1. Is “social recruiting” really such a new idea? I think not. After all, affiliate marketers [read: MLM] have been at it for years. Taking self-reference and self-fulfilling prophecy to the next multi-level…Black Belt Recruiting. Some lessons for us all.
2. So, you think “Sourcing Samurai” Glen Cathey can slice through the data on LinkedIn, huh? Think twice, no, three times: Understanding Web 3.0 as Data: Reid Hoffman, Founder LinkedIn.

   Conclusion: If Glen Cathey is an authority on LinkedIn it might just be question of semantics…if you know what I mean.

3. And now for something completely different…Cited in a social recruiting editorial, Florida is, indeed, among the best places to live and work:

   “We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal cluster#@!*$s”

   And to think, I came from missing TruLondon to living in paradise…mind the gap! Personality matters more than platforms

1. 30-seconds in blogging is all it takes, to post that is. Like the author says: “It’s not what you say but how you present it.” So true.
2. What is the difference between an essay and a blog post? Well, it ain’t thirty seconds, ducky!
3. And I quote: “A recruiter is a consultant…To get in bed with your client put on your consultative head.” Whatever happened to nurses in suspenders?

Our apostolic neighbor got to work and in no time was possessed. She began uttering some unknown prayer that was only coherent to God and herself.

While it seemed quite possible that everyone else in the room was being transported to a higher place, I found myself being teleported to the Appalachian foothills where one imagines spirits of a different sort give voice to an equally unintelligible, if not distilled, form of incantation.

Somehow, in my befuddled Hebraic interpretation of what was going on I confused the “charismatic church” with the “charismatic me” and foolishly decided to apply the lessons of the day to some healing of my own.

Without going in to the pathetic details of my amorous overtures — or my completely missing the point with the snake metaphor — suffice it to say, getting lickered up, and my own very clumsy “laying on of hands,” resulted in my waking up the next day with a thick head and a lip to match. Go figure.

Steve Levy recently posted Learn Boolean, Start a Business. In a catholic defense of modern day mediums he says:

In the 10+ years that I’ve been part of the online recruiting community, I’ve never seen a time when it was possible to learn a rudimentary skill and then pawn oneself off as an expert. Shally and G-Man have been internet search wonks for this period and have the experience to bolster their skills teaching with a range of specific examples; El Dave isn’t too far behind…

Alas during the past year, I’ve seen several neophytes learn to write a Boolean – or more precisely, to copy one that the true experts freely share – and suddenly they’re self-appointed experts selling themselves as Internet search gurus.

Oh dearie, dearie me. Let’s apply my befuddled Hebraic interpretation to this one now, shall we?

First, it occurs to me that nothing could be easier than passing oneself off as “an expert” when the skill is “rudimentary.”  I mean, honestly: AND, OR, and NOT — how much simpler could it be?

Next, as one of the neophytes let me clarify a couple of things…

One (NOT first): If the experts “freely share” why can’t I freely copy, share in kind? Of course, “if” covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it? In reality if most of what is being “freely shared” has been available in the public domain since, well, before googling, who’s copying who; where’s the hanky-panky? Maybe the question here is one of attribution, maybe that’s it.

Two (NEAR:One): “…and then pawn oneself off as an expert” — golly! And, “..suddenly they’re self-appointed experts selling themselves as Internet search gurus” — that’s a bit strong, don’t you think?

I might consider myself a neophyte in the esteemed company of the liturgical high-priests of cybersleuthing — unworthy even — but in the company of lay folk my bible-thumping is enough to save a few sinners with the sacrament of sourcing know-how. Sure, the cacophony of hand-clappin,’ foot-stoppin’ music is a far cry from a reverential Latin Mass but for the recruiting riff-raff it’s an experience worth the price of admission.

Three (-wise.men) Just to be clear, only a fool would suggest that the 12 Apostles of George: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, [no, no, no -- that was John The Baptist!] and the rest of them, have not enabled a few scruffy-looking lay-preachers like me to schlep from one congregation to another but, Mr. Levy, gimme a break! Am I the one to be weighed in the balance, found wanting?

This week another hillbilly church has sprung up, this time on the slopes of RecruitingBlogs.com. I wonder if the Apostles will come down to share in a snake-whoopie-woo or two, sip a little poison at the Congregation of Boolean Strings. Whatever…

One of the things that has been interesting to me for some time is the codification of language and the subsequent value placed on its interpretation by a litany of coders and their assigns. Historically, all that has been a source of power so, why not now?

