an established company (a'hem) which began with an initial "telephone interview", you know where they used to ask you:

"If you had an angry customer would you...1. punch them in the face, or 2. relax because remember, the customer is ALWAYS right

I was passed onto the secondary stages. However just to digress, how could anybody fail those interviews...the only thing I can think of is that a large amount of cats are applying for jobs, as they blatantly couldn't press the right button on the keypad. I look back now and it almost felt like I was going for the final stages of Britain's Got Talent, all for a call centre role on minimum wage and not forgetting the 24 hour, 7 day a week shifts I'd have to start forcing myself to go too.

Second stage

In I walk, all fresh faced and nervous about what was about to happen, and suddenly I find myself surrounded by other people whilst quickly being split into teams. This was new to me, and I did feel like I was enrolling to the Army. "Sit down and be quiet" squawked a particularly Alpha female manager, if she'd asked us to do ten sit ups...we probably would have done.

Then, said Lego was slammed by said Alpha female onto the table into our pathetic groups, with some straws. Our objective was to...well build something. There I am, as a mortified teenager suddenly realising I was never going to get this job as: A: I used to literally build towers and B: Swallow them so all in all, not good.

In the end

I look back and think who does this anymore in such an excruciating manner? Well tons still do, as I know a friend that went to a interview recently for a very well known shoe brand, and he was told, at the prime age of 39 to sit on the floor in a circle and in pairs, paint a picture to express how he "felt about the brand" needless to say he didn't stay. Though I did argue that at least they had glitter pens as well as paint so why not get creative? He didn't find that funny.

Yes, I've had other interviews that were excruciating, for example I was asked "how would you sell this pen" I mean come on...and I answered terribly as I started listing its qualities, like it was a fine wine but it wasn't, it was a bic.

Here at Data Clarity we don't do anything like that. We don't ask people to build Lego or to pretend they were dealing with a difficult person. Nope, because we actually want to learn about the persons history and soul, as that's all that matters to us - not if they can build a bridge with Lego. If the person wants to become part of the Data Clarity team then we'll happily have them on board for their personality as if the attitude is right, the rest can be taught. We'll always expand in the right way.

Is B2B Better at Social Media than B2C?

B2B marketing can be tricky, time consuming and sometimes unrewarding, and according to the 2011 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program by the Fournaise Marketing Group 73% of CEO's believe that a good old marketer is not able to prove that their strategies to increase sales and improve the organisations market growth will actually work.

Is this true? I don't actually think so! 

B2B historically was all about the trade, and cold calling trade customers or sending informal, discount driven direct mail. For example, buy now and get extended credit until December. Brilliant.

However now we must feel empowered, and realise our potential for B2B marketing and allow the B2C marketer's to do the front facing branding. Stop trying to do it. Now I am a slight hypocrite because I have always been in the commercial B2B market, where now; I believe, there has been a transitional shift. No longer is it trade only, you have to appeal to the end users too.

So lets ask ourselves some questions:

Internal social Media, but why?

You get it, most brands have jumped on the "our team is totally awesome, look at how awesome we are, we wear hoodies" band wagon, so now on a ton of websites you get to "meet the team".  For example meet Janice from HR who loves dogs, and mugs of tea but she also loves her job. Insert picture of her possibly with said dog/mug of tea/or a benign smile proving her adoration for the role she's been in for fifteen years. However, it does appear to work in the B2B market, people actually feel that a value proposition is getting to know the organisation properly, almost becoming a member of the family. Whereas within B2C - the consumers just want the shiny product, and strong advertising to prove their buying worth.

So what's my worth?

Think about what your values are, and stick by them. A question to ask is do you have the resources available to be successful? What I mean by that, is most social networking platforms are free so in the purest of senses it should be cheap to add social media to your marketing mix.

Fact is guys and gals, we know it isn't cheap. It's time consuming and sometimes can be uneventful. I suppose a lot of B2B companies use social media as an experiment. I struggled massively with Facebook, when I was in the commercial B2B market not so much however specialist B2B markets are flat in responding when interacting so was difficult to sustain a following.

Your worth, is quite simply realising that social media is non linear within your market. Your aim is to deliver a website with personality and core values, show leads and customers based on relationships.Be transparent. Be trustworthy.

Its all in the maths

Tell a great story, and analyse it! So story + data analysis = you're awesome! A great B2B marketer should be a fantastic story teller, and no it shouldn't all just be buy my product stories, and aren't we great - it should be informative, interesting and very very quietly pushing your business into their mindset. There are so many great software houses out there, such as Hubspot which will track anything you do social media wise. It really is worth a go.

At data clarity we offer a range of services to suit a vast array of B2B users, from web development, data management to SEO so in retrospect we're extremely versatile so in order for us to have succeeded, we did the above first and we're winning so can you!