Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Unless someone does, things start to fray around the edges.

Often it’s the CEO or the manager who sets a standard of caring about the details. Even better is a culture where everyone cares, and where each person reinforces that horizontally throughout the team.

You’ve probably been to the hotel that serves refrigerated tomatoes in January at their $20 breakfast, that doesn’t answer the phone when you call the front desk, that has a shower curtain that is falling off the rack and a slightly snarky concierge. This is in sharp relief to that hotel down the street, the one that costs just the same, but gets the details right.

It’s obviously not about access to capital (doing it right doesn’t cost more). It’s about caring enough to make an effort.

If we define good enough sufficiently low, we’ll probably meet our standards. Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.

Of course, the manager of the mediocre hotel who’s reading this, the staff member of the mediocre restaurant who just got forwarded this note–they have a great excuse. Times are tough, money is tight, the team wasn’t hired by me, nobody else cares, I’m only going to be doing this gig for a year, our customers are jerks… who cares?

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.

Like most things that are worth doing, it’s not easy at first and the one who cares isn’t going to get a standing ovation from those that are merely phoning it in. I think it’s this lack of early positive feedback that makes caring in service businesses so rare.

Which is precisely what makes it valuable.

Jindrich Liska is founder and CEO of Jobmagic, a leading social recruiting platform which enables employers to hire candidates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Jindrich has pioneered many social recruiting approaches which are now used worldwide by brands such as Disney, J.Crew and Compuware.

The 2011 job market is ending on a positive note. With unemployment shrinking to a mere 8.6% — its lowest level since May 2008 — and a steadily growing economy, businesses are planning on hiring and recruiting even more as their confidence in customer demand builds.

In this new, growing market, those seeking their next dream job should cultivate their presence and contacts strategically in places where employers will be on the lookout for the best talent. According to the MSU survey PDF of more than 3,000 companies conducted last month, social media has flourished as a burgeoning recruitment strategy, becoming a more mainstream approach for companies of all sizes and industries, even the most conservative. For job seekers, social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter have established new ways getting discovered by employers, as well as directly reaching recruiters and hiring managers.

Here’s the scoop on what job seekers should know in order to be successful in today’s digital job market.

Your Social Media Profiles Are as Important Your Resume (If Not More Important)

The MSU report asserts that 36% of companies surveyed are using social media for recruiting. In today’s competitive market, recruiters look for the most current information on candidates, which is readily and easily available on social networks. Job seekers should actively include links to their complete and up-to-date Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter profiles in their applications. When creating your profiles, do not just import your resume — it often contains too much detailed information. Rather, build your profile from scratch with a concise description of your prior experience to grab a recruiter’s attention. To make yourself more discoverable, search engine optimize your title and skills.

Be sure to use social news streams as a dynamic extension of your traditional resume. Employers are interested in candidates who are passionate about their work. Job hopefuls should share interesting and relevant news about your industries and areas of expertise, demonstrating their knowledge and establishing yourself as an essential player in the fields. While the social news dialogue ought to maintain a professional tone, you should also reveal yourself to be a fun, authentic individual.

80% of Success is Showing up

Social media enables us to stand out, to be more noticeable, to differentiate ourselves from the masses and to tell the whole story behind and beyond a one-page resume. When contributing to your news streams and profiles, choose current topics of interest, start participating in discussions about your professional field and industry trends, and share your own hands-on tricks of the trade. Many companies are now making use of Facebook Pages that are dedicated exclusively to careers and hiring. These pages are generally run by recruiters and talent acquisition professionals that are looking to attract and hire candidates. Savvy job seekers should make use of these pages and proactively ask questions about job openings, the specifics of a company’s interview process, or any upcoming career events. Responses are generally instantaneous, and you will quickly establish connections within the company.

Additionally, every field has its own industry thought leaders broadcasting on Twitter. You should follow the influencers in your field, contribute to the discussion and share it with others who might be interested. Take advantage of @-mention feature to keep participants engaged and include hashtags to increase the visibility of your tweets.

