Following up on John Sumser: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing? and Jason Davis: The Recruitosphere’s Darling, Broken Promises posted on Bells & Whistles.
Archive for the 'Blogging' Category
…Birthday Greetings, Bottle of Wine?
It has been a little while since we posted here, hasn’t it? No matter. Those of you who know me well enough to care will also know that I have been somewhat distracted with other projects. Those of you who don’t know me that well, well, don’t care do you?
With the launching of Bells & Whistles: The RCI Recruitment Solutions Blog I find that most of my work here is done. While this blog has been an entirely personal adventure, what I have learned has been most valuable in ways that I could only apply to “work” and other assorted labors of love.
But it is like a bug, you know, having your own little piece of cyberspace to graffiti. So I think I might continue to post from time-to-time, most likely when I feel like talking to myself is the best way to work through a problem, not wanting to upset anyone I might otherwise want to impress. Maybe I’ll post here when I want to write just for the fun of it.
For sure, if this first blog has taught me one thing it is that I do need a personal space for my private public musing. Making connections between work, the business of recruiting, ambition, profit, anticappointment and what-have-you in the context of God, sex, power, bodily functions and boyhood — not to overlook the occasional rude observation about industry luminaries — is hardly appropriate when blogging — as I must now — with the decorum of polite company and paying guests in mind.
So this blog will continue to serve some purpose I guess, even if that purpose becomes increasingly obscured over time, those idiosyncratic connections and contexts never being referenced here again, rather left to the archives for some fool to take issue with.
Who knows?
Maybe I’ll just post links here to other places where I am my contemporary self, diverting one’s attention from my clumsy first kiss with authenticity, my heavy-handed groping with social media. Little, innocuous links giving way to a lighter touch perhaps or just popping in and out when the need to wax lyrical overrides my greater need to cost-justify my time blogging.
Really, darlings, who knows? Who cares?
No, not another post about the currently beleaguered Chief Jobster Jason Goldberg, or a commentary on his recent opacity, unless you want it to be, of course. I write – metaphysically – to please you I hope although on this blog, as previously reported, I’m almost done here.
Ding…
Well, I’ve had fun these past few days, blogging here more than in recent weeks. At least, so it would seem on the surface. In reality I have been busy putting together a great many more posts for the launch of a new and spiffy “blog-enabled” corporate website, going live sometime late January, early February perhaps. My only fear is that by then there will be a general armistice in the war for talent, or Dave Lefkow will have left Jobster for Taleo or some other industry brain drainer, or they’ll be giving away credits for recruiter training on the back of specially marked boxes of Special K – or some such nonsense – like my postings here, obviously dated.
Dong…
Looking back on my posts here I see my tagline “A Contrarian View of Talent Management” hardly describes the bulk of my content since posting here in June. Rather, my work on the whole seems much more introspective and/or recruiting blog-centric. A little light in the talent management department compared to some. So I have changed the tagline to, “A Contrarian View of Life in the Recruitosphere” which seemed to be the overall tenor, regardless. I will be blogging about talent management and related topics on the new corporate blog – Bells and Whistles – and looking forward to shamelessly commercializing my efforts.
Ding…
I am planning to write a personal blog focusing on stuff that interests me in business and in blogging and in general, abandoning the need for this impossible love-hate relationship with the Recruitosphere or an online persona that needs such frequent watering.
Dong..
When I get going, if you find what I post there interesting, I might ask that you please keep it to yourself. First, I am not nearly smart enough to develop threads about how, for example, the augmented social network (PDF) is finally transcending the perceived or real limitations of monetization and walled gardens and trust and persistent identity, evolving to realize it’s potential. Phew. Nor will I have much time to become embroiled in lengthy exchanges, baring my nincompoopery for Mother to see. I’ll be too busy with my other duties. Second, I wouldn’t want everyone to know what I was researching as I sought to develop some competitive advantage for my business, now would I?
So, for who does the bell toll? Jason Goldberg, it tolls for thee.
When John Sumser sent me an invitation to post on interbiznet as part of his Top Ten in 2006 yearend review, I could not have been more surprised, gob-smacked actually. It was not that he referred to me as “one of a few” or that he said – quite nonchalantly – the others were “leading thinkers in the industry.” The reason that I was taken aback was that anyone widely respected in the bubble – let alone the patriarch of recruiting bloggers – would place me in such esteemed company, let me post first. Well, ain’t that something? I mean, I am accustomed to being spanked on the bottom for being naughty, not pat on the head for being good:
We had lunch with Ami in a prototypical Manhattan diner the first time we physically met him. We’d been hearing from and about him while suffering the lash of his pen over the past year or so. Ami is the single most provocative and infectious of the new voices that have emerged in the blogging fury that has taken center stage in the industry. It felt like a gathering of old Bolsheviks plotting the overthrow of anything that came up. We were completely unprepared to like him so much.