In some convoluted way I think the communication of Boolean syntax for surfacing leads and resumes is like bottling water. We have to contain it, brand it, sell it and defend our share of it to give it value despite the fact that, like water, the means to quench our thirst exists everywhere. Maybe Steve Levy see’s it slightly differently.

Experts, priests, shamans and snake-charmers all hold a special place in our communities because they [purportedly] hold the key to unlocking the knowledge we seek, and it’s practical application for a better life.

Is it any wonder that when the status quo gets “status skewed” those with the most to loose get shirty? Can I get an “Amen!” Brother?

Several days after our neighbors visit and my wife’s miraculous healing her pain returned, this time with a vengeance.  When I tried lightening things up with a drooling “I’ll be darn’d!” she told me to “Put a sock in it!” Hmmm…maybe in our house if we’re not speaking in tongues were talking at cross purposes? Nah, that’s just too obtuse, isn’t it? I don’t know, maybe not…

Like most short posts a quick read can leave one happy that one’s brain has not been taxed too much — blah-blah-blah, click-click-click and move on. After all, its only blogging…junk food.

Sometimes — depending on your mood or interests perhaps — short posts can leave you hungry for more. Some posts may even show you were to find something chunkier, albeit on a self-serve basis. Whatever, empty calories — however delicious — will leave you malnourished if that’s all you digest.

Today, my present to you is the gift of choosing what you want to do with this little morsel. You can click-click-click and move on. If you like you can bookmark this page, bury it like a bone and dig it up later. Maybe you’ll enjoy the joke tucked away behind one of the links, even if it’s on you! You pick, it’s your post now.

The series so far…

• The Hungry Blogger
• The Man in the Know
• Recursion Excursion

Chew ‘em over again. I’m told my blogging is an acquired taste.

Now I have a place to apply some of what I understand to be the value in the recursive nature of blogging which was difficult to grasp when I flirted with the not-quite-so-self-referential RecruitingBloggers.com and the issues of cross-posting. I think I also understand now some of the payoff for “digesting” as opposed to ruminating, giving back more than I am taking I hope. We’ll see.

I was rather pleased with my first post on RecruitingBlogs.com, The Virtue of Short Posts. Unfortunately, it seems only John Sumser got the joke. Maybe.

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

Having a strong sense that recruiting bloggers are unwittingly making Jason Goldberg and Jason Davis fabulously rich simply by thinking about their blogs, I shall start to suppress conscious thought and coherent writing on mine. I have no problem with Jasons Goldberg and Davis becoming fat-wallet media tycoons – I aspire to being one myself – but, if I am going to work hard to create original content, they are going to have to work just as hard to understand it, capitalize on it. Oh, I know, the favors of communal love are reciprocated if I want to attract more readers and/or monetize my driveling blog. But I don’t. It seems the more I want the privacy of my very own weblog the more people want to see what I’m up to. I think it must be the Recruitomatic-Lavatory- Webcam syndrome. For some reason there are people – but not you of course – who want to observe me struggle with a thing, like making sense of what this new-fangled Recruiting.com is really all about. How odd.

The unfortunate part of this struggling with issues – words as art not currency; content for reading and analysis not syndication, incorporation, blending and bludgeoning to death; struggling with correspondents parroting each other instead of posting original work, fact blurred with fiction; individual voices versus corporate mash-up; the issue here – is that you, my reader, will no longer be able to make any sense of what I’m writing. I’m terribly sorry. Really, I am.

But, I see it now: as part of my survival strategy for autonomous thought, my writing will change into a random cut-up, a montage of repurposed content, rehashed thinking, rumination of original rubbish. Meaningless words will take on momentary meaning –“diggolicious,” “jasonotize,” “contentragious,” “popsidasical,” “blogrollable,” “ballotable” – and yet, the words will mean nothing in reality. My posts will celebrate nihilistic gobbledygook, Dada-blah-blah. So, there you have it. You might as well switch off now. Gorge on the live feeds, nothing here but a snake charming sideshow. Oh, dear. What’s happening? Has it started already? Bloated with tautological pleonasms and constipated with word-play, squeezing out another contentragious post for my buddies Mssrs. Goldberg, Davis, Reed and Elsevier, and you – my victimized reader! Going, going, goingPlop! Gone are the days of Jason Davis’s blog, gone forever.