You should also join LinkedIn Groups related to your field or moderated by a company you are interested in. Since hiring managers are always on the lookout for team players, you should establish a reputation by sharing your opinion, answering questions and offering advice in the group discussion forums. Join specific company groups to gain additional insight and keep up on the latest hiring news. Recruiters are very active in these groups, and taking steps to establish a positive LinkedIn presence will help to assure that you get a call.

Social Networks Enable Direct Interaction

There was a time when contacting recruiters on job sites and boards was difficult, and proactively reaching out to hiring managers was nearly impossible. Social media has created a culture of openness, and has all but eliminated the ‘black hole’ that resumes have fallen into for decades. Many companies even highlight their recruiters on job postings; not only can you contact a recruiter directly, but you can often view recruiters’ and hiring managers’ social media profiles before contacting them.

Job seekers need to connect to recruiters who are hiring in their field and location. If you don’t know them directly, subscribe to them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to stay current on all job openings, and work towards developing a positive relationship with them.

Your Networks Help You Find Jobs (and Help Employers Find You)

More companies than ever are cutting their job advertising budgets, opting to channel their recruiting efforts through referral hiring. The MSU report indicates that 44% of companies use referral hiring, and 49% tap into alumni networks in order to recruit. Companies are drawing on their employee’s social networks to share jobs and attract the most qualified candidates. The more extensive your personal network is, the greater your odds of encountering these unadvertised job opportunities.

Grow your networks by reaching out and connecting to people with whom you have either professional or personal relationships. If you don’t know the person well, begin by subscribing to their feed or ask a friend for an introduction. As in real life, opportunities can arise from any connection — a co-worker, a friend, a neighbor, etc. Many companies publish their job openings and career events on their Facebook Pages, so connect to the pages of companies that are of interest to you to start receiving active job openings in your news feed with little effort.

With the economy on the mend and hiring rates rising, job seekers should not hesitate to break into the social media sphere. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter offer an abundance of ways to connect with companies, foster your professional reputation, gain exposure to job postings, and ultimately, realize your professional aspirations. Establish your online professional brand and presence now. Your dream job is waiting for you.

When sitting down for a job interview at a top U.S. tech company, you’d typically expect the interviewer to hammer you with questions testing your abilities, past history and knowledge of the company. You wouldn’t think it was the time or the place to start exploring solutions to world hunger, but that’s exactly what happened to one candidate looking to be a software developer at Amazon.

In Glassdoor‘s annual review of the top 25 oddball questions asked in job interviews in 2011, tech companies feature highly. Although there’s just one question from Google on the list, the Wall Street Journal recently profiled the search giant’s interview process, highlighting the trademark strangeness of some of the questions.

Google’s odd questions range from relatively straightforward mathematical brain teasers like, “Using only a four-minute hourglass and a seven-minute hourglass, measure exactly nine minutes–without the process taking longer than nine minutes,” to truly head-slapping queries such as, “A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?”

Google isn’t alone in this practice. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many others have challenged the brains of prospective job candidates in some truly odd ways for a long time. Glassdoor has been publishing a compilation for only since 2009, but the idea has been around a lot longer than that.

The “oddball question,” of course, is meant to challenge the job candidate to think on his or her feet. It forces the interviewee to reach beyond prepared remarks and start engaging in problem solving on the spot. The best “weird” questions still have some relation to the kind of work the position entails. (For example, questions about finding the correct sequence could relate to jobs involving organizational systems.)

What’s the weirdest interview question you’ve ever gotten? Let us know in the comments, and browse the strangest interview questions from tech companies on Glassdoor’s list below.

“How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday?” — Asked at Google, Vendor Relations Manager candidate

“If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” — Asked at Hewlett-Packard, Product Marketing Manager candidate

“Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which break at a certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulbs break?” — Asked at Qualcomm, Engineering candidate

“How would you cure world hunger?” — Asked at Amazon.com, Software Developer candidate

“You’re in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?” — Asked at Tesla Motors, Mechanical Engineer candidate

“Please spell ‘diverticulitis’.” — Asked at EMSI Engineering, Account Manager candidate

“You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?” — Asked at Epic Systems, Corporation Project Manager/Implementation Consultant candidate

“How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?” — Asked at Consolidated Electrical, Management Trainee candidate

“If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?” — Asked at Summit Racing Equipment, Ecommerce candidate

Part 13 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this series serves as the book’s prequel.

