Archive for October, 2006

FuckedCompany.com

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 31, 2006 in Recruiting. 1 Comment

On the scene for some years now, it has never been easy to recommend FuckedCompany.com as a resource for recruiters even though the daily catalogue of firings, layoffs, furloughs and assorted corporate shenanigans makes it a great resource for identifying potential hires before their resumes hit the streets. For others, FuckedCompany.com has the industry scoops, ahead of the mainstream media.

I know, I know, in the interests of authenticity we can get away with the occasional “f”-this and “f”-that – keeping it real – but really, is it any wonder that otherwise perfectly good sourcing tools never make recruiters’ lists or get cited when they break important news?

Tooth Rot

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 27, 2006 in Blogging. 9 Comments

Inspired by the Chief Executive Recruiter’s Breast Cancer Public Service Announcement I would like to encourage everyone I know to visit his blog and take note of his dismay at the disappointing response by recruiting bloggers to his promoting pink M&Ms as the preferred giveaway for this year’s Halloween trick or treat extravaganza. He has a point.

In defense of those bloggers who he notes are self-absorbed with issues that are riveting [for the commentators at least] – Jobster, Monster, blogebrity, blog-speak and so on – the nature of conversations in the bubble don’t always segue into topics like breast cancer or even recruiting per se. Also, a closer reading of the Recruitosphere would reveal that some are promoting awareness on these types of important topic, even while other “public service announcements” – pressing for us in particular – get drowned out in the water-cooler babble.

But no, the bigger issue is this: When new voices are added to the cacophony of posts, comments, rants, feeds and all the things that muddle the blogging mind, perhaps those who Carl Chapman refers to as “big name bloggers” should take more time to listen. More often than not, there is something other than our navels that is worth contemplating, things that often come from the emerging blogs.

So, grab yourself a skull-full of pinkies and click here to vote this blogger to the top. I think the Chief Executive Recruiter is the kind of voice we want to hear more of, don’t you?

Tag! Who’s It?

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 26, 2006 in Blogging. 0 Comments

I read Shannon Seery Gude’s post in reply to Jason Goldberg’s comments as they relate to Monster.com being totally crap: Jobster’s Jason Goldberg and the Monster.com User-Experience. A very good post I thought, fair and balanced reporting, Shannon is so foxy.

If nothing else, I learned what interstitial advertising is and already have a call in to my people to see how I can add this obtrusive – but clever – money-maker to my blog. Like Monster.com I guess, I take the view that my going to the bank trumps enhancing your online experience, forgive me please. It’s those persistent voices in my head, nagging, nagging, nagging.

Similarly nagging is the tagging going on all over the place as recruiting bloggers begin to buzz around Jason Goldberg and Jobster like worker bees making money-honey. That’s okay. In my efforts to create a profile – by way of investigative reporting of course – I unwittingly created yet another online persona where my peers now want to have me – the online, binary, digital me – as a “fan” or a “fave.” I can’t make out whether I‘m being asked for a signature or an autograph. It’s all so confusing. I’m just a blogging Baby Boomer, you know. An endorsement on LinkedIn would be fine. Really, I think it might be better. Any takers? Not impetuous enough?

Anyway, I’m flattered, y’all. One day I’ll get to tart-up my profiles on Jobster, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Jigsaw, and wherever so that I can better manage my personal brand avoiding, one hopes, the conflicting impressions created by inconsistent messaging across multiple social networks. Just for good measure, when I do it, I’ll give myself an MBA from some really swank university and maybe some previous experience raising billions of dollars for an obscure Web 2.0 start-up. You know, keeping it authentic.

In the meantime, to all of my fans and faves – don’t be discouraged by my slow response reciprocating your support. I will get around to it. It’s just that I’m going to be busy over the next few days getting my interstitial ads up.

The Cross-Post Conundrum

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 24, 2006 in Blogging and Recursion. 2 Comments

What do Recruiting.com, ERE blogs, the HCI Blogosphere and RecruitingBloggers.com have in common with hot chocolate, a good daily read, relativity and talking heads?

The answer is simple if you care enough to give it a little thought. Can you solve this recursive riddle? Click here now…

The Disruptor

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 23, 2006 in Business Matters and Recruiting. 1 Comment

Well, you have to love Jason Goldberg. When we met briefly at the Jobster exhibit at the HR Technology bash in Chicago – actually it was more of a bomb than a bash – Jason Goldberg told me that he was going to make his mark as a disruptor in the online recruitment space, very soon he said. A disruptor, eh? I asked Jason Goldberg whether he favored the neural disruptor over the temporal disruptor at which point, conveniently distracted by the possibility of talking to somebody with money, he left me dangling there, disrupted. No matter.