My first experience of Recruiting.com was not as a blog as such. I had just discovered NewsGator as part of an earlier – and ongoing – wrestling with how RSS and all that stuff was going to enhance my ability to communicate with an undiscerning audience who I anticipate will abandon their inboxes one day soon, or maybe not, who really knows. As I look back on it, it’s ironic that I should have bought the Outlook plug-in where eventually the steady stream of posts got ignored like spam.

Anyway, in my search for feeds I typed in “recruiting” and Recruiting.com came up so I subscribed. The Canadian Headhunter – who has since left the building, but continues to throw pebbles at the window as if to catch the attention of his Juliet – was particularly confusing to me, Pythonesque, obnoxious, foreign. Jason Davis was, well, ordinary, but he was the glue, so it seemed to me. Personable too. Anthony Meaney, the correspondent blogger, confused the hell out of me. Hard to tell who is who with the Canadians. What with one thing and another, I hardly paid attention to Recruiting.com and the coming and goings. As a casual bystander – as the majority are now – I was disengaged and uninspired by a medium too hard to manage, comprehend and digest. Electronic Recruiters News and Electronic Recruiters Exchange were easier for me to follow. Morning fare, mature content and bookmarked on my browser.

In November, I think, 2005 for sure, I saw that Recruiting.com was having a best of the blogs contest. I was being invited to cast a vote, enfranchised at last. “Hold on.” I thought, “Isn’t this new-age democratization a mash-up of augmented social networking and good ol’ black-flag ideology?” As I began to look more closely, and now with a critical eye, I realized Recruiting.com was the hub of a vibrant community of people – recruiting bloggers blogging about the stuff recruiting bloggers blog about – honestly, much as I am doing now. [Insert cutesy winking smiley emoticon here, make this post more ballotable on the new Recruiting.com, wink-wink.] I found myself rather intrigued, glued to the keyhole. Who was going to win? Who should I vote for? Should I vote at all? Well, at least I was thinking now, asking questions, aroused.

Crank the handle, fast forward, and here we are today. I still find myself more interested in the society of bloggers than in the content – with some blogrollable exceptions, naturally – musing again about voting, participation, community and what citizen-centric blogging means. This leads me to wonder, for example:

1. If so many people voted for my submission on Recruiting.com – Jason Davis made me do it, I swear – how is that that didn’t translate into page views on my blog? What are people voting for – the content, the submission or the blogger? Or, are we just flipping the bird at one another, collectively empowered, so to speak.

2. Aren’t the comments left on a post the most authentic type of endorsement or rejection, a real vote of participation? I notice that some people have started to comment on the Recruiting.com article submissions and not on the actual work referenced. So, is Recruiting.com going to suck the comments out of our posts too? Is this another form of unbridled blog post jasonotization? Oh, well. We shall find a way to buck the system too. That’s part of the fun isn’t it, sticking it to the man?

3. If Recruiting.com is so web 2.0 now, where are the tags? Digg it? Friggit! Tag it, daggit! And no tag clouds, what’s that? No matter. All this content, layered on layers of layered mish-mash will compress over time to form the bedrock of Recruiting.com 3.0 and the semantic web along with super-relevancy search engines, Jobster mindshare and more popsidasical invention from minds that can only imagine job search at the speed of light. By the time Jobster has finished with the Recruitosphere it will be nothing more than an obscure Wikipedia entry. Blog posts will be auto generated. We will all be born, already retired. And all from such humble beginnings.

On Recruiting.com’s cosmetic surgery I am going to resist the temptation of poking and proding. The bandages are hardly off and we need some time for healing. Not all facelifts are simple procedures, are they? These things take time to get comfortable with as do realigned teeth and accentuated cheek bones and cookies and code and favelets and registering and posting and commenting and making mint tea to sip through a straw while possibly reading something from beginning to end! So, please, let’s not jump to any farfetched conclusions here about the new Recruiting.com or what it might end up looking like. Only time will tell.

