Archive for the ‘That’s Life’ Category
Imagine this: An expectant mother decides she will go to the hospital because it seems that the baby is coming, no time to wait. Her sister carries the bags to the car, helps her sibling get in and they leave for the medical center.
So it was with Rose Mirielle Exumé and her sister Alta Grace Garcon who one Monday afternoon left their home in Deerfield Beach, Florida to travel the 15 miles or so to Broward General.
What is normally a routine journey on I-95 was for this family anything but and Olivier Jean Paul Exumé was born in the fast lane in the back seat of his auntie’s SUV.
(January 11, 2008) Information overload and paradoxes are a part of this churning new era. A look at today’s daily links on Recruiting.com (Manners and Risks) shows a world in transition. If you want a specific piece of advice, it’s easy to find several conflicting opinions, many diametrically opposed to each other. More and more is written by people who know less and less. What was boorish behavior is now insight peddled by the latest celebrity whose clock is ticking off the allotted 15 minutes.
The now-conventional wisdom is that this is all a part of disintermediation, the collapse of old fashioned institutions in the face of superior technology. (In fact, I believe this is the case on most days.) The trends towards decentralized operations, global communications and radically thinned capital requirements in production seem inextricable from advances in technology.
The call and response nature of technology can be seen in the Museum at The Tower of London (the Armouries). The theory of disintermediation suggests that rather than an appropriate response to new technologies (bullets require bulletproof vests), we’ve reached a point where our new toys are producing an era of unprecedented democracy. It’s a good optimistic story with a happy ending for all good nerds. Technology saturation equals nirvana.
Doesn’t that seem just a little too easy?
John Sumser. – . © 2008 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA
Today is the last day of Kennedy’s Recruiting 2007 Conference in Orlando. It marks the closing of the industry’s conference season which has seen the annual pilgrimage to SHRM, ONREC getting down in San Francisco, coast-to-coast gigs from ERE, and HRTechnology blowing hard in the windy city – again.
SourceCon made its debut in Atlanta while other “focus groups” gathered under their respective banners of exclusivity: Recruiting Excellence 2007 in Boston, The Fordyce Forum in New Orleans, the DirectEmployers Association whooping it up in Vegas, the National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS) dusting things off in San Antonio.
Road warriors like Don Ramer, Gerry Crispin, Joel Cheesman, Shally Steckerl, Kevin Wheeler, Lou Adler and an army of vendors, sponsors and assorted groupies will be heading home to gather round their Thanksgiving tables, many thankful for the fact that the circus is over, at least for this year.
The recruiting industry’s conference business is big business. In so many ways, it embodies the industry’s infrastructure and creates the channels along which ideas, innovation, favors, contracts and money flow. From the podiums, assorted speakers, pundits and industry celebs promote their reputations as subject matter experts and as sometimes saviors of the human race.
In workshops and forums opinions are formed, behaviors are influenced, best practices honed. Over hurried snacks or fine-linen tablecloths friendships are kindled and rekindled, relationships formed, forged and sometimes soon forgotten.
The network of vocal and visible people – the publishers, promoters, speakers, track leaders, commentators, vendors, sponsors and the lucky delegates who follow the circuit – each year consolidates its position as the industry’s core.
Hot on the heels of the announcement that Facebook and Microsoft have been canoodling — and making good on my promise to get smarter about using Facebook made on Recruiting.com — here is a useful guide I hope other newbies might find helpful.
Josh Lowensohn who wrote the guide for Webware kicks-off:
What is Facebook and why should you use it?
Facebook is a social networking service that lets you connect with friends, co-workers, and others who share similar interests or who have common backgrounds. Many use it as a way to stay in touch after finishing school, or as a way to share their life publicly. What makes Facebook different from other social networks are its extensive privacy controls, its development platform, and its large and quickly growing user base. Facebook has been called the “thinking person’s” social network. Compared to many other social networks, Facebook gets new features and improvements on a regular basis.
Don’t get too comfortable. “Facebook gets new features and improvements on a regular basis” means don’t blink or you’ll log on one day and not know what to do or how to do it!
Just in case you’re hungry for more, from Robin Good there is Social Networking: A Beginner’s Guide To Facebook, another handy reference with some additional stuff to work through.
Found this along the way…courtesy of the folks at WorkAustin.com:
[Can't see the video? Catch it on YouTube]
General Stuff
Internet Access
Visitors can access wireless internet on the GT campus by using FASTPASS. The instructions for connecting to FASTPASS can be found here. Discounted vouchers can be purchased here.
Even though the system is set to accept comments on any post without you having to login first for some reason you do have to login before you can join in the conversation. Aaaargh! I am working on fixing that glitch so please bear with me!
In the meantime, if you have a WordPress account you should be able to comment simply by logging into your account. If you don’t a WordPress account it only takes a minute to set one up. If you would rather, you can email your comments and I’ll post them for you in the meantime.
Sorry for the bother.
I outdid myself today explaining to a potential sponsor that the format for John Sumser’s Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow was modeled after the increasingly popular “unconference” format to which my would-be benefactor replied, “Unconference? Wha? Huh?”
Having confused the issue by contrasting a traditional conference where sponsors expect something in return for their “investment” with sponsorship for this event — more like to making a donation — I tried to explain that sponsorship dollars should be given expecting nothing in return, at best in anticipation of a boomerang effect.
I tried to rebut “What the hell are you talking about?” by referencing the network economy — “No, no, no! Not Kelly Services!” — and abundance theory. After going at it non-stop for 30-minutes my patron-in-waiting was ready to give it up for Atlanta. Phew!
The discussion turned to money. Oh, dear.
With just 15 days to go before the Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow we have a few more promotional emails that are scheduled to go out. As simple as that sounds there are a few niggly problems…
Problem One: It is difficult to balance the value of directly communicating with the very people who should be marking off September 25th to join our event on the campus of Georgia Tech with impersonal and potentially annoying mail that assumes someone else knows what’s best for you or that you are even in town on that day.
Problem Two: I haven’t worked out how to remove the people who have already signed-up for the Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow from the emails that are still going out. I know that doesn’t say much for yours truly but in my own defense this “campaign” has been cobbled together using paperclips, Post-it notes and our sponsors’ goodwill. After all, it is an “unconference” don’t you know!
So, some of you have signed-up and are wondering why we are still insisting you should come. Now you know. Sorry.
Problem Three: Unsolicited email is hardly consistent with the spirit of the thing or the concept of networking and community building. Those assume shared trust, mutual interests, professional respect and personal understanding which mass mail and indiscriminate marketing — however targeted by geography and job title your list might be — fail to do. That approach is so not what the Recruiting Roadshow is about. The other stuff is!
Oh well, no matter. There is an easy solution!
Indeed.com is a pretty nifty job board which offers more than at first meets the eye. For those who may not be immediately familiar with this site, Indeed.com is a vertical search engine that has multiple uses, some conventional and some not quite so.
Among its most useful bits Indeed.com has a Job Search Tools page with more stuff on it than the average Joe could possibly want. But then again, some stuff that would leave a job seeker baffled can lead a recruiter to make more sense of the world.
For example, take the Job Trends tool and sneak-a-peek behind the job postings per capita link. Click a bit and voilà! 59.8 good reasons to visit the Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow – not including the free lunch!
See you there.
Posted by: Amitai Givertz
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-- Amitai Givertz