These days, customer service seems to be a contradiction of words and intentions. Year after year, customers are appealing for attention, efficiency and a communicated sense of being appreciated. After all, what is the value of customer acquisition if retention itself isn’t valued? Now with social networks becoming the preferred channel of communication among connected consumers, businesses are losing ground and faith. The reality is that customers will share their experiences whether positive or negative and they will influence the decisions of others. The question is, how are you changing your service model to shape and steer experiences that deliver value to customers and also back to your business?

Social networks are emotional landscapes that are populated by human beings, not consumers. It is for this reason that many existing customer service approaches to social networks are the equivalent of the tips of icebergs we see above water. The real opportunity lies underneath the waterline and as you can imagine, it is beyond formidable. As part of this special series, my good friend Frank Eliason decried that social media customer service is a failure! He surely startled everyone including those who are championing change from within. To explain, I’ll provide a bit of context to his position. In order to do so however, we’ll need to peel back an additional layer to demonstrate where customer service and social media are missing confluence. I refer to this phenomenon as the horseshoe effect.

On either end, social media and customer service are either established or developing within the organization. While each exist, they do not naturally co-exist in regards to process, systems, vision, or collaborative workstreams. Allow me to clarify. Today, social media is mostly owned by one of three functions within businesses today, 1) marketing, 2) marketing communications, or 3) public relations. Social media essentially exists within its own silo and is largely disconnected from other divisions.

When a customer tweets at the company with a problem, the social media team is either unqualified to respond or chooses only to focus on those interactions that correspond with their focus or the company’s marketing efforts. Either way, the customer doesn’t see, nor do they care about, who owns social media. They see one company and they simply need an informed and empathetic response. Even when a company has a service team dedicated to social media, it is often a progressive front with a traditional infrastructure – or perhaps said another way, making something appear better than it is. When a customer is engaged, they’re often prompted to take the interaction offline, say through email or phone with a specialized representative, or they’re simply referred to a particular web address, phone number, or email address to start the process from the beginning through existing, less preferred channels.

With social media on one side and customer service on the other, a gap emerges where the social customer is left to fend for themselves. Businesses must look at creating a holistic experience where customer service extends to social media, providing engagement and resolution at the time and place of the social expression.

Case in point, Niklas Femerstrand is a web developer who discovered a security gap in a particular web page owned by American Express. Long story short, the security hole left an administration panel for Web site debugging wide open for anyone to access and provided a potential avenue for attackers to target AMEX customers. Rather than exploit the gateway, he alerted AMEX via the channel he relies on for personal and professional communication…Twitter. What happens next only demonstrates the horseshoe effect and why closing the gap sooner than later will benefit customers and the company alike.

In his own words, Femerstrand expresses his disbelief when he could not get through to the company on a network where it maintains multiple presences,  “When somebody voluntarily contacts a company and repeatedly mentions words like ‘security vulnerability’ and ‘hacker’ one would think the company would act as quickly as possible.”

If you follow the exchange below, you’ll see that Femerstrand made an honest to goodness attempt to reach what he deemed to be the most direct channel to the company, @AskAmex. Please do take a moment to read each line item so that you can both see and feel his frustration and also visualize the horseshoe effect that separated social media from customer service.

As you can see, the exchange is priceless. Poor ^Courtney…

Femerstrand was clear. He didn’t want to be referred to a traditional service backend.  While Courtney was staffing the shift for @AskAmex, she was obviously not trained to handle such a situation and therefore demonstrated the horseshoe effect perfectly. So what is Femerstrand left to do when he was insistent that he wanted to help the company, but did not have time or patience to go through a “technical support jungle?” He blogged not only about the experience, but he also exposed the code and tipped security publications everywhere.