As to the entrepreneurial scheming and plotting in Jobster’s camp, I have to wonder what is behind this “strategic” move with Recruiting.com, and why now. What’s Jason Goldberg up to? With $50 million in the bank he could have bought Digg if he was so inclined and added value to Jobster’s five hundred or so subscribers by expanding the universe of passive candidates with one stroke of the pen and six degrees of separation. I know, I know. Not all capital-injected new media/social networking ventures should be tarred with the same brush as Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace and Jason Goldberg seems altogether too nice for that kind of thing. After all, the man worked for the first Black U.S. President so he must be on the up-and-up, wouldn’t you say? And Reed Elsevier, they’re nice people, I’m sure, not at all like the spammy NewsCorp riffraff. So, this whole Recruiting.com 2.0 thing must be an altruistic move designed to promote humanity and democracy among the countless potential Recruiting.com readers. What was I thinking? That the enhancements were made for a couple of thousand googling job-seekers and still fewer recruiting bloggers? I must be mad.

For sure, I cannot begin to understand it all but I know that I am witnessing something marvelously entertaining, drawn into the action like some wretched fellow who only wanted to observe that to which he is now committed to participate in. It seems to me, that Recruiting.com is turning into a mutoscope of sorts where we can flick through the article submissions and posts and feeds adding more and more content as we go, somehow making the Jobster machine tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, ourselves being drawn in – one coin, one post at a time. And yet, somewhere along the way, I have nagging doubts. Who is watching who? Am I really alone? Where did you come from?

A Note to Visitors

I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issue with any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:

What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong

I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover, I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determine whether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games. Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here – all you have to do is commit to a criterion for testing. It’s easy to criticize science for being “closed-minded”. Are you open-minded enough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?

I do like that, it’s good isn’t it?

This is a rather long post. I don’t care. If you decide to read it, I have tried to make it entertaining enough to keep you engaged although my purpose – as always – is quite serious. I shall attempt to reconcile what has been described as my clumsy blogging with my personal view that your reading of this blogger is, perversely, none of my business. I am not a reporter. I am not a thought leader. I am not an expert with five ways to do this and ten ways to do that. I am not a vendor selling things. I am an individual who happens to be intrigued by the recruiting bubble and blogging and other things. From this post forward, I shall start referring to myself as “The Naked Blogger” in deference to another “inadequately informed amateur” who so influenced me as a childish boy: Dr. Desmond Morris.

Anyone who has the patience to go through my Monday posts will be able to put the pieces together as to why I write this blog. If you are missing one of the corners to the jigsaw that’s because one Monday I posted Spin the Bottle on Recruiting.com. That post marked the beginning of my participation in the Blog Swap. As I read it again, it’s quite funny. At least, I think so.

When the Blog Swap started the participants had agreed. We would post in deference to our host blogger, their subject matter and in the spirit of their gig. For my part, I made it clear up-front:

Important! My daughter’s cat has a habit of bringing her dead, half-eaten mice, lizards, frogs, etc. which the cat drops on her pillow as tokens of affection and respect. Invariably, my daughter wakes up and freaks out! But, she loves and cares for her cat understanding the cat doesn’t know any better. Similarly, with my blog, I see myself playing the role of the cat. I will write for you with affection and respect. However, if you are in the slightest bit squeamish about what I might leave on your pillow, let me know beforehand and I will do my best to please you, as you like.

After an exchange of emails on silly things, the group squabbling as I remember, I later went on to explain the cat is rabid. As if to contrast our puny contribution to humanity, the space shuttle launched that day. It was the July 4th weekend and I was musing on matters of good citizenship and blowing things up in celebration of my own independence.

I have come a long way since my youth, playing spin the bottle, swallowing my tongue in an awkward effort to kiss and be kissed. The Recruiting Animal’s flat out rejection of my recent proposal that we partner in some fashion, you know, like the Recruitosphere’s Siegfried and Roy, simply left me wondering if perhaps he was displeased with my practicing how to write a three-minute post, commenting on his site too often. Or maybe, ironically, he suffers from ailurophobia? Whatever, we agreed, no hard feelings.

With this in mind, last week I was delighted to be posting on the Recruiting Animal’s site for the Blog Swap. I produced three short skits for posting the same day, as is the Recruiting Animal’s practice. I chose to revisit bloggers who he has parodied: Shannon Seary Gude who writes for the EXCELER8ion blog and occasionally tinkles with other peoples sites; Joel Cheesman who did for online recruitment marketing what Al Gore did for the internet; John Sumser who some affectionately call “Papa”; and Dave Mendoza who recently launched a blog called Six Degrees from Dave. I also referenced the latest in vertical blog-search – RecruitingFly – but only because I like it so much. At the same time on Recruitomatic I published a response to the Recruiting Animal’s Advice for a Young Blogger with my Three Ways to Clever Recruitment Blogging.

Are you following all this? If so, you now have the setting for what then unfolded, unraveled rather. But, before sanctifying the “cat fight” between Dave Mendoza and Tiffany of Magic Pot of Jobs fame, a word to the revered Recruiting Animal:

As someone who has been so generous in their mentoring, and who typifies an aspect of bona fide blogging that I aspire to – you have left me confused, disappointed. We have discussed my being an “evangelical” blogger. For example I believe there is a world that exists for recruiting bloggers after life in the Recruitosphere. I also believe in the Father (the post) The Son (the comment) and the Holy Ghost (the thread). So, your wholesale censoring of comments on my Blog Swap post “Third Degree Burns” is, in my considered opinion, a disgrace. I am sure that you can justify pandering to peer pressure. After all, I did it in my prepubescent spinning of bottles. I can only assume that you are right and I am wrong. You are the master. I am the grasshopper. No need to discuss it then. No need for comments in reply. Of course, anyone reading that post now will know by the obvious dislocation of comments that they have been shortchanged. What you have decided to leave them with is nothing more than hanging chad. You spat in the chalice.

When I rewrite Tongue-tied there will be some special cat-nippy gift for you – a hairball, perhaps. In the meantime, remember, there is no “easy button”. You can sanitize the crime scene but nothing on the internet is really scrubbed clean, hidden from forensics and luminol. Remember, you cannot stuff a spitting cat in a box and expect kitty-kitty to be so easily tamed.

For the record, this is what happened:

1. My Blog Swap post Three Degree Burns went up and Dave Mendoza saw it. He became infuriated, not at the content – after all, he begrudgingly conceded my points and I begrudgingly conceded usng the wrong example of his work to illustrate my point, although you would never know that because the comments are gone – but rather his sudden realization that in the blogosphere, farts don’t always smell like potpourri. I also think he felt I had besmirched Shannon Seery Gude in my post EXCELER8ion Blog Defrocked and felt obligated to defend her honor, Zorro-style. Note: “Defrocking”, David, is a something that happens to priests not women of repute.

2. Tiffany made a comment about Dave Mendoza being a spammer – a jibe that perhaps only Dave Mendoza would understand. I certainly didn’t get it. No one I’ve spoken to got it either. It was obviously a private matter between David Mendoza and Tiffany but which he decided to publicly, and rather foolishly, take issue with. Well, all hell broke loose. I figured whatever Tiffany had said, this was not the kind of thread I had hoped the post would spawn, but the ensuing cat fight was, for me, an interesting study in shit-stirring and narcissism. If anyone wants a transcript of the actual posts that have been axed, I have them all. They are available via email for $9.99 for each unedited comment. There are eight available. Buy all eight, pay for six. Sorry, no refunds, paid in advance please.

3. I reached out to Dave Mendoza to apologize for his upset and when we finally connected – literally and figuratively – we agreed to be friends. I listened to his Recruiters’ Lounge podcast, twice – I made my wife and children listen to it too – and now I have a photo of the real Dave Mendoza in my wallet. Seeing that he is not a three hundred pound gorilla after all, I shall now refer to Dave Mendoza affectionately as “Desi” to save his professional brand being taken out of context, and to avoid future embarrassment for him among his friends or colleagues who might just be googling about God, chimpanzees, quantum physics, psychology, manure, blogging and other things I find to be fascinating portals to the worlds of talent management and business, and where his name might otherwise be mentioned.

4. I sent Desi a copy of a retracted comment – withdrawn because I refuse to participate in the Recruiting Animal’s horrid revisionism, confusion – and suggested if he wanted to draw his own post from it, I would reply in my missive today. In It’s About Professional Conduct, Stupid! – with the clever use of oxymoronic titling to give the post an erudite flavor a la Recruitomatique – Desi sets out his personal view of what recruitment blogging should be, most of which I agree with. It also reflects some of what we had discussed on the telephone and encapsulates the advice he gave to me on how to conduct myself, professionally.

Let me draw this post to a close by making the following points:

1. I came to blogging for the express purpose of trying to understand the medium. I believe it serves my current interests to identify and appreciate what possibilities exist for me to communicate more effectively as a marketer. I do not want to be a “late adopter” for this medium. I want to be a part of its research and development. This thing called blogging, as an element of an emerging web 2:0 reality, is moving so fast there will be no time for late adopters anyway. There will just be victors, wounded and dead. I want to be a victor.

2. I am a citizen-blogger. I do not represent my business or any other commerce. How could I? The Recruitosphere has been my laboratory, a place where I can combine dangerous elements and blow things up without doing too much damage. I had more traffic to my booth at the Park City, Utah Career Fair for Minorities & Women than I get to my blog, so where’s the harm? Of course, I didn’t know about “personal brands” and “online personas” and other works of fiction when I came to this, and I’ll talk to that in a moment. But, I have been very open about my purpose, I invited debate, I have documented my findings, I have published my theses, I have commented on other blogs. I have been honest, sincere and generally well accepted.

My satire may be irritating to some. My criticism of others’ noble efforts is not meant to score points at their expense, belittle them in any way. My posts and comments add to the wider debate in which we are all involved – like it or not. Also, as a longtime consumer of recruiting and related content, I found my own desperate need for authenticity, originality and substance so lacking that I decided to fill the void for myself. There is a didactic and corrective purpose in my blog. But you don’t have to like it or agree with it or want it. You might even wish it would go away. But many readers will keep coming back because this space lacks what I bring to the forum – a strong opinion and an unafraid voice with which to speak it. Unlike others who believe the majority of readers in the recruiting bubble are too dumb to get it, I don’t. That said I am happy if just one or two people get it. Ultimately, I get it and that is who I am blogging for – me. If there are some who don’t like it much, if there is a general disdain for someone who doesn’t quite conform, well, in the nicest possible way – as we say in the places where I hail from – bugger off.

3. Who could have known when I started this blogging thing I would end up dancing with wolves? Who could have thought that the possibilities for blogging in business far exceeded my wildest imagination? I have a use for blogging, Desi, which is not your use. I respect your purpose and will be mindful of your cause. I support it. But, I am a naked blogger and you are so fine in your crocodile shoes. Don’t confuse coexistence with cohabitation. Don’t presume to tell me what is – and what is not – professional conduct. Please don’t call me stupid even though you could well be right.

4. Closing on the subject of personal brands and online personas and all that surrendering of self and God to Google and ZoomInfo, let me quote Harry Joiner’s comment on “Third Degree Burns” – the single most destructive comment of them all, the one that resulted in the blasphemous revision of the post’s thread:

Not to take sides, but this needs to be said on the record: I spoke to Dave for the first time last week and found him to be exceptionally bright, well spoken, and above all – sincere.

Michael [Recruiting Animal] in copy, you should delete this string before it gets archived in Google or (much more formidably) in ZoomInfo.

Harry Joiner’s comments, while well intentioned, suggests he, like Desi I think, has not fully grasped the underlying power of blogging as a communications or thought-channeling medium, web-portal, research tool, social networking thing, art-form and the list could go on. He appears not to understand that once you press “publish” you are damned. Let me reply to his comments thus:

5. I blog and comment using my Jewish-sounding name. My name is Amitai Givertz. It’s the name that the good Rabbi Hoohavada Manischewitz called up as he cut off my dinky little foreskin. Circumcision is an okay biblical reference but let’s hope nobody googles that and ends up participating – even on the sidelines – in a debate over the democratization of the web, and recruiting, and blogging and what to do when your head might be firmly shoved up someone else’s search engine. If ZoomInfo picks up this thread – and that in itself impedes my prospects for getting a job – can I legitimately make an EEOC/discrimination claim against the employer for discriminating against Jews? If my blogging here – and my being Jewish – impedes my ability to forge business relationships can I blog about Company X or power-broker Y as being Jew-haters? Give me a break. If someone rejects me because they don’t like my opinions or my style or convoluted thinking, even though they may have drawn an altogether two dimensional view, I call that poor-man’s screening and assessment. Nothing wrong with that. We’re both better off for it.

6. Poor Desi and his fragile brand. Did I get upset when the Animal depicted me online as a Hasidic Jew? Why would I? Is it something to be ashamed of? The Animal’s depiction of me – like my depiction of Desi – is not meant in a harmful way or to spite me or to have someone look for me at home and throw bricks through my window. There is no hate crime here. Desi seems more concerned for his good looks and personal brand than I do for my own. But, branding, as I have said before, is more than skin deep.

Controlling perceptions in the context of blogging is virtually impossible – you cannot control it. Affect it, yes. Manage it? No. Control it? That is impossible. I’m about being myself and trusting that ZoomInfo users will care enough about their investment of time and money to get to know me, qualify me in – or out – of their purpose when searching my person/profile/name. I trust Desi will get the same treatment too.

5. Anybody, anywhere, anytime, can find me online and take what I said or blogged about of context. They can misquote me, misconstrue me, misrepresent me and even try to publicly berate, attack and hurt me. But, I am not blogging to win a popularity contest or make a bucket of money – although one day I might. When I do I’ll change my name to Norma Jean or Benny Hinn. Today – and in this context blogging is a today thing too – I am blogging because I am passionate about this recruiting/talent management space – caring enough to spank it on the bottom when I think it’s being naughty and kiss it lovingly when I think it’s being good. Who appointed me for such a “critical role?” No one did. It’s called blogging. I appointed myself. If you don’t like it, read something else.

Note: Anyone who does not want me to directly reference them ever, comment on their blog ever, remark about their projects ever – pretend as if they don’t exist – contact me and I will absolutely respect your right to try and manage something that is bigger than the both of us. Be my guest. Email me. I’ll afford you your venerated status. I shall not mention you anymore than I can utter the true name of God. You will have transcended the triangulation of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

6. I use my name and I have no problem with how it is processed and regurgitated online. That is the price I am prepared to pay for being connected as I am, for who I am, and in celebration of my profession and blogging. As long as I am authentic, honest and sincere, why do I have to worry about what some googler or ZoomInfo bushwhacker might think about me? I am not asking for anyone to agree with me. I am asking that we open all this interesting stuff up to a frank and lively debate so that we can all walk away enriched. If I am the only one to do that – leave this experience the better for it – so be it.

What is this hive mind mentality that is emerging here? The Naked Blogger shall continue to explore this space until I am good and ready to move on or morph my “brand” and “purpose” to something that conforms to the space I finally decide to occupy. In the meantime, it’s blogging. Nothing more. Nothing less.

There you have it. I am naked. The cat is out of the bag.

I shall write as if my posts were entries to a personal diary. The advantage of this is that I can now say what I like without having to pander to the sensibilities of those I once sought out for approval or acceptance. And no more replies to fallacious arguments, I’m done. I have ripped out the ability to count page views and the number of feeds from my WordPress dashboard. I will not be monetizing my site. Metrics? Phooey.

From now on I shall try to work out the details of a thing through the creative process of blogging, “musing” in blog-speak and posting a la Recruitomatique

Realizing there may be one or two who might want to read my entries – to fill their own void or loneliness perhaps – I will keep my sentences short. Uncomplicated. Not too intense. I will lighten up. Let the real me shine through.

If you are a recruitment blogger, one of the self-absorbed or self-serving or self-important – take your pick – or just a gentle reader, before you abandon me, disgusted that there is nothing of value here, a thought or two so that our brief time together may not be entirely wasted…

When putting your jobs online, try using a title for your post that will give the potential hire – that “one in a million” – something to identify you as different from the countless other indistinguishable posts they have to wade through. For example, “Sales Representative” does not differentiate you or your job from the teeming tadpoles out there.

I’m not suggesting you title your posts “Sperm” – although clearly you could – but something that will get your post noticed may also be considered the first step in the screening process too. How about: “SALES PERSON High energy go-getter for FT sales position. Are you confident and like people?” I might apply for something like that myself, if I lived in Roanoke. I guess sometimes finding just the right candidate at just the right time and in just the right place is a little bit like swimming up the primordial river pleading: “Me! Me-me! Me-me-me! Me-me-me-me! No wonder some job boards are making so much mo-mo-mo-mo-money.

Similarly, consider the number of resumes online for American recruiters. I am told that Monster has 43 million resumes, CareerBuilder has 18 million resumes, and HotJobs around 24 million resumes of its own. Now, assume that 20% of those resumes are duplicated – is that a reasonable assumption? If so, that would add 17 million more resumes to the mix. We now have 102 million resumes available on the big-three boards. Let’s say, 10 thousand assorted job boards comprise the balance – a conservative number is it not, or beyond belief? Can we say each of those would have, what, five thousand resumes apiece? Is that a reasonable number? If so, all that means – without counting the resumes posted on association sites, alumni pages, and personal websites and so on, or the profiles on ZoomInfo and LinkedIn for example – there are at least 152 million resumes available online for U.S. headhunters and body snatchers. Golly!