The other day Jason Goldberg sent me an email from one of his handheld gadgets to update me on his disruptor plans, a “heads-up” he said. I am always amazed at how people will send me critically important communications and, just as I’m getting to the point of replying with the single question that will help me make sense of the universe, they have to board a plane, handheld gadgets turned off. Or, chase people with money. Whatever, no matter.

At Jason Goldberg’s suggestion I took a quick peak at Superstar Tags and immediately concluded that while the idea of tagging LinkedIn-look-a-likes-come-passive-candidates-and-wannabes might be considered kind of folksy by some of those who would automatically pooh-pooh this as nothing more than Web 2.0 [im]posturing, even so it is very clever idea. I like it, I don’t know why exactly, but no matter.

This morning Jason Goldberg published a simple post, recruiting bloggers. It reads: “know any recruiters who blog?  here’s a good starting list.”

I followed the links thinking I was going to be redirected to the new group blog RecruitingBloggers.com but landed on a Superstar Tags page for recruiting bloggers. Disruptive thinking or cognitive dissonance? Bother! Naturally, I created my Jobster profile so that I could tag myself along with my contemporaries. Who wouldn’t? I even answered some of the questions that people who don’t know me personally would ask to get a measure of me as a potential hire. Questions like: “If your life could be made into a movie, which actress would play the part of your Mother?” To my horror – as happened with my carefully considered what does web 2.0 mean to you? submission – I played Jason Goldberg’s interactive blog-post game and nothing happened! Nothing at all! Zut!

I fear Jason Goldberg may have confused his “shaking things up” with our being “shaken not stirred.” No matter. There are more fundamental issues than my anticappointment that would need to be addressed long before this innovation in of itself could ever disrupt the online recruiting space. But, that is for another post on another day. In the meantime, go tag yourself. You may have better luck at it than me.

Body Image

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 19, 2006 in Talent Management. 1 Comment

I know it seems awfully shallow to say I find Tyra Banks’ breasts attractive, but I do. Clearly, her achievement as a top international model, screen goddess and big-time TV producer makes Tyra Banks a powerful woman in her own right, one of the most influential.

Even so, I find her breasts grab my interest more than her other professional attributes. As I research everything I possibly can about Tyra Banks’ and the origins for my own curiosity – it’s a transparency thing, duh! – I realize that my being distracted by her voluptuousness is perfectly normal for a man of my age and orientation, certainly nothing to be embarrassed about. And, in the musings of an authentic post, I mean no offense to my less worldly or more matronly readers.

More, as I research the psychology of physical attraction and how having a beautifully formed bosom can influence outcomes in the recruiting process – in ways we might otherwise be uncomfortable talking about, screening and assessment, interviewing, salary negotiations and so on – I find Tyra Banks feeds a number of my interests, not shallow at all.

Continue reading ‘Body Image’

Sindignation

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 18, 2006 in Blogging. 2 Comments

I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of love in recent weeks as many have contacted me offline to ask why I have not been posting as frequently as normal, enquiring after my health. To all of you who have expressed concern thank you but there is no need to be alarmed. I recently entered into negotiations with a very powerful force in the business who had expressed an interest in acquiring my heart, mind, soul and new found blogebrity. I felt it better to lay off the blogging for a bit while the suitor went through the due diligence hoops.

This morning I learned – to be honest, with relief – the deal is off. Apparently I will be going to hell anyway and the other party could not find enough value in my previous blog posts to tip the balance in favor of irreversible damnation. No matter. Others have waiting in the wings to console me with similar deals of their own. Bless them.

Today you can read my original post Body Image on RecruitingBloggers.com. RecruitingBloggers is a brand new escapade which the Recruiting Animal kindly invited a few lost souls to participate in. Described as a “hedonistic orgy of glutinous blogging” I’m not sure whether this is an invitation to pleasure or torment but, as I am so over the collapse of negotiations with that other powerful force, I said to myself, “What the hell!”

Contrasting the Animal’s rabid approach to sinking his teeth into a thing, I continue to get regular phone calls from Jason Davis who patiently nudges me to resume posting on Recruiting.com. As there is no doubt in my mind that Jason Davis represents a host of heavenly angels – and by way of double indemnity – I have resolved to respond to his persistent, polite requests. In the next day or two I shall resume posting my less offensive material on Recruiting.com so that there is something left for you to read when you do come here. You will still visit, won’t you?

Last, I am planning to start posting in the new year on my company’s new blog-enabled website. Jim Durbin – his business is blogging, so he knows – suggests I might start taking FOCUSfactor to help me get all these postings done, sorted. On the other hand, my wife has suggested Colonblow as more appropriate prescriptive for my blogging. Either way, both treatments are quite expensive, so what to do?