What’s the ROI of a Good Customer Experience

In his post about the failure of social customer service, Frank Eliason also notes that part of the problem has to do with how customer service is measured or valued within the organization today. Traditional metrics that are deeply rooted within the call center today are used as a baseline for an entirely new paradigm. Fortunately or unfortunately, the connected customer defines the rules of engagement and based on the interaction, will in turn share their experience whether it’s positive or negative.

As Eliason explains…

This brings me to the failure of social service. The other day someone tweeted me asking about current costs of phone calls versus the cost per Tweet for customer service. Ugh! This is new media and yet we’re already focusing on old metrics. The truth is that the service world has been broken for years because of the emphasis of handle time or calls per hour. Companies do not want to talk to you, and it shows. The fact is most do not want to Tweet with you either. Since they are worried about brand sentiment, they may appease you to shut you up. Sorry, shutting your customer up is not customer service and trying to expedite resolution isn’t a metric for the new world of consumer influence.

The time is now for new metrics. And by new metrics, I’m not referring to those that simply measure time to resolution, cost per tweets, wait times or Tweet reduction. The opportunity for increased engagement is the real opportunity for customer service. This isn’t about getting away from the customer or simply about solving problems. This is about creating exceptional and shareable experiences! Customer service can contribute to engagement, advocacy, loyalty, and what I call NPS 2.0 aka SPS (Social Promoter Score). It’s not the traditional NPS of whether or not someone would refer a product or company. In social media, we can see if someone actually did and compare that to those who are clearly public detractors. We can also view those detractors that recommend against a purchase.

Additionally, the new doors that are opening to customer service and customer engagement don’t simply have to be relegated to negative experiences. For example, I recently flew United Airlines and I was fortunate enough to have an exceptional experience on a flight from New York to San Francisco. I was so elated with the wonderful customer focus of one flight attendant in particular, that I decided to share it with @United.

I wasn’t surprised when the response was the equivalent of digital crickets. But, I had high hopes for some form of acknowledgement. And even though I know I was daydreaming, I would love to have seen the semblance of a system where that feedback would get back to both Meg Callan and her manager. All too often, social customer service focuses on optimizing the systems and strategies to contend with experiences when they negatively impact social streams. But I believe that if businesses can provide mechanisms where customers, employees, and positive experiences are rewarded, more people will become willful advocates than detractors.

If you’re unclear where to begin, then simply ask. When Google+ was new on the scene, prior to the release of its official brand pages, several companies such as Dell and Ford asked customers how they can use the new network to engage more effectively with customers. In one such case, Michael Dell personally asked followers on his profile if they would like to connect with Dell service via video directly on Hangouts.

The response, to say the least, was phenomenal. Customers were elated that Michael Dell would ask people what they want while also demonstrating how an organization could use new tools to improve customer experiences. The result is support, loyalty, and advocacy. Additionally, the result of one simple post resulted in an array of influential press. I guess that says everything about that state of customer service. If businesses ask how to better help customers and press breaks out as a result, well…at least we’re on the right track.

Closing the social customer horseshoe to create a complete circle is the equivalent of a holistic experience. Fixing customer service is not the goal here. Improving customer service and delivering an integrated experience will not only help customers feel valued, but also establish a competitive advantage. In the end, businesses that invest in customer retention and acquisition to deliver positive experiences, regardless of platform, will strengthen relationships and loyalty and additionally contribute to organic advocacy.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In the past several years, businesses large and small have come to realize the positive impact of engaging their brand-loyal public and — more importantly — potential customers, via Facebook Pages. While fan pages are typically seen as a destination for users to remain privy to brand news, a recent comScore report shows that a Page is really just the place where content resides, as fans are 40 to 150 times more likely to consume branded material in their news feeds than on the actual fan page itself. This discovery led to Facebook’s expansion of “Page Insights,” including new metrics and analytics designed to constantly remind business owners of what truly matters: engaging content.