As each contributor posted their take on the 10 most important things that happened in our industry during 2006 I realized – seeing that on so many points we were agreed – that perhaps I could hold my own as a panelist at some fancy-schmancy recruiting conference, command some un-Godly fee. We “thought leaders” do get paid un-Godly fees, don’t we? No? How about .01% of the take plus actual expenses? No? How about some free publicity, stroke of the ol’ ego then? Hmmm…that sucks. I might as well stay at home and blog then, don’t you think?
Thank you for honoring me John, sincerely, thank you…
- Amitai Givertz : Top 10 in 2006 (v1)
- David Hurst : Top 10 in 2006 (v2)
- Scott Dow : Top 10 in 2006 (v3)
- Kevin Wheeler : Top 10 in 2006 (v4)
- Hank Stringer : Top 10 in 2006 (v5)
- Tim Driver : Top 10 in 2006 (v6)
- Steve Levy : Top 10 in 2006 (v7)
- Martin Snyder : Top 10 in 2006 (v8)
- Don Ramer : Top 10 in 2006 (v9)
- Hans Geiskes : Top 10 in 2006 (v10)
…and who knows, one day you might invite me to join one of your panel discussions, eh? I’ll negotiate a special rate just for you, John.
Well, my slide into obscurity – not posting much – has been rudely interrupted. I am being spammed out of my inbox by bloggers and wannabes desperate to get their emotional needs met with a big win in this year’s 2006 Best Blog Awards, a Recruiting.com production.
It seems that some vindictive bastard nominated me. Well, thank you very much – not! In addition to the blog-spam I am now fielding emails asking me to explain what I meant by this and what was I thinking posting that, why did I migrate from my original WordPress blog to this new “Blogversity” domain - wassup with that – and will I undergo a paternity test, and do Jews celebrate Kwanzaa. Puh-leeeeeze! Have we lost our minds? There is so much else going on in the world that deserves our energized canvassing – how about genocide in Darfur for starters? Now there’s something to get puffed-up about, don’t you think?
Anyway…
John Sumser was nice enough to give me his vote of confidence on interbiznet today – gracious even, inviting my post – and I finally wangled a Mikey’s Monkey out of the Recruiting Animal. What more could this blogger want? Recruiting.com’s 2006 Best Blog Award, a hat-trick? Let the omnipresent Dave Mendoza have it, for God’s sake. I’m begging you. He seems so desperate to win that to deny him would be un-Christian.
I like John Sumser’s idea of a Top Ten to close the year out. So, here is my pick of Recruitomatic posts from 2006 – in no particular order – to help persuade you that: a) there other recruiting bloggers much more deserving of your vote than me and, b) the real prize is in being read, bookmarked even:
3. Sex & Spammers: Lightening Strikes & Other Acts of God
5. College Career Centers: Reality Online Checks Out
7. When Top-of-Mind is a Headache
9. Body Image
10. Atonement
There you are, there you have it. Happy Holidays!
Ah, to slump back into the comfort of my old blog. Like a well-worn armchair that so easily conforms to the shape of my bottom, with armrests on which to relax tired limbs, a moment to pause and reflect: What is the meaning of it all?
Having read recent posts and comments ad nausea about the vacuous nature of recruiting blogs, I am thinking twice about whether to comment myself on two important new developments at the center of gravity for this corrupt band of self-interested, self-important, self-promoting and self-indulgent pseudo-recruiters – Recruiting.com.
To hell with it! I will not be cowered by convention or conventional people. For as long as I cause no serious offense to the public-at-large, or breaches of national security, I will blog as I please – to please you I hope – but in the final analysis, because I have an idea and I want to think through, or an opinion to voice, or something to share, or a spare five minutes between spasms.
Important new development number one: As recently predicted, the new-look Recruiting.com is now running a few innocuous banner ads, with more to come. And, why not? God forbid someone should make enough dosh blogging to pay the bills. I have already asked for a media kit so I can forward the information to potential advertisers, thinking even candidates might want to pay the freight for such marvelous exposure.
Important new development number two: Despite suggestions from luminary John Sumser to the contrary, Jason Davis continues to bring his personal charisma to Recruiting.com, helping people connect, as is his forte. In his post Let’s Make A Deal, Jason Davis not only does what he does best, that is broking deals and throwing down gauntlets – even at the expense of potential advertisers – but comforts us that advertising on Recruiting.com does not mean an immediate stop to shilling for the products and services we love, like Jason Davis does for ZoomInfo.
Jason is very clever. Recruiting.com wants and needs advertisers. Vendors want and need Jason Davis’s endorsements. Either way “product placement” is a sure-fired way to monetize your blog – assuming you have enough self-interested, self-important, self-promoting and self-indulgent pseudo-recruiters backing you up.
Keep plugging.
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?
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.
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…
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