So again, I find myself hoping the choices I am making today will be the rights ones realizing that I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I guess all this leaves me no choice really – published and be damned.

Damage Control

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 5, 2006 in Business Matters. 3 Comments

As I read Jeff’s Hunter’ Talentism post Is Transparency Worth It? I find myself wondering why, having already complained of having a headache contemplating such things, he wants to take me into migraine territory.  Jeff Hunter quotes Jonathan Schwartz who is the CEO of Sun Microsystems – a blogger – noting that transparency for this CEO is not as problematic as it could be for some us given that he has little to lose with an authentically naked conversation.  After all, Sun Microsystems has been in the pits of late so what does Jonathan Shwartz have to lose with his transparency blogalogue?  To the contrary, Jeff Hunter argues he has much to gain. He goes on to say:

“I am still searching for an example of being “too transparent” costing someone a company, where there are many examples of lack of transparency (or “being caught in a lie”) doing a lot of damage.”

Well, needless to say, I can’t think of an example where being too transparent cost someone a company either, but then again, I do have a migraine dammit! And, as for “being caught in a lie” and “doing a lot of damage” let’s consider for a moment the scandal de jour.

Ex-U.S. Congressman Mark Foley is demonstrating the cynical side of transparency, coming to full disclosure late in the game. Mark Foley resigned his office in disgrace over his sexually explicit text messages to underage boys, confusing the roles of Congressional Page with Washington call boy.  In damage control mode, Mark Foley is now being very open about his homosexuality – not a crime – and is sharing with the whole world his struggle with alcoholism, made worse by the unresolved emotional fallout resulting from his own being manhandled as a boy by a priest. Sound familiar?

In reply to Jeff Hunter’s post, one wonders how this type of “transparency” would have advanced the politician’s career had he made these revelations on his resume, before being labeled as a hypocrite and corrupt pervert. If Mark Foley had made his problems known up-front perhaps the resulting debate would have led to a more constructive outcome with the possibility of our being sympathetic, not as we are now, disgusted.  But of course, that would not have been possible would it? Who wants an emotional wreck – another drunk – at the seat of government?

Being “too transparent” – drawing a parallel between the ambitions and power plays in business and politics, as illustrated here – can be a decidedly bad thing. True, coming clean after the fact makes the offense seem more pathetic than sinister and one could argue there was some authenticity in Mark Foley’s decision to resign on-the-spot, without creating an even bigger circus of the whole affair but really, at this point, who cares?

The connection here may be tenuous, I accept that.  My question is, is there not a time and a place for everything, including transparency?

Atonement

Published by Amitai Givertz on October 2, 2006 in Business Matters. 7 Comments

I have had a number of conversations in recent days about authenticity and transparency and evangelism and corporate blogging and the human condition. I have to admit, these things rattle around my cranium causing me to have a headache, raising more questions than answers. How these converging and sometimes colliding concepts are being applied – talent management, marketing communications and selling, the points of intersection for me – is interesting but not quite understood yet.  Trying to reconcile the absurdity of all this hypothesizing with the working realities we face every day leads me to wonder how I will ever translate these value propositions into deliverables, actions that count for something in my world – productivity and profit, self-actualization. I guess I should just get on with it, right?

Creating the impression of being more self-assured than I am, I get by winging it: transparency this, authentic that, accountability up, turnover down, this one’s in, that one’s out, yada, yada, yada… Hardly real is it, creating an impression that you might be in the know and then winging it. You would think my er-um speech and fidgety behavior would give away my discomfort fluffing it with the experts who champion such lofty things. Amazingly, some acknowledge me as one of the initiated. Others, too polite to tell me that they see right through my highfalutin tootin’, stop returning calls. How transparent is that?

Even so, when we talk about the new paradigm for business and talent management – without quite grasping what it all means and how it might all work – it is because we want to believe that there is more to our dealings than the routine chicanery, the marketing spin, the misleading sales tactics, and the shark-chumming that we have somehow confused with best-practice, deal making and winning the war for talent. If that desire alone is not enough to advance the agenda, the bubbling of transparency and authenticity among our leaders, vaporizing in conversation and online, amounts to nothing more than reflux.

Of course, all these confessions affect my personal brand don’t they? At least I have come to realize the therapeutic benefits of this openness. I am mildly amused that my being so uninhibited and honest – about faking for example – is, in of itself, quintessentially authentic, doing my brand good. But then again, I might be kidding myself or worse, you might think I’m kidding you – like one of those synthetic blogger types – unwittingly unravelling any good this baring of my soul might have done. Ouch! That would be awful, wouldn’t it?

So there you are, there you have it. How much more transparent could you want me to be? If my being upfront with you in this candid and reflective way does not make up for my being poorly versed in the new lingo of naked conversations, forgive me, do.