Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

I am very happy to be hosting this week’s Blog Swap contribution from my friend, Yvonne LaRose. Of course, “Viva” needs no introduction from me, her post says it all. Taste for yourselves…

The Exotic Fruit

Amitai gave the other Blog Swappers a statement regarding the focus of his Recruitomatic blog. It says:

“I would describe Recruitomatic as a ‘perpetual work in progress.’ I write on whatever tickles my fancy as it relates to what is going on in the talent management space and anything else I think my readers might enjoy. That is all I would ask of you bearing in mind my intention is to broaden my base of readers beyond the Recruitosphere to include recruiting practitioners who are in desperate need – in my opinion – for something to stimulate their thinking out-of-the-box. If you prefer to write shorter posts (the length is entirely up to you) my short posts are typically a commentary on things I see going on around me that I think may be ‘buzz-worthy.’”

Ami’s blog is one of my partners for this week’s swap. I’m going to have a conversation with my friend about “the buzz,” as though being a career coach, as though being a colleague, as though being a friend passing through a point in time. Please pull up a chair and listen in. There are insights you may appreciate as well – or desire to comment on.

 You are quite right to want to jog the recruiting collective out of its run of the mill thinking. Many complacently sit waiting to be stimulated or told what to think, what is new, what is challenging. Far too many are content to follow the path that others have paved without breaking out of the pack. Perhaps that’s a good thing. If everyone were striving to make a new path, there would be chaos. There would be no standard. But we need innovative thinkers such as you who dare to raise their voices and excite others in many ways. They do not believe the only way to success is through running on the hamster wheel while proclaiming that they are too busy (as is the cry this week). Instead, they want to break away and see why they are too busy and then remedy that state.

Having a blog. Writing long posts or short ones. What are the posts supposed to be about? Some see blogs as tools to collect information and bits of this and that. Others see blogs as communication tools. They are vehicles to communicate with the many interested in our special area (or areas) about the thoughts we’ve had; the theories we’ve developed, tested, and exploited to perfection, or the progression of that development. Blogs are places where we can quickly and efficiently write articles about our subject(s). And blogs are our marketing and public relations organs in order to develop new contacts and business. Blogs are whatever we determine they do best for us in our endeavors.

I don’t believe blogs should contain all of the same type of content. But then I believe in variety in order to create a better, more interesting flower to offer, to entice. Can you imagine going to a dinner and the only thing served is mashed potatoes or else a menu that consists of only various ways of serving potatoes – fried, baked, boiled, mashed, riced, pancaked, stewed, and so on. After a time, you go blind from the whiteness of it all. (Incidentally, it’s polite to laugh at my jokes, even if they’re bad.) But I digress from the subject of content.

Originally, blogs were personal reflections on things that had happened. They were a type of journal written in online form for the world to see rather than private musings meant for one pair of eyes. Now blogs are the public musings on many things that pass through one’s life. And blogs can encapsulate various parts of our lives – one blog for this, one blog for that. The question is whether it is prudent to maintain so many that one’s day is spent blogging and not making a living. It’s important to set priorities and limits and deal with them accordingly.

What is a blog? It is what you make of it. If it is a business vehicle, it can serve many purposes. But the first step is to determine what you want it to do for you and then determine how best to do that with the blog – or whether a blog is even the best way to do it. So it’s important to experiment a bit. Sometimes, the blog is merely a transfer, a modernization of the communication tool we used in that other century. Progress, after all, is about change and moving with the times.

Running a business is not an easy task. It definitely is filled with responsibilities in many areas. Entrepreneurship is a weighty endeavor. The obligations and areas that require attention can become a distracting blur if one is not careful. To stay abreast of the many facets that build a successful venture is to be many people at one time. Since we are only individuals and not gods, it is impossible to handle all of the jobs that a successful business venture tasks us to do. So we read as much as possible and attempt to stay current and learn. And then we hire staff, who have specialized knowledge, who can manage particular areas of our business and act as our advisors while we develop our own specialty that makes our customers, our clients want us and return to us.

So we develop our own means of thinking outside the dots in our niche that distinguishes us from our competitors. We create a buzz about our product, our service, our offerings so that our consumers are hard pressed to find a reason why they are not banging down our door in order to have our offerings.

“The buzz” is what interests and captures your attention and fascinates you. It is not what the masses are flocking to follow.  You create the buzz and tell the world that it is the buzz. It is what you are causing people to consider. You tell them it is important and why it is important to them to know about it. Your curiosity, examinations, and analyses (as well as how you articulate your interests and findings) is “the buzz.”

Many will chase after the proverbial fruit of the elusive tree. Some will say it is an apple. Throngs will crowd around all manner of apple trees and use various schemes to deter others from having a bite. Why chase after the apple when what you have and what attracts your attention is not an apple but an exotic fruit of another tree? Go after that fruit. Learn about it. Exploit it completely and consummately enjoy it. Walk away from the tree smiling and with your face smeared of the juices and tell those who see you that the reason you’re in such a state is because of this wonderful fruit that will make them feel just as good, will stimulate their creativity in order to help them do business better, or do more business, or produce widgets faster that last longer. And plant more trees so that as the numbers of those who learn about your exotic fruit will not plunder and extinguish it but pluck of just enough to sate their appetites for a few minutes and enthrall them to return for one of the variations you’ve developed.

What is the buzz and what is a blog? Those are excellent questions, my friend. They are what you determine is the best for your purposes. They are the exotic fruit you grow in order to create the drive to get to your tree. What is the name of your fruit?

About the Author:

Yvonne LaRose is a California Accredited Consultant whose office is in Beverly Hills, California. Her practice focuses on two general areas: Organizational Development and Career Coaching. Her column, Career and Executive Recruiting Advice was created in early 2000 and then moved to its own domain in mid-2002. She has written for CollegeRecruiter.com as a member of the Ask the Experts panel and a contributing author of articles since 2001, and began blogging for the site in late 2005. She became the site’s career coach in January 2006 and has developed a long list of success stories from her interns in that short time. She also blogs from an extension of her site, The Desk.

© Copyright 2006 Yvonne LaRose