Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

In the hopes that it may give pause for thought, a selection of notes taken from phone conversations with John Sumser. The social web was our topic de jour.

1. Data? What data?

It can be difficult to make sense of the data that gets reported under “Social Media.” Harder still, accepting it could be useless in the context of traditional HR metrics, or under any circumstances, come to think it. Teasing intelligence from a new data set can leave one befuddled. Correlating things like “authority,” “increased awareness” “mentions,” and “sentiment” to the traditional metrics like time-to-fill and cost-per-hire may not only be a challenge of Rubik proportions, but ultimately an exercise in futility.

Read the rest here »

As business involves more interactions on the internet, the legal and practical implications of what you say and where you say things online is changing. Access to information is instantaneous-thoughtful responses and time to consider are rare.

It used to be that something was written, set aside, edited and mulled over before it was published in one of a few media outlets. Today, information, including photographs and video, get Tweeted, posted, linked, YouTubed, Googled and emailed instantaneously.

The opportunities to create havoc and legal liability abound. Part of it is the disconnect of between the author and the audiences. There is a false sense of intimacy in being able to communicate so quickly to multiple audiences of one.

Posting our hearts out from a computer, we are completely removed from the checks and balances of body language and voice inflections inherent in in-person communications. We like what we’re saying. We think we’re right. It’s often difficult to know when we are completely out of line until it’s too late. And once you post, it’s pretty much too late.

Read the rest here »

It is a well known trick that has been spun out a million times before: announce bad news on Fridays. Not that the highly anticipated HRExaminer Top 25 HR Influencers List published today should be viewed as bad news. To the contrary. The list of seasoned blogebrities and HR A-listers is wonderful news for both the influential elite and those of us who are proud to be among the industry’s most easily led.

I am afraid that the bad news today emanates from me, yours truly. But please, don’t shoot the messenger.

Read the rest here »

Industry patriarch and beloved Dumbledorian John Sumser posts on HRExaminer another in his series on branding: Traffic Development. What follows will make more sense if you begin by reading John’s post and our exchange of comments. You may also want to use the restroom first.

I spent a good amount of time trying to post what follows to the original post in reply to a rebuff from John.  To no avail. Apparently a plug-in on John’s site may have become unplugged. Feel free to post your comments here or there, at this point it may not matter.

Anyway, reluctant to break the thread, or retire for the night with this undone, here is my closing argument…

Read the rest here »

When I got home from the TRULondon conference (more about that later), I discovered that my son had terminated his Facebook account. I was surprised by the level of concern I felt. Cut off from the constant flow of information bits about his life, I felt worry and sense of loss.

Ray’s patterned release of status updates gave me the feeling of being clued in. The dribs and drabs of online small talk were a convenient substitute for real connectedness. The mere threat of losing that connection created a palpable fear in my heart.

Right there, after my parental instinct to fix something, was a series of surprising insights.

Read the rest here ».

John Sumser poses some interesting questions in a post on HRExaminer: Structural Unemployment in HR , commenting:

The market will face a dichotomy: a surplus of people with HR resumes and a shortage of people with the right skills. This is how structural employment looks within a single discipline.

Read the rest here »

John Sumser and I have had many conversations on the nature of work and the subjugation of the human spirit.  I cannot say why it is a recurring theme in our conversation except that it is.

You can read John at his finest on the subject on the GlassDoor.com blog: Why Workers Get Left Behind.

Read the rest here »

In reply to John Sullivan’s recent come-to-Jesus diatribe, Five Ugly Numbers That You Can’t Ignore – It’s Time to Calculate Hiring Failures on ERE.net, John Sumser now asks on HR Examiner: “Why not give the whole problem over to the training folks?”

For starters, I’m not sure changing scapegoats addresses the underlying problem.  There really is very little difference between abdicating responsibility to trainers for recruiting excellence — or whatever standard we used to aspire to — to  expecting “recruiters” to stop buckling under the weight of a hiring manager’s passed buck.

Read the rest here »

Recruitopian Footnotes [October 26, 2009]

1. U.K. blogger Katharine Robinson [aka The Sourceress] posts Performing Sourcery at The Recruiting Unconference. Hmmm…Nothwithstanding timezones, recruiting unconferences are so yesterday, don’t you know: Jeff Hunter’s Talent Unconference [2007]; John Sumser’s Recruiting Roadshow [2008]; Jason Davis’s RecruitFest [2008/09]; Susan Burns’ Talent Camp [2009] and some I’ve missed, I’m sure. Now, Bill Boorman’s The Recruitment Unconference taking place in London on 19th November…a sign of the times, no doubt.




2. In Feel Sorry for the Recruiter… Lisa Kaye laments that recruiters “worry if they will wind up on the other side of the desk, interviewing for jobs that well frankly are no longer in high demand.” Look on the bright side: if they ever make it back into recruiting they’ll have a better grasp of what “candidate experience” really means. That should make them better recruiters, don’t you think? [Counterpoint: My Future in Recruiting]




3. In his post It’s all about the message Michael Specht rightly notes: “…that clearly communicating the employment deal up front is a critical first step in having an engaged employee,” going on to say, “Employees who blog openly and honestly will allow prospective employees to see what it is really like in your workplace.”I guess shooting the messenger is out of the question then, eh, Michael?

Recruitopian Footnotes [July 10, 2009]

1. Who said: “A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart” - John Sullivan, John Sumser or Jonathan Swift? Such studious fellows all…Rub-a-Dub-Dub
2. Erecting the new recruiting edifyce…Bob the Builder meets Smiling Bob
3. “When we win, we all win.” So, what happens when we’re counting the rations?…Man overboard!

Recruitopian Footnotes [July 8, 2009]

1. John Sumser under the influence?…Shocking but true
   
2. Has Glen Cathey gone native? OMG, we’ve lost him…Dancing with wolves
   
3. This blogger gets the pink Caddie for raising the bar…Lisa Kaye, we salute you!
   
4. To SEO or not to SEO? That is the question.

John Sumser’s controversial post Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The Death of Sourcing has has inspired a great debate about the state of our industry and the area of specialization we call “Sourcing.”

John suggests that “Former sourcing luminaries will be familiarizing themselves with the alarm on the French fry machine and the relative difference between Rare, Medium and Well done.”

Oh, dear.

Read the rest here »