Now, I will concede that for all practical purposes we can sift, sort, select and screen from the absurdly large number of resumes to narrow down the pool of candidates to a manageable number. And of course, no one could possibly access all of the resumes online at any one time. Who would want to? And many will report, despite every technological advantage, they cannot surface enough qualified candidates to fill their few open positions. I think I understand that.

The point is, just as every one of the up to 500 million sperm in each teaspoon carries the 99.99999% certainty that its mission will fail, it requires that critical mass for the single successful spermatozoa to fulfill its purpose. Without the millions and millions of resumes available online, the one that makes a difference – that one that consummates the search – could never be realized. My God, the creation of life – like finding the perfect candidate – is a marvelous thing, isn’t it? It makes me sing, “Hallelujah!” every time we make a hire and “Amen!” when they decide to stay.

According to David Sifry, the aptly named Technorati has just tracked the 50 millionth blog. The number of daily posts has doubled in the last 12 months to around 1.6 million posts per day. Therefore, the odds of you landing here are similar to the odds of my survival swimming the English Channel, if you get my drift.

Again, as with the number of jobs and resumes posted online, and the one-in-a-few-million probability of their potential being realized, the number of blogs and daily posts makes our union here an event that is truly miraculous. The scale of this thing is awesome – infinitely immense and at the same time, infinitesimally small. In my quest to understand the implications of this I somehow think Albert Einstein has some of what I’m looking for. Is that possible?

So, here we are – you and me – about to get down to the germination of a new idea for this cozy and insular place we call the “Recruitosphere”, pregnant with possibilities. Are you ready? Are you sure? Come a little closer then…

Thesis: Each little spermy-thing is essentially comprised of three distinct parts: the bit on top – the head, of course – contains the nucleus, the code, the payload or, if you will, the post; the middle bit is the engine that powers the entire thing, like the internet, perhaps? The last part that propels the package through time and space, the long tail, is like, well, The Long Tail.

This combination of post, internet and driving force makes a randomly inimitable output possible most every time. Again, just as one zoosperm is quite indistinguishable from the next, indistinguishable job-, resume- and blog postings contain within them the potential to spawn great things – unlikely, but possible and purposefully – as if by some intelligent design.

Antithesis: Clearly an antecedent of modern talent management, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World explores a society where stability is based on a scientifically engineered caste system, not quite like the one Gautam Ghosh describes in a recent comment, but close enough to cross reference here. Human beings, manufactured through the re-engineering of sperm, are graded from brilliant intellectuals – like our modern day Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning – to the lowest menial workers, hatched from incubators and brought up in communal nurseries. Interestingly enough, posts titled like this one stand testimony to the “hive of industry” where much of the action happens in Huxley’s prophetic book.

Synthesis: If we can accept that a) sperm might represent aspects of the recruiters’ experience online, and parallels the incalculable numbers of individual posts needed to bring forth the realization of just one; and b) by applying a futuristic view of science and technology to workforce and succession planning we can better control the outcomes for a well-ordered society, it follows:

A single blog post can be used to intelligently make the case for both developing a systematic approach to talent management and the incorporation of blogging as part of that strategic, but possibly boring, process. There you have it, in a nutshell.

In comparison with award-winning posts, this is a rather long post, I know. But, before you complain – tired and drained of energy – please evaluate the alternatives, given your own busy schedules and concertinaed attention spans:

1. Tempered by Fire: Where HR Is. Where It Needs to Go courtesy of Mercer Human Resources & Harvard Business School Publishing;

2. Next-Generation Talent Management: Insights on How Workforce Trends Are Changing the Face of Talent Management authored by Elissa Tucker, Tina Kao, and Nidhi Verma from Hewitt Associates; or

3. It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is? Why Acquisition and Retention Strategies Don’t Work published by Deloitte Research…

…and that’s just for starters.

Surely it would be easier to march into the boardroom, where for so long we have protested HR’s right to a place at the table, and say: “As it relates to the problems we face today, in all matters affecting our talent management and workforce planning, we have closely examined sperm and have drawn some meaningful conclusions. Respectfully, we would now like to present our findings to the Board.”

Sterile white papers, sanitized studies and loveless tomes hibernate in locked cryogenic chambers, frozen behind closed doors. They have their place for sure, and hold the promise of great things too. There can be no question of that. But so do our promiscuous blogs, don’t they? Nothing “in vitro” here, gentle reader, nothing